Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Preface: This guide is written for the Conceptual Balance Mod, it seems like most games I’m in lately are using it. You can use a lot of these ideas for vanilla games but the strategy verbatim won’t work without CBM’s changes. I also wanted to say this is a fairly advanced strategy I wouldn’t really recommend for beginners, it requires a good amount of finesse and coordination of skills.


Machaka is one of those nations you really want to like. Giant freaking spiders, I mean what’s more fun that that theme? Unfortunately, they really struggle to be competitive for a number of reasons. For those bold enough to play a bit unconventionally though, the power of the sorcerers will have your enemies trundled up in a nice web awaiting you to get around to dinner.

First, I need to dissuade you from the very flashy bait on your roster. Repeat after me – “I will not buy Black Hunters”. Keep saying that until you think you can stick to it. These guys are just so cool you can’t help but want to tank your entire strategy to field them, dumping massive points into a good bless and ruinous amounts of gold into recruiting them. This unit is, I think the prime culprit as to why Machaka is so seldom competitive. Cool as they are, they just don’t work as the centerpiece of your strategy. When you start thinking about recruiting them, remind yourself for that price and being cap only they’re competing roughly with neifel giants, much more expensive than Vans or Knights of the Chalice, and the comparison isn’t even close. Their hitpoints are too low, they’re size 6 so they get swarmed and this drastically reduces their damage output, their second form (riderless spider) doesn’t benefit from the same bless as their first form and has a terrible MR and damage output, etc. etc. They are very cool, and there are some niches where they’re useful (they *LOVE* elephant snacks), but I don’t think it’s possible to be very competitive with them as the centerpiece of your strategy.

This leaves you with quite a problem though. The Black Hunters look like badasses, while everything else on your roster looks anemic. If we’re not gonna use the hunters, what are we going to do? Well, my subtitle gives my angle away, you’ve got to play this nation thematically. Your strength is in your sorcerers and your spiders.

Since I just went on at length about not recruiting the hunters, you’ve by now correctly guessed I’m looking at the smaller giant brown spiders. Don’t get confused, I’m not talking about the spider riders, those are merely the chauffeurs who get your spiders to the fight. If you look at the 125 gold Black Hunter and compare it to the 30 gold spider rider you will correctly conclude that he’s easily worth the 4 times cost he’s priced at. What that fails to consider is the spider that you keep when the rider dies. 5 Black Hunters (a reasonable raiding squad) cost what 20 spider riders do and can likely do a better job than they can, but are they worth 20 giant spiders? Generally no, and the brown spiders don’t require a blessing nor many resources and thus are even more drastically cheaper. 20 giant spiders is certainly a reasonable raiding squad.

The spider riders have short bows, but for archery they’re generally way too expensive to be useful in using them. There are some situations where you’ll want to remember they have bows (attacking barbarian indies, casing flaming arrows) but by and large you’ll want to script them to attack in melee. They’ve got 0 protection and 10 hitpoints and are going to die in droves, which is exactly what you want. The great spider which you then get has 26 hitpoints and 14 protection – drastically more durable. And here’s the sneaky part – spiders don’t draw a salary. Once you’ve got rid of that pesky rider you don’t have to pay any upkeep for your swarms of spiders, and over time this will prove to be a dramatic advantage if you compose the bulk of your army from spiders.

Now, here is the first thing we come to that requires finesse. These spiders are decent, but you have to know how to use them. Their fangs have death poison, but you have to be able to hit and do 1 point of damage for the poison to be delivered. The hitting isn’t generally a problem even for high defense units because of the webbing, but high protection can be a problem. The fangs are doing only 13 damage and the spiders are size 5 so only one per tile, so things like knights (protection 17) generally take several rounds to poison, then a few more to die while dealing enough damage to kill a lot of spiders. It is a small comfort that even loosing battles often result in many more of the enemy dying as the poison keeps working, but obviously that’s not what you’re aiming for. If you stick to the weaker indies though and use appropriate battlefield strategies you can expand very briskly and reliably. Use your shortbows against indies with no shields, and separate your spider riders from your riderless spiders. Riderless spiders generally should be scripted to fire closest, they’ll close to a short range and spray the enemy front lines with webs, breaking them up and letting them straggle through piecemeal for the spider front line to eat rather than being swarmed by the small mammals. The spiders who still have riders will (rarely) be using their bows or (often) scripted to attack closest. The 14 protection and high hitpoints of the brown spiders is sufficient that an occasional friendly fire shot from a shortbow won’t hurt much, so use the cheap Machaka archers with your spiders to help overcome the reduction of damage output which comes from being size 5.

