Vanilla Summon Costs

[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]

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

What's wrong with it now that the bug has been fixed?

* Caster of Stygian Paths took 1 an dmg for each unit under his command instead of units taking 1 an dmg each
* Stygian Paths reported random number of lost on the way

Manual: Transports the caster and all troops under his command to distant province. En route, all troops are attacked by dmg:1 AN attack and dmg: Death, MR attack. These represent the spirits of the underworld attacking. Stealthy units only have a 20% chance of being hit by the death attack. The caster gains no benefit from stealth.

[Gregstrom]

I too think gentle tweaks would be of value. A bit of a boost to summon numbers or stats, or adding scaling per path level in the right place, would add a lot to some spells. Work like that done to the 'Sleeping in...' spells, adding some scale dependencies or dominion-dependent boosts, could also be a neat solution. Summon Animals might summon bigger, stronger animals in a Growth scale, for instance.