Upkeep for summoned units

[llamabeast]

I'd always assumed that summons were upkeep-free, and was cheerfully summoning lots of trolls, while bemoaning my inexplicably low net income. Then I saw on one of the far-too-fast-to-read hints that trolls demand lots of gold, so I did a test, and indeed they do (around 80 gold a turn for a sea king court - eek!). But I assumed it was just trolls. But I just read somewhere (Sunray's Dom2 page, in fact) that other summons, like black hawks, also cost upkeep. This is very bad news, as I'm pretty much King of the Black Hawks in one MP game at the moment.

So - is there any way to find out which units cost upkeep, and how much? Is there a list anywhere? Or do I have to keep on loading up a test game, summoning a unit and seeing how much my upkeep changes?

Thanks!

llamabeast

[Nick_K]

Upkeep is based on a unit's recruitment cost, which isn't immediately obvious for summoned units. Trolls can be recruited from a site and cost 50 gold each IIRC.

Any summonable unit that is also a recruitable one will have the same upkeep no matter how you get it.

Some summonable units that can't be recruited normally also cost upkeep, but I don't think there's an easy way of finding out how much. There might be a list somewhere, but I don't know of one.

I believe that undead, demons, constructs and the like usually (always?) don't cost upkeep - except for Oni, of course, as they're recruitable for Yomi.

[thejeff]

I don't know of any non-recruitable units that cost upkeep.

Very few regular summons cost upkeep. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Some of the national summons are recruitable in other eras, I believe, so watch out for those.

People are working on various unit lists. Hopefully upkeep will be included?

[NTJedi]

thejeff said:
I don't know of any non-recruitable units that cost upkeep.

From Dominions_2 the summons I remember which cost upkeep were:
1: Sea Trolls... about 3 gold per turn
2: hawks from "call of the winds" ... about 0.25 gold per turn
3: foul spawns from "cross breeding" spells... about 0.30 gold per turn


These amounts may not be 100% accurate, but they are close and these amounts may have changed with Dominions_3.

[Edi]

Known recruitment prices for summoned units so far:

Trolls: 60 gold --> 4 upkeep per troll per turn.
Troll Kings: 150 gold --> upkeep 10
Sea Kings: 150 gold --> upkeep 10
Sea Trolls: 50 gold --> upkeep 3.33

Foul spawns: Average recruitment cost 1 gold --> upkeep 0.07. To make it simple, every 15 fould spawns cost 1 gold to upkeep. The more powerful ones like Ettin and Chimaera are 0 recruitment cost, it's the man-sized almost useless chaff that costs money. One of them had a cost of 2, the rest are 1 and one was 0.

More news as the DB progresses.

Edi

[Meglobob]

Edi said:
Known recruitment prices for summoned units so far:

Trolls: 60 gold --> 4 upkeep per troll per turn.
Troll Kings: 150 gold --> upkeep 10
Sea Kings: 150 gold --> upkeep 10
Sea Trolls: 50 gold --> upkeep 3.33

Foul spawns: Average recruitment cost 1 gold --> upkeep 0.07. To make it simple, every 15 fould spawns cost 1 gold to upkeep. The more powerful ones like Ettin and Chimaera are 0 recruitment cost, it's the man-sized almost useless chaff that costs money. One of them had a cost of 2, the rest are 1 and one was 0.

More news as the DB progresses.

Edi

This explains why, when playing Atlantis, I cast 3 Troll kings court and 2 Sea Kings court in a single turn and went bankrupt.

[danm]

bah... i just KNEW my agarthan troll-spam/utterdark scheme was too good to be true.

That also explains why my upkeep is higher than I thought it should be in my current game. Poor trolls are just too darn greedy for their own good.

[Edi]

Correction to my above post:

Ettins cost 20 --> 1.33 upkeep.
The four-clawed big humanoid foul spawn costs 15 --> upkeep 1. The rest are as stated.

Edi

[PhilD]

Yeah, not having the upkeep cost appear anywhere in-game is really a stupid oversight.

[NTJedi]

PhilD said:
Yeah, not having the upkeep cost appear anywhere in-game is really a stupid oversight.

Perhaps the gold upkeep information will be added in the units character information window for an upcoming patch... there's plenty of room.