Now, generally you’re gonna be recruiting spider riders, but on the turns where you are tight on gold (putting up a new castle or whatever) go ahead and recruit some spider knights. You won’t be able to build too many because of the resource cost, but they’ll nicely round out your options for dealing with the tougher indies and still end up as spiders when they do go down. If you’re *real* short on gold, the same logic applies to hoplites, though of course no spiders, no free upkeep, and sad Baalz.

Now, onto the next drastic divergence from how Machaka is usually played…well, to be fair how every nation is usually played. Your sorcerers are going to be used as workhorses. There’s a lot of stuff you’re gonna need them to be doing from a very early point. You also need some critical research done very early. This proves to be a problem as you can’t get done what you need done and have a bunch of people hitting the research early. So, you need to do what you always should be trying to do and use your pretender to plug the hole you need filled.

You’ve got some room to tweak this of course, but look at something like an awake great sage, 2 in most paths but a 3 in earth and 0 in blood. Now, let’s do a little math to see why I suggest the most urgent thing your pretender can do is just research. With magic-1 scale witch doctors have 4 research points, sorcerers have 8. For year one with tight finances, lets assume you use mostly witch doctors for your research and for simplicities sake lets just say each researcher contributes 5 research points. Let’s say in an ideal scenario you don’t do anything but recruit research mages who all only research – no site searching, no forging, no leading armies, nothing but research. So, on turn two you have 5 research points, turn three 10, etc. By the end of year 1 you’ve researched 5+10+15+20+25+30+35+40+45+50+55 = 330 points worth. The great sage I suggest above has 33 research points in magic-1, so by himself he generates 33 X 12 = 396 rp in the first year. My pretender is not “just” researching, what he’s doing is contributing all the work I can get out of every mage I recruit from my capital in the first year *and still* leaving me ahead in research. When you put it that way you can see why this makes a lot of sense for a nation focused on sorcerers.

So, spiders are going to be your initial focus. This means we don’t need resources and can take sloth-3. We also pick up nice points from taking heat-3 since our preference is heat-2. We’ll want to take order-3 (to crank out swarms of spiders), and magic-1 (you’re playing sorcerers man!). As I mentioned, you can tweak your pretender’s paths significantly, but at that minimum I already suggested this leaves you enough points to take a dominion of 4 with luck-3 and growth-2. These are *excellent* scales and luck-3 actually does a *whole* lot for Machaka in the first year. The tiny resource cost of the spiders means any large gold income event translates into an immediate extra expansion party, and thus an exponential increase in gold. Gem income events (common in a positive magic environment) are also extremely good for reasons I’ll get into in a minute. The other various good things are of course good, but any one of several gold or gem income events happening in the first year can have a dramatic impact on Machaka. Plus, you’ve got a couple very nice national heroes. Combine with this the fact that your sorcerers already have a very impressive magic diversity, and there’s not a heck of a lot your pretender needs to bring to the table in that regard, and most of it is covered by just having a 2 in the path.

Alright, so your scourge of spiders is spreading out in all directions, now lets examine the use to which we’re gonna put our sorcerers. Now, on first blush it seems ridiculous to have such a widely rainbow pretender, but leave him home researching while you manually site search with other mages. The thing is, what you really, really want is earth, fire, death, and nature gems. Your pretender isn’t gonna do any better a job at looking for those than a pair of sorcerers, but is going to contribute drastically more to research. In your first turns what you want is to have 2 black sorcerers and 2 regular sorcerers out site searching. This will give you a level 2-3 search in fire, earth & nature, and 1-2 in death. Because of the path overlap in an ideal situation have none of them overlap where they’re site searching, but when you inevitably do need to overlap try to have the sorcerers overlap black sorcerers so at least you’re covering a new path. Make sure you focus on the terrain that yields more gems: wastelands and swamps, then mountains and forests.

With just a little bit of luck your initial gem income will grow quite rapidly. Just one or two magic sites makes a very large difference at this point. Why? Because your pretender has meanwhile been hitting the books labeled “construction”, and very quickly hits level 2. Level 2 means dwarven hammers, which is why you took level 3 earth for your pretender, hoping you get the right random on a black sorcerer isn’t gonna cut it because timing matters a lot which is why you really want some initial earth sites. The second you’ve scraped together 15 earth gems (worst case scenario your capital income will get you there on turn 8) you’re gonna make a dwarven hammer. The dwarven hammer goes to the witch doctor you simultaneously recruited who then forges a fever fetish every turn forever.

