resoln is a great example of faction balancing - they have a lot of dependable summons but their base units have less hp and armour. A faction than can summon a lot of creatures should have a definite weakness in either the civ or military tech tree.

I of course ignore their spellcasting for the purposes of this conversation.

@ Lord Xia - 

Come on summoning is not that great but comes as the icing on the cake for high level mage! A level 10 Fire elemental will chew through companies of archers with embers, it will tank heavy Cavalry or Dragon like a bauS, and will make use of Cloak of fire and his High attack to destroy any infantry/cavalry in a 1 on 1. In an organized groups of casters and heavy cavalry they have a niche role when you are far away from any Fortresses to fill up the place when one of your heavy calavry dies. They are really great supports for troops and heroes and have really decent initiative.

@ GFireflye -

I don't think queuing up summons is a good idea, because you usually want to use it instantly when you need backup for an incoming fight. Similarly, I'd rather have darklings, ogres and such spawns after a certain given time in their lairs, than having to build a bunch of expensive scouts, ogres in the city nearest to their lairs (probably not a Fortress) while I really need to build city improvements there.

Although I do think that a subpath for summons would be great for the mage path (like more attacks & spells for summons, increase the number of active summons, being able to sacrifice summons for mana/health for their master, scaling hp/resist/spell mastery/spell damage for the summoner or his summons). But then it would require to have at least 2-3 available summons per mage path and it would require to rebalance their availability with an increase in their upkeep cost.

I think completely remove the restriction would not work even with increased mana upkeep, since one procipinees crown and you have free maintenance on summons as it is a buff on the caster. Instead how about summoner 1,2,3 add an extra summon each, maybe path of mage too.

Or instead of extra summons summoner allows you to summon in squads.

Or just create a larger variety of summons so you can bring in 1 of each. (summon great wolf as a tactical spell may make the summoner perks pointful by itself.)

Or make summons all scale damage by level.

Careful xia, those 100 Ice elementals might freeze your pony out of the game.

And it's up now. Obviously balance needs work (well, game balance ALWAYS needs work anyway.)

https://forums.elementalgame.com/436617

I don't see why unlimited summons at 1 mana per turn upkeep each and the initial casting cost would be that bad, since most of the available summons are not much better than early to mid game trained troops, and it provides an alternative to the damage-oriented mage for a magic-oriented faction. I could get behind a caster level based restriction (i.e., you can have (level/5) fire elementals, (level/3) ice elementals, and (level) shadow wargs, or something along those lines) or not having any restriction beyond your mana income. If summoned creatures were to be buffed significantly, I might see a reason for them to be as limited as they currently are, but right now most of them don't seem to be worth the mana once I can produce a spearman in leather armor, or have a decent champion.

Removing the limitation on the number of summons or increasing the cap on the number of summons would also go a long ways to improving the Summoner sovereign class and making the Summon traits more appealing, even if levels for summons still only really increased their health, since you'd be getting more out of these traits. Also, the mana costs of summoning creatures as quickly as I can would probably prevent me from using much magic in tactical combat, and summons are generally fragile enough that I'd have to replace them fairly frequently.

As things stand, I feel like Summoner is the worst profession for my sovereign to take if they are to be built as a mage, since the direct combat professions will let me level faster, Bandit Lord and Beastlord will give me more disposable allies (and in the case of Beastlord, usually also better disposable allies), and the various troop supporting professions make my meatshields cheaper or tougher, while Noble at least doesn't hurt and is beneficial even if I chose magic types that don't have access to summons (death, air, and life).

I'd also like for the tactical summon spells to be castable even if the strategic version is already active on the caster (this is another annoyance that removing the summon limit would likely solve).