Summons: Your thoughts.....

[K]

So, in Dom II I used to summon things quite a bit. Armies sucked and were hard to build, so your army eventually became composed entirely of summons.

In dom III, with the exception of a few notably great summons, I generally make armies out of recruitable units and save the gems for battlefield spells, rituals, and items, or I spend them on summonable commanders.

So my question is this: are there any summons you use as a part of your strategy? Any great stories from MP or SP about a lesser used summons that paid off? How do you use your summons: support troops, frontline troops, or chaff, or some other roll?

[NTJedi]

Some summons are NOT a good for the gem investment... such as the Ziz, Behemoth and Eater of the Dead. Avoid these even in SP games unless you're totally winning and looking to splurge.

I'll let someone else list the good summons.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Some summons are situationally useful.

Claymen, for instance, when facing R'lyeh on the land. Cheap enough to form a frontline, regenerating construct that doesn't need a lab. Mindless, so makes a good frontline versus mindblasters, as long as you've got something other than your leaders for R'lyeh to target, say some deadly archers. And R'lyeh has little protection, to boot. They're poor amphibians, to boot. So they won't be great invading, but counter-attacking they can be quite useful underwater if they need not face the main force. Did I mention that pesky poisoned coral?

[Sombre]

90% of summons are basically crap in my opinion. Either overpriced or underpowered. So in MP people basically just use the remaining 10%

I recently went through almost every summon in the game to suggest changes for the next version of Conceptual Balance Mod - it just reinforced how terrible some summons are. I mean look at horned serpents, shades, spectral infantry, Ziz, drakes, amphipteres,....

An example of a good summon is something like the recently added Jade Serpent. It's actually worth casting.

[K]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Some summons are situationally useful.

Claymen, for instance, when facing R'lyeh on the land. Cheap enough to form a frontline, regenerating construct that doesn't need a lab. Mindless, so makes a good frontline versus mindblasters, as long as you've got something other than your leaders for R'lyeh to target, say some deadly archers. And R'lyeh has little protection, to boot. They're poor amphibians, to boot. So they won't be great invading, but counter-attacking they can be quite useful underwater if they need not face the main force. Did I mention that pesky poisoned coral?

Thats the kind of thing I was looking for.

I mean, in a recent test game as LA Atlantis I made four Winter Drakes and was quite happy with their ability to sit near the front on Fire Closest and whip on the enemy with their Area 2 frost breath attack.

Was I twenty-four Water gems happy? I don't know. They were pretty nice though, and most likely reduced my casualties of home only troops.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Also Atlantis- or Caelum, perhaps:

Hidden in Snow is an unreliable spell. Not so hot, pun intended. BUT consider the research path. With just one school (enchantment), you get Grip of Winter and semi-tough undead. Throw some chaff (skelly spam) into battle to buy time for Grip of Winter to take effect. If you've got no mortal units, throw in Rigor Mortis for added effect. There's definetly better summons than Hidden in Snow, but with the right race and mages, Hidden in Snow delivers a powerful combination with only one school of research.

If, on the other hand, enchantment is a low priority school, then Hidden in Snow is a horrible waste of gems - except there's not a whole lot to spend water gems on.

Keeping an eye on LA Atlantis and R'lyeh... pretty much all the underwater summons are useless, excepting Sea Trolls + sharks. Combine minds with ridiculously low magic resistance plus temptingly large size and hitpoints, and you've got the perfect mindblast target.

I have to wonder what the point of the kraken and sea serpent are, though I admit they may have their uses against independents or Oceania. Decoy? Does Mindblast retarget?

[Velusion]

I can't usually justify summoning almost anything except end-game summons (Abomination, Iron Dragon, Tarrasqe, etc...) or summonable casters that can diversify my magic.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well... I'll have something to share about Consecrated Ground - 200+ shade beasts at the start of year four, but we'll have to wait and see how that turns out. With six of them to a battlesquare and Niefelheims expensive units (cheapest priest 130 gold OR indep), I think I may be able to swamp their units with poision. I've seen some pesky hydra skin armor, sadly.

In Doom Chicken I was not able to survive because a). I attacked too early and b). I spread out my efforts way too much.

There are a few tantilizing ideas I botched by spreading out to thin.

I equipped Black Servants with a rod of the leper king, bane venom charm, and 8 Shades. I also summoned Wights in a seperate army. My half-strength wights got slaughtered by priests- even under darkness. As Ctis, I could have (with missing research) and should have cast Anti-Magic. The combination of Darkness and Anti-Magic would have made them merciless. Unfortunately, while quite safe in melee, they fell to banishment.

The Black Servants failed because I had too few doing too many things. They didn't serve as a stealth force because the Venom Charm left an obvious trail of disease. The eight shades the Rod of the Leper King let me lead would have done a nice job against the province defense if I hadn't advertised my presence and attacked in one fell swoop, not in dribbles. The disease was practically a memo saying: buy pd here! I think Abysia gets a priest-mage at 20, which is even worse.

From one early battle I can say I could have easily taken out typical pre-war PD with eight shades. Say 10 teams (200 death gems?! Well, I did have 15 wights...) I could have cannibalized from my other incomes), enough minor provinces siezed and taxed and I could have done something. Leaving out the Bane Venom Charm frees up 10 gems and stops advertising my presence.

On the other hand, I could have just given Black Servants Bane Venom Charms, and nothing else. (Or thugged them out, but that I didn't try). At a total cost of 15 apiece, I could have diseased every single one of their armies- much cheaper than leprosy.

But I did none of this hypothetical. Instead I did everything piecemeal. I learned a lot - but I lost.

[AdmiralZhao]

Fire Snakes and Winter Wolves have been good to me. They are relatively low cost, and they let human nations make element-specific armies that can take advantage of battlefield wide elemental spells.

Pride of Lions is helpful if you are in a closely matched early game war.

Summon Draconian is a good choice if you only have one or two air mages, since it lets you convert a lot of air gems into a lot of meatshields in just a few castings.

The national summons are consistently worthwhile.

[Sombre]

National summons are consistently worthwhile? I think they're generally less awful that regular summons, but still less than a third of them are actually any good. Again, consider stuff like jaguar toads, spectral infantry, rubbish mass animal summons (pack of wolves springs to mind), demons of heavenly fire etc.