Now, the reason you want initial fire sites is because your capital only fire income is only 1 and thus it’s a sputtering start to start forging fever fetishes using only it. With anything other than horrible luck though your 4 site searching mages will net you at least one extra fire gem income which is all you need, the fetishes will quickly start producing the fire gems you need. Now note, you only want to forge these using a dwarven hammer, the difference in rate of return is immense. 6 gems vs 10 gems, you’re practically doubling your return percentage. Your capital only nature income is 2, so as long as your roving site searchers turn up at least one nature site you can comfortably crank out fever fetishes forever. Hopefully you will have an easy time getting a bit more nature income and can scale up your production each time you can afford a new dwarven hammer.

Gah, this sounds like a micromanagement nightmare. Can you imagine trying to juggle a hundred fever fetishes around? Rest assured, I most certainly could not and would never (again) set myself up to do so. That’s ok though, once again the spider’s have you covered. While you’ve been prepping this fever fetish factory you’ve also put up your second castle, preferably an 800 gold hillfort in the mountains. From this castle you recruit a neverending stream of spider lords at 50 gold a pop. These guys have 13 hitpoints, which in and of itself is nice for a guy holding a fever fetish, but (you probably know where I’m going with this my now) once he dies you get a giant spider commander with 26 more hitpoints! This means that with no juggling or micro at all this guy will hold a fetish for 39 turns. Double bonus – no upkeep while he’s a spider and that’s not inconsiderable when you’re talking about the scale you’re gonna be farming at.

Now, option one is to just consider the transformation of 6 gems into ~35 a worthwhile job and don’t worry about it another second. Just milk the rubies every turn from your “pool gem” option and let the spiders die with the fever fetishes and it will have all been well worthwhile. The more anal of you are not gonna be able to do that so I’d like to offer a suggestion Meglobob gave me on how to manage this when you get to the end game and your spiders finally start dying. Rename your spiders with the turn number you gave them the fetish, each turn you just need to go through your nation overview and scan for one number which is at 1 hp.

Meanwhile, you’ve hopefully been able to scrape together a small death income with those 4 guys out site searching. Whatever death gems you’ve got will be funneled into dark knowledge which your pretender switched to research after construction-2. With any luck this will rapidly build up into a respectable death income as you’ve no shortage of death mages to cast it and your brisk expansion gives you plenty of juicy targets.

While your death income builds up, back to construction research. You’ll hopefully have a moderate death income and construction 4 researched before the end of year one, which is good because that’s about when you need to start worrying about opponents attacking you. You’ve probably stabilized to building 2-3 fever fetishes at this point, bottlenecked by forts to recruit spider lords (you really want to start cranking out sorcerers from some of your forts!). You’ve got earth gems and fire gems to spend on other stuff, so crank out a couple more dwarven hammers and set some sorcerers to crank out a stream of bane lords which is a quick step up from where you researched dark knowledge.

Bane lords cost 4D and require a level 2 death mage. With luck you could be fielding 2 per turn along with the 6E & 6F for a fire brand and golden shield. Your most likely bottleneck is earth gems, you can swap in different equipment according to what you’ve got available. Don’t use any gems wastefully though, because you’re far from through with uses for your sorcerers. If you’re struggling to equip what you can afford to summon, use some of your death gems to summon wights, they’re only 2 gems and are very cost effective if you’ve got the mages to steadily summon them.

The bane lords thus equipped are not quite tough enough to solo reliably, but used in small groups they’re hideously tough. They’ve got cold auras so for big fights where you’ve got several clumped together it can work very well to have your spiders hose the whole front line of both sides down in webbing to let everybody freeze while they struggle free. Note, these guys are not intended to be SCs, they’re frontline troops for armies supported by mages. They’re what you’re using once your spiders aren’t cutting it anymore by themselves. They are why you don’t have to worry about the rest of your anemic recruitable roster.

Ah, but that’s not it by a long shot. Construction – 4 has unlocked thistle maces for you. Forge one of those while researching enchantment, and now start enchanting your sorcerers who got a fire random with dragon master. Your sorcerous fever dream is now firing on all cylinders. You’ve got a steadily increasing flow of fire gems, 5 of which produce 3 fire drakes. Your bane lords are heavily armored and fire resistant from the fire brands, so this is wonderful synergy with a solid frontline and numerous deadly artillery who can eat most flankers which might try for the back. This synergy also works with the flaming arrows you’ll be wanting to shortly get.

