Best ways to kill Trolls (Instructions)

[Everto]

I eventually won the battle by clearing out the town-square, filling it with my troops and then having every single Pikeman unit fight the Balrog. The Balrog was too busy massacring the ants-with-long-sticks to notice that I had captured the town square. I eventually won the battle with every single Goblin dead, 2-3 of the Balrogs destroyed, and the rest of those monstrosities playing soccer with my Pikemen.

I laughed so hard when I saw this, that's exactly how I feel when I send an army into Moria and the Balrogs appear. My solution, as the high elves, has been archers... LOADS AND LOADS of archers. I break down the gate and then pepper the balrogs with 15+ units. I have to put one unit at the gate at a time so they have a sliver through with they can shoot (the balrogs always run up to the gate) otherwise they'll decimate my army.

As per Trolls. . I HATE TROLLS. My response to Olog-Hai are 19 shiny Eldarinwe Archers. Plant Stakes. Take Aim. KILL EM ALL. Sometimes I get lucky and take them out before they reach my lines (rarely) but by the time they do they're already so messed up by arrow fire that it's just clean up work then. Honestly, if it weren't for trolls I'd find this game to easy. They're the one unit that always makes me think twice. Playing as the High Elves with my Golden Army late game, the biggest challenge is facing of against the monstrosity that Mordor has become. The best comparison of a full stack of Eldarinwe Archers against a stack of ANY orc army is equivalent to a can of raid against an anthill, they die, ALL OF THEM. Trolls are the one thing that actually makes me pause, and Olog-Hai make me cringe. Those things do soooo much damage once they're in your ranks it's painful. But a nice line of Golden Deliciousness has always done wonders for me in the past

[JJJaikishan]

Personally I found that 2 units of Gondor Cavalry..or any Heavy Cavalry when lures the trolls away from the main battle line and then charge,rinse and repeat can deal with Trolls easily.

[JJJaikishan]

For Mumakil, I found that 2 handed Infantry can turn them into little frightened cows who run amok after charged upon...

[jhhowell]

Most of this thread seems to focus on late game, large army, full unit roster availability counters to trolls. What should one do about early game troll encounters, when the size of one's unit roster is four, economy is very weak, and 4-5 units counts as a major army? I'm playing High Elves (units available - bow quendi, sword quendi, Noretirno archers, and one unit of Noretirno cavalry).

Is the correct answer to simply turtle on the Imladris front and not pretend I can take a shot at Eregion until Glorfindel and the boys manage to get up the Greyflood, march around Tharbad, and take it from the west?

I tried taking it with Elrond and some troops from Rivendell, succeeded easily enough, but immediately had both cities besieged by half-stack OotMM armies each with a troll unit. Rivendell has two Noretirno archers and a hastily recruited sword quendi; Eregion has Arwen's husband, a sword quendi, and a bow quendi; Elrond, the Noretirno cavalry unit, and an understrength bow quendi unit were en route back to Rivendell when these two troll-led half-stacks showed up. A half-stack of goblins etc. wouldn't be a major concern, but having to kill 12 trolls and those two thousand-ish goblins at the same time is a bit much for turn 30...

[Davek]

What I do in early game when playing the High Elfs is to focus on their strengths.

Pro: archers and body guards of the generals. So focus on archer fire, to minimize your losses, use general to hit and run in ordor to keep the enemy busy, which gives your archer more time to shoot.
Neutral: melee units, very good even the sword Quendi however you can not really afford the losses. If you are forced to take losses. And with that I mean when you are unable to mow down the enemy, these guys can take the losses for you, since they are back up not the main killing forces like the archers and Cavalry.
Bad: long recruitment times.

So you have keep your (archer) units alive no matter what. My normal strategy is to have a general or two, one or two sword Quendi and as many archer as possible.

Archer will shoot down most units, the sword unit will be acting as meat shield to keep the enemy busy and the generals will flank and break morale.

Specifically for your troll problem: if you can not kill them fast enough, focus the archer on the orcs and goblins first. Use your sword unit to keep the trolls busy and charge the troll in the back with your generals, or place a archer unit a bit behind your melee unit, turn of skirmish mode and focus archer fire on the trolls, I believe that since trolls are high and archer aim for the center of the unit, your melee unit will not be hit so much.

If everything else fails then just attack the trolls with all you have, when the first finally falls the other will follow. Trolls are not immortal and will die .... eventually

[Nivea for Men]

This might have been answered already but as trolls are a cavalry, do they die when they run into stakes?

[Flinn]

afaik, Trolls are heavy infantry and not cavalry

[sruz25]

(necrobump, I guess)

Any tips for catapult trolls?

5 years late and this solution might've not been possible then, but if anyone is still struggling with this:

Use ballista - not to kill the trolls, but to destroy the catapults. Worked wonderfully during my dwarfs campaign against any sort of catapult, not only troll catapults. With standard bolts (flame reduces accuracy afaik) 1v1 the catapult usually managed to get off about 1,5 salvos on average and then they turn into standard trolls. Dwarfs do have some stats for their siege engines better then other factions, so they may be more effective at this, but it should probably work for other factions too.

[Patronus86]

(necrobump, I guess)



5 years late and this solution might've not been possible then, but if anyone is still struggling with this:

Use ballista - not to kill the trolls, but to destroy the catapults. Worked wonderfully during my dwarfs campaign against any sort of catapult, not only troll catapults. With standard bolts (flame reduces accuracy afaik) 1v1 the catapult usually managed to get off about 1,5 salvos on average and then they turn into standard trolls. Dwarfs do have some stats for their siege engines better then other factions, so they may be more effective at this, but it should probably work for other factions too.

Yep. I think it's absolutely cheesy how accurate those troll catapults are (no fault of the mod, since I'm sure that is game code issue). So I had absolutely no remorse about cheesing them right back with some accurate ballista fire, if I was in a position to do so. Most of the time, I found the enemy liked to charge his main line against my army, leaving his troll catapults mostly undefended, so some cavalry charges usually worked to distract and lure away the trolls, until I could bring the rest of more force to bare on them.

Trolls are a tough nut to crack, which is good, because otherwise the armies of Mordor, Gungabad and Misty Mountains would be fairly easy to defeat. I've found that certain approaches work very well with trolls:
1) Using meatshield units to absorb the troll's charge and then counter charging with AP units. You'll take casualties, but all but the heavily armored trolls will go down relatively quickly. Javelin units work for this same reason, though there will be friendly fire.
2) Using a meatshield units same as before and then firing ballista at the immobilized trolls. You will take some friendly fire, and the ballista needs to be somewhat close by for this to work.
3) Using a meatshield unit same as before and then charging the immobilized trolls in the rear with cav. Works very well, especially with repeated charges.

Trolls can be taken down, but you're going to suffer some casualties, which does a good job of making the player respect, if not fear, the otherwise impotent AI orc-based armies. Playing as Silvan Elves or Gondor and having 4-5 full Mordor stacks with 3-4 units of Olga Hai each really gave me pause and forced me to play out the campaign in a similar way that it played out in the novels. It's an awesome experience and it's truly a testament to the Medieval 2 Total War and the Third Age mod that this game can still produce that kind of experience 10 years after release.

By comparison, playing something newer like Empire Total war, the AI and the campaign just isn't a challenge after the early game.