Fantastic units vs normal units

[Question]

It seems that most fantastic units are much more expensive and weaker compared to normal units...

You can easily get end tier normal units like paladins, elven lords, etc much much earlier before you get mid tier summons like stone giants. The normal units are much more powerful and will keep getting more powerful as they get experience, access to mithril/admantinium and most unit enchantments are limited to normal units (flame blade, holy weapon, etc).

Only when you start hitting stuff like sky drakes, etc are they noticeably more powerful than normal units, but why waste 500 mana summoning a unit that struggles to kill trash units that the AI throws at you, when you could spend some gold to rush buy paladins or whatever? Gold is much easier to get and if you have even a couple of cities linked with roads, your gold income just sky rockets.

I usually end up allocating no power into mana and just putting most into research/casting skill because there's only one way to increase casting skill, while you can just convert gold to mana. You don't even need alchemy to afford the exchange rate.

I tried using a stack of storm giants once and the AI's unbuffed, veteran slingers, with only magical weapons, managed to kill one of them while the giants took forever to kill anything. Great mana investment right there.

Most of the dangerous summons seem to be multi-figure units like gorgons or have very high stats for a single figure unit. Otherwise, they feel like a joke.

When summons that cost hundreds of mana and have a mana upkeep of 10+ mana per turn are getting slaughtered by the AI's unbuffed veteran level normal units, why bother using the summons? Upkeep of 4 gold + 1 food vs 10+ mana is really hard to justify. It's not like the summon is anywhere close to being twice as good.

[Seravy]

Not to mention, casting a 400 mana spell is a much bigger investment than producing a (even 400 cost) unit, You only have one wizard to cast spells, but you can have a lot of towns.
Original game balance is a joke in every regard including this, which is why mods exist.

[Asfex]

1.if i have 11 death book + summoner, death konights cost 210.
2. buffed slingers can be disenchanted.
3. chaos rare... doom bat is excellent scout, efreet need teleport -but he is caster. chimera is a problem - need + to hit.
nature ... need life buffs- bears,behemoth. stone giant need ammo buff, but he is mountainer.

[Anthony]

I did some number crunching on cost vs value, using a somewhat dumb algorithm involving each unit facing off against each other unit (thread here), and a number of Very Rare units are worth their cost. However, the Uncommon and Rare fantastic units are almost all useless outside of 11 book strategies.

[zitro1987]

Commons are 'generally' ok, with some units needing boosts and a couple (hell hounds?) being a bit too good. They compete against unproductive towns cranking out inexperienced units with no magical weapons. Common spells shouldn't be excellent, so the overall creature vs normal unit is ok.

Uncommons and Rares are generally expensive and underwhelming with very few exceptions. By this point, normal units have decent experience, the +1 to hit from magic weapons, access to top-tier units (inc. some game-breaking ones), and a large number of cities cranking such units out. Summoning units simply disappoint and not worth spending so much mana and skill.

V. Rares kind of get things right on track and are sometimes necessary against the toughest of heroes and large stacks of tough normal units.

[Question]

So what do people think are the main problems? Too high a casting cost? Too high a mana upkeep?

Asfex : Yea but that means you are focusing soley on summons with lots of drawbacks in other areas. And you still need time to research death knights unless taking 11 books allows you to get them off the bat. Also summons can be banished, etc, although the way dispel magic works in the game is just WAY too good, especially disenchant area. Being able to easily dispel 10x the casting cost in buffs with just one spell because dispel strength is not lost for every successful dispel is dumb.

Warlord + a few books in life can easily lead you to running around with buffed up end tier normal units a lot sooner and is a lot cheaper as well.

[MrBiscuits]

I did some number crunching on cost vs value, using a somewhat dumb algorithm involving each unit facing off against each other unit (thread here), and a number of Very Rare units are worth their cost. However, the Uncommon and Rare fantastic units are almost all useless outside of 11 book strategies.

The thing is that summons should really greatly outperform the units you can build at the same point in the game rather than just be worth their cost. Don't forget you have to research them, earn the mana points, cast the summon meaning that you cannot use any overland magic in the meantime

So what do people think are the main problems? Too high a casting cost? Too high a mana upkeep?

Mostly the summoning cost, but the mana upkeep is way too high for a lot of them in vanilla. The Zitro mod has improved summons a lot (as well as a load of other balances) and so does Caster of Magic. They're pretty broken in vanilla really.

[Asfex]

Summons (not commmon) must cost more than buffed normal units. it must have unique abilities for its magic scools, it must be used as a powerfull weapon - an advantage against the other 9 -unit stack.- for the battle against wizard, and unique ability against node garrison. the main problem for uncommon and rare creatures is lack of unique behavior - ability, it usually is beated by very rare creatures. for example: stone giant vs colossus. but give stone giant 6 shoot - and it found the occupation - and become unit with higest shoot*throwStrenght unit per figure. It must be cost -effective and more powerful than other gold-upkeep units without rare enchantments.

[Question]

Buffing summons is kind of tricky because they already get buffed in nodes and you dont want them to become unstoppable there. I tried buffing sprites to be slightly better than elite priests and in most battles, they are fine...but in nodes they get this terrifying alpha strike ability.