Khalifate Vs Mass Trolls Or Drakes

[DwarvenWarrior]

Hello guys,

I feel that Khalifate has an ok balance vs elves humans and dwarves. But what would you do if your enemy only recruited Trolls? they all have impact and can always regenrate. khayal is not that good of an option because it costs 21 troll only cost 14 and still khayal is worse (6-3 no regen whereas troll have 7-2 + regen). what would you do to counter mass troll strategy? at least for undead mas adept is better because adept can kill troll faster than troll can kill mage (due to more % + more damag)

same Q for khalifate vs drakes (if you started with mudafi spear man you may be able to deal with them)

[The_Gnat]

A approach that might work is using the hakim to counter the troll. The hakim has heals +8 (similar to the trolls regenerates when coupled with other hakims). The only problem is the hakim has far less hp and costs too much, so you would have to overwhelm the trolls with jundi's (supported by hakims) and hope the trolls don't kill them all at night time.

[taptap]

You have fire damage dealers, that also do good retail in melee + your own healers.

[Samonella]

I think Khaiyal will be very useful in both match-ups.

Vs trolls, use the khaiyal's 6 movement to control when fighting happens (namely, at day only). Khaiyals also have a better impact resistance than most khalifate, and that mace is pretty good at banging up trolls. The lance might even be useful for scoring kills before they can escape and regenerate.

Khaiyals' maces are also pretty good at squashing saurians, and the lance will positively tear drakes apart.

Of course, Khaiyals are pretty expensive, so they probably shouldn't be the meat of your army in either math-up.

Vs trolls, complement them with jundis (who can also easily out-run trolls) and hakims for support; naffats are also not a bad choice.

Vs drakes, have some jundis to help fight clashers and skirmishers. If your enemy is using a lot of saurians, an arif or two might be worth it to counter their high terrain defense; if they don't use many saurians, ramis could be a big help for making fast strikes and killing enemies before they have a chance to retaliate. Hakims might be useful, depending on the map size, but drakes are mobile enough that an extra soldier might be better instead.
( and don't recruit a naffat unless there's nothing but saurians as far as the eye can see)

EDIT: i'm not a multiplayer pro or anything, that's just what i'd try

[Gyra_Solune]

If an opponent is recruiting solely mass trolls, then here's something I advise: run past them. Khalifate's second only to Drakes in terms of overall speed, and Troll Whelps are rather slow. It should be relatively easy for you to use Jundis and the occasional Khaiyal, supported by Hakims when necessary, to pen in any trolls with a ZOC web, and since they're fairly low-damage, even with the Jundi's impact weakness they won't actually do all that much damage. If you need to do a lot of ranged damage to some of the trapped trolls, Naffats are your go-to for offense over defense. Then you can send in a strike force of Ramis or more Jundis (and maybe even some Falcons, they're well suited to a kamikaze swarm of a singular target, namely an exposed leader), and take out the hero. Honestly trolls aren't even what I'd rate as the biggest problem when dealing with Northerners - to me, I always have trouble contending with their Grunts, who are faster and harder to enclose, hit harder while being much cheaper than your units, and have more total HP with no primary intended countermeasure. Spam of any unit is an incredibly easy thing to counter, since usually they're designed to be countered.

[DwarvenWarrior]

have you guys actually tried this? troll only cost 13 gold.... there is no way naffat will be able to match with trolls...

do you guys have a replay of an example of any of these strategy working?

also khayal vs troll: 21 gold is almost double the cost.

Hakim + jundi I still never tried it so I cant judge yet

[The_Gnat]

True the main problem with the khalifate is their price. I dont play them often but I think the jundi would work because it is faster. It would be a close battle though and you would have to retreat alot but since the jundi has more moves that could work. And then if you play well you can steal all their villages with cheap Falcons since theit trolls are too slow.

This is just a theory though and would highly depend on spread out villages, a big enough map to retreat at night, and not have the trolls reach your leader, and proper terrain to give you a speed advantage.

[Samonella]

have you guys actually tried this? troll only cost 13 gold.... there is no way naffat will be able to match with trolls...

do you guys have a replay of an example of any of these strategy working?

also khayal vs troll: 21 gold is almost double the cost.

2p_—_Fallenstar_Lake_replay.gz

(26.73 KiB) Downloaded 398 times

Here's a silly little match I just did, all khaiyals vs all trolls. Just vs an ai with +3 gold per turn, so it doesn't prove you could win an actual match; it just proves that the khaiyal's cost isn't a fatal flaw. I admit it was harder than I expected, but like i said, i'm no multiplayer pro. And of course, pure khaiyals for my team is anything but optimal.

I'm sure you can see turns where I made bad tactical decisions, and at the beginning I let the trolls take a bunch of my villages in the south which led to some hard turns. The important things are that I could exploit the trolls poor damage to discourage them from attacking, and, more often, exploit their poor movement to not even give them a choice.

If an opponent is recruiting solely mass trolls, then here's something I advise: run past them. Khalifate's second only to Drakes in terms of overall speed, and Troll Whelps are rather slow. It should be relatively easy for you to use Jundis and the occasional Khaiyal, supported by Hakims when necessary, to pen in any trolls with a ZOC web, and since they're fairly low-damage, even with the Jundi's impact weakness they won't actually do all that much damage. If you need to do a lot of ranged damage to some of the trapped trolls, Naffats are your go-to for offense over defense. Then you can send in a strike force of Ramis or more Jundis (and maybe even some Falcons, they're well suited to a kamikaze swarm of a singular target, namely an exposed leader), and take out the hero.

