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Summon Sea Dogs
Summon Crocodile
Spirit Curse
Black Servant
Summon Fire ants
Summon Shades
Summon Killer Mantis
Summon Amphiptere
Summon Cave Crab
Summon Bog Beasts
Summon Cave Drake
Summon Shade Beasts
Summon Cave Drake
Summon Shade Beasts
Summon Lammashtas
Summon Leogryphs
Summon kitharonic Lion
Summon spring Hawks
Spirit Mastery
Vermin feast
Contact Forest Giant
Summon Sprites
Harvester of Sorrows
Call the Eater of the Dead
The Kindly Ones
Call Abomination
Call Ancient Prescence
Leogryphs have good stats for the cost and are cheap.
Shade Beast are pricy but you get a lot at high levels of death. So it's not a spell I would cast on a death 3 ctis, but maybe with a Demiliche.
The Fire Ants makes me sad, because it's one of the few Fire/Nature cross path spells.
Leogryphs are on the verge of being useful due to being cheap and massable quickly enough I can accept that as disputed.
I appreciate that. I should point out that not being bad (in my opinion) doesn't make them good in a lot of cases.
Whats wrong with forest giant for 2 gems. They compete with vine ogres and lumber construct but dont seem much worse.
Lammashtas have messed me up a couple of times but I've never gotten them to work right myself.
22 prot high hp amphibious cave crabs I would summon frequently if they didn't need a cave.
Why isn't vine man on the list? Are they considered useful?
I think the issue with Forest Giants is efficiency. You are using up a Nature 3 turn, so you are giving up at 11 research points, or chance to forge a Vine Shield or Thistle or using it in battle and casting Mass Protection.
Also, there aren't many pure Nature 3 mages, so you are usually giving up a little more than that.
If it was Nature 2, I would probably get a bunch of them to crack open a castle, or take some Soul Slay Hits (although 9 MR is slightly awful).
As to comparing the units:
- Pierce and blunt resistance means that the Vine Ogre's 55 HP / 9 protection and the Lumber Construct's 56 HP / 17 protection will probably go further against mundane damage than a Forest Giant's 66 HP / 11 protection, though that may be at least partly offset by the giant's higher defense skill.
- Vine Ogres and Lumber Constructs are resilient mindless magic beings, making them more or less perfect troops for the typical mage with 5-20 magic leadership and a morale penalty to squads under their command, whereas Forest Giants are undisciplined mundane units, which makes them inconvenient to mix into an army that doesn't already use undisciplined units.
- Forest Giants have a single strong attack which will probably overkill most units whereas Vine Ogres have two somewhat-weaker attacks and so Vine Ogres are better at killing human-ish infantry while Forest Giants may be better against tougher opponents. Lumber Constructs almost may as well not attack due to their terrible attack skill, but if they do connect they have a single attack that's similar in power to a Vine Ogre's making them worse against both massed infantry and single large targets than either the giants or the ogres.
- Size-4 Vine Ogres can intermingle with size-2 infantry whereas size-5 Lumber Constructs and Forest Giants cannot.
- Poor amphibian (Construct and Ogre), forest survival (Ogre and Giant), and spirit sight (Construct) can be useful abilities.
- Poison resistance (Construct and Ogre) may be nice to have if you're using N battle magic.
Generally speaking, I would say a Forest Giant is typically worse than a Vine Ogre, because most of the time the giant's high attack damage is going to go to waste and between size-5 and undisciplined they're a bit more inconvenient to fit into your army, plus mindless is usually better than morale 15 for meatshields.
I would also comment that ritual spells are competing with one another for mage-turns, spells, and research, so if you have a low-research spell (e.g. Awaken Vine Ogres at Conj-4) and a high-research spell (e.g. Contact Forest Giant at Conj-6) that do similar things (in this case, summon relatively resilient large units) for similar costs in mage-turns and gems then the high-research spell is probably worse if you don't have some other reason to invest the research required to get it, especially if - as is the case here - the two spells are in the same school of magic and so you will get the lower-research one on the way to the higher-research one.
Beyond that, something like a Forest Troll fills a similar niche to the Forest Giant (high single-target damage and a lot of HP per tile that only requires mundane leadership), but Contact Forest Trolls gives 5+ trolls for a single N3 mage-turn whereas Contact Forest Giant only gives one giant for the same N3 mage-turn. Five Forest Giants might perhaps be a better use of 10 nature gems than five Forest Trolls, but is it enough of a better use of 10 nature gems to justify spending four extra mage-turns to do it?
Some of these spells have situational use. I am sure Mergele knows his stuff and knows why he would ignore when black servants, forr example, are damn fine summons.
