As much as I've played MoM, I've never really tried a summoner build, and I'm wondering whether anyone has any thoughts on the subject.

It looks to me like Death and Nature are probably the best choices, although Chaos and Sorcery have some attractive options as well. Life looks quite poor for summoning. The Conjurer and Channeler traits should give stacking 50% and 25% bonuses to casting cost and maintenance, so that looks promising. I'm thinking it's probably best to pick one type of magic and stick with that.

For race selection I'd guess a magical race like Elves or Draconians, since mana is going to be needed, and gold not so much.

I'm very nearly done with my first game using a pure summoner build, and I can only describe it as a smashing success.

My wizard started with 7 Chaos books, Chaos Mastery, Channeler, and Conjurer. I selected Orcs.

I was helped along by a pretty good first city position: not coastal, unfortunately, but several river tiles as well as access to mithril and coal. There was also a portal tower right next to the capital, and a sorcery node, and just outside the city radius a chaos node, which was particularly beneficial. As I explored it became clear that I was alone on one of the two largest continents of Arcanus, and it happened to be laid out in a way that made founding seven decent cities possible with only a couple of overlapping squares. Interestingly, each of my rivals (Tauron, Oberic, Freya, and Raven) also started on his own continent. Only Raven's was of comparable size to mine, though. In one way, this was actually something of a disadvantage for a Chaos summoner build, because a Zerg Rush strategy with hellhounds could be very effective. I was safe from my rivals, but they were also safe from me.

What is a summoner build about? Not gold, heroes, artifacts, food, normal units, cities, or even mana that much, although all those things are better to have than to have not. It's about having a huge army of magical creatures while everyone else is still trying to finish their granaries. Before long I had a gang of six hellhounds, which was enough to break the two nodes, and in short order I also picked up the Bard and Sage heroes. This allowed me to crank out more hellhounds and clear all the easiest ruins on my continent. The game felt like my empire had the fastest start of any game I've ever played. And it's all quite simple: summon, conquer, summon more, conquer more.

The two last things I'll mention are the creatures I chose to use for my armies, because that's the biggest decision you have to make, and the endgame, which has been particularly fun and interesting.

Hellhounds are obviously the soldier of choice for the early game. They're cheap and very effective with their speed of 2 and their breath weapon. After my first surge of expansion they started to drop off in usefulness somewhat quickly, and I stopped using them. There are certain enemies they're simply not tough enough to handle, and they never will be tough enough. Fire giants would be next step up, but I didn't get the spell until later in the game. They're pretty uninspiring for, well...fire giants. Their ranged attack is weak and they really aren't that great in melee either. Speed 2 with Mountaineering is useful in limited circumstances, but overall I wasn't impressed. Even in large groups mine struggled to clear ghoul and zombie sites. You could spell them up, but if you're going to do that you might as well summon something better. I moved to gargoyles after hellhounds. Speed 2 flyers, they can take lots of punishment and serve well as meat...er, stone shields. By this time I'd gotten Fang, so I stuck him in a stack with them. It worked okay, but not nearly as well as the next step up: doombats. The complaint about doombats is that they're too expensive. Normally they cost 8 mana per turn to maintain, and I agree that's too much, but if your wizard is a dedicated summoner the cost drops. Mine cost 6 to maintain, and I found them worth it. They're speed 4 flyers, and much more lethal on the attack than gargoyles. I gave Fang weapon and shield artifacts I'd found in ruins and grouped him with four doombats. That stack was good enough to clear most nodes and sites in the game. In fact, I only dumped the doombats much later after I'd acquired the Great Drake spell. The other Chaos creatures I never needed, although some of them looked pretty good: efreet, chimeras, hydras, etc.

