Path of Summoner era

[mystic x the unknown]

Sometime, somewhere, there was a land competed for by powerful mages who drew from the powers of the elements, and some from powers life or death as well.

Path of Summoner is a very old multiplayer era made by fmunoz. This is just a maintenance and polishing release. (the old thread)
Each player is a powerful level 3 mage, called Master Summoner. He is specialising in 2 fields he chose from air, water, fire, earth, life and death but excluding conflicting combinations like air+earth.
Based on his specialisation the Summoner gains ability to recruit magical creatures, wield powerful ranged attacks and some other skills.
screen1 screen2

continued:
there are 2 "generic magic" summons everyone can use and 2 elemental summons for each element. Of the elemental summons, one is mostly formless element/force and the other is using an internal structure. Death specialist can recruit several undead.

The concept, all the stats and images were done by fmunoz. There are just some extra images now.
The graphics and in part stats are being used to form a faction in Era of Myths.

there is an extra era that includes default factions (but the era is not balanced against default)
you can get it from add-on server or here:(recommended with old mountain/hill, tree graphics)

[mystic x the unknown]

more on gameplay/ future plans:

I brought the era back mostly because I loved it's atmostphere when it came out but I would still like to see it improved in other areas. Fmunoz took the units from his singleplayer campaign and put together like this. The era isn't very well balanced, and it's indeed hard to make it so with this unit arrangement, even without making the units more diversified. The gameplay is a bit dull with most units being neutral.

There are some people who wanted to expand the era. A kind soul said it will try to make summoners recruit out of keep and fmunoz mentioned he had an idea for some specific-element-combination-only units. I could add some extra graphics, especially defense frames.

Some units have mostly unchanged resistances, move costs and defenses from the movetypes the unit stats were based on. I think some of those could be adjusted for improved flavour and maybe balance.

Some units are missing a description. If you think you could write any, please post it here.

If there are to be some major changes/additions, I would split them and keep the classic summoners era, as it was done 2005.

[Velensk]

It might be a good idea for someone to move this to the correct area of the forums. I'll try to come up with a list of suggestions sometime, but I'm going to be very busy this weekend.

[kyi_the_bard]

When you level a Puppet, you get a "Unknown Unit type error" when generating the traits, or something like that.

Thought I should let you know.

[mystic x the unknown]

thanks, there is now a fixed version. it also includes some updates to Summoner graphics.

[mystic x the unknown]

new version here.
To improve the gameplay of summoners+default era, all costs have been lowered to move the summoned units closer to default's power level. Units from default, undead and mudcrawlers have been changed as well, so undead players in the same game will pay more for the same unit.
Players can now select faction by element, in addition to random or element combination.
There are also some changes to unit stats, other minor changes and some extra unit frames from fmunoz.

[wesfreak]

it's kind of unbalanced, isn't it? i mean, all elementals only go to lvl 2, so it would be unfair for someone playing a kind of summoner, exept for anything with death. try using the elementals from other factions. and maybe you could recreate the mother mudcrawler, a lvl 2 mudcrawler.

also, the lvl 3 leaders are also very unbalanced, to compare them with other lvl 3 units. they do only lvl 2 damage, for the most part.

also, when i was testing the era, summoners from random that ended up with undead+ other got only undead melee, while death+ wind got a death ranged attack. is this a glitch, or a result of the combination?

[mystic x the unknown]

it's kind of unbalanced, isn't it? i mean, all elementals only go to lvl 2, so it would be unfair for someone playing a kind of summoner, exept for anything with death.

It is unbalanced. But because there are 12 factions, with each unit present in 4 of them, not for the reason you mention. L3 units are very rare when playing with default settings, so they don't really affect balance. Also I belive the absence of L3 units improves the feel of the era.

try using the elementals from other factions. and maybe you could recreate the mother mudcrawler, a lvl 2 mudcrawler.

New units aren't going to be added, but current ones might be slightly modified.

also, the lvl 3 leaders are also very unbalanced, to compare them with other lvl 3 units. they do only lvl 2 damage, for the most part.

They deal comparable damage and have comparable HP with other L3 spellcasters. Some elements get better attacks than others. Like default's spellcasters, they get other abilities, some elements enable better resistances, some better movetype, healing, drain.

also, when i was testing the era, summoners from random that ended up with undead+ other got only undead melee, while death+ wind got a death ranged attack. is this a glitch

Death doesn't have own ranged attack, they always get ranged attack from the second element.

[krotop]

also, when i was testing the era, summoners from random that ended up with undead+ other got only undead melee, while death+ wind got a death ranged attack. is this a glitch, or a result of the combination?

Yes, that's a result of the combination. Water/Wind gets its own personnalized attack as well.