Haha, lets see what else your black sorceries produce. Hammer out a couple cheap vine crowns and your nature random sorcerers can start building up a nice corps of vine ogres. You can also awaken some sleepers if your opponent starts laying down strong anti-undead measures – with some cheap equipment you don’t need many to hold your front line.

Now, these summons may not at first glance seem too intimidating, but I’d like to reiterate the time frame here. This is what you’re intending to fight your first war with, this is your year two troops. You’ve researched one school to level 4 and 2 more to level 3 and have a gem income from site searching with 4 multipathed mages while summoning very cheap things. Banelords backed by firedrakes sounds a lot more impressive when you remember they’re gonna be matched up against the national recruits of your opponent. Scoff mightily at your weak infantry, *this* is what the battlefield should look like for a nation subtitled “Reign of the Sorcerers”! Now note, you’ve built your nation up with very good scales and almost no upkeep from troops. You should be swimming in castles cranking out sorcerers and because your spiders cost next to no resources you can rapidly produce a staggering amount in short order if necessary.

Let’s not imagine that we’re sending our troops into combat without the very sorcerers our nation is built on, sorcerers and black sorcerers should be used liberally in combat. Machaka has some absolutely devastating combat mage options at every level. The magic path spread is such that you can easily do something drastically different each and every fight as your hapless opponent tries to counter you. Thistle maces, skull staffs, earth boots and flaming skulls are all easily forgable, pass them out freely. With boosters plus earthpower and phoenix power you have quite a bit of versatility. Consider some of these possibilities as your research progresses:

Falling fires/Magma eruption
Poison cloud/breath of dragon (spiders, bane lords & vine ogres are all poison immune and webbing drags battles out)
Panic/terror (webbing and poison are both great when your opponent routes)
Flaming arrows + cheap, low resource archers
Shadow blast
Bane fire
Charm
Strength of giants (works surprisingly well with spiders, makes it much easier to punch through armor and poison units)
Legions of steel (just what you wanted for your banes/wights!)
Marble warriors (perfect spell for vine ogres)
Incinerate

And many more of course…

As you round the bend into late game you should have a staggering fire gem income, you’ve been cranking 2-3 fever fetishes out every turn since very early so it’s not hard to imagine pulling in over a hundred fire gems per turn well before things get to the crazy stages of end game. I can hear the yawns from the audience, don’t you usually struggle to put fire gems to use late game? It’s not like they’re pearls. Allow me to paint you the picture that results from not having to worry about being wasteful with fire gems.

You already had a very solid research lead with loads of sorcerers each with a good research. Most of them also now have lightless lanterns, you should be one of the research leaders.

Second sun cast with a whole lot of gems – you’ve already got heat 3 scales.

Your spies have mapped out every population center and anonymous volcanoes erupt from every one. Raging hearts (anonymously) is spammed dozens of times at every enemy castle. Your opponent’s income will very rapidly be cut drastically and very likely go under his upkeep cost while any fort he doesn’t put a dome over will stop being able to recruit anything even if he does have gold. Unlike Utterdark or other options, this is not damage he can dispel or recover from even if he pops up domes everywhere at this point, population has been killed and unrest raised to the point it’ll probably take the rest of the game to come down unless he patrols and kills most of the rest of his population himself. Your spies let you know any place that needs the pressure kept up.

Flames from the sky cast multiple times per turn - *every turn* at any significant grouping of non fire immune troops.

Flaming domes all over your own territories.

And, of course a ridiculous swarm of fire drakes, who make pretty decent meat shields even into late game. Who cares if the get soul slayed? You’ve got the fire income to summon 60+ of them per turn (assuming you have that many dragon masters) and you’d probably rather have them targeted than the SC you’ve got leading them.

Fire helms & flaming skulls for every black sorcerer + phoenix power = 5-6 level fire mages, just one lower for regular sorcerers if your capital is the bottleneck. No reason to fight any battle without several people flinging flame storm….

Mass produced rods of the phoenix

Plus, of course you can always alchemize. 100+ fire gem income = 50+ pearl income so you can still empower up and cast a wish every other turn if that’s your cup of tea.


