Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

Hmm, they do have severe MR problems though... they're very difficult. I kind of feel like an E9/W9, N6S9 bless is required, which is a bit ridiculous. Without an astral bless, though, they'll become irrelevant as soon as you meet a human player because he'll just paralyze them all instantly.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

Hmm, I just did a test with E9S9N4. Surprisingly affordable with an Oracle. They were very effective. Still, I think it's questionably worthwhile being as they're the only sacred unit. If only the mages were sacred too, it would probably be a good plan.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

The MR weakness is compounded by the lack of native Astral, so there's no easy access to AntiMagic. Eventually they'll be able to do Army of Lead, but that's a long time after other players have been slaughtering the poor spiders with magic.

It's also hard to balance what they need before the riders die and after. E9 doesn't do much for the spiders. It's great for the riders, though. W9 or F9 help both. The lesser MR bless makes the riders really hard to affect and brings the spiders up to almost tolerable.

Though the mages aren't sacred, the spiders that the Black Sorcerers turn into are. It's worth considering if you plan on using them as thugs. It is really hard to arrange to have them blessed though, since you can't control when they shift. I've never been able to pull it off with any consistency.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

Hrmm, I just tested that, but the spider the Black Sorceror turned into wasn't sacred.

I had a go with a prophetized Black Sorceror though. He was pretty cool.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

Wow. I'm sure they were. I wonder how old that memory is. Maybe all the way back in Dom2. :)

Machaka's one of my favorite nations for flavor, but I haven't played with them much. I just can't make them work. I'd love to see other age versions...

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

Well its a question of what the nominal damage they are going to face is, and then whether its better to have an extra few %protection in the case of E (20-24) than extra attacks/defense from water. If you look at the % for making a roll where you have to beat 10 vs. 14 you see that the odds don't change by a huge amount. But on the defense side, the odds to beat 4 vs 8 are a very large change.

If you figure to have them running into big mobs and getting alot of arrows then E is probably going to serve you better, but if you try not to use them that way (or if you take an air bless, which isn't completely impractical in some designs) you don't need the extra protection as much.

Again, I'm focusing mostly on early game where the forces they will face are not going to have all the counters available. I really don't have a feel for the late game options though, and it may well be that these kinds of Machaka builds are not particularly effective late game, however, the idea is to leverage the rush and growth early game into enough of an advantage such that you have either hindered the true late game powers to where you can compete, or given yourself enough space to allow for some catchup with your assumed ability to leverage death mages into something.

If someone could enlighten me as to the effectiveness of these Machaka rush strategies vs. other MA rushers I would appreciate it.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

So as far as damaging tough troops is concerned, a D9 bless (2AN) really is your best choice. And it's not half bad against chaff either. A D9F4 or D9F6 (taking fire for the increased attack bonus) could be reasonably cheap and effective, especially considering that spiders are difficult to hit anyway.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

It is not that they are not particularly effective late game, heck they won't even still be alive then, but that they're not very effective in the early midgame. The spider riders are so vulnerable to pretty well anything other than indy chaff, and the spiders themselves have such absolutely pitiful MR, that they tend to be massacred w/out much difficulty by any human opponent. Poison, lightning, fatigue attacks, most other sacreds on any gp/resources matchup...

The require a massive investment in points, gold, and resources. They are then effective only against opponents against whom almost anything is effective...

I like the sacred spiders, thematically, but size 6 and 125 gp kills them. personally, i'd up spider MR by 2, lower cost to 100, and increase rider defense by 3 - it's gotta be difficult to hit someone sitting on the back of a giant tarantula :)
Even then, they'd be a bit borderline for a serious bless strat.

The hoplites, backed by the web spitter spiders and bows, work well. flaming arrows and magma spam give machaka good midgame power.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

Oracles and FOBs are always the best chasis for full double + blesses, with occassional exceptions for national only gods.

Even so, the return on investment for machacka simply isn't there.
The spiders cost too much (especially in resources) to work well with the scales necessary to produce the bless.

I think machaka strengths are: (and I'm doing this from memory)

1. Low encumbrance spell casters, etc.
2. High mobility.. map move three archers...?
3. Good magic versatility.
4. Some free points due to heat preference.

Generally, I'd say your better approach is sloth, heat, and boost your income as much as possible. crank out castles and mages. Get into summons.

Re: Machaka and a W9 bless
 

I disagree that the spiders are resource intensive, other than the first 2 turns you are not resource limited compared to your income (assuming you also want to recruit mages...), and eventually its the holy which limits you anyway.

What scales does machaka need to be effective anyway? Order3 obviously, and they get Heat3 for free, so you can easilly take Mis2(3) and Drain2, hell you can even throw in some sloth and still not have a resource issue since the spiders are the only unit you need resources for and your early spider armies clean out indies very quickly with zero casualties (this is all before turn 10).

Now I grant that I don't know the MP game very well, so maybe this early expansion/rush power doesn't translate into anything, but that would seem to imply that all bless based rushing doesn't translate into much of anything, not just for Machaka.

How much research/mages do you have to effectively neutralize 20 spiders on turn 10? What else have you sacrificed to do this?

Again I don't know the answer to those questions, so I'm posing them. The best thing for me to do would be to try it in MP obviously, but I don't really have the time for that right now ;)