Empowered troops that are summoned are not empowered.
Noticed this with Spider Throne last week on multiple instances.
Not sure if it is true for all empowered troops or just spider throne specifically.
not sure if summons skip a “trait check” when entering battle when summoned or if “empowered” only applies to start of battle and not when a unit joins the battle.
it says ‘at start of the battle’
The only time I can think of a troop being summoned with mana is baby dragon. Dragon’s eye (weapon) can turn an enemy into “an empowered Baby Dragon” and The Dragon Soul has the Rebirth trait which give a 50% chance to become (summon) a “Baby Dragon with full mana” when it dies. Can’t remember if there’s any others, but summoning empowered troops doesn’t trigger many traits, such as empowered, but also those that give allies stats, such as Centaur Bond (summoning a troop with this trait doesn’t give life to allied centaurs, even though it seems like it should).