Once you get too Summoners you can really rack up the magical units. I had a war vs a very big might focued military, the first couple turns I was worried becasue my twenty pupeteers and three summners didnt kill anything, but after they weakend the enemy hoard and started geting kills the war chaged VERY fast. Spell extention Law bringers and Hosts of Erhijar, Lob the 1 turn lawbringers at them, then mop up with the Hosts. Since the hosts stay alive I just kept adding them up, I had over a dozen at the height of the war and many of them at level 5 to 6. From what I can see properly leveled summners can beat a might army hands down as long as they are mobile and have spell extention to keep away from the front lines. Are they weak against anything in particular (Obviously you dont put them on the front line or anywhere where they can be attacked) or is thier unlimited power the reward for the patience it takes to build such an army?

Racking up summons are very fun, no need for convential units since they can take cities, if you lose the city, oh well, get it again next turn. Make the cities build their own defensive untis.

Summon army is indeed very powerful, expecially if you play a leader with Summoner trait (which can be true for you, as it seems that you're playing Balseraphs). I recon game in one of the previous releases of FfH, where I played as Tebryn of Sheiam and my Spectres wiped out entire civilizations.
Just watch out for Assassins and in general units with Marksman promotion. They attack the weakest unit in the stack, so guarding summoners with stronger units won't help.
I found that if you have 4-5 summoners pumping out a 3-turn lasting summons ebvery turn, nothing will get through to hurt your magic users.

Have fun ;)

Not many players like summoning strategy. I think that is not because it is not enough powerful but because it needs much micromanagement. If AI was able to use it gameplay can be more interesting.

I found that if you have 4-5 summoners pumping out a 3-turn lasting summons ebvery turn, nothing will get through to hurt your magic users.

Have fun ;)

That i disagree with,

Firstly summoners are a national unit so they have a limit of 3 of them, and also an assasin could easily target your magic users, assasins are invisible so no amount of summons would be able to kill what you can't see and only a strength 0 unit would defend before a summoner or archmage, so they would be the assasins first targets.

Summon armies are powerful, but i don't think they are more powerful than any other tactic as there are multiple counters for them or your opponents could even use a summon army themselves, it just looks much more powerful when the AI is incapable of countering most tactics (atleast they can use some magic now though :) ).

Can you guard summoners and archmages with adepts?

Adepts are cheaper than assassins, so they might win in a war of attrition. After an assassin kills an adept, the summoners could kill the assassin, and a lucky adept might even survive to become a mage.

Or better yet use skeletons.

Do marksmen target summons?

Archmages are the first to defend except 0 str units, units with guardsman and a few heroes of which Loki is the only one you'll ever want to defend first.

Mages defend before summoners but losing mages hurt enough for it to be a useless counter.

Adepts, skeletons, warriors etc doesn't help. Unless you're protecting religious spellcasters in which case adepts help.

One solution, especially for the Sheiam or Balseraph, is slavery. The melee units give you a nice supply of strength 0 units to protect your summoners from assassins.

Mages defend before summoners but losing mages hurt enough for it to be a useless counter.


Are you sure mages are before summoners?

I would have thought asassins would naturally target the channeling 3 unit before the channeling 2?

I had Insane Mr P as the leader, and he got raiders, the commando promotion went to my lawbringers, That with spell extention made it so my Pupeteers and Summners where nowhere near the front line, (4 tiles away usually) and with summoned creatures flying everywhere they would certinly roll over any assasins on the way, unless the assasins dont get attacked even if you move into their tile, not sure on that mecnic. Its acedemic anyway, my Acolates waiting on exp sit in the stack, they would have to send a LOT of assasins to touch the important units. My last game I played with the summoner trait, Wow. Twelve Conjururs with law, mobility, and spell extention took 40% of a large map in 16 turns... Of course i spent the two turns pre summoning, so I had 36 lawbringers to open with, and I had a couple crusaders, not that they actually saw combat. My opponents all had major tech leads and one of them had a good army too. Sumoners\Dream eaters are a limited unit, true, but Conjurers\Pupeteers are not, if the war lasted as long as I expected I would've had 30, the 3 high level summners are just icing on the summoned army. One opponent had crossbowmen and kept rebuilding them, but they died LONG before they got close to my summon base. Good thing I won, turn before my culture claimed the land I needed my economy was 0% -79GPT, but I had a war savings of 3000.
The summoned army is VERY vulnerable to a rush, because it takes longer to set up even than mages, (I was usuing stacks of warriors right up to the conjurer teck) but once it gets there...

