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Heroes Community > Heroes 4 - Lands of Axeoth > Thread: Summoning skill is useless!
Thread: Summoning skill is useless! This thread is 2 pages long: 1 2 · NEXT»
HappyPike
HappyPike


Known Hero
Pikeman
posted April 29, 2002 12:25 AM

Summoning skill is useless!

The summoning skill appears to be useless. Even if you have Grandmaster Summoning, you only get 1 elemental a day -- not very useful. Those units also slow down your hero!

I know I'll never learn that skill from now on...
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Djive
Djive


Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
posted April 29, 2002 01:04 AM

Quote:
The summoning skill appears to be useless. Even if you have Grandmaster Summoning, you only get 1 elemental a day -- not very useful. Those units also slow down your hero!

I know I'll never learn that skill from now on...


Ok... You can say it's useles but 1 Elemental/day is roughly what you get from the Creature Portal, or an external dwelling. And it's free of charge. How much is an Elemental... Around 500 Gold? That makes about 3000 Gold/week worth of creatures.

I've noticed the same thing as you. The units are often in the way. Sometimes I use them as sacrifices shields in combat (they usually serve well), or I put them as mine guards. Also I often have one slower stack moving along the hero (main stack), where I put extra creatures.

Do recall, in H4 movement allowance is recalculated all the time so you don't lose anything on getting the creatures. The worst you can do is having to dismiss them.

The bad point about summoning is that you're usually only offered one skill for each skill group, so if you get offered Summoning you probably won't get an offer for Herbalism, Meditation or Nature magic.

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HappyPike
HappyPike


Known Hero
Pikeman
posted April 29, 2002 01:58 AM

Quote:
And it's free of charge. How much is an Elemental... Around 500 Gold? That makes about 3000 Gold/week worth of creatures.


Free things are always good... The problem with summoning skill is that it's impossible to amass enough troops to make any differnce. Frequently those summoned creatures are killed each time you fight a wandering stack, so you always end up with a few of those creatures at any time.

I usually just dump the summoned creatures at the nearest mines or sawmill.
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Jenova
Jenova


Famous Hero
posted April 29, 2002 06:56 AM

I usually don't bother with Summoning either, because you need a high level for it to be of any use. At low levels you get crappy sprites and leprechauns.

But I disagree that it's totally useless.. If you buy elementals from the creature portal, then your stack won't be small all the time. Elementals are great. And a resupply of elves doesn't hurt either.

But this skill would be a lot better if you chould choose what creatures you want summoned.
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phYscHo
phYscHo


Known Hero
[This space For Rent]
posted April 29, 2002 07:35 AM

and then if you wait till the end, the lvl 5 summons are really usefull, but getting there is a problem yes
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Flashman
Flashman


Adventuring Hero
posted April 29, 2002 10:24 AM

I beg to differ, summoning is very usefull.

Leps and satyrs are always good because of Fortune/Mirth and water eles are the backbone of a good preserve army.

/flash

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Cat
Cat


Honorable
Supreme Hero
Gonna Get Dirrty...
posted April 29, 2002 10:52 AM

A good think about low-level summoning

Is the level one creatures ability to be a pest.  A large level one stack can take time and effort to kill, and if they have first strike like sprites they can cause some damage before the inevitable (ie, their death) happens.

Summoning at higher levels is extreamly useful.. as Djive says, 1 elemental a day is roughly what you get from the portal.  Assuming you build up to GM summoning at the first possible instance on a large map, you could hae quite a hefty stack of free elementals by the time any real fighting occurs.
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Juregen
Juregen

Tavern Dweller
posted April 29, 2002 12:36 PM

And ofcourse

You can make your army in such a way that you only summon what you really want

I once spread my army in such a way, that i had only the posiibility of summoning Waterelementels, getting one every turn is a very nice thing indeed
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DonGio
DonGio


Promising
Famous Hero
of Clear Water Mountain Clan
posted April 29, 2002 12:41 PM

You're right, Juregen, but you might not always have the opportunity to compile such an army, and then this skill becomes quite bothersome. Maybe you should be allowed to choose which creature you would like summoned?

And anyway, I think a lot of the other skills are more powerful at GM than summoning. Like Magic Resistance...

Play well
DonGio
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darkspirit
darkspirit


Famous Hero
aka Zutus
posted April 29, 2002 04:50 PM

indeed they should fix that in an expansion/patch.

for both summoning and necromancy it should be so that you can select wether you want 1st 2nd or 3d level creatures. They could even expand it to lvl 4's, but this should have to be extremely balanced. Necromancy skill should only be able to raise bone dragons, when fairies or black dragons were present in the battle, and only one should be allowed to be raised. Summoning skill should allow you to summon 1 mantis, phoenix or fairie in one week (maybe two weeks?)
You should be able to select the creature of your choice in a dialog screen, so you can chose wether you want huge amounts of leprechauns to one phoenix a week/
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undead_wolf_...
undead_wolf_lad


Adventuring Hero
Undead Wolf Wrangler
posted April 29, 2002 04:55 PM

In essence, you can control what you summon...
Say you have 5 of the 7 slots filled with your "army" and 2 slots are for summoned creatures...
Say you summoned elves one day and white tigers the next, but you wan't JUST elves. It's simple, split the tigers from your army and fill in the slot with one of your other units from your regular "army". From that point on, all you'll summon are elves.

