Good ritual summon

[superresistant]

Time for the discussion about the good summon.
What ritual summon do you think is good and why?
If it's bad or unbalanced, what would you do as a dev?

[boozermonkey]

In general, some national summons that are sacred are always good. These are things like the bears for Rus, the boars for marverni, the ghandharvas for kailasa, and any mage summons are always good. These help you to break into other non-native paths and these include things like specter's, naiads, fairy queen, lamia queens, troll kings, flame spirit, the elemental kings and queens, and others.

As far as generic summons, elementals are always good, longdead, and even ogres annd trolls are good when you need some punching power.

There are some nations that are very dependent on their national summons like Agartha with the magma children and statues in the MA they pretty much require to be competitive. Other nations like MA Ryleh get random summons through the void gate which can be very very powerful.

Mid-late game summons are very common such as Tartarians and if available, the big national commander summons that nations like all the monkey nations, the chinese and japanese flavored nations. Hinnom gets some game breaking summons in late game, as does Pythium and Marignon. Blood nations also get some rediculous blood summons in late game as well. And, everyone gets access to things like vampire lords, which can become powerhouses all on their own.

One of the most important things to consider with summons is upkeep. Some have it and some don’t, so it’s good to know things like that, especially if your economy is tight.

[Demonsthenes]

I would say the handful of 2 per gem sacred summons (especially Rus bears) and Draconians (roughly 2 per gem if you count the commander freespawn for 10 turns, or just value the flying giant commander at 5).

I'm hoping both get nerfed in an upcoming patch, to be honest; they feel substantially above the curve of other summoned troops.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

Originally posted by Demonsthenes:

I would say the handful of 2 per gem sacred summons (especially Rus bears) and Draconians (roughly 2 per gem if you count the commander freespawn for 10 turns, or just value the flying giant commander at 5).

I'm hoping both get nerfed in an upcoming patch, to be honest; they feel substantially above the curve of other summoned troops.

I agree. Many flying summons are super strong compared to their gem cost. The draconians used to be terrible because they had only one attack. But now they have two so now they are much stronger.

Manticores are also terrifying.

[Legowarrior]

Leogryphs are a good Summon.

[tomygun]

The Terasque has awesome health, protection, regeneration, poison cloud, breath attack, and 2 high damage attacks for killing thugs. Downside... Its slow, expensive (15 nature gems), can't be used near your own troops because of poison aura, and is thus vulnerable to high damage spells. I put them in the frontline with archers as a meat shield for my commanders, and fliers or cavalry taking out the mages in the back that are a threat to them. I only use poison immune chaff with them.

[Sain]

I'd love to see some way to get Tight Rein ability through magic items or summonable commanders to give undisciplined animal summons some extra potential. Was excited for the feature when I saw it for Dom 6, but it's so rare it might as well not exist.

[Legowarrior]

Has anyone tried the level 7 boar summon? That looks cool.

Honestly though, a lot of summons become better if your nation has Tight Rein. That ability is awesome.

[Emphyrio]

Fire Ant's sting is armor-piercing which makes them surprisingly effective against certain enemies. Difficult crosspath though.

Cave Grubs is pretty good for a level 1 spell. 1/2 gem each for a huge blob of HP with a magic attack. 100 siege strength for 5 gems.

Longdead horsemen are a lot tougher now that they have a mount. Unlike real horses, the mount keeps fighting instead of running away. Very cheap too.

Shades are very strong in darkness, and in caves.

I'm not sure about spells like Scorpion Beast and Amphiptere that only give 1 unit per mage turn, relative to mass summons they don't seem impressive, but relative to level 3 items they're a bargain. Do you spend a mage turn and 2 gems for a Scorpion Beast with 3 attacks and death poison, or 5 gems for Mace of Eruption? Obviously not 1:1 comparable, but it's not obvious that a 5 fire gem item at level 3 is usually 2.5x better than a Scorpion Beast.

[boozermonkey]

Originally posted by tomygun:

The Terasque has awesome health, protection, regeneration, poison cloud, breath attack, and 2 high damage attacks for killing thugs. Downside... Its slow, expensive (15 nature gems), can't be used near your own troops because of poison aura, and is thus vulnerable to high damage spells. I put them in the frontline with archers as a meat shield for my commanders, and fliers or cavalry taking out the mages in the back that are a threat to them. I only use poison immune chaff with them.

Terasque is a HP sponge to attract and soak up damage mainly from things like soul slay and nukes. AI goes for bigger HP units first.

[TheMeInTeam]

Draconians had a niche before as a long-game investment. Since you can keep a steady supply coming via summon allies, they were basically mobile siege chaff. Less up front value than great eagles, but if the game would go long you'd probably get more per gem out of draconians. Now they actually hurt a bit in melee too, though they're not outstanding at it (2 attacks per square, 20ish damage per, not amazing attack or defense). But direct line combat power isn't why you'd make them.

Manticores are expensive, so they *should* be pretty good. They have to compete with putting gear on national commanders at that price point. They really rely on that high attack stinger to apply poison + fear aura to put in work while point buffed. W/o point buffs, they can get mobbed down by chaff easily. 11 prot and 11 def won't make their hp pool last long w/o help. With sharpness/quickness/iron warriors they're blend stuff and they're a good candidate for these buffs...but any relatively decent troops receiving those will do well.

Leogryphs are lions with MR. I don't think they're garbage or anything, but I'm not seeing how they make the cut for "good".

