Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?

[Arryn]

archaeolept said:
there's that high level air global that gives some income bonus and deals w/ unrest, forget it's name off hand.

Alteration-8 Fata Morgana (A7). A good choice, but I'm saving the "Last" global slot for Arcane Nexus.

[Cainehill]

On the other paw, regarding putting the gems at risk - I fail to see why artifacts (unique items) are greyed out from the forging list, while summoned uniques are not.

After all - shouldn't people want to gamble on whether or not a particular artifact is available?

Answer - I think that losing the gems for a summoning is very disheartening for the newer players who may not have realized that, say, Ice Devils were a limitted commodity and that they could be throwing their gems away. It's irritating even for the players who know the risk.

Making unique items work the same way would add even more irritation factor to the game....

Personally, I think it might be nice if the summoning mechanism were tweaked a little bit. After all - you get shafted when you create a unique item at the same time as another person, or cast the same global in the same turn as another. If two people both summoned the Last ice devil the same turn, one loses out, so graying out the summons wouldn't eliminate risk.

That's probably going quite a bit too far towards player friendliness though. But - if the summons doesn't work, the player could lose a random 25-75% of the gems normally used, not all the gems.

Or at a minimum, for the new players especially, the interface could do something to stress that the gems might be wasted if the summons has already been cast / all the critters summoned.

[Arryn]

I'm making it a point to include verbiage about this issue in Liga's next Manual Addenda revision. New players need to be warned that their caster's time (and more importantly, gems) might be wasted.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I vote for a chance for the summon to succeed... sortof like wish, summoning the Ice Devil from another player. Why else is it called Summon?

/me ducks and rolls under a handy table.

[Boron]

Arryn said:
I really need to go back to playing MP games. In SP, by the time I can summon these things I have such a commanding lead on all the AIs it's pretty safe to assume none of them will "steal" one out from under me. In the game I'm playing now, I have Gale Gate running, plus 3 other globals, so I'm almost 100% sure that no AI is in a position to challenge me on summoning such things. But playing SP spoils me. The AIs just aren't aggressive enough or creative and sneaky, like humans are.

Thanks for pointing out my brain cramp.

Perhaps you can strengthen the ai by using mods in early Versions like Cohens crusader mod , the ork mod and the one with the 4 handed creatures don't remember the exact name .
This way you would have to fight harder to win

[Cohen]

I'd add some more unique summons to the game however, and improve the Tree Lords.

Some unique Astral summon should be appreciated I believe, one that is Blood + Astral too (and a demon troop too).

I'm not sure. Astral gives you absolutely amazing battle-magic. It doesn't need summons as well.

Mark

[Cohen]

Not so good amazing battle-magic.
It's good if you've massed guys and the enemy are few and lacks of MR, but otherwise it's better elemental magic.

[Boron]

Cohen said:
Not so good amazing battle-magic.
It's good if you've massed guys and the enemy are few and lacks of MR, but otherwise it's better elemental magic.

Yeah it is two edged . Imo it is more supportative for path boosters / converting and lategame for wishing .

Soul slay / enslave mind are good but only against SCs .

And there is always the danger of magic duel .


I still haven't decided for whether fire or air is in general the best battlemagic . Air gives better Scs with the airqueens and is in many other areas more useful too though .
Anti-Sc only it is probably nature with charm .

[Cohen]

Air is better usually, because you can:

Mirror Image and Mistform ...

Lightning (armor negating), Orb Lightning or Thunderstrike depending your target.
Wrathful skies is easy to reach via research and battle cast that Fire or Flame storm (or strike, I don't recall, 2 are battle magic 1 is ritual).

Not to count that Air gives precision to your mages, fire gives attack that is useful only on fighting mages like SCs.