Summoning: Question.

I think there should be traits that allow for multiple summons from the same spell (at increased mana upkeep of course).

If we take from FFH, it could be "Twincast" ...

But I think something like "Summoning Attunement 1-3" would suffice

But I'm wondering why you can't summon like in AoW. There you could have as many elementals as you could afford or have an army of summoned spiders.

This is true. The upkeep per turn was paid with mana. No reason why this can't be done in FE.

Of course, the mana maintenance would be ridiculous. The huge number of turns involved in this game makes keeping a standing army of summons a really silly idea. Or in fact using any spell with maintenance. Either maintenance for the lowest spells needs to come below 1point per turn, or the general supply of mana and costs of other spells needs to go up significantly.

Not at all. As long as you can keep the mana rolling in. AOW:SM can last hundereds of turns on large maps. And yes you can maintain a decent sized summoned army if you manage your mana correctly just as you would managing normal units with gold.

Now mana maintenance should be on par with what you pay in gold for normal non-summon units.

what if we attached the amount of summons allowed to the lvl & schools they come from

lvl 3 fire/lvl 2 earth mage could have:

 three lvl 1 fire summons + two lvl 2 fire summons + one lvl 3 fire summon

 two lvl 1 earth summons + 1 lvl 2 earth summon

edit: upkeep could be the same: 1 mana for lvl 1 summons, 2 for lvl 2 & so on?

so a lvl 5 fire mage could have:

 One lvl 5 fire summon at 5 mana upkeep +

 Two lvl 4 fire summons at 4 mana upkeep each +

 Three lvl 3 fire summons at 3 mana upkeep each +

 Four lvl 2 fire summons at 2 mana upkeep each +

 Five lvl 1 fire summons at 1 mana upkeep each +

This would allow for an actual summoned army

If you could cast as many summons as you want, you could go for a summoner caster as sovereign. When going down this path, you don't cast spells in combat for the dammage, you'll be using the summons. This is a feature I'm really missing in the Elemental franchise. *sad panda*  

+1 Alfdaur. I would like every choice for sovereigns to be useful (though making every possible combination useful is asking too much if the choices are to remain interesting). I am happy that at least a direct spellcasting sovereign is viable, which they weren't in WOM.

In terms of maintenance, mana is precious but not so precious that one can't maintain spells. Early in the game if you take Attunement you can keep a couple of buffs up and still net 1 mpt; this is enough for a significant edge in early fights (Evade, for example).

I agree that summoning needs to be a more viable magical path, but I think that if you truly want to be an exceptional summoner, you should pretty much have to pick the summoner trait.  This should unlock not only the summon shadow warg spell, but also additional summoning options depending on what spheres (ie fire, life, death) your sov knows.  Shrills should be available as a summon at level 1 or 2 of their respective spheres, and should not have a limit on the number of times you can summon them.  All the Elemental summons should, instead of a hard limit, be put on an X-turn cooldown, which is reduced by the number of mages that can summon that unit.  Life and Death should also get their own summoned units; familiar, assassin demon, and death demon for Death, and something similar for Life (I'm thinking wolf, cave bear, and maybe Ophidian?  There aren't really any fae/angelic forces in Elemental lore AFAIK to use as Life-summonable units.) 

Summons are pretty damn weak. I would like them to have better spells and maybe some traits to allow a maximum of 5 summons per conjurer. I am excited to use Shadowgate in the new beta.

+1 Summoner needs to be a viable playing style instead of just blasting direct damage!

1. More summon types please, if you can fight it, you should be able to summon it. Or maybe a quest you need to do before you can summon each type.
2. Ability to cast multiple summons of the same type (restrict by cool downs, traits whatever)

That's the other thing about magic in FE, besides being weaker than melee is incredibly one dimensional . You don't have much metamagic, summons are weak/boring etc, Bluffing spells for fighting or growth are not impressive either so it's mostly about how mana blast is OP  Yawn...

In the original WoM the player could summon a whole swarm of beasties.  This was a lot of fun and led to much monster bashing, but it was seen as a serious imbalance in the game.  I notice Stardock avoids previous errors like the plague and probably misses out on some good ideas as a result.

Excatly and they each have mana upkeep per turn so it is not unbalanced (I'm playing AOW as I'm writing this)