Summons: Your thoughts.....

[Valandil]

Sadly, they don't last very long in the face of firestorm and the like. Same problem with most of hte other summons.

I'm using blocks of living statues to hold of sharks underwater in DoomChicken. Basically, they block the inevtable shark attacks long enough for the basalt kings to get buffs up/put up my own shark attack.

[Shovah32]

Vine Ogres are practically made to be buffed. They are nice normally, but throw in an army of gold and mass regeneration and they suddenly become alot more than nice.
You can also add quickening, resistances, will of the fates, fog warriors, weapons of sharpness ect but the first 2 work great on their own.

[Evil Dave]

On a related topic: other than skelly spamming, I almost never deliberately cast battlefield summoning spells. Do other people? What do you summon?

[Shovah32]

LA Ulm+Massed Vampire Counts in your own dominion+Several castings of Summon Lammashta

Great fun.

[Velusion]

In a previous post I said most everything except late game summons suck. There are a couple exceptions I missed:

Call of the Wild can be very useful
Vine Orges can be cost effective with the right summoning gear/summoning abilities.

[Ewierl]

Valandil said:
Sadly, they don't last very long in the face of firestorm and the like.

Quite true. But even before you can lay down buffs like Army of Gold, the main use of Vine Ogres is in the early game. They are accessible and useful way, way, way before there are spells that can slaughter them en masse.

Oh, and other useful summons: I find Mechanical Men very useful sometimes. They're a niche critter, but the niche isn't a rare one: if your opponent is using lots of nasty elemental spells, you can plough through happily with these immune-everything fighters. (Even once you eventually get access to the equally-protected Iron Dragons, the MMs can still be worthwhile when your opponent backs up elemental spells with a few MR-targeting effects like Disintegrate. Neither type has excellent MR, so it can be better to have a stack of small guys than one big one.)

[VedalkenBear]

Hmm. As far as (national) summons go:

I find S&A Tien Chi's rather interesting. River Oni (why are they called Oni if they're Chinese?) are quite nice, the Fire Oni are okay (but not the greatest; they don't 'play well'). Servant and Hounds are pretty craptacular. The Soldiers are solid.

Marverni's Iron Pigs are pretty hysterical. 20HP 20Prot Sacred Boars.

I think Gandharvas must be mentioned. Bandar Log can easily summon them, and IIRC Patala and Kailasa can Clam for them. Depending on the Bless, Yazatas can be in the same camp, though it's a lot harder for Caelum to get the pearls. (Someone, switch it to Air summons. It just makes sense.)

Anyone mentioned the Morrigans of Fomoria yet? They look pretty interesting. Never been able to mass them, though. Also, I'd like opinions on the Golem Cult's stone guys. Any good ones?

As far as commanders go? The Serpent Cult's Satyr has to be high on the list of 'cool and actually pretty decent'. Even taking him as an Assassin, he's not bad for the price. If you start next to LE Arco or Jotunheim, they can be even better. OTOH, you kind of have to built your pretender around using them.

[llamabeast]

Call of the Winds is one of my favourite spells. Very useful.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

The Golem Cult's summons are pretty good, speaking from experience. Even five plain un-sacred, unbuffed Attentive Statues are pretty mean. At enchant three, you can get them pretty early on, and they just carve through most independents (beware cavalry, barbarians) because of their 0 encumbrance- not to mention +10% hitpoints per candle of dominion.

... Beware of astral nations, unless you've got antimagic,an astral bless, or drain scales instead of magic. "Opposition" is your enemy, as well as "Elf Bane" and "Moon Blade", I suppose. Mind hunts will leave your golems unled unless you've got spares/decoys.

Attentive Statues: Earth Might is Alt2, gives those swords extra bite, affects three at a time. I've had five take out 70 independent troops. They're still effective against other nations, but you need beware your weakness.

Enliven Sentinels: 10 dominion, 50 hitpoints. 0 dominion, 25. Less afflictions. Nature bless, earth bless do not apply. Strength boost irrelevant, thanks to 22 strength and Granite Glaives (10 damage).

Granite Guards- I haven't experienced a situation that calls for Granite Guards- but I haven't made it to a late game as Agartha (2 games played). Too expensive to use against Astral nations with Opposition (barring mr boosts of your own), they have 150 hitpoints in 10 friendly dominion. They don't have additional damage capacity, though, and in a square by square battlefield analysis, they're a half as effective as Sentinels, thanks to their largeness.

Enliven Marble Oracles - get your MR up, especially against astral nations. Encumbrance is not a concern, so a Lead Shield works well.

The biggest threat to your golems is not astral magic (though that's a mean second place), it's running out of magical leadership on the battlefield. You need spares, even if they're just Earth Readers to prevent dissolution. No leaders and all your golems go pop!

[HoneyBadger]

I think all the...shall we say "less cost-efficient" summons deserve a boost. You're not only spending the gems, you're spending the mage for a turn that could have been used for research, etc. Summons should be worth summoning, even if they're niche-national troops have a lot more room for superfluous "themed" units than summons do, especially non-nationals.