Micromanadgement? Never! Not if you unipromote your Adepts, All Adepts learn Spell Extent, Mobility, then work their way up the Combat tree, Law II is free from nodes and Holy city. Shift-Select all conjururs, the only difference between them is the combat level, one click summons all lawbringers. Alt Select lawbringers, lob them wherever you want. I find it to be less micromanadging becasue there is no reason to care about things like unit HP. Admitetdly I often had to split the lawbringer ranks into two smaller armies, but still not a big deal.

I need beter multiplayer opponents though, I should just buy Civ for some of my freinds that are generally good at games, then they could more effectivly find the summon army weakness, if there is one other than its rush vulnerability (which is very considerabl by itself)

In Summon army VS summon army, first stike wins, kill your opponents summoners and roll over them. The power of the summoned army is that each summoner creates troops like a city with max production for the unit. On top of that summoners automatically create high level troops because their combat transfers indirectly to the summons combat. 12 Cities even if they produce higher quality troops wont create them each turn, so the tide will eventually shift to the summoned army. On top of that the summon army can create convential troops if nessisary, or their cities can continue to build an economy and push its civs advantage higher. The convetnial army might take a few periperal cities (it happened to me) in the first several turns of the war, but once the summoner advantage starts the balace shifts fast.

Hmm, I would say the advantages of a summon army over a mage army would be:
Summoned units promote, short term summons can get city raider, long term summons can work up the combat tree as well as the empower tree brining them up and over 300% normal power.
Summoned units can snowball, In cases where a combat win means you keep the unit, you get an extra attack. Cant do that with meteor, though meteor does more damadge one turn, Erhijar can win and last much longer to become powerfull and rack up many kills (I had em up to L6-7).
Conjured units are more powerfull than regular mage fireballs.
Even short term sumoned units stay on the board during the AI turn, and the AI WILL see them as the biggest threat, and they WILL throw their armys at the units that will die anyway, giving you extra battles from even short term units.
I would say get the three Archmagi, but make the rest Conjurers\Summoners.

Balseraphs using Law summons?

Yes, going for altar of luminator win with Fellowship of the Leaves Tree\Cottage economy. I wouldnt really like Balseraphs as a nation if it wasnt for how much fun the Insane trait makes the game. I wish there where more Insane leaders...

well I guess if you're lore and setting unaffected :P

That i disagree with,

Firstly summoners are a national unit so they have a limit of 3 of them, and also an assasin could easily target your magic users, assasins are invisible so no amount of summons would be able to kill what you can't see and only a strength 0 unit would defend before a summoner or archmage, so they would be the assasins first targets.

I meant summoners in general, as units wigh Summoning promo (so conjureres/puppeteers/illusionists... and ofc summoners). Sorry for not being precise.

Summon armies are powerful, but i don't think they are more powerful than any other tactic as there are multiple counters for them or your opponents could even use a summon army themselves, it just looks much more powerful when the AI is incapable of countering most tactics (atleast they can use some magic now though :) ).

Agreed that summon army is devastating against AI, primarily because AI targets summons rather than summoners (in broad sense :)). I have no multiplayer experience, but I can imagine that human player would be much better at countering this tactic.

