Yep!    Though I still want the summons to have some maintenance cost also.  So I think it's all about getting the mana vs summon pool balance right.  With the dragon example, another way to tackle it would be to (greatly) increase the summon pool cost/maintenance... that way you'd only be able to call the dragon if you pick up some of the other (channeling skills) also, and/or not summon anything else etc.  

So lots of options.  Will do another version soon and probably incorporate a bit of all of these options to water down the dragon situation.

It's a good idea, I have been thinking about something similar.   Just need to figure out how to get the AI to know when it is appropriate to cast the spell, though I think that is achievable.  It might also be possible to have other spells that buff/debuff summoned units.  

Not me personally, I haven't gone to it because of the issue reported so far.  I guess it's possible 1.3b has affected the level up somehow... certainly seems possible given the other weird behaviors reported.

+1

There definitely needs to be a consistent system. I felt the whole spell distribution in vanilla was just totally random and haphazard. Leaving the core summons in the spheres and adding buffs and tactical skills to the summoner path with few or no new summons would be quite fitting. It would also be consistent with the spheres being the main source of new spells and path traits being more for support.

Edit: make sure the mage path has a consistent system, too. IE: magic missiles are better than Flame Dart and Shadow Bolt.

Yep that's a fair point.  Initially I had it setup so that (almost) all the summons got +1 level per shard, so even the Shrills etc.  So in the early days it was consistent, you knew you'd pretty much always get a level bonus for shards.  But I removed it from a lot of units.. mainly the first 3 levels of summons in the spellbook because they are the ones that can get grouping... and I though it might end up making it too powerful.  

I still like the idea of having some unit summons only available in the path itself (like the OuterPlanes guys for example)... because in a similar way to having a few spells available in the Mage path, it means that there are some "special" summons that only the Summoner path can get. 

I get that some people would prefer to have pretty much all spells organised under the spell spheres/books though to help with finding things and getting consistency.  And I definitely get the shard bonus confusion, it's far from obvious at the moment which summons get a shard level bonus.

I don't really want to move spells just yet... but one option might be to make it so that all the summons under the spellbooks/sphers get shard bonuses... and the ones in the Summoning path don't.  Will have a think about it.

Next patch will mostly be focused on balance.. need to nerf/fix the drake/dragon stuff.  Will try and do something with the shard level stuff to make it more consistent though.

Then after that should have a version that includes 4 new spell schools.

Thanks again for the feedback guys.

Hi Abob101,

I love this mod, its very well implemented and the AI uses the summons too!, it would be nice however if the ai unleashed some high level summons upon the player.

I really haven't found any noteworthy bugs or anything and regarding balance i can only agree with what people have said, decrease the cost of low and mid end summons and increase it for high level summons i mean 20 mana for a weak skeleton?, in the beginning of the game that's too much.

Would be nice if you could buff high level elemental summons(fire magic, earth magic, air magic, water magic) because right now only the death demon is truly useful, the Archon is good but not THAT good, might need a little buffing, but Grave elementals and crow demons(the ones i have played) are lacking power they can't hold their ground against mid end troops.

Thanks for this!.

The summon Ignys spell seems to have a problem. Everytime I try to summon it, it tells me I do not meet the requirements. Costs me 40 mana and no Ignys. Am I missing something or is this a bug? Could be that it's not working since Kayla doesn't have fire magic, but my other hero Badra does? But with other summon spells that's never a problem.

OK so assuming I can't fix the bug described above (and it's highly unlikely unfortunately), i'd really welcome any thoughts on what to do about it... I can think of a few options....

1) Leave it - just live with the bug and write it up as a known issue in the readme

2) Scrap the multi turn casting times for strategic summons, possibly increasing mana cost or something else for strategic summons instead to balance it

3) Change it so that the summons happens immediately, but the caster is immobilized for X turns instead.  So this would be fairly similar to how it is now, except that the unit would get summoned at the start of the spell cast.  Movement would be set to zero, and hopefully it would also be possible to prevent any spells casting from that unit for X turns also.

Edit.... just thought of another one...

4) Remove the casting time but give the strategic summons a cooldown time.  So basically convert the casting time to a cooldown time.  Possibly also increase mana cost for strategic summons for balance (as in option 2).

Edit2, yet another one...

5) Make it so that when you cast a strategic summons, the caster is unable to cast *any* other strategic summons for X turns where X is the power level of the summons spell.  So Shrills summons are power level 1, you can cast another summons after 1 turn.  A Death Demon is power level 5 summons so you can't summon anything else for 5 turns.  So it's like a cooldown but affects all summons for that caster.  I've tested this one and it seems to work ok.... the only downside is that for period where the particular champion can't cast any summons... all their summons spells are removed from the spellbook (rather than grayed out).   Not ideal but probably ok.

Thoughts?

Cool thanks for the feedback 

Working on a couple of updates for this now, will probably include a fix for this bug also.

Would be a shame to scrap the casting time, I liked it as a way of stopping summons abuse... will have to think about it.

Thanks ManiiNames.  I'm going to do a test for #3 so I can at least be sure whether it will work or not.

Cooldown in combination with extra costs sounds like a fine balance.

Thanks wasn't aware of that.. just had a look, it's (Centaur Sov spell) setup the same as my stuff.  Probably unlikely you'd ever see it though because it's just the one spell and would only manifest if the Sov was not on top of the stack.

Guys thanks for all the input.  It's really helpful because I like to bounce ideas around.

I've just been working on this now.... i've got yet another option which i'm thinking about... i've edited the previous post... but to make it easier here's the list of options again:

OK so assuming I can't fix the bug described above (and it's highly unlikely unfortunately), i'd really welcome any thoughts on what to do about it... I can think of a few options....

1) Leave it - just live with the bug and write it up as a known issue in the readme

2) Scrap the multi turn casting times for strategic summons, possibly increasing mana cost or something else for strategic summons instead to balance it

3) Change it so that the summons happens immediately, but the caster is immobilized for X turns instead.  So this would be fairly similar to how it is now, except that the unit would get summoned at the start of the spell cast.  Movement would be set to zero, and hopefully it would also be possible to prevent any spells casting from that unit for X turns also.

4) Remove the casting time but give the strategic summons a cooldown time.  So basically convert the casting time to a cooldown time.  Possibly also increase mana cost for strategic summons for balance (as in option 2).

5) Make it so that when you cast a strategic summons, the caster is unable to cast *any* other strategic summons for X turns where X is the power level of the summons spell.  So Shrills summons are power level 1, you can cast another summons after 1 turn.  A Death Demon is power level 5 summons so you can't summon anything else for 5 turns.  So it's like a cooldown but affects all summons for that caster.  I've tested this one and it seems to work ok.... the only downside is that for period where the particular champion can't cast any summons... all their summons spells are removed from the spellbook (rather than grayed out).   Not ideal but probably ok.

For now i've ruled out #1...  I actually like it the way it was, but I really don't like that bug. 

#3 was basically trying to replicate the casting time... however although the immobilization is possible, preventing casting of any spells is not so easy.  It just gets messy.

So i'm looking at going for either 4 or 5 and doing a release with that change and a few balance changes.  What do you think about option 5?

Thanks.

I think I still lean toward 4 as it probably has the fewest side effects.   I guess I'd want to see how you do 5 before I could vote for it.   However, either way you do it I will play with it, it just is that good.