You don’t have astral or blood and your death magic is weak, so there’s no getting around the fact that you’re gonna struggle in the very late game. This is a recipe for a very aggressive sorcerous nation, and needs to be played as such. What you can’t really do is let the game grind on into the uber late game where flocks of tartarians are built up everywhere and angels are teleporting around casting master enslave. Played right you get a good headstart, but like any good sorcerer the deal you made with the devil will eventually catch up with you, so you have to get into a winning position before that tortoise can catch up with your hare.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Wow, you're just full of guides today aren't you?

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Damn, you've got pretty much all the angles covered, but I am interested what SC you'd use since this is something Machaka lacks.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

With those gems he's probably gonna go for E/F Elemental royalties; and the fast research of Construction will give him access to Poison Golems, which marry well with his late game "increasing unrest and killing population" strategy (Poison Golems are Reapers). :evil:
But the word to the author :) (from which I expect a good guide to Kailasa someday eventually ;) )

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Ah Kailasa has become one of my favorite nations. Never used poison golems before doe.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

One problem is the small spiders also have MR5 in spider form. A few casters of Confusion (A1 to cast in CB) will probably destroy an army of MR5 units. Same with Shadow Blast, Nether Darts, etc. And it's pretty difficult for Machaka to cast Antimagic.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

This is completely unfair. Can't you space these things out more.

You just got me hooked on Ulm again and now I want to play Machaka. And I'm away for a week.

Thanks

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Its clear that the spiders are meant to be phased out by the second year and only play a supporting role where it could be properly applied from then on. That means very few MR checks. Clearly, the instant your opponent starts to approach enslave mind or charm you should stop using them all together against that opponent. There is no harm in using an upkeep free low MR unit so long as it doesn't switch sides.

Related point. There is actually one mind control spell that can be used in the early game by Ermor. However, that is a spell that only affects holy units. I've seen it used very effectively against black hunters once they've lost their rider. Another real good reason to avoid the black hunters at all cost. You don't want to fight your own spiders with a W9S9 bless.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Good point on the Apostacy! I can never remember who gets that. MA or LA Ermor, or both?

Mictlan's turkey Mesmerize will also be effective in confusing the low-MR spiders. But I guess Machaka should be fielding far more spiders than Mictlan has turkeys.

I missed the bit about Vine Ogres the first time I read Baalz's guide. That's probably a good enough meat shield for the Machaka archers if you can't use spiders.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

What about Black Sorcerer thugs? I haven't played with them since Dom2, but they could be quite effective then.

Give them a regen ring and a luck pendant, script Summon Earth, Invulnerability and Fire Shield then attack. Sometimes they wouldn't even get killed and shift to spider form and really start doing damage.
Lack of slots makes them less useful mid-late game, but they should be ugly early on.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I wasn't going to chime in - but I do have to beefs with CBM.

Summon umbrals at 7 - is too high. Thats the minor problem.
But A1 confusion is just absolutely ridiculous - especially with Caelum.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Eh ... nice guide but I think you might be underestimating the opponents here a bit Baalz. One of the weakest links I find about machaka is they're more or less helpless against raids of any sort. Heck they're the only ones I know of that still loses to call of wind. Remote attack spells devastate Machaka to a point where I'm almost considering mechanical militia mandatory. I too agree on the use of the spider riders (they seem the only feasible troop option for me) but I think you need to cover what to do against an early aggressor.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Interesting point about the spiders + fever fetishes. I frequently find Enchantresses in my games, so forging the Fever Fetishes isn't the hard part, but apparently the upkeep cost (and micro) is. That suggests that Machaka's advantage is really the cheap Spider Lords. In vanilla they're 100 gp, but if I'm reading your post right they're 50 in CBM. 13 HP in man form, 26 in spider form. Assuming for simplicity that you get 1 gem per HP of life except the final HP, and also assuming for simplicity that you take the fever fetish off on the last turn, let him die, and have to buy a fresh one:

CBM Spider Lord, 38 gems, cost 93 gold. That means you're turning gold into gems at 2.45:1 gold:gem ratio. Not bad.

The rest of these numbers are going to be vanilla--you can adapt them for CBM as needed but I'm curious enough to crank them.

(Niefelheim) Jotun Scout, 31 gems, cost 103 gold. That's 50*(1+32/30). The ratio is 3.3:1, and of course it's harder to find someone to forge the gems. Note that it gets cheaper for Niefelheim if you have an N blessing, because you can just drop a Call of the Winds or something on yourself and heal all those sacred units back up instead of re-purchasing them.

