Are forest trolls worth 45~ gold?

[Big Dog]

36gold/year


Intial tests shows they outmatch random Jotunheim MA giants decently but they are not alone. I will try sending armies of just forest trolls v non fire enemies but their upkeep seems like a lot 3g/turn a forest troll....

[terve886]

Due to their innate regen, trolls get much better if you can get some buffs on them, such as etherreal, iron skin, regenation or mistform. Having gift of health also makes their regen stronger.

Troll armies are more late game kind of thing when people have gems to spam summoning them and research to cast wider battlefield spells to buff them. Gold also becomes less important later in the game so the upkeep doesn't hurt that much if you have been able to expand into huge empire.

However, forest trolls are among the weakest of all trolls (and their individual summoning cost is cheaper to reflect that). Best way to summon trolls is usually contacting their king/tribe to get a powerful caster on top of some heavily armored trolls, but this does not apply to forest troll tribes that much since they don't have elite variant and the troll shaman is more often used to break into death from nature as its magic paths are weak on their own.


Other useful nature summons you can get instead of forest trolls are lamias and forest giants or just plain good old vine ogres. Of course it depends on for what purpose you need said units.

Vine Ogres are good blockers and you can get more of them per summon if you have certain construction items.

If you need huge damage outut to kill enemy giants, forest giants will probably perform better than forest trolls due to their higher damage and the fact that regenation is not so effective against high damage opponents like giants, please note that it needs much more mage turns per forest giant to summon equa amount of them compared to trolls, and this should be taken into account. They also have much inferior magic resistance which can make them really vulnerable depending on your enemy.

Killer Mantis are also good damage dealers, especially if you manage to cast strength of giants on them. Their two armor piercing attacks can do some really nice damage even through armor. However, their innate survivality is low and they will probably die from few hits without buffs to improve their survivality.

Lamias are really great due to their huge regenation, life drain attack and second form. They still prefer having their base protection increased via spells, like pretty much all the summons mentioned.

[kzickas]

Originally posted by terve886:

Killer Mantis are also good damage dealers, especially if you manage to cast strength of giants on them. Their two armor piercing attacks can do some really nice damage even through armor. However, their innate survivality is low and they will probably die from few hits without buffs to improve their survivality.

The mod inspector says that killer mantises don't have armor piercing attacks.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by kzickas:

Originally posted by terve886:

Killer Mantis are also good damage dealers, especially if you manage to cast strength of giants on them. Their two armor piercing attacks can do some really nice damage even through armor. However, their innate survivality is low and they will probably die from few hits without buffs to improve their survivality.

The mod inspector says that killer mantises don't have armor piercing attacks.

MOD INSPECTOR DOES SAY PIERCING AND MAGIC WEAPON

I like the forest trolls atm for nature gems, they outclass lamias IMO.

Forest giants are good and I will switch to them once my research is higher. I am playing MA Man v AI so I just went alt 5 into conj 6 for mother oak and summons to test them out. I have like 30N a turn so I can play around with all of them and see if I can counter the world with N summons and knights (Super OP unit)

[Shinuyama]

Trolls are useful for their regen or as emergency troops. The biggest use of them is with Soul Vortex - they regen the Vortex damage, and the mage with the Vortex gets reinvigoration from the vortex's damage to the trolls, allowing infinite spell spam for delay-style strategies (like skelespam).

[Shinuyama]

the strongest non-item based use for N gems is creeping doom, relief, mass regen, mass protection, army of giants

in terms of permanent units, the best are wolf siege chaff and vine ogre line infantry

gift of nature's bounty and gift of health are pretty excellent globals

itemwise, thistle maces for buff spell casters are cheap, regen and reinvig misc items are a staple of heavy thugs/SCs as are vine shields, and there's some other situationally useful bits and bobs like the endless wineskin

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Chris:

MOD INSPECTOR DOES SAY PIERCING AND MAGIC WEAPON

"Piercing" type weapons are not the same as "Armor Piercing" weapons. (The former negates 20% of equipped armor, the latter negates 50% of equipped armor).

Also, the caps-lock is probably unnecessary.

[ChaosKhan]

Forest trolls are indeed the worst trolls you can get, but they are still pretty decent troops when buffed. They don't have "elites" though, which makes summoning the tribe kind of redundant, except if you really need their mage. Otherwise I prefer the standard summon because you get extra trolls for higher magic path, which makes them a pretty good summon for a nature bless pretender.

It's strange that no one mentioned Leogryphs. They are faster, stronger and tougher than Mantis and you get +2 for every path above 2. With a lvl 9 nature pretender that makes 24 "lions" for 12 gems... A Machaka lion costs 20 gold to recruit so if we use this as a reference it means that you pay 12 gems to get troops worth 480 gold. Surely not the worst deal...

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Shinuyama:

gift of nature's bounty and gift of health are pretty excellent globals

Don't forget Enchanted Forests as wll. But I can't imagine anyone in MP letting that one go, unless they just totally don't have Astral Magic.

[Shinuyama]

leogryphs and mantises are just different flavours of 'summon this only when locked in a fort and needing chaff to protect the mages and you don't have the turns to summon anything else

you should not be spending gems on them, if you are it means you are not spending enough gems on other, more worthwhile things (and also possibly aren't building enough regular chaff, playing aggressively enough to gain the income to buy gold chaff, or are using your other paths that are better suited to chaff generation to generate line infantry)

even under a lot of those circumstances there are better options like vine ogres (or even forest trolls).

[Morsigil]

The only time I would summon mantises is in the above "oh ♥♥♥♥" situation or when I know the enemy is going to be bringing a wall of dispossessed spirits or Gana and I have no magic weapons (not gonna happen).