I expanded on Arcanus until I had the largest empire, filling my entire continent and grabbing three small nearby islands. Nomads and humans were relatively easy to rule over, but high elves are much less content to be ruled by orcs. The game was surprisingly low-conflict, since I marked out my territory and then moved to Myrror (where I found an Adamantium deposit right next to the portal tower). I didn't bother my rivals, and they didn't bother me, mostly because they were all busy ganging up on Oberic, who managed to wipe out Freya before he made the mistake of declaring war on me. He was a pest, because he had lizardmen who would swim to all the other continents and annoy people. After he defeated Freya (her island was much closer to mine than Oberic's) I swooped in and planted colonies all over so he got nothing. That apparently pissed him off. Later on Raven's klackons broke through to Myrror and started a couple of colonies there. Needless to say I planned to kick him out, but I threatened him first. It was the only time I've ever seen a rival wizard in MoM act like a coward in the face of a threat. He promised to remove his offending units if I would leave him alone. Funny.

The late game became really, really fun and more and more about magic. I found the Armageddon spell in a tower when I first broke through to Myrror, and after busting nodes there I had 13 Chaos books and the spell Great Wasting too. I cast Armageddon and Great Wasting, and spammed Raven's cities with Call the Void. A very fun powertrip. At this point the game's almost over. I'm not going to bother wiping out my enemies because their cities and lands are all in ruins and they have no power left to oppose me. I'll cast the Spell of Mastery and be done with it. I can summon Great Drakes instantly, my cost for casting Flamestrike is 21 (so I could spam combat with it), and my casting cost for hellhounds is 4, so I could whip up an army of them at a moments notice.

What difficulty are you doing these on? Also what are the other settings, magic power and land size?

I would suggest using Barbarians for Sorcery as Sorc focuses mainly on Combat summons to weaken them. That way your Barbs, who get 2 attacks (Thrown&Normal) can take down the survivors. I especially like Barb Cavalry for this as they get to do both of their attacks before retaliation with first strike.

It also helps if you choose Alchemy so you can easily replenish mana/gold not to mention that your Barbs would get and extra 10% chance to hit. WarLord is optional but could help and it's one of the harder retorts to get later as it takes 2 picks.

I generally play on Normal, which this was, but sometimes on Hard. I don't scum for good starting positions or anything like that though. I always use Normal for testing builds I haven't tried before. I use Insecticide too. Does Warlord affect summoned creatures? I guess I've never noticed. If it does, it would indeed be a very good retort for a summoner, as would Alchemy. I didn't want to sacrifice the books though, because I was aiming for low casting costs.

A funny thing happened at the end: I forgot I had edited my game to allow 15 books, and after I had 13 Chaos books, I got a Life book from a Demon Lord ruin. It was pretty bizarre to be able to cast Just Cause while my Armageddon and Great Wasting spells were destroying the entire world.

Chaos really has some FUN spells. Doom Bolt, Flamestrike, Doom Mastery (automatically Chaos Channels all your newly built troops), Call the Void...real earth-shattering destruction type stuff.

No WarLord does NOT effect summoned creatures.

It's just that Sorcery does not really have any good non combat, common summons, unlike Chaos. Naga are junky, cost 100 to summon, only have 1 movement/swimming. Yes they do have first strike but they only have 2 figures with 4 atk each and a 40% chance to hit. Poison is not that reliable either. Therefore you will need some cheap normal units to start the battles with and I figure Barbarians have an edge, plus they really get along with everyone just not quite as well as Halflings.

Alchemy improves their edge by giving that +10% to hit that magic weapons give as well as letting you keep your mana up for casting.

The other main reason is that WarLord is almost impossible to get ounce the game starts. Most fights or encounters that would give you a retort or book usually only give 1. Warlord would require a very good roll on a 2 book/retort encounter to get.

I agree they probably are not worth lowering spell book picks but it's tough to stick to a pure path, at least for me.

Ahh...I see what you're saying. I haven't tried Sorcery summoning, but I will. After my Chaos game, I think I'll try every type of summoner (except maybe Life; that looks like it would be hard). I'm leaning toward Death next.

I chose orcs for my Chaos summoner just because I wasn't sure exactly what I'd need, and orcs are very generic and sort of evil-ish. They seemed well suited to the theme.

The only thing I used my regular units for was garrisoning cities and nodes. In fact, I never built a single unit more advanced than mithril halberdiers and a smattering of mithril cavalry (all with Chaos Channels, of course).