GM Summoning and a hero class of Summoner is particularly impressive. Especially on larger maps.

And summoning is far from useless. Free units that don't require that you travel anywhere to get them frees you up to cover much more ground. Summoning is tremendous. It's still not as good as Necromancy, but it's far better than Charm or Diplomacy and slightly better than Resurrection.
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HappyPike
HappyPike


Known Hero
Pikeman
posted April 29, 2002 05:33 PM

It's a matter of personal perference, I guess. I would choose Magic Resistance or Resurrection over Summoning anyday.

I finished map 4 (medium size map, advanced level) of the Elwin campaign w/o recruiting any troops in a little over 2 months time. The hero can move so much farther w/o taking slow units alone. For example, my hero has 51 movement points, if I carry a slower unit, the army's movement rate can drop to 38. It's simply not worth it. [Only the air elemental can keep up with my hero]

Certainly getting 100% magic resistance is more useful for my play style...
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Thunder
Thunder


Responsible
Famous Hero
posted April 29, 2002 05:42 PM
Edited By: Thunder on 29 Apr 2002

Howabout recruiting druids every week from your towns and then visiting some learning stones to gain summoning skill. Then put those druids into town garrison or mine or where ever you want to put them to boost your sprite or wolf population. Having 8 Druids with advanced Summoning to boost your sprite production with 16 per day isn't bad, or is it?

Might work on larger maps.

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Djive
Djive


Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
posted April 29, 2002 07:27 PM

"I finished map 4 (medium size map, advanced level) of the Elwin campaign w/o recruiting any troops in a little over 2 months time. The hero can move so much farther w/o taking slow units alone."

It seems to work like this. A hero with units gets a +5 speed boosts. So giving a hero a fast creature is often preferrable to moving only the hero.

So giving said Elwin some Sprites (filling up all the six slots with Sprites), you prevent Elemental Summoning and speed up your Hero.

As I said in another thread, the creature Xp you're entitled to accumulate so you will get all of your Elementals later on when you free up a slot. And you can decide which Elemental to get if you add one of them in the slot you free up.

Elwin campaign is a bit of a special case. You usually have Trough bonus, Stables bonus, Equestrian Gloves and the +50% movement Boots all through the Campaigns. If you also develope Pathfinding, you'll get even higher Movement allowance. Add to that all the +1 Hero Speed places you can visit and you receive an exceptional movement allowance.

If you compare Summoning with Ressurrection in the Elwin Campaign, you'll probably find Ressurrection of even lesser use than Summoning. The hero often fights alone or with little help. Ressurecting 50% of nothing is nothing, and if you lose only 1 unit you will still Ressurrect nothing.

So far from what I've played. I get a lot more extra creatures from Summoning than I can recover from Ressurrection. And this is mainly because Ressurrection kicks in very rarely.

The one ability which is overpowered is GM Necromancy, because you fight more than one combat with your Vampires per day and each combat is likely to net you 2, 3 or 4 Vampires. And Vampires cost 1100 Gold.


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return_of_soth
return_of_soth


Known Hero
Undead Slave
posted April 29, 2002 08:25 PM

If i have to pick between summoning and ressurection? ill picked the summoning in all major net games there will be only one big fight between the players so ther will not be any need of ressurection after the fight but before the fight it will come in handy whit a big army.

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Hero-Alex
Hero-Alex

Tavern Dweller
good archer
posted May 23, 2002 09:40 PM

summoning is best at the beginning of a game

summoning is best at the beginning of a game
becuse then you have few creatures
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bestanden
bestanden


Adventuring Hero
posted May 23, 2002 11:49 PM
Edited By: bestanden on 23 May 2002

summoning

In an experiment the other day, I was able to have 6 GM summoning druids by early in the third month ( in addition to thief and tactics hero).  They were creating about 10 water elementals every other day, approx. 35/week.  It doesn't take too many weeks of this to make an impressive army.  One strategy would be to hide the druids in a nook near your castle, but not visible from the castle and let them keep pumping out the elementals.  One nice thing about water elementals is that their magic attack doesn't really need high tactics to be effective and does not diminish with range.
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mustafa620
mustafa620


Hired Hero
Royalty
posted August 30, 2003 02:06 AM

Summoning

I disagree - summoning can be very useful. however, late in the game i never have (or even want) elementals in my army, but i always have elves. thats why i NEVER learn GM Summoning (if i can help it), but ONLY stick with Master Summoning instead! I make sure i'm only summoning elves (there's no room for white tigers or satyrs with 2 level 4 creatures - usually Faerie Dragons and Mantises ), so my army is growing increasingly stronger every day - for FREE! plus elves are great to have, especially in LARGE numbers lol.. if i do get GM tho, from an altar or something, i just take out wolves or something and get water elementals, which are also strong when you have a lot due to their spell casting
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silx87
silx87


Supreme Hero
posted August 30, 2003 02:14 AM

nope,I always go for GM summoning,if I'm playing a large or XL map!if u start getting them early on,u get more of them!
from the portal I also buy them.
I used to buy mantises too,but u only get 1per week,which isn't that great!since I want to carry elves with my army,it doesn't matter how fast they are!
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LordZXZX
LordZXZX


Famous Hero
Overfished
posted August 30, 2003 04:15 AM

Summoning provides meat shields. Even if its just a water elemental, you can still cast some slow of weakness. The few summoned units can open an attack for the wolves, who must always hit second (or die via retaliation)
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