Now that's a strategy I'd like to see a replay of. I've heard/read about weird strategies like this, but when I try them they quickly dissolve and I end up fighting a pretty normal match.

[Computer_Player]

Nice people are trying out Khalif

Here's the thing. if your enemy goes mass trolls. You're doomed. End of.

Trolls are so cheap and hard to kill for khalif (the only decent chance is at day with naffat / arif, both expensive units on their own right) that you're going to be attritioned to death. No, trying to go past them doesnt work since they are cheap and easy to do a creeping ZoC wall with.

Getting Khaiyal means you lose out on much needed gold on an already economically challenging fight. Khaiyal is never good. Ever.

The thing with the orc match up is that its relentless pressure at night right from the get go (so you can't leisurely get Hakims.. since you need fighting units), and at day you don't have the units to kill things since your most powerful units are hella expensive too (mass troll is even worse since they have fearless and your liminal units are malus at day and thus far game). You're essentially fighting a drake game without the massive retal firepower at day.

The thing that makes this match not unwinnable is that usually people don't go mass trolls right from the get go (really, its hard to take the outside vils for example.. nor is it possible to quickly rush.. other factions have cool answer to it). So you leverage the one thing that makes this "not" a drake game: your liminal units.

Your liminal units (especially the Rami) are going to be the key. Esp at dawn they can put the hurt on orc units with minimal retal if they are on good terrain. Once they are hurt your day units can finish off things. If you do it right you could make up for the disadvantage by the following day and begin to fight at a more even footing.

The thing is tho, the smart orc player would just hang back on first night until they have critical troll mass. So khalif has to be extra agressive and look for openings to exploit. Be sure to maximize the terrain advantages which will be the key to winning.

Basic recruit mix: 2-3 Rami to be able to kill / do dmg. 1-2 jundi as filler / 1-2 arif or naffat. Mixing up further recruit depending on game state.

... I really need to get my how to play going.

P.S. Drake is a solved problem for Khalif. That is, Khalif destroy them. Simple formula: Rami for drakes, Jundi for saurian (with a few arif). Just leverage your liminal time to the hilt. If Drake player gets clashers (there will be temptation to do this because of all the ranged pierce), that just means you can run circles around him as your army paradoxically beats out the drake faction in mobility. Time-space control is key as always for Khalifate. Once you wrestle it from Drake (another faction that relies on that), they are doomed .
Get hakim when you have free chance so you can press the attack continuously.

[Horus2]

Here's the thing. if your enemy goes mass trolls. You're doomed. End of.

I told this to ladder people since day 1 of Khalifate, a very reasonable assumption i daresay. Deaf ears were turned to it. Grunt is gooood, troll is baaaad.
Thank you for validating it with applied science.

[DwarvenWarrior]

Here's the thing. if your enemy goes mass trolls. You're doomed. End of.

I told this to ladder people since day 1 of Khalifate, a very reasonable assumption i daresay. Deaf ears were turned to it. Grunt is gooood, troll is baaaad.
Thank you for validating it with applied science.

but if we make horseman defense 30% vs impact it becomes balanced. why is their horseman slower and have more armor but still cannot resist impact lol

Edit: or 40% actually like human horse

EditL or 50% because it is slower and have more armor lol

[The_Gnat]

Which khalifate horsemen do you think should be changed?

[DwarvenWarrior]

Which khalifate horsemen do you think should be changed?

the khayal guy or whatever he is called (he have spear charge and mace)

[skeptical_troll]

Humble suggestion based on pure theory (no multiplayer experience here): what would happen if you let the Khalifate faction recruit scorpions? They are damn expensive (22g), so they are probably not very convenient to use in other cases, but they are ridiculously resistant to impact, so they will be no match for mass trolls. They even are desert-related so it would also make some sense lore-wise.

[Gyra_Solune]

Honestly I disagree with how Scorpions are statted. That heavy resistance to impact makes little sense for what's supposed to be an armored creature - since other armored units typically are weaker to impact than pierce or blade. And their extreme apocalyptic weakness to Fire is odd as well. Potentially it could be a good idea but it's a very weird one and I think the Scorpion would have to be seriously analyzed before it's suitable.

You mentioned that the problem with trolls is that they'll critical mass and form a wall you can't run around - the idea is to not let them form that wall in the first place. Falcons are a cheap and efficient way to surge in and snatch every village if the opponent is dead-set on only utilizing 4 MP units - you can then replace them with hardier Jundis once they arrive. It's not a long-term strategy I'm talking about - Khalifate is meant to move very fast strategically, and in this unusual situation you should be occupying the bulk of the map very quickly. On most maps I would say you ought to have 2/3 of the villages by the time they're all claimed if it's just Trolls - by that point, considering the low breaking power of Trolls and a village's tendency to be surrounded by flat land, it shouldn't matter that they're cheaper, they're only barely going to be denting entrenched Jundis that can retaliate with no counter-damage with their bows if need be. You should be making enough money that 15-16 gold is as much of your per-turn income as a troll-spammer's 13, and if you're smart enough, you can bump that up to a 18-19 equivalent by moving in to 3/4 of the villages, meaning the more offensively powerful Naffats are easy to churn out and really push back trolls come daytime.

I ought to run a few test games with you all to illustrate what I'm talking about - one in which the Northerner player ONLY recruits trolls, which sounds exceptionally easy, and one in which they use them as their rank and file but still utilize Wolf Riders and maybe even Nagas for village-snatching, which slows down the map-blitz strategy enough to potentially make that wall of trolls possible. I can see how on a tiny 2v2 like Isar's that's a more viable strategy but in an average 1v1 it's much harder for just two or three units to block off large sectors of the map.