Death and Life are both very straight forward. This is because you go 11 books for each as neither can get the 0 cost thing because they don't have Masteries. At most with 13 books you get the 60% reduction + Conjurers 25% summoning bonus. Not sure if the Conjurer bonus works with Torin though as it does not work on Summon Hero/Champion spells.

As for Death Wraiths FTW and it's quite simple to conquer everything on Arcanus with only 1 of these guys.

Nature & Sorc are tougher because you can't start with 11 books and have to instead do the Mastery&Conjurer combo to make the most of it.

I've actually always found nature the easiest to win with of them all. Earth lore means you can know where the AI's home is very quickly, and from the start you can summon gorgons with stone skin, giant strength, and resist elements--pretty powerful. Add in web and cracks call (also starting spells) and you can take most any nature node from the start--though the insecticide patch does remove the ability of cracks call to kill great wyrms, and rightly so.

The gorgons' flying allows for retreat when you can't kill something all at once, and you can get nature's cures as a starting spell for instant healing.

Water walking and pathfinding allow for easy expansion of your cities, and if you're going for high score you can use change terrain to make sure everything gets to maximum population.

Of course by end game, nothing can stand up to a bunch of iron-skinned, regenerating, water walking and pathfinding great wyrms. :D

Except for a couple of high-level invisible flying spellcaster heroes.

Just sayin'.

So far, that's never happened to me. So far.

ETA: I usually play on hard, four, medium, powerful.

Just another reason why this game could use a PvP option.

A pair of heroes (or even a single high-level one) properly buffed and equipped, can take out an entire node full of great wyrms without even bothering to have breakfast first. Even on Impossible.

The problem is that GWs have a glaring weakness: they can't attack flying units. And if my units were somehow to oppose yours, you couldn't target them with Web if you can't see them, which is pretty much the only spell that could make them vulnerable to your GW's attacks.

I know someone made a multi-player mod at some point but I never tried it myself. Might be worth looking into. Multi-player would indeed be a different game entirely. I do occasionally see AI heroes equipped with magic items, but it's rare and has never affected the battle significantly for me. Yeah, at that point in the game I can usually just let the enemy attack me and hit auto with confidence, since anything that dies will regenerate anyway.

I expect in a multi-player game sorcery magic might be the most advantageous, if we're going to talk multi-player strategies.

Regeneration only kicks in if you win the battle. Otherwise troll units would be unconquerable to the point of being broken.

Well...yes.

o_O

Ha! Indeed. My attempt at a Death Summoner was a failure because I took Channeler and Conjurer, which are pretty much useless since ghouls and skeletons are only 1 mana per turn to maintain. None of Channeler, Conjurer, or Infernal Power are very useful for a Death specialist until later in the game, and by that time it's too late. Much better to put all points in Death books, but I wouldn't consider that build a dedicated summoner anymore.

Essentially, I don't think Death or Life really have workable dedicated summoner builds the way Chaos, Nature, and Sorcery do.

The pronounced difference I noticed between Death and Chaos was in the early summoned units. The ghouls ability to raise dead is neat (I got several very useful undead guardian spirits that way), but they're much more expensive to summon than hellhounds and they're not well suited to cracking nodes and ruins. Given the 2 movement speed and the breath weapon, I was able to beat nodes and ruins very early with a mob of 6-7 hellhounds. That was a huge advantage, even if I lost most of my units in the process.

On a side note, one other cool thing about raising dead enemies: they retain whatever spells were cast on them. I destroyed Horus's capital quite early in the game, and I got a unit of undead nomad swordsmen with Heroism cast on them. They kept the Heroism in death, even though it wasn't in my spellbook. You have to pay the upkeep, but that's minor.

I'm going to try an 11-book Death build some time (just because it's different from the Alchemist/War Troll Death builds I've often tried), but I think I'll try a different summoner build next. If we were playing multiplayer I'd probably have my GWs stacked with a couple heroes with True Sight or something like that. The computer's too dumb to figure that out.