[wesfreak]

mudcrawlers should have more then just 3 speed. with only three, they become a huge pain to move around.

there are no scouts or fast moving units for many of the summons factions, some combinations are really strong against others (fire is exeptionally strong against earth, and very good against everything else.

fire: has a good melee and ranged unit.
water: a very fragile melee and a mixed instead of a ranged
earth: slow and weak ranged
air: fast but weak
death: overpowered in comparison+ ghost's drain is useless in the summons era, making ghost much weaker
light: no ranged.

and the summons masters are comparable to lvl 2 mages. mage of light does 12-3 damage, but lightbeam is only 8-3. archmages do 12-4 fire damage, compared to 10-4 for the fire mages. a lvl 3 with 3 strikes would do 15-3 rather then 12-3

i suggest strengthening the damage and giving a combination elemental to every faction, like a hurricane for water and air, doing good ranged damage to make up for the combinations lack of ranged. death wouldn't get any, because it already has more summons then before.

Also decrease the cost for the following units: the ice crab costs 18 gold when it does the same damage as the elf fighter, and is much more fragile then that. i'd price it at around 13.
unicorn would be 18 for a weak attack and weak healing
the brazier creation should be 14 gold.

to balance these factions, you would need to add mixed elementals and make it so that only balanced factions are playble, or add another unit to each mix (maybe 2 to earth)

[mystic x the unknown]

sorry for the late reply.

mudcrawlers should have more then just 3 speed. with only three, they become a huge pain to move around.

correct

there are no scouts or fast moving units for many of the summons factions

that might be a problem

some combinations are really strong against others (fire is exeptionally strong against earth, and very good against everything else.

I feel the same way, I'm going to weaken fire a bit.

fire: has a good melee and ranged unit.
water: a very fragile melee and a mixed instead of a ranged
earth: slow and weak ranged
air: fast but weak
death: overpowered in comparison+ ghost's drain is useless in the summons era, making ghost much weaker
light: no ranged.

that's mostly stating the obvious. some comments..
remember that you should count in the contribution from the co-specialisation.
death: skeletons are more vulnerable than in default, because the leaders, the L0s, and a lot of L1s have impact or fire attacks. Ghosts are relatively strong because no summoned units have resistance to arcane.(still, death 'might' be overpowered)
water: ice crabs aren't very fragile

and the summons masters are comparable to lvl 2 mages. mage of light does 12-3 damage, but lightbeam is only 8-3. archmages do 12-4 fire damage, compared to 10-4 for the fire mages. a lvl 3 with 3 strikes would do 15-3 rather then 12-3

and the Silver Mage and Elvish Sorceress do 9-4 damage, and Elvish Shyde does 8-3 damage...There are other qualities to units besides damage. Compared to Archmage, a Summoner gets a special ability from both of it's specialisations, most aren't neutral and most deal multiple damage types. Moreover I don't want them to get too powerful compared to the recruits.

i suggest strengthening the damage and

I'll think about it

and giving a combination elemental to every faction

already done, in PoE era
also:

New units aren't going to be added, but current ones might be slightly modified.

like a hurricane for water and air, doing good ranged damage to make up for the combinations lack of ranged

water and air doesn't lack ranged

Also decrease the cost for the following units: the ice crab costs 18 gold when it does the same damage as the elf fighter, and is much more fragile then that. i'd price it at around 13.

crab has both decent attack and ability to slow, and can often take more punishment than elvish fighter. It does seem slightly overpriced though.

unicorn would be 18 for a weak attack and weak healing

sounds about right

to balance these factions, you would need to add mixed elementals and make it so that only balanced factions are playble, or add another unit to each mix (maybe 2 to earth)

same as above

Note that the primary concern is balance within PoS, true balancing against default won't be attempted.
Thank you for your post. we can play some PoS games if you want.

[wesfreak]

water and air don't lack ranged, but they lack good ranged. They have 5-3 at most. the ice crab is fragile because of it's resists: it's weak to impact, and as you said, everyone has impact.

what if you add a new unit for all of them? making it so that each combination can get good melee, ranged and scout at the very least.

or you could make the magic servant faster and make it a decent scout, while modifiying existing units so that every unit by itself has a fighter and archer. make earth elemental a good fighter (7-3) and take away steadfast. and change mudcrawler to rock-lobber or something.

light can have a light archon for ranged, and an angel for melee rather then a vine beast (you can use a celestial sprite)

i would only nerf fire's ranged so that he has 5-4 instead of 6-4.

make wind herder ranged 6-3 and give it a tornado unit instead of thunderbird, doing 3-7 melee damage with debris and some weak ranged wind buffet.

either give the ice shell more hp or take away its impact resistance, and give the tidal worse melee and better ranged.

[fmunoz]

I just uploaded a new version on the 1.7 add-on server,

Changelog:
- New unit for Earth summoners, Earth Digger. Moved Mudcrawlers to Earth+Water only.
- Added several animations and extra frames (thanks to inferno8 the summoning circles)
- Lowered the Magic servant hp 20->18
- Added the submerge hability to the Tidal and Undine.

PS:
As several eras/campains use this era grafics or units (of modifications of them) this could trigger a chained reaction of updates...