Ashdod Kohen, (70 * (1 + (35 / 30))) / 34 = 4.46078431:1. Edomite scouts are 35*(1+21/15)/20 = 4.2 but you can't heal them back up.

Regular indy scouts, 20*(1+10/15)/9 = 3.7:1. The micromanagement will of course be painful.

EA Helheim Vanherse (just for fun), 160*(1+14/15)/13 = 23.8:1. (Don't use Vanherses for fetish farming.)

Lanka, Bandar Commander, 50*(1+21/15)/20 = 6:1.

EA Agartha Ancient Lord, 90*(1+44/30)/43 = 5.2:1. But, aha! Pale One Scout is 20*(1+20/15)/19 = 2.45:1. So Agartha will be as good at fetish farming as Machaka (on a per-cost basis), if you can find someone to forge the fetishes.

Overall, it looks like Machaka is tied with Agartha for being the best at fever fetishes (unless CBM changes the other units too sufficiently), but indy scouts aren't so terrible that they're not usable, unless my simplifications threw off the results (I'm not really sure how diseased you have to get for the fetish income to become reliable). A fever fetish income of 100 gems a turn only costs 370 gold/turn. Also, Niefelheim turns out to be surprisingly good at fever fetishes, if they can find an enchantress to do the forging.

BTW, you might as well use your indy scouts for blood-hunting while they're fevering to death. The blood hunting success formula doesn't care if you're crippled, diseased, and feeble-minded.

Edit: fixed factual/math error (Spider Lords have 13 HP not 10, which makes Agartha competitive).

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I checked and LA doesn't have it. Its a MA Ermor spell only.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

All hail Baalz, The Pathfinder, Master of the Guides, He who Stole cleveland's Thunder

:(

Haha, just kidding. Serves me right for trying to keep my Chlorolera strat a secret. But keep your grubby paws off of MA Man!!! :)

You smashed it out of the park, as always. I do have some criticisms, the most important of which is related to the referenced thread, but I'm going to wait until Chlorolera gets a bit more mature to voice them. Well done!

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

@Executor - Real SCs are gonna be hard. Wraithlords are an option, though they're a little light. As already mentioned poison golems are within reach, though again on the lighter side of SCs. Again already mentioned, but elemental royalty is a good bet, and you'll have lots of options for swarms of thugs and anti-SC tactics. You're not going to be using SCs as your central theme at any point though, which is a big part of why you can't let the game drag on to the point that they really dominate everything - at that point there isn't much you can do to be too competitive.

@vfb - yes, the MR on the spiders is a big problem, though it's less of a problem at 30 gold than 125 (for black hunters). The whole point of all that fancy footwork though is that you've got lots of options to switch to if your opponent is fielding anything which dominates the spiders - of which there are several. Likewise if your opponent is spamming lots of strong anti-undead stuff you'll not want to invest in kitted bane lords - use those death gems for skull staffs instead.

@Thejeff - I find the black sorcerer thugs a bit of a fun gimmick rather than a very effective thug. You don't want to equip anything other than misc items if you plan on switching to a spider (you'll lose them), which doesn't leave much that's terribly effective. I'm certainly open to someone proving me wrong, but I haven't been able to make this effective yet.

@Kissblade - yes, Machaka has probably the worst PD in the game, arguably even worse than the much maligned monkey PD. They're not *that* bad though, putting up 10 PD all over (which is not hard at all with the scales and strategy outlined here) will handily chase off birds and most remote spells, if you're talking about ghost riders, horrors etc. then it doesn't really matter what PD you have. You've also got swarms of upkeep free spiders so sprinkle them all around and if you're *still* having problems with raiders leverage your absurd number of sorcerers and sprinkle those about with small amounts of your upkeep free summons. As your research ramps up you've also got options for ritual spells to handle raiders from earth attack/manifestation to fires from afar.

@Maxwilson - yes, but also keep in mind one of the big advantages Machaka has is dwarven hammers and everything needed to start making fever fetishes as soon as the very low hurdle of construction-2 is cleared. There are a couple ways to generate gems in dominons, from bloodstones and clams to sea kings. The compelling thing to me about this strategy is the efficiency and speed with which it comes out, and thus the ability to generate a large gem income by the point in the game small amounts of gems are very valuable. EA Argatha (or anybody else really) would almost never be able to crank out fever fetishes in the first year, and if we're talking about 10-15 produced in the first year, that's hundreds of extra gems by the end of year 3. Good suggestion on the blood hunting BTW.

