Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Does anyone actually use vanilla summons, providing no magic diversity or thug/SC in addition, except as an absolute last resort? I can't think of a worse waste of gems then summoning a handful of units at a relatively decent price, as with vine ogres + summoning head piece, or summoning large quantities of really terrible fodder for far too many gems?

Personally I think the cost ratio on most summons should be lowered. Either make the cost less, which still incurrs many turns of mages sitting around summoning wasting their research and forging time to make doodz, or make the number of effects greater which would both lower the number of mages needed to cast, *and* provide cheaper troops.

Either way I think, currently, the basic "here are some doodz" summons aren't terribly useful at the moment.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I like Call of Winds, and national sacred summons are good.

I've got an MA Mictlan game where I've summoned really quite a lot of Jaguars (Conj 3 spell), along with quite a few Jade Serpents. It's going pretty well.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I should have specified that the summon at a distance spells were out, as they're not vanilla. Those clearly have their uses fighting PD, etc.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I can't entirely agree with the OP.

certainly, there are some damned useless summons.
but as vtb notes: national summonable sacreds can be OK sometimes.

and spells that summon lots of pretty good troops at reasonable prices are good, like the higher level, often national, summons. spells where you get 20ish units around 30ish gems; units with over 20 HP, and str and prot over 15. But I don't know, I'm only in my 2nd MP game, so maybe these are actually useless. They look pretty tasty to me though.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

The most problematic summons are the various low to mid-level summons that cost 15 to 30 gems for 5 to 20 units that are essentially worthless. Many of those are nature summons, but others as well. The cost efficiency is so bad that you are always better off using those gems to forge items or distributing them among battle mages. You get more use out of them that way.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I play Agartha a lot, and because of that I like to use low level national summons they have in all ages.

But vanella summons? I am sure that I have used some but generally they seem somewhat wasteful. I do not build a lot of thugs generally, but I like to save my gems for mage item, mid game summons, and the big late game ones.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

This is exactly what I'm talking about D: They spells end up being so junky they're useless. I'd really like to see the spells retooled to be more useful. I think it'd be a lot more interesting to see T'ien Ch'i's soldiers supplemented with a contingent of ancestral ghosts, instead of just more of the same national troops as cannon fodder because the gems are just too valuable to waste on low ratio, low power, summons.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Yes, that is what I've always thought. All the serpent/drake spells for example - pure crap. Do anyone ever use them (besides from SP). Even the spell that is intended to strengthen them is bad (dragon master). I mean lv8 and 30 gems to get "not one but three" of them. What is up with that?

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Well this is kinda my speciality area. If you go back to the old CBM thread you can see my analysis of various vanilla summons and suggestions to improve them in CBM.

Many, many summons are improved in CBM, though sometimes I think qm doesn't go far enough. Or at least as far as I would.

Summon animals in CBM is a hot spell though. It scales (quite a lot) and is cheap and in the right terrain you get some nice stuff. Just as an example.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

The CBM is a way to solve the issues of course, but I rather have an explanation by Kristoffer how he justifies the high costs. I mean doesn't he like animals? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif