The (not really) Official Endgame Summon Thread!

[TheMenacer]

Well if you want to get right down to it, Grendel (and his mother) were descendants of the biblical Cain, so it could conceivably be awesome as hell to have Cain himself show up as a unique summon. Just imagine it, some guy with immortality strolling around beating the holy hell out of things much, much bigger than himself by virtue of his Blood Vengance +7 ability because of course, any harm inflicted upon his head will avenged sevenfold thanks to a curse placed upon him by God for murdering his brother.

Grendel himself of course was just a big nasty monster that couldn't be harmed by weaponry and lived in an underwater grotto, which suggests something big (size 3 or 4) amphibian monster with full human slots, high strength and high protection. Certainly summoning it through water would be doable considering that it was a natural, albeit magical, monster rather than a demon.

Also yes to chupacabre, I think it'd be pretty fantastic to dip into more modern supernatural myths rather than keeping strictly to epic fantasy. Imagine your herds of chuacabre causing unrest by virtue of the fact that they get bored hanging around in the garrisons all day and wander off to eat some goats, imagine a summon based on the Jersey Devil or some of the mythology surrounding the salem witch trial and 16-17th century superstitions surrounding witchcraft. Imagine a summon based on Spring-Heeled Jack (seriously, look him up on wikipedia, he's awesome).

[PyroStock]

If a size 6 Tartarian Monstrum can wear a helm than many other monster-types can be given head slot(s). Monster-types can also be given up to 4 misc slots, magical paths and good base equipment/stats/abilities at an attractive price. There are plenty of variables to adjust so they can compete.

the game really steers away from stereotypical fantasy. I'm sure everyone has noticed that none of the Norse inspired nations have dwarves, because dwarves and elves are totally overdone from a fantasy perspective. I suspect that's also why there aren't as many dragons in the game as there could be.

EA Vanheim & MA Vanheim have "dwarven smiths".
EA Helheim has svartalfs (referred to as "sinister dwarves" in the game).

The ghost, skeleton and some others are very stereotypical. Dominions3 simply includes atypical fantasy from mythology as well. Since Dominions3 takes ideas from mythology worldwide it's not surprising the developers didn't get everything in, like elves (unless you consider svart�lfs to be svart�lfars ).

[Endoperez]

Water/Earth, Construction 9 or Enchantment 8. Something equal to Machaka-only pretender Colossal Fetisch in stats, but it regenerates like the Claymen.


Or just size 4 Mechanical Man with 40 hp. Enc 0, full immunities, mindless, inanimate, mr at least 12. Weaknesses include being inanimate (Smasher) and magic being (Elf Bane) as well as armor-negating non-elemental damage. It also has no magic, so it can't self-buff, but with full immunities from the start I'm not sure if it needs anything.


Seasonal spirits. Every element can summon one. I think they'd be most easily covered by huge monsters. There's Winter Wolves, and then there's Son of Fenrer. They aren't limited by number, only by cost. Conjuration 9, level 6 in the path, 100 gems. Come with several suitable lesser creatures, like winter wolves, summer lions, green lions, spring hawks/rocs/ziz, whatever. I might do a quick mod, this is pretty simple stuff.


Nature: Look at Kithaironic Lion. 6 gems for 48 hp, prot 18, enc 1, mr 13, att 14, base def probably 12. Give it human slots, Caveman sprite and rename it Kithaironic Man and double the cost. It comes armed with a Great Club, has a bonus Great Fist attack that does few points of armor-piercing stun damage (str no added), and starts with Kithaironic Pelt, prot 10 no-slot armor, and has 50% cold and fire resist. Conjuration 8, probably, and Nature 5 I think. It's like Awaken Sleeper, but the sleeper is much older.
The Sleeper should be boosted slightly, as well. 36 hp instead of 26, enc 1 instead of 3, mapmove 4 instead of 2, and add forestsurvival, rejuvenation and sailing. Perhaps change the armor and shield into something slightly magical, like Silver Hauberk and Shield of Valor, and give him #onebattlespell Air Shield.

Or something like that.

EDIT:

If a size 6 Tartarian Monstrum can wear a helm than many other monster-types can be given head slot(s). Monster-types can also be given up to 4 misc slots, magical paths and good base equipment/stats/abilities at an attractive price. There are plenty of variables to adjust so they can compete.

Yeah, I had something like that in mind for the seasonal spirits. 3 misc slots, no head slots, come with lots of lesser creatures, and have 7 to 9 picks in magic, total.

[Zeldor]

I did read just the first page now, I will have to read rest later

But what we really need is:
- much more universal SC and thug summons for paths exccept death, especially nature should get something
- that mod should be expanding addon of CBM which makes normal summons better and changes some old ones
- summons should rather be expansion of what magic school is
- we also need much much more national summons, they should really make end-game different
- we need to make an increase in spell limit etc in next patch, our new moderators should do that I think with current one we'd get into problem with onebattlespell etc

llamabeast:

Yep, I was writing about treelords in conceptual content thread. But that looks like ages from being done and Better Summons Mod seems to have more attention here. Copy of my general idea:


I would like to see about 5 levels of treelors, at 10N, 20N, 30N, 40N, 50N [all non-unique] + couple unique ones at 50-75N. Unique ones could be those that we have now but with really big buffs. Maybe with ability to use Faery Trod for free, while still being immobile...
All of them would need a lot of HP, big regen, nice reinvigoration, decent MR. On higher levels they could also get other magic picks [e.x. Swamp Treelord with water and death].
The only problem is that you wouldn't be able to set them to patrol outside fort. I guess there is no way to go around that, so price for immobiles should also reflect that.

