Whats the point of summoned monsters?

[Question]

As title?

You need at least conjurer or they are too expensive. A lot of buffs dont work on them and most of the monsters you can summon are inferior to elite ranged troops.

I mean, war bears need 2 mana upkeep, and they are inferior to regular cavalry. Normal units are just faster to train(especially if you have inspiration), can benefit from mithril/adamantinium, are really cheap to support once you get fame the list goes on and on...

And its always pretty sad to summon up a giant or something and then they kill like 1 figure per turn.

[Catwalk]

In 1.31, most summons suck. There are exceptions, but by and large they aren't that useful. Yet another thing Catnip aims to change

[Question]

Great wyrm poison...let me see if i get this right...

The target gets to roll to resist against each point of poison damage, which means 15 times.

But most end tier units have close to 10 resist or even more.

So that means the poison effectively does nothing?

[Catwalk]

Yes, poison is largely useless because it's really easy to resist. In Catnip we're looking at changing both resistance and poison mechanics.

[momfan]

As title?

You need at least conjurer or they are too expensive. A lot of buffs dont work on them and most of the monsters you can summon are inferior to elite ranged troops.

I mean, war bears need 2 mana upkeep, and they are inferior to regular cavalry. Normal units are just faster to train(especially if you have inspiration), can benefit from mithril/adamantinium, are really cheap to support once you get fame the list goes on and on...

And its always pretty sad to summon up a giant or something and then they kill like 1 figure per turn.

Summoned creatures are useful for particular roles, for example:

1. Early Game:
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Your cities take a long time to build even the mid-range units (cavalry, slingers, horsebowmen, longbowmen, wolf riders etc). Your troops are pretty weak as rookies, though Warlord helps a lot.

Summoning allows you to build your army at least 50% faster.

Some examples:

a. Hell hounds - cheap (40MP/1 upkeep), 3 fire breath, 2 movement. Great for city conquest and weak lairs/nodes. Almost every game, I will take 2 Chaos books and pick Hell Hounds to start with. Good for guarding Chaos nodes (node bonus).

b. Phantom warriors - cheap (10MP), illusory attack bypasses shields, 8 figures. Great for use against most enemies. Also good cannon fodder to soften opponents before you use the precious normal units. Can also be used to block attackers from reaching ranged units. With Conjurer, Sorcery Mastery and Archmage, you can usually summon 2-3 units per combat from turn 1, enough to take out weak lairs/nodes/cities. And if you can't do it at one go, you can whittle away the monsters each turn until you are victorious.

c. Sprites - not cheap (75MP/3 upkeep) but ranged attack is valuable. Flying gives 2-square scouting range, and allows them to avoid ground-based enemies im combat. Forester can be helpful when stacked with other 2 movement units. Useful to guard Nature nodes due to node bonus.

d. Nagas - not cheap (100MP/2 upkeep) but swimming is handy. Also first strike usually hurts multi-figure enemies enough that Nagas don't take too much damage in retaliation. Handy to guard captured Sorcery nodes as they get the node bonus.

e. Fire Elemental - semi-cheap (20MP), similar to Phantom Warriors, can take more punishment, but can't ignore armor. Not as good IMHO but not useless.

f. Ghouls - semi-cheap (80MP/1 upkeep), but with a couple of Ghouls doing the fighting you can raise free undead units to help in future fights or to garrison cities. Works great if you can also cast Black Sleep since your Ghouls won't get hurt killing those units. Best to pair with a spellcasting hero so you don't use too much of your own mana on Black Sleep.

2. Mid Game:
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a. Phantom Beast - strong illusory attack, lots of hit points. Handy even for strong nodes.

b. Giant Spiders - very helpful if you don't have Web and want to fight flyers.

c. Chimera - decent fighters, fly at speed 2, fire breath.

3. Late Game
====

a. Hydra - tons of hit points and regeneration. Almost impossible to kill if you buff a bit (Stone Skin etc) and deadly with Lionheart. But needs Endurance or Flying to be useful, otherwise too slow.

b. Djinn - flying taxi, useful if you don't have Jaer. Alternative way is to use Summoning Circle and Word of Recall to teleport units.

c. Sky Drake - can clear most nodes, lairs and cities when operating solo, handy to fight enemy mage heroes/wizards if you don't have paladins, else you lose units to Doom Bolt, Psionic Blast etc.

Just my $0.02.

[Question]

I find that early game it takes 4+ turns to summon a decent monster that happens to be weaker than cavalry...not worth it IMHO. Hell hounds might be one of the few exceptions.

And once you get ranged units, most of the melee units in the game die before they can get anywhere near you.

[momfan]

I find that early game it takes 4+ turns to summon a decent monster that happens to be weaker than cavalry...not worth it IMHO. Hell hounds might be one of the few exceptions.

And once you get ranged units, most of the melee units in the game die before they can get anywhere near you.

The thing is... your summoned creature may be weaker than cavalry, but you can have it IN ADDITION to your cavalry. It is not either/or. I do not find war bears a good value either, but I find hell hounds extremely useful in the early game.

Cavalry is only cheap if you play High Men or Orcs. With the other races, your mounted units cost at least 50% more which slows your army buildup. Even then it takes a long time to get a cavalry stack. Do the numbers:

4 High Men/Orc Cavalry:
Stables 80
Cavalry 40 * 4 = 160
Total 240

At the beginning, your city will have maybe 10 hammers to start, so it takes 24 turns to crank out the stack, even before you factor in the granary/marketplace/farmer's market. Those cost:

Granary 40
Marketplace 100
Farmer's Market 100
Total 240

So it takes 48 turns to get your 4 cavalry stack. Say you only build the granary then switch to cavalry. That still costs 280 in all, or 28 turns. During these 28 turns, are you just going to sit around and let the enemy players take over the land? Of course not. But if you go out with only 2 cavalry units they may not be able to beat even the weak lairs. Solution: summon something while you are building the cavalry, and get going with 2 cavalry plus 2 hell hounds/war bears/sprites. The stack will be strong enough to beat most weak lairs, and will move at speed 2 through flat terrain.

