New overland summoning costs?

[Seravy]

I propose these new costs for summoning spells (see discussion in the Chaos thread) :

War Bears 55
Nagas 80
Sprites 80
Ghouls 80
Skeletons 25
Guardian Spirit 60
Magic Spirit 30
Hell Hounds 40

Giant Spiders 90
Unicorns 200
Fire Giant 110
Great Lizard 200
Gargoyles 100
Chimera 180
Night Stalker 190
Shadow Demons 175
Cockatrices 150
Lycanthropy 105

Efreet 333
Angel 310
Wraiths 350
Doom Bat 320
Chaos Spawn 303
Stone Giant 275
Gorgons 325
Storm Giant 330

Djinn 375
Sky Drake 500
Archangel 600
Hydra 400
Great Drake 450
Death Knights 360
Demon Lord 666
Summon Demon 41/205 Can't reduce due to combat cost, unless we flag it “equal cost” which is too cheap?
Behemoth 400
Colossus 450
Great Wyrm 500

Resurrection 325
Summon Hero 250
Summon Champion 600
Item ???
Artifact ???
Floating Island 50

Nature's Wrath Trigger 301 or higher

Aside from what has already been discussed, one problem I see with this is, as it makes summons much more relevant, not getting a high rarity summoning spell (especially for the AI) might be too much to deal with.

[Nelphine]

Only thing that stands out to me is that unicorns are the most expensive uncommon. I think shadow demons and chimera are better than unicorns. I'm not sure where I think great lizards are.

[zitro1987]

Late summons are outstanding, especially with conjurer and/or buffs like iron skin.

I can't expect this to go well. These suggestions are incredibly unbalanced and could break the late game. It looks like an attempt to tackle insufficient overland skill late in game (I already suggested amplifying towers granting overland skill only)

Nevertheless, I agree with reductions on the following summons:
Nagas (80) - yes, due to their slow movement
Unicorns (200) - yes, due to their lack of fighting capabilities
Gargoyles (100) - yes, due to their low hp and melee
Angel / Doom Bat / Chaos Spawn / Stone Giant / Gorgon / Storm Giant (maybe a 10-15%/50 reduction)
V Rares - Maybe (10-20%) cost reduction across the board, but be careful here. These units are hero-like in how unstoppable they can be with the right buffs and spells. Having them at 400-600 cost seems like a recipe for disaster - your opponent will cast 2 death knights a turn

[Seravy]

Unicorns are overpriced because Life is bad at summons and they buff an entire stack with 2 resistance.

Something else I realized, we need to probably change Suppress Magic? As is, very rare creatures no longer have a high chance of working if their cost is lowered this much.

[Nelphine]

Zitro, while I agree with you somewhat, what's your opinion on my arguments that getting 1000 halberdiers for a comparable cost to 9 very rares currently? My current way of dealing with very rares is literally just swarm them. And the cost difference is so great, the summons are never a threat. The sheer number of city troops an AI has, especially magicians (which I think might be underpriced), is a threat. Basically, combat spells are typically more dangerous than the units involved.

(It might be better to go the other way and increase production costs - but generally I find an AI is only a threat if they have way more units than the human. Reducing how many cheap units seems like a bad move too.

[zitro1987]

Unicorns are overpriced because Life is bad at summons and they buff an entire stack with 2 resistance.

Something else I realized, we need to probably change Suppress Magic? As is, very rare creatures no longer have a high chance of working if their cost is lowered this much.

Good point,

Nevertheless, this doesn't seem like a good solution, creating unbalance in various ways:
*Conjurers may be overpowered
*Summons (uncommon and later) are now generally overpowered spells, especially at v.rare
*Late summons could have simply kept relatively high costs but have more hp, in order to survive damage spells better. Think 40-60hp across the board
*Others (will think about it later)

[Nelphine]

I don't think simply giving a very rare more HP is enough. They also don't do enough damage. Fighting an earth elemental node? Very rares will take more damage (due to dealing less damage) than bezerkers. And losing a single very rare taking a node, hurts more than losing a full stack of city troops.

[zitro1987]

One thing is for certain - many of your rares and very rare units were far too expensive and had a tendency of dealing underwhelming melee damage or being killed to easily for their cost (10 armor is not outstanding, 30-35hp is quite mediocre). On that, I agree. 

Examples:
*Stone Giant's melee at 20 +2tohit is 10 dmg before armor. Storm Giant is 7.5 dmg before 1/2 of armor. These numbers are not much greater than armorer guild units. 
*Stone Giant doesn't even have 30hp. Many v. rares don't even exceed 35. Remember how much hp troll units have
*Great Wyrm has pathetic armor, and the melee is underwhelming - I'd expect something like 40
*Archangel has horrible stats for its 4.01 version cost. Demon Lord at 1500 is too difficult to summon, though is much superior.

I still ask extreme caution on drastic cost reductions like the ones shown here. Maybe a better approach is meeting at the middle and attempting some better stats for certain units meant for melee.