They could surely make use of 'forest shape' mod command.

[Endoperez]

I tried modding my suggestions, but using Seasonal Spirits and CB together leaves them without magic.

Any suggestions for the great bear spirit of autumn? He'll be E4N3D2 at least, 200 hp, ethereal, prot 30, regen 20 and will heal his afflictions. And fallpower 50, so that his hp fluctuate between 100 and 400. I think he's the weakest one of the four because he doesn't have any AoE effects, damage shields or weapons, and the others summon better helpers. Would trample and 20 AP be enough to keep the bear competitive in the late game? I could give it some reinvigoration as well, if necessary, and it will have magical claws and bite to use against anything too big to trample.
The other ability I've been considering is huge fear aura, and an undead secondshape to protect him from soul slay. It'd link well to the Finnish peijaiset ritual, but also mean that he coudln't handle chaff alone.

[Amhazair]

Endoperez said:
I tried modding my suggestions, but using Seasonal Spirits and CB together leaves them without magic.

That sounds suspiciously like the bug that surfaced in the latest patch giving issues with mod nations. Try activating your mods in a different order, that worked for some people. You can find a discussion of that bug in pages 130-131 of the bug thread.

[Endoperez]

Amhazair said:
That sounds suspiciously like the bug that surfaced in the latest patch giving issues with mod nations. Try activating your mods in a different order, that worked for some people. You can find a discussion of that bug in pages 130-131 of the bug thread.

I know about that. I think it's "just" memory allocation problem. There's only so much space reserved for magic paths, and now it's starting to run out.

I doubt changing the order of mods really fixes anything. At most, it will change the order the magic is allocated in, and affect different creatures.

The log file gives warning when the paths don't show up, but I don't know what this means:
***** Warning: out of spellab

[Wrana]

Considering the king-with-snakes from Shahname - he is already in the game as Pretender with exactly the same snakes growing from his shoulders (called Lord of Snakes or somesuch). Shiva, etc. is also already in the game, though these summons are limited to India-based nations... And certainly Balrog-like creatures are plentiful enough (and it's not "thought of as demon" - that's his author's own words)! The (almost the) same goes for 4 Horsemen: they should be Death and it already has Tratarians...
Dragons would be very good, with Western-type ones having stats like those of Pretender dragons & only 1-2 Paths, & Oriental ones having different pictures, slightly worse stats & better magic (including Astral). Possibly Seasonal Power & certainly limit to China/Japan mythology-using nations.
Great Bear I've made as Pretender for my Bogarus-splitting mod. Fortunately the graphics were already here. I didn't make him trampler, but have given him 2 Paw Slap attacks having aoe 1 instead. I think it would be more in style of real bears...
Cerberus probably shouldn't be very large, but should have plenty of attacks, including some magical ones (I'd think 3 dog-head bites, 1 dragon-head which it had instead of tail, plus some Hydra-style as it had snakes instead of fur on his shoulders), plus immunity to undead attacks (various drains - don't know whether it's possible to do without making it undead), Dark Power - it became weaker under daylight, and certainly Patrol bonus!
Another possibilty is to continue the line of trolls - make a spell to specifically summon troll Moose Knights & someone Bogus-like...
Considering monster Pretenders I wouldn't put too much hope in them: their use is based, I think, mainly on Fear/Awe combo, with Awe provided by high Dominion. As actual monsters they would be too weak without such Awe (and there are no misc-slot items to grant such iirc) & extra hp granted by Dominion level...
Considering Sleeper I agree that he should be boosted - probably getting something like Hall of Fame ability(s) for free? After all, he's considered to have much experience...
I also agree that while Niefelheim has no real SC-gaining problem, they (and probably other Norse nations?) should have an ability to summon Rimtursar! And an idea that Greek-based nations should (at least at EA) have an ability to summon legendary Greek heroes was voiced recently... And just a thought: background of Man's Witches and Wardens says that Wardens are magically transformed by Witches to become stronger, etc. Maybe Man's Witches should have an appropriate spell which either summons Wardens or transforms normal infantry (?) into such? Similar transformation should be useful for other nations too - and is more appropriate for Nature magic than summons of unnatural creatures. The only possibility for this I think would be were-creatures: either some Werebear/Wereboar/Weretiger - stronger than existing Werewolf so better thug candidates (possibly not for every nation), or lycantrope which is also a mage of some skill so can self-buff (or both). I would also include some dinosaurs, but they probably should be resricted to C'tis...

[Zeldor]

Wrana:

Use some text formatting

I think that here we are only discussing NEW summons, leaving improving current ones to CBM mod. And we surely need as many national summons as possible. That is really bad that some nations have them while others don't.

It would be also cool to have mod command for setting if set unit is wishable or not.

[JimMorrison]

I had been thinking to suggest dinosaurs (or something modeled after them) but wasn't sure how it would be received. Anklyosaurs, Triceratops, Allosaurs in mid game, and Tyrannosaurs for the late game, could be really fun.

To make up for their lack of magic, they could have high prot (very thick skin), multiple strong attacks, and the spell could describe that due to their nature, when they are summoned they are also enslaved, making them mindless with a 50 morale. Or perhaps the mid game dinos would just be "unruly", so they'd be trained like the predator lizards, and just be 15 morale or so, but big Rex hs to be Slave Collared.

Does Slave Collar counteract insanity? Some of the more fantastic creatures could be summoned with high insanity or Shattered Soul if so, and you'd have to collar them immediately to retain control.