Vanilla Summon Costs

[B0rsuk]

Part of the problem with nature summons is that many of them work only against living enemies. Spirits of the woods and their awe. Lots of venomous creatures can't harm undead, constructs, and (if I remember correctly) many demons. Nature summons are good mostly against other nature summons (or at least living creatures).

I've just cast Creeping Doom. Pathetic ! 2 gems to stall 30 barbarians. They didn't even manage to deal 1 (1!) damage to barbarians. They are supposed to have weak poison. Creeping Doom looks like a very situational spell. It might be better than Swarm against certain enemies, but it's hard to come up with an example. It's much higher in the research tree and requires NNN to cast.

[Cor2]

I use Ice and Fire Drakes with Hot and Cold nations. Abysia and Jotunheim benifit the most because they lack archers.

I cant say I have done it in MP game, however. Maybe soon though. I would be in favor of a cost decrease to around 5 gems.

[Kristoffer O]

> For me the problem is, if many big changes are made, be it in CBM or vanilla game, the manual become obsolete and I like to use it a lot.

That's one of our main reason to keep it as it is. Now, as the game has been out for some time I feel a bit less reluctant to change stuff that makes the manual wrong. I'm not entirely against altering casting costs. Spell lvl's and path lvl's are more of a problem as they have greater impact on your strategy and might confuse new players in particular.

[Morkilus]

I'm a big fan of the way Summon Animals works in CBM. Bears, moose, wolves, all the cool stuff, and lots of it.

[Xietor]

I did not read the whole thread, but id like to see the e summon trolls get pr like the water trolls, and id like to see a summon added for the higher protection earth summon trolls at 2 e gems apiece.

[Jazzepi]

Kristoffer O said:
> For me the problem is, if many big changes are made, be it in CBM or vanilla game, the manual become obsolete and I like to use it a lot.

That's one of our main reason to keep it as it is. Now, as the game has been out for some time I feel a bit less reluctant to change stuff that makes the manual wrong. I'm not entirely against altering casting costs. Spell lvl's and path lvl's are more of a problem as they have greater impact on your strategy and might confuse new players in particular.

A lot of the stuff in the manual, and/or game, isn't completely reliable. Why keep a useless spell the same for the sake of consistency when for 99% of competitive MP games, and even most single player games, when it is never going to be cast?

I mean, you buffed seeking arrow by making it armor negating instead of piercing, and nerfed blade wind. Not to argue the changes one way or the other, but both those spells see infinitely more play, especially blade wind, then some of the worse summons.

I mean really, lets look at "Summon Animals". 20 gems for 20 pieces of fodder? You might as well just remove the spell from the spell book so it's easier to scroll down and find Faerie Court.

I would say you should feel much more at ease buffing in game summons. There is an explicit statement in the in game spell for most of them, indicated by the "# of effects" so there shouldn't be any confusion over what they actually do.

Jazzepi

[Xietor]

I do not think loyalty to the manual should be relevant either. It is in need of an update anyway.

I for one would pay for a new manual after the major patches are done. A working basis is already there, so correcting the manual and republishing it likely would not entail the same degree of work as the original.

[Sombre]

The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

[Jazzepi]

Sombre said:
The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

I completely agree, and sometimes the spell doesn't even work as described in the manual. Stygian paths, anyone?

In Magic : The Gathering, they've faced this problem for a long time. Since the rules have changed so greatly since the printing of the first sets, they've had to extensively change old cards. For example, there is no longer "interrupts" in magic anymore. Everything is an instant. The important lesson to take away is that they weren't afraid to go back and meddle with older cards to make the game better. Even though it makes it a bit more difficult to pickup old cards and play with them according to the oracle wording (the official text of every card is listed in the oracle), the game is made that much better because old mechanics are fixed, cards are reworded, and things become keywords.

Also, they generally only change things to make them clearer, while preserving as much of the original effect as possible. Lighting Bolt may now be an instant instead of an interrupt, but chances are a player picking one up is going to play it almost exactly the same way as someone might play Shock.

I see a lot of value in gently tweaking these lower level summons. Make them more valuable. Let people use their gems on stuff other than forging, SCs, and magic diversity.

Jazzepi

[Endoperez]

There are lots of people who only play singleplayer, or just the demo, and still think the AI is hard and impossible to beat, and would be quite confused indeed if they bought the game and found out they don't know research levels up to 4 any more.

As an example, is LA Vanheim good or crap? There was that thread about some other forum thinking it was so bad it was almost useless, and discussion about their mages' randoms and the skinshifters and stuff like that.

Similarly, here we've had huge discussions about monkey nations' PD, and about Ulm. Some people think Ulm in all ages suck, some think MA Ulm sucks, some think EA Ulm is too good already - unless someone frequents these forums, major changes will come out of nowhere. Even if someone frequents here, some changes seem to come out of nowhere.

Some changes are good and universal. Price changes are relatively easy to adjust to, and changing Summon Animals to 20 to 30 beasts isn't that big of a change. Something like changing Dragon Mastery to Conjuration 1, 10 gems and Cave Drakes to 20 gems for 4 drakes, +2 from mastery, +1 for every level above needed? Suddenly some nations can pump out lots of Cave Drakes in the early game with one turn's expense from a Great Mother pretender. The spell might get used now, but all changes are scary.

There's also the fact that Shrapnel is still selling Dominions, and shipping the game with a manual that is very clearly outdated is bad. If people can at least trust that the manual gives the right idea about where you find what spells and what they do, they can plan without having the game always open.

EDIT:

Sombre said:
The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

The manual could use an update, but I use it to check spells' details. Where can I find this spell, what level caster does it take, how much fatigue does it cost? It gives me that. I also use it to check probabilities from the table at page 5, and no one has proven that wrong yet. I also learned out the effects of fatigue and morale from tha manual, and no one has proven that wrong either. My manual is right in almost everything, and wrong in few things. It's also missing some stuff that should have made it in for the release (number of towers in castles, quickness stacking, things like that), and lots of stuff that was added in patches. As I said, it could use an update. But it never was, and isn't, hopeless.