Some others that have use cases:

- Ice drakes - cold evos were buffed, but this is still the earliest source of large AoE armor negating cold damage available in many cases.
- Swamp drake - "foul vapors at home", but it's available earlier and won't gas your mages. Probably.
- Vine ogres - same role as in 5...a big chunk of hp which can be given regeneration, starts outside the range of opposition casts by enemies and is immune to stuff like soul slay and enslave mind because it's mindless. Evo bait.
- Wights - a square of these given quickness + sharpness + whatever defensive buffs you can manage will put in a ton of work until some jerk casts dust to dust on them.
- Ghosts - They don't need sharpness, but they still appreciate quickness + other buffs. Similar to wights, very hard to tank w/o simply killing them first.
- Fire snakes - If you're done making lanterns and have enough flame spirits, this is a way to get more siege chaff w/o putting anything on the payroll.
- Great eagles - they still do a good job breaking walls and moving quickly between areas.
- Ghost riders - You probably won't have the tech for this. If you do, you should use it to gem bait and kill any raid w/o significant commitment.
- Tarrasque - Again, good luck teching this. By the time you do, you can probably get PR10 on your armies and put them behind by enough where they don't just die to the aura. They're extremely heavy front-line army thugs...>200 hp with regen on a chassis with native magic weapons and AP attacks is a great candidate for things like quickness.
- Claymen - without buffs, crummy. However, they have innate regen and blunt/pierce resist, so they have a niche when point buffed with stone skin and at least one extra layer like mossbody or ethereal. In some cases they can be pretty hard to get rid of. As these are also immune to rigor and see in the dark, point buffed claymen can easily hack through fairly large numbers of skeletons w/o getting destroyed if both sides are relying on living mages to cast stuff, and subsequently hack through the mages too.
- Behemoth - a bit pricey, but has an extremely important distinction to other elephants and most other non-pretender tramplers generally: it does not know fear, AND it does not get tired. Also *causes* fear as an aura, unlike normal elephants. With quickness + iron warriors, they can cause disproportionate damage in army fights as long as they don't rush in too quickly. If you are fighting someone with shock damage, consider stoneskin instead...shock stun is one of the few things that will slow them up for long. Note that Earth elementals can do the same thing, if you can set up the buff train + spacing in battle. But you might have easier access to behemoths than earth elementals, depending on nation.
- Terracotta army - another one of those things you can put up front if someone's going for fear + awe or fear + repel. They're basically chaff that ignores morale, fire, poison, and darkness. They suck in regular scenarios. They suck much less when someone casts foul vapors + darkness + fire storm + rigor mortis + heat from hell etc.
- Blood - there are lots of good blood summons and this is already pretty long.

[Legowarrior]

Leogryphs have good MR and good Morale and decent number of attacks, you can get 20 of them with one casting. So, its a quick way to boost your army, especially if you have a high path Nature Mage.

And if you have a nature mage, you can layer on things like Beast Fury or Rage of the Cornered Rat, with a little bit of set up.

If the opponent is throwing MR Spells at you, they'll do better then a lot of things at conjuration 4.

As for Manticores - they got a nice buff. 3 for 10 nature gems and they are tough. Conjuration 6,
Good in Melee, can use barbs at range, has fear and flying.
But, I believe the best use case is for them to Hold and attack Rear, or body guard a flying thug. Fear in the Back line is nasty.
Being Disciplined really helps!

Also, its one way to get flying if you nation doesn't have it natural.
It's coolest when you have cheap Earth/Nature mages that can cast it without using a stronger power house. Gnomes use to be good for that,

But you can always slap a Thistle Mace or Earth Boots on a cheap mage with the right paths. Like an MA Enkidu Shaman or Ulm Shaman

[TheMeInTeam]

I think sending manticore to rear vs having land on line flanks is situational. In back line it can attract direct focus fire from mages. Its only resistance by default is poison, so if there's a screen of body guards or hold and attack closest/flyer junk sitting in the back I'd not be inclined to send them to attack rear. If the mages aren't being guarded that way because opponent isn't expecting it...that's another matter. In that case I'd definitely send them there. I think most nations should be respecting rear against opponents with N2 E2 though, because if they have such mages, they can also do strength of gaia --> howl, and you don't want unsupported mages in the back when someone casts howl.

However, as something you point buff before sending in, they are perfectly acceptable as flanking units too. All of their attacks benefit from weapons of sharpness. At 2 encumbrance, they won't fatigue out from quickness very soon, and those attacks will be at 20, 15, and 15 skill twice per round. The only thing really holding them back is that ethereal or fog warriors will really slow down their DPS. Death poison will still get through sooner or later, but if we're doing 6 attacks per round with sharpness stuff off a 3.33 gem creature that we spent a few script slots setting up, we want that to translate into damage quickly. Vs anything other than those, they're pretty efficient when used as flank DPS.

A lot of the stuff I mentioned also gets countered by fog warriors and/or ethereal though. Drakes, wights/ghosts, tarrasque, and some blood summons (like fiends of darkness and devils) have magic attacks. Wyverns do too, though it's only 13 pierce and not very dense.

[Selgeron]

Originally posted by Sain:

I'd love to see some way to get Tight Rein ability through magic items or summonable commanders to give undisciplined animal summons some extra potential. Was excited for the feature when I saw it for Dom 6, but it's so rare it might as well not exist.

I would love this so much, its rare and even using mods its hard to mod in (you have to duplicate one of the existing units that have it and then change their stats... its not ideal)