Summon Zealot is the most pointless unit in the entire game.

[Eldrin]

This unit comes from the Tome of Zeal.

It is a basic tier 1 fighter unit who's ONLY special power/skill/ability is that the unit has Zeal on it by default.


Well in the SAME TOME, there is a spell called Legion of Zeal that gives all your units except mages and supports ZEAL. That includes any other fighter you have. So the moment you cast this spell that zealot turns into a common tier 1 unit that has NOTHING going for it, absolutely nothing.

[Astasia]

Negative. Not all t1 units are equal. Compare it to the t1 Light melee unit, the Dawn Defender, it has 10 base damage, the Zealot has 12 base damage. Having Zeal inherent also means you don't have to pay the upkeep for the enchantment on that unit. And the fact that it's a summon means you can reinforce a stack remotely, then the fact it's a racial unit means it gets all the bonuses of your race transformations and traits, while other summons are generally not affected by those things. It's certainly an interesting and situationally useful spell. You probably aren't going to want to use them as a main unit, but as an emergency/remote summon there are going to be situations where it's superior to other t1/t2 and maybe even t3 summon options for you.

[Eldrin]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Negative. Not all t1 units are equal. Compare it to the t1 Light melee unit, the Dawn Defender, it has 10 base damage, the Zealot has 12 base damage. Having Zeal inherent also means you don't have to pay the upkeep for the enchantment on that unit. And the fact that it's a summon means you can reinforce a stack remotely, then the fact it's a racial unit means it gets all the bonuses of your race transformations and traits, while other summons are generally not affected by those things. It's certainly an interesting and situationally useful spell. You probably aren't going to want to use them as a main unit, but as an emergency/remote summon there are going to be situations where it's superior to other t1/t2 and maybe even t3 summon options for you.

It is never going to be superior to T2 and T3 summon options in any situation.
Also saying not to cast that spell because of maintenance cost would be insane, as to how powerful Legion of Zeal is.

I agree all tier 1 units are not equal, but this one just turns redundant the moment you cast a spell that you find in the same tome.

In no situation ever, would you want to summon it over another unit Legion of Zeal up, every single other tier 1 summon unit will be superior to it, as they all benefit from legion of zeal + their own abilities.

Summoning a zealot over any other unit is a literal waste of mana, when you have Legion of Zeal. You are better off not summoning a Zealot to save your mana for you maintenance.


EVEN IF you can still find some use for this unit when all the stars align in some special situation, it is STILL the worst unit in the game you can find in any tome.


TLDR: All i am saying is that this unit needs a rework. Having a unit in a tome that has a spell to make it redundant is ridiculous.

[RaPriest]

Just finished a game where summon zealot won it for me at some extent.
Good cannon fodder unit that you can mass while being afar from your territory and faster than you usually can build and assemble your other t1.

And the fact that zealot has zeal by default doesnt mean that you dont need to cast legion of zeal. That mean that after casting legion of zeal you wont pay that spell upkeep for zealots, therefore they would be cheaper than other t1 units.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Eldrin:

It is never going to be superior to T2 and T3 summon options in any situation.

Things like golems and elementals do not get race transformation effects. Zealots do. A Zealot with +2 armor from steel skin, +20 health from Gaia's Chosen, +20% damage from spawnkin, +1 armor from earthkin, with joy siphoner, magical wards and scion of flame or whatever else you want to mix in, is going to be substantially more powerful than a basic t3 elemental summon like the earth elemental, while costing significantly less mana to summon and upkeep.

Originally posted by Eldrin:

Summoning a zealot over any other unit is a literal waste of mana, when you have Legion of Zeal. You are better off not summoning a Zealot to save your mana for you maintenance.

That's not how enchantment maintenance works. Enchantment maintenance is per unit affected, since Zealots aren't affected by the Zeal enchantment it doesn't cost any thing.

[Midas]

It's literally a unit that costs no draft and can pop up out of nowhere. It's for swarming, it's for reinforcing in the field. It's basically "We're religious nuts, and we can rile up an angry mob to fight for us without training them".

It's also a summon with no mana upkeep, which is kinda neat.

[Buldor]

Originally posted by Eldrin:

This unit comes from the Tome of Zeal.

It is a basic tier 1 fighter unit who's ONLY special power/skill/ability is that the unit has Zeal on it by default.


Well in the SAME TOME, there is a spell called Legion of Zeal that gives all your units except mages and supports ZEAL. That includes any other fighter you have. So the moment you cast this spell that zealot turns into a common tier 1 unit that has NOTHING going for it, absolutely nothing.

It is instantly produced, and only upkeep is mana. Which you can reduce to 0. So in theory, you can have 3x or more of these than you would any other unit in the early game. It is a zerg/swarm thing.

[RaPriest]

Originally posted by Buldor:

Originally posted by Eldrin:

This unit comes from the Tome of Zeal.

It is a basic tier 1 fighter unit who's ONLY special power/skill/ability is that the unit has Zeal on it by default.


Well in the SAME TOME, there is a spell called Legion of Zeal that gives all your units except mages and supports ZEAL. That includes any other fighter you have. So the moment you cast this spell that zealot turns into a common tier 1 unit that has NOTHING going for it, absolutely nothing.

