upkeep

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Boron:
the sea troll kings + troll kings are nice but especially the trolls are a unwanted coproduct .
while a knight of the chalice is very useful for 30-40 turns or so

Heh. KotS and Sea Trolls have roughly the same upkeep, 'cept you have to pay a hefty initial gold cost for the former. The main difference is you don't have to invest on heavy blessings with the latter, which sort of come with their own builtin Nature-9 blessing (with increased poison resistance BTW). They just lack the morale and berserking, but that's nothing a good Touch of Madness won't fix.

[Master Shake]

I think it's silly to try to argue whether Trolls or Vine Orges are "better." They each have their advantages and disadvantages.

I recently won a MP game, and Trolls and Vine Orges were key to the win. I summoned the Trolls early on for a quick tough army with which to destroy a Marignon assault. Later in the game, when income had been decimated by many turns of BoT and lots of pillaging, I used giant armies of Vine Orges to roll over Ermor. The Vine Orges wouldn't have done the job early in the game, and I could never have afforeded the upkeep on Trolls later in the game.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Well put!