Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

And their PD is kinda crappy at early game income levels, so they can't make a good trap easily. Not that you couldn't just get some evo right quick and slaughter an army from behind spiders...

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

yeah, all the evoc sounds great in theory. in practice it's bad. Yes, your great mages make up for your crappy units (excluding spiders) when marching with the troops but then your research will take a hit making you seem all the more the inviting target. An ideal start game is made of roughly the same set of objectives:
-> research, most of your early game mage time goes here
-> lands, ideally you should get them with armies/pretender
-> castles

There are some exceptions to that rule but Machaka is not one of them and it has a rough time getting a good start mainly due to it's reputation.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I was talking about a trap. The kind where they enemy comes in, and you just hit em with the mages real quick. Blood rocks for this, because even at lvl 1, your mages can summon ungodly hoards of imps in very early turns. Of course, blood nations don't really get rushed, except by new players...

Anyway, I've done a trap before, if you can break their spear tip off, you can often take their stuff.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Machakan PD is ultra-crap, which means they are very vulnerable to raiders. Nations with flyers or stealthers can practically overrun Machaka in one turn if that is the opening move in a war. I remember a game with Pans where even 11 Harpies (a harpy commander with 10 harpies) took several provinces on first turn I attacked (plus the stealthers and Call of the Wilds I cast on same turn, in addition to the frontal attack who targeted the strong points (and in which I took a crapton of damage against spiders)). You know the PD is *bad* when even a few Harpies eat your defenders without a sweat.

Machaka does great when they are the one attacking. Everybody knows this. But after the first year, before the excellent evocations are available and their forces are still all spread out, they are very weak. This, I would presume, is when they get targeted. Nobody wants an offensive monster as their neighbour.

MA Pangaea, which has pretty similar magic as Machaka has and has no national summons, is *much* more stronger in end game. The Pans first of all have loads of more HP than the Machakan sorcerors (they laugh at things like Earthquake), and Pangaea has great cheap thugs (with some minor equipment) who can wield SC killing gear. And yet, the real killer IMO is Life for Life, a couple Pans casting that destroys basically anything (excpet large armies of course, but Pangaea has lots of options against armies); Life for Life has Range 100, precision 100, 40+ AN irrestible damage, and that says "SC killer" to me. Every single Pan can cast Life for Life (at least if they cast Hellpower first).

Machaka needs some similar niche for end game. Sadly I have not figured out what that niche is.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

They can't even find achaisic record. With Pythium, I've used a pretender with completely different paths than the awesome locals, and he operated almost autonomously, summoning his group of mages and they in turned summoned stuff. But Machaka doesn't get pearls. You must be able to sort something out, but the spiders and hoplite don't cut it against demons and other summoned units and SCs. I don't know how to use a pretender in the endgame to save a nation if they can't get gems. If they can get gems they can summon summoners. Lead time lags a bit on getting offensive compared to other option, but ultimately you spend a lot of gems. I admittedly haven't used this in technique in MP or even 2 player.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Akashic record is rarely used in MP. It's too expensive and comes too late.

Lack of Astral is a problem, particularly since it's hard to bootstrap. There are no cheap low-level Astral mages to summon for site-searching & routine forging. If you take a rainbow pretender, send it out manually site searching and hope for either Astral indies (lizards!) or you'll probably need to wait for spectres or empower for other astral mages.
I probably would take an Astral Rainbow, if only for access to RoW/S.

By the time you're fighting mostly demons and other summons you'll have your own. Undead thugs and, in CBM, drakes. Spiders remain useful until the big MR-resist spells come to dominate the battlefield, but they're not your only tool.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

OK, Ive poked around about Achashic record, and it seems that some playerscast it on swamps and wastes. The AI likes to cast it in deep ocean, I assume forts are fairly likely there.?. Also some don't reccomend it for LA. Also, some cast it on provinces with stuff like unrest and wierd scales.

But if you want a specific gem type you cast that spell. Also, get the arcan probing out of the way first.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Don't do anything based on what the AI does. AI nations cast Akashic? And how do you know?
I think the biggest problem with it, other than burning all those precious Astral gems, is that it usually doesn't come early enough. By the time I've reached Conj 5 & have enough Pearls to cast it more than once or twice, I've searched most provinces, especially the more likely provinces either manually or with the specific remote spells, so the return is lower. Also by that time, there are no indies left, and I assume that whoever I'm taking provinces from has been searching, at least their main national paths, so the return will be low on new provinces as well. (This may not be so true against the AI, which doesn't site search well.)

I'm sure there are some scale/unrest generating sites that would be worth finding, but most of the ones that leap to mind (Devil's Den!) require a mage of that path anyway, so I'd search with one of those first.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

No, not the AI, some players say they cast Acashic record on swamps and wastes.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Now that one cant produce FFs out of the assembly line, whats the story for proud and noble Machaka?