And well, I can't add much to what Tlalynet wrote. I only used this strategy once, playing Tebryn and it seems that Tlalynet has more experience :goodjob:

Summoning was actually nerfed pretty hard in Shadow... Ritualists get a crappy 3str unit instead of their uber ghost panther as their l2 fire summon, and chaos marauders turn on you constantly. Still, yeah, summon armies rule. Try playing the Sheaim sometime; I've literally wiped out entire AI civs using NOTHING by my eaters of dreams summoning pit beasts...

I returned to Monarch level now since im more used to FFH, Summoning is almost as effective, but the early game is harder, I had to use copper warriors to defend my fronteers against a MUCH stronger opponent. Why does the AI attack cities with scouts? I got hit by close to 20, and of course all it did was feed me EXP to get enough strenght to defend against the stronger guys?
Now, other than the delay in getting them I did find a vulnerability to summon armies, well promoted longbowmen. If I could get my leveld Hosts of Erhijar they could eventually deal with them, but the lawbringers cant, specifically a stack of 3 CRIII Drill I or III Longbows on a hill, the chance of lawbringers damadeing them without seging the 60% culture defence (I have no seige) Is simply too low. Other longbowen and other cities are falling fine though, Im just going around that nasty little city and am going to take their non hill capital first. The lead AI has gone from tripple my score to double, and I took out his vassle with the greatest of ease. Against an opponent with so much a beter army the summoning trait is really needed for a summoner army, but against supirior opponents you always need to work your traits anyway.

Had a bad start this time, only one close AI to warrior kill and Oralthious spawned three tiles away from my capital so I had to deal with him while the AI spread out... So far So good anyway, If I kill or Vassilize the front runner I have a neigbor with str 6 armys waiting to be kilt, and by then Ill have summoners to make a hard press for the rest of the world.

Random EXP gains can be seriously annoying! I build 4 Adept in one turn, a reasonable amount of time latter, one became a summoner. The other three didnt get the EXP they needed for another 30 turns! AAARRGGHH... It was tense becasue I knew the front runer Feyl was going to decalre war on me anytime, and one summoner just doesent cut it.

Faeryl viconia likes to zerg with recon line units.

Is it only her? I always have her as my main war negibor for the last few games. The recon line units are great XP fodder to use against an otherwise strong opponent.

While we're worshiping the almighty Summoner Trait, I'm still trying to get together the ideal Sheaim attack force as a goal for one of my games:
3 Ashen Veil Inquisitors
3 Profanes
3 Eaters of Dreams
The Meshabber of Dis
Hard to get, but think of it... nine Balors every turn. Without combat, that's 36 Balors, with the nine that fade being replaced. Plus, if you bump into any enemy summoners, you can try to inquisitor them to break the cap...
I don't think I'll pull this list off, but it's a goal to dream about.

You left off Mardero's ability to summon Balors, and the rare possibility that one of those Eaters of Dreams could have gotten the Hero promotion through a random event, thus allowing Twincast. Plus, an Eaters of Dreams can summon an unlimited number of units per turn, assuming the population of the city it is in is unlimited as well.

I still enjoy damage spells more because of collateral damage and the more easily lightbulbed path. Only time I use summons extensively is when I play the sheaim.

Ohh, that does sound nice. But my last summon game killed my economy so badly and was over so fast I only got to Sould Debt, 1 turn off ethereal call when i hit the threashold for domination. To beat 3 Highly promoted Longbowmen on a hill It took 67 Lawbringers, for a normal army these losses would be ridiculas, but by that point I still had 32 left from my base army of 33 Conjurers, and from there I plowed. I DID have to go around the city to their capital untill more adpets matured becasue my original war party only had 18, but after I knocked the leader down, extorted some much needed tech, killed off two other civs, and came back it was easy.
Someone said that summoning dead ends you with 50 mediocre units, but in reality, it dead ends you with 150, within the first 10 turns of a war, and 500 over a war if you play it well. 500 Str 6 will desroy most stacks of 3 str 16. Finnally you can out unit the AI!