It is instantly produced, and only upkeep is mana. Which you can reduce to 0. So in theory, you can have 3x or more of these than you would any other unit in the early game. It is a zerg/swarm thing.

Well, zealots have normal t1 gold upkeep.
And yes they are indeed are the weakest t1 summon, and yes their gimmick (zeal) can
be reproduced on other stronger t1 summons.
Also zealots and phantasm warriors are the only t1 summons that cant evolve. But phantasm warriors are MUCH stronger than zealots.
It would have more sense if zealots could evolve into inquisitors.

But they are not useless. If you dont have other t1 summons.

[SpicyCrab]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Eldrin:

It is never going to be superior to T2 and T3 summon options in any situation.

Things like golems and elementals do not get race transformation effects. Zealots do. A Zealot with +2 armor from steel skin, +20 health from Gaia's Chosen, +20% damage from spawnkin, +1 armor from earthkin, with joy siphoner, magical wards and scion of flame or whatever else you want to mix in, is going to be substantially more powerful than a basic t3 elemental summon like the earth elemental, while costing significantly less mana to summon and upkeep.

Originally posted by Eldrin:

Summoning a zealot over any other unit is a literal waste of mana, when you have Legion of Zeal. You are better off not summoning a Zealot to save your mana for you maintenance.

That's not how enchantment maintenance works. Enchantment maintenance is per unit affected, since Zealots aren't affected by the Zeal enchantment it doesn't cost any thing.

Damn schooled. I volunteer this post to submission to 'murdered by words' lol

[Crimson Phantom]

Originally posted by Midas:

It's literally a unit that costs no draft and can pop up out of nowhere. It's for swarming, it's for reinforcing in the field. It's basically "We're religious nuts, and we can rile up an angry mob to fight for us without training them".

It's also a summon with no mana upkeep, which is kinda neat.

Wait, it has no mana upkeep? For me it says upkeep is 8 mana, so I don't use it at all.

[Midas]

Originally posted by RaPriest:

Originally posted by Buldor:

It is instantly produced, and only upkeep is mana. Which you can reduce to 0. So in theory, you can have 3x or more of these than you would any other unit in the early game. It is a zerg/swarm thing.

Well, zealots have normal t1 gold upkeep.
And yes they are indeed are the weakest t1 summon, and yes their gimmick (zeal) cant be reproduced on other stronger t1 summons.
Also zealots and phantasm warriors are the only t1 summons that cant evolve. But phantasm warriors are MUCH stronger than zealots.
It would have more sense if zealots could evolve into inquisitors.

But they are not useless. If you dont have other t1 summons.

Evolving them into inquisitors would be super cool and thematic, but I'm not sure if upgrading a spammable T1 into a T3 would be balanced. Shame Zeal doesn't have like a T2 'witch hunter' or something they can be instead.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Crimson Phantom:

Originally posted by Midas:

It's literally a unit that costs no draft and can pop up out of nowhere. It's for swarming, it's for reinforcing in the field. It's basically "We're religious nuts, and we can rile up an angry mob to fight for us without training them".

It's also a summon with no mana upkeep, which is kinda neat.

Wait, it has no mana upkeep? For me it says upkeep is 8 mana, so I don't use it at all.

I'm not playing Zeal right now to check, but I'm like 80% sure it just had a gold upkeep like a normal trained unit.

[GlompFox]

Any option to summon a unit is a good option to have. Reinforce far from a city, add a stack to act as canon fodder to support your real army stacks. It opens up options, which can be useful, but it's main use will always be canon fodder to tie down enemy troops... they're disposable pawns.

[Bomjus]

if you think a tier 1 unit will "never be superior" to a t2 or t3 unit, you gotta get to late game with tome of the horde lol.

runesmiths+prolific swarmers+tome of the horde turns your T1 stacks into super cheap, giant killing gigachads. a stack of 6 of my skeletons or phantams warriors has around 1100 army strength.

Originally posted by Buldor:

Originally posted by Eldrin:

This unit comes from the Tome of Zeal.

It is a basic tier 1 fighter unit who's ONLY special power/skill/ability is that the unit has Zeal on it by default.


Well in the SAME TOME, there is a spell called Legion of Zeal that gives all your units except mages and supports ZEAL. That includes any other fighter you have. So the moment you cast this spell that zealot turns into a common tier 1 unit that has NOTHING going for it, absolutely nothing.

It is instantly produced, and only upkeep is mana. Which you can reduce to 0. So in theory, you can have 3x or more of these than you would any other unit in the early game. It is a zerg/swarm thing.

upkeep cannot be reduced to 0. upkeep reduction is capped at 50%. but you *can* get zealots to that 50% very quickly with the tier 1 upkeep reduction in the chaos tree and some other source (there are several)

[Fņŏŕď]

Zealots are almost broken. You can build huge swarms of disposable glass cannon armies. I've won games without even building units in my cities with zealots.

[RaPriest]

Originally posted by Fnord:

Zealots are almost broken. You can build huge swarms of disposable glass cannon armies. I've won games without even building units in my cities with zealots.

Cant you do the same but more effective with copper golems or phantasm warriors?