@Cleveland - Ok, MA Man strat next. I'll try to post it tomorrow. Kidding...:)

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Sure, for all the reasons you've outlined, Machaka is clearly the best at fever fetishing. I was just curious enough to crank the numbers to see how *much* better it is--that endgame you describe (hundreds of fire gems per turn) is attainable by anyone who can stand the micro and has access to nature gems, and you won't even know it until EA C'tis or Caelum starts slamming you with dozens of Phoenix Rods and a Flames From the Sky every turn.

-Max

Edit: to put it another way, I've never bothered with fetishing before but you've convinced me that maybe I should look into it even if I'm not playing Machaka.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

A bold and interesting strat, baalz! I'm curious to see how it plays out. I'm twice tempted cause I've always wanted to see drakes as part of a workable combat force.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Another of the things I liked about this is volcanic eruption, raging hearts, flames from the sky, etc. are all anonymous so it's not hard to imagine you could leverage a steady stream of them to cripple nations you're not actively at war with but expect to eventually be (best time to decapitate their income). >:)

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Great guide Baalz! I would like you and/or the community to comment on the strategy of self-buffed combat sorcerers w/ little or none crafted items and then charging in to become spiders. I remember using them like that in Dom2, but not for years now... ;) Have you had too many losses for this strategy or do you not find them as effective as researching and then using them as mages?

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Quoting from upthread:

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Fun strategy :)

I've some questions about kitting out the banes. (By the way, you've written bane lord instead of bane everywhere)
What's your opinion on adding a lychantrope amulet and maybe a fire plate? The fire plate might seem a little redundant with the bane's heavy starting armour but if you have a lot of fire gems the better def, ap and 100% fire resistance might make a difference.

I think it depends on your luck in finding death and earth gems. If you can afford to field several banes with firebrand and awe shield I guess that would be most effective but if you have trouble affording them it might be worth it to kit them out some more.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Baalz. How do you manage to come with all those interesting and surprising strategies?- I usually read your guides and think :doh: how come I wasn't aware of this before.

I esp. like your guides for weak nations. I'm looking forward to day you'll make a Yomi guide.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Yes, the lycanthrope amulet is an excellent choice, and there are worse ideas than using fire gems for fire plate, though the primary thing you're gonna be struggling with generally at this point is scraping up enough gems to outfit a steady stream of banes. Keep in mind that these are 4 gem summons so while the gems obviously don't always translate directly across I tend to think skipping the amulet and fire plate is almost another bane with an awe shield and weapon. These are the frontline troops of your army, you want mass over efficiency. You'll probably be dissapointed if you're trying to shoehorn these guys into real thug roles, but if you can really convince yourself that they are your uber-heavy infantry then you'll have a big grin on your face every time you bring them to a fight.

The thing is, you're also going to want to be diversifying so that you're not completely screwed when your opponent starts spamming dust to dust (or other strong anti-undead spells). I'd almost always recommend nature and fire gems get funneled into dragon master and fire drakes, or vine ogres, or fire boosters for combat mages, or something else clever rather than making your banes more efficient.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Even better than Machaka on fever fetishes is EA Arco.

Keep on province where you kill your own dominion. (Skeptics).
When unit x gets down to 3 hp or so.. switch amulet to another scout. Heal. Repeat.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Why does dominion matter for fever fetishing? Arco's dominion does automatic scrying, but it doesn't heal, as far as I know.

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Yeah I was wondering that too. What does dominion have to do with it? How are arco better than machaka at it if they're just using scouts?

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Arco has priestess healers, so they don't have to keep hiring new fetish holders.

It's got nothing at all to do with dominion though, and Arco does not have FN mages anyway, so it's all kind of moot unless you're doing some weird nature-forge-lord thing.

I tried out a FWEN Forge Lord once and it's actually a doable strategy, pumping out cheap fetishes and clams. 2F2N for a fetish, 7W2N for a clam. Not a whole lot of fun though.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I don't think fever fetishing is moot, it's just not something you can plan on in every game. From now on every time I find e.g. a Forest of a Thousand Streams, my first thought will still be "Oooh! I can clam now," but the second thought will be "And fever fetish!" Note that fever fetishing and then alchemizing the fire gems to pearls is slightly more nature-gem-intensive than clamming (4:1 instead of 3:1), but you're also not water-limited.

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

To be honest, there are two critical factors that makes Machaka the fever fetish king for me.