This is not "do not ever do this", this is, quoting the op "aren't worth for most players or nations" generally. If a player asks "Should I summon Black Servants" and provides no other context the answer is "No" and then you may list some exceptions were they are useful. Shadebeasts can work fine as chaff when you have marble warriors. But you'll probably have better things in that case anyways.
Compare say Lamias. You won't want them always, but by the time you get them you are quite likely to be able to give them some buffs, Magical AP Life Drain scales very well into late game, you can use them as life drain batteries (bad ones but can work) and you get them for both a decent prize and 5 per cast. That is a good spell.
Imagine you open up the turn of a new player asking for advice and you see he's summoned these units, do you instinctively go "Oh no" or "Ok, some of those"?
I personally think "Hidden in Snow/Dust/Underneath" can be very useful for the powerful mages you get - a possible D3/W3/E3 for "Snow", and possibly breaking into Astral with "Underneath" and Fire/Astral with "Sand".
The "Summon Spectre" spell will give you a weaker mage, in general; maximum of D3, or 2W/E/S and D1.
Nevermind that "Snow/Sand" units have Cold/Heat power, Cold/Heat auras that stack with each other; and 20+ HP per unit.
The only spells I'd agree with from that list are "Spirit Curse" (you're rarely so desperate to curse an enemy unit that you're willing to spend a Gem on it) and Killer Mantis (after the nerf to their attack, they've pretty much lost their only advantage).
I admit, I'm baffled how anyone thinks "Summon Spring Hawks" is a bad spell. :b
The Hidden spells are 75 water or earth gems. That's a Troll King and his better troops, plus 2 pairs of Boots. That's a Sea King and his troops plus a Sea Cloak and Bracket booster.
That's the equivalent of casting Riches Beneath and have gems left over.
And that's all before you factor is the impact of scales.
If it's crosspaths you are looking for, less, the spectre is far superior, as is the Lamia Queen, each for far less. 3 of either for the same price.
If you've researched Enchantment instead and have a pile of Earth or Water gems and have Earth/Water mages, then casting hidden in X is hardly a bad choice if you need some extra mages and troops right now instead of waiting a bunch of turns to research another school.
That's a common mistake many players make, hoard their gems because there's a more "efficient" way to spend them if they wait some more time.
But gems stuck on your treasury won't help you in the present. And sometimes the right choice is conjuring reinforcements right now to give you an edge right away with your current war.
Also Fire Ants are a favorite of mine precisely because they're pretty low research. You're getting 1 ant per gem if not better, relatively tough, immune to fear, hit hard with armor-piercing 14 dmg poisonous attacks that will make a dent on most things, 10 per cast minimum, so all in all can be pretty good at filling the ranks for an early war. Sure later on there's better uses for your fire gems, but Fire Ants can be conjured pretty fast and if my enemy decides to hoard their gems then I'll have a significant advantage at conquering them before they can get their "more efficient" spells online at all.
The trolls being "better" troops is definitely arguable. They're better tar pits and good anti-giant units, but have lower attack skills and no special abilities to take down high Defense or Ethereal enemies. And the Troll/Sea King has zero versatility in their magic paths, while the "Hidden In..." mages have the potential to be more powerful in raw magic levels overall.
Also, you're rarely going to be in a sitution where you're saying, "This turn, my ONLY choices are to cast Riches from Beneath OR Hidden Underneath". If you want to up your gem income, you cast Riches. If you want unique troops now, you cast Hidden. Once you cast one, you build up your gem resources and then perhaps you cast the other. It's not a binary choice.
The Spectre is actually a weaker mage, generally speaking, and requires 3D, whereas the "Hidden In..." spells only require 1D. The Lamia Queen is indeed an excellent mage, but requires 2N, while none of the "Hidden" spells use any Nature magic. The Lamia Queen is probably not going to compete for Gem resources.
And, again, you're paying 22 and 25 gems for a single mage only, without any of the supporting troops AND powerful commanders you get from the "Hidden" spells.
I am not waiting on getting more efficient spells online though. I am spending my gem like water on things that help me win wars, or make progress. 75 earth gems is Riches Beneath at the same Enchantment level, so I would use it on that instead.
75 gems could be used on Girdles or Might or Earth boots, to help my mages throw down Earth Elemental, or extra powerful Maws of Earth. 75 earth gems can be spent on Dwarven Hammers or Smashers.
If you spent the whole first part of your game saving up for Hidden in the Sand or Hidden Underneath, you've probably behind in other areas that could have benefited from the use of Earth Gems.
Water is similar.
The argument I have against the Hidden spell is that 75 earth gems could have been doing a lot of work, instead of sitting in your treasurer, and its not worth saving up for something that is a huge gamble.