Lamia are where it's at for me. If I have access to those ladies everything else just sits in the tool chest until needed. Vine ogres for blockers/spell absorption

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by Morsigil:

The only time I would summon mantises is in the above "oh ♥♥♥♥" situation or when I know the enemy is going to be bringing a wall of dispossessed spirits or Gana and I have no magic weapons (not gonna happen).

Lamia are where it's at for me. If I have access to those ladies everything else just sits in the tool chest until needed. Vine ogres for blockers/spell absorption

Why Lamia's they seem to die so easily without earth / air mass buff. At least forest trolls can survive 1 hit (even from most spells) and keep fighting without much issue.

Originally posted by ChaosKhan:

Forest trolls are indeed the worst trolls you can get, but they are still pretty decent troops when buffed. They don't have "elites" though, which makes summoning the tribe kind of redundant, except if you really need their mage. Otherwise I prefer the standard summon because you get extra trolls for higher magic path, which makes them a pretty good summon for a nature bless pretender.

It's strange that no one mentioned Leogryphs. They are faster, stronger and tougher than Mantis and you get +2 for every path above 2. With a lvl 9 nature pretender that makes 24 "lions" for 12 gems... A Machaka lion costs 20 gold to recruit so if we use this as a reference it means that you pay 12 gems to get troops worth 480 gold. Surely not the worst deal...

Yea I like leogryphs except that they are undisciplined. I mean they are ok and 24 or 48 of them can be a decent raiding army. I get 10 trolls for 10 gems (1 gem a troll N8 pretender) and with 2 more N5 casters I can get another 14 for 20 gems. 24 for 30 gems a turn... the AI cannot seem to handle these many trolls. There is abysia AI but they are on the other side of the map.

[Morsigil]

Lamia cost half as much, have 1.5x the HP, 5x the regeneration, twice the number of attacks (in human form), higher attack value, categorically better resistances, and one of their two attacks is magic and armor piercing meaning ethereal or invulnerability isn't going to stop them. Also life draining, so they get 50% regen + whatever they steal.

Low protection sucks, no argument there, so you cast mass protection, wooden warriors, or fog warriors on them. Just don't take them up against hordes of shortbows without some protection and you're golden. Luck is great as well.

Forest trolls may hit hard, but that's if they can hit anything at all. There are units that will dance around 2 attack value 10 attacks all day without ever being touched.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Shinuyama:

leogryphs and mantises are just different flavours of 'summon this only when locked in a fort and needing chaff to protect the mages and you don't have the turns to summon anything else

you should not be spending gems on them, if you are it means you are not spending enough gems on other, more worthwhile things (and also possibly aren't building enough regular chaff, playing aggressively enough to gain the income to buy gold chaff, or are using your other paths that are better suited to chaff generation to generate line infantry)

even under a lot of those circumstances there are better options like vine ogres (or even forest trolls).

If you play against braindead opponents, I am sure, you can afford the luxury to set up a Vine Ogre farm but when you are running multiple wars sumultaneously, chaff dies in the hundreds every other turn and you need every research point you can get to get to your research goals faster, stuff is not as simple. The Leogryph spell is far more efficient than any of the ones you mentioned and 2 of those beasts are certainly better at everything than a Vine Orgre, except bodyguarding...

You shouldn't only think about total end game where you dominate the map when considering something good or bad, you know. On the way there efficiency requirements make the Leogryph spell, especially with a nature bless pretender (Who obviously has nothing to do until the big buffs are researched, and even then you just use your own mages to cast those anyway - why risk the pretender?), far better than anything you mentioned.

And no, there are no "better" paths at chaff summoning, than nature - especially if you have a non thug nation.

Originally posted by Chris:

the AI cannot seem to handle these many trolls. There is abysia AI but they are on the other side of the map.

Yeah, the AI has generally problems handling bigger sized warriors which regenerate.

[Morsigil]

ChaosKhan - I'm sure Shinuyama is going to respond, but I'll put in my two cents anyway and maybe save you some pain.

Chaff is meant to get in the way, not to do damage. Given a nature mage of level 3 and an ivy crown, vine ogres provide almost 3 times the HP of a single casting of Leogryphs, and much higher effective HP when you factor in the higher armor and blunt + pierce resistance. Throw in the fact that they will not retreat, while leogryphs do at the drop of a hat, and that you can do cheeky stuff with their poison resist and the choice becomes very clear. Yes it takes more mage turns to summon them, but any given nation is also much more likely to have a number of N2/N3 mages than they are to have a number of N5+ mages.

Sure, you can get a bunch of leogryphs per turn with your pretender, and then when they're busy casting globals, forging, summoning the Worm that Walks and other mages...? Suddenly you're relying on those weaker N mages and the efficiency delivered by the big N mages is gone.

Want to do damage to a bunch of unarmored enemies, or quickly summon an army to overwhelm someone? Okay, load up on leogryphs. Want to protect your mages? You're going to want vine ogres, even if it takes more mage turns and setup costs. It doesn't hurt that vine ogres aren't slouches when it comes to dishing out damage, nor that leogryphs are vulnerable to a number of battlefield spells that vine ogres aren't.

Also, if you're losing hundreds of chaff every other turn I have to question how well the war is going for you.

@Chris: The AI doesn't have problems taking down forest trolls, or any trolls really. If you try to match the AI 1:1 summoned units to their purchased units you will lose unless the AI is on normal or easy, maybe difficult. At mighty and beyond you're looking at hordes that couldn't give a doodoo about a handful of half-naked trolls regenerating 3 HP a turn. With buffs they fare a bit better, but those buffs further the discrepancy between trolls and Lamia.

[BoboYagga]

I will also throw in here too, Nature is not, for my money, the best magic path for chaff. That would be Death. A thousand time Death. Nature is great, it's solid. But Death forever.