As for ranged units, without mithril/adamantium/buffs/experience, I find that bowmen are horrible. They don't do enough damage to make much difference.

I normally only use slingers, longbowmen or horsebowmen. Shamans are a possibility though I have never tried a stack of them. If I play beastmen I will use adamantium bowmen because they can also fight quite well in melee combat (+1 sword, +1 heart). But by the time I get a stack of such units, it is already in the mid game and summoned units are no longer so vital.

Count the costs:

4 Slingers:
Armory 80
Slingers 100 * 4 = 400
Total 480

4 Longbowmen:
Sawmill 80
Longbowmen 80 * 4 = 320
Total 400

4 Horsebowmen:
Stables 80
Horsebowmen 60 * 4 = 240
Total 320

4 Shamans:
Shrine 100
Shamans 50 * 4 = 200
Total 300

4 Adamantium Beastmen Bowmen
Sawmill 80
Library 60
Sages Guild 120
Alchemists Guild 250
Bowmen 60 * 4 = 240
Total 750

The cheapest route is 4 shamans but this still costs 300. Same argument as with the 4 cavalry stack - makes more sense to summon while building, and head out with 2 shamans and 2 summoned units. I would argue that having only 4 figures makes shamans a bit too weak though. Adamantium beastmen bowmen are clearly a mid game project.

Remember that even with 4 units (whether cavalry or ranged units), initally the units are weak so additional backup is good. For close-range protection of ranged units the nagas, phantom warriors etc are great. For your cavalry stack, hell hounds lend some extra firepower (haha) and war bears/sprites give Forester. And inside nodes their bonuses help even the odds a little. Fire Elementals can also be handy in chaos nodes since besides the node bonus they are immune to hell hounds' fire breath.

As usual, YMMV.

[b0rsuk]

Yes, Master of Magic has bad balance. Nothing new.

But summoned creatures have several valuable properties:

- your casting skill is the main bottleneck, if you have enough mana and skill you can summon stuff very fast. Meanwhile normal units are limited to 1/turn. Skeletons in particular are extremely cheap, what 25 mana ?
- summoning doesn't interrupt city development or training normal units. You're producing settlers or farmer's market, raiders come. What do you do ?
- summoning is not related to your city development level. Summon a Basilisk to defend a remote Myrran village or even an outpost.
- because they gain no experience, they're disposable, no need to worry
- few people know that the node aura works even before it becomes visible. If you build a city near a chaos node, you can have +2 Hell Hounds guarding them: +2 shields, swords, breath, resistance. Can be big depending on creature.
- death summons, even low end ones, have illusion immunity which is good against Sorcery nodes.
- it's not just buffs. There are harmful spells which don't work on fantastic creatures. Warp Creature may be trivial, but I'm sure you'll start caring once you run into high powered Possession caster.

Usefulness of individual fantastic creatures is partially a matter of opinion, but a couple of underrated ones:
- you can rush with ghouls if you're careful and use weakening spells, even Weakness. One ghoul can produce several units of high men swordsmen and spearmen, which can allow you to increase taxes and easily develop the town. Ghoul rush can work even on Impossible.
- Giant Spiders are good for defense against minor Draconian attacks (raiders, spearmen, up to halberdiers). They cost less mana than casting Web each fight.
- Basilisks are quite good city gate guardians. Their high HP means they benefit a lot from healing units like shamans.
- Floating Island can be MUCH cheaper than enchanting everything with Water Walking. You can use them as bridges in narrow waterways.
- zombies, although hard to get, are surprisingly sturdy. Berserkers, hammerhands have problems killing them without wounds unless buffed or experienced
- Giant Bears are bad in combat, they can even lose to swordsmen. But they do grant Forestry.
- Fire Giant is the cheapest summonable wall crusher
- without Insecticide patch, Invulnerability spell is buggy and can't be dispelled. This makes Archangels ridiculously good. The popularity of Invulnerable Guardian Angel is also a product of this bug. For years no one noticed it can't be dispelled.

Solid monsters:
Hell Hounds, Gorgons, Chimeras, Basilisk (rips through low resistance units), Death summons starting with Werewolves, various Drakes, Wyrm, Hydra. Torin the Chosen. Storm Giant is dangerous.

[momfan]

Warp Creature may be trivial, but I'm sure you'll start caring once you run into high powered Possession caster.

YES! I never thought about Possession until one day I fought a Witch hero and she Possessed one of my units. Not funny when it was a unit of Gnoll halberdiers - this was early in the game when Gnoll halberdiers are dangerous opponents.

Later on when I hired Morgana I used the same tactic when attacking cities - possess a melee unit and use it to fight the others. Works even better than Confusion since you control the unit every turn. But Confusion has a -4 penalty, is a common spell, works on fantastic creatures and is available to Life wizards, so I guess it's still the better spell overall.

[Question]

I do find it really hard to raise casting skill though. It usually only goes to 200+ in VERY long games. Meanwhile i can get an adamantinium city to churn out magicians or whatever my racial end tier unit is.

Early game though, summoned creatures cost about the same as cavalry to rush out. Without a node, you can't really pay 100+ mana for a summon, and with alchemy, you could use that money to rush build an additional unit anyway. War bears cost something like 130 mana?

Ive also noticed that AI with death spell books almost alway just spam unboosted life drain...have almost never seen posession, etc.