1) You can start cranking them out reliably early in year one. The amount of gems you get is cumulative, so making a dozen fetishes in year one lands you hundreds of extra gems, and they're flowing in during the early part of the game when gem incomes are much lower and thus gems are more valuable. Starting just 6 turns earlier really makes a significant difference.

2) To be honest, for me the real draw of the spider lords is the lack of micro. My number one goal of playing is not to win, it's to have fun. I won't play a strategy that's not fun even if (or especially because actually) it's guaranteed to win. I don't really care if units have recuperation or I can heal them - at the point I've get to look forward to shuffling dozens of fetishes around every turn I'm dreading my turn rather than looking forward to it, and the number of fetishes you're shuffling adds up real fast on 10 hp units if you're cranking out 3 fetishes per turn - basically every 8 or 9 turns you've got another 3 fetishes to juggle every turn. With spider lords - just stop juggling as soon as it gets to be a pain, the strategy is more than justified with no juggling at all.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I agree with #2, which actually makes #1 less of a problem for me. Since I play SP, even when I clam I usually stop when I hit 50 clams or so. With fever fetishing, it will be nice to have an additional source of fire gem income, but if I can get my net fire gem income up to +50 per turn I will probably stop--and once you find enchantresses, it probably takes less than a year to pop out 30 fever fetishes. Starting earlier and netting a couple of hundred extra fire gems is thus not going to be a huge priority, for me.

After all, even with Meglobob's trick, scanning hundreds (vs. dozens) of fetish holders for their expirations dates could get to be quite a chore.

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Yeah I have to say any strat which involves a lot micro I'm just not interested in. I have used fever fetishes when I have access to units with high hp, but I'd never do it with a load of scouts. Plus I play NI exclusively, so it isn't an option anyway.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I tried out the strat in SP and had horrible luck finding death gems (but I was lucky enough to find garnet amazons next to my capital, fetish spam + bloodstone spam = fun :)). I had a great number of fire drakes soon and they worked very well but even with heavy armour and 50%FR the banes took noticeable friendly fire. Either a lycanthrope amulet or fire plate would take care of that. But as stated it all depends on what gems you find.

I was a little annoyed by the banes slow speed. Other units tend to pass them by (and get hit by their cold aura) and they are slow to help other parts of your army after they've killed the bad guys next to them.

Have you tried the stat against a heavy air nation? How does it stand up to thunder strike spam?

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Yeah, but you can't base a strategy on finding a particular magic site recruitable. Oh geez ... sorry to have gone OT with this Arco discussion, everyone. I'll refuse to discuss it in this thread anymore :).

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I never said you could. Or should. My idea of "strategy" says that you should have an early game mapped out, and know what you're capable of in the late game, but what you do in between and which late-game you aim for depends upon what happens early on. I'd rather know what it *means* to find an Enchantress site (clams!), or find garnet amazons (bloodstones!), or to find the Library of Time (Shadow Seers, teleporting Will of the Fates!), or to locate Caelum's capital (air gems!), or to start next to Niefelheim (research Ench-3 immediately!). Rigid nations are no fun IMHO.

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Under CBM 50 pts for a forge lord. Plus 4F4W is reasonable bless for WindLords.

Regarding Arco and fetishes.. Once upon a time I did a test for 10 or 20 turns comparing recuperation in dominion and out of dominion - and as I recall I got 30% more recuperation in dominion.

Now, it could have been statistical variance. I didn't adjust for difficulty of affliction, I didn't only look at disease... - but ever since that I've always just jumped in and out of dominion when I want to recuperate.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Heh. There are so many little hunches like that that I have about this game, and just play along with without ever really being able to verify for sure. It really is an amazingly complex game.

(And I should probably read the debug logs more thoroughly.)

-Max

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Which arco units with recup were these?

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Put the fetish on a black sorcerer, when dying it switches to spider and is back full hit points the next turn. I accidentially noticed that when one was supposed to die from old age.

That saves a lot of micro.

What else do you do besides playing and writing guides, Baalz, I wonder. Do you even sleep? Very interesting reading, all of them.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Well that was the old trick, and it worked decently. However, every Sorceror with a Fetish, becomes highly unreliable in combat, due to mounting Afflictions, and can spend significant amounts of time Mute or Feebleminded, not even contributing to Research. To top that off, you are limited to 1/turn ever.

With this guide, the intent is to do 2-3 or more per turn, until you are swimming in Fire gems. Once you've already begun to employ the cheaper Fetish carriers, it just seems best to put all of your Fetishes onto them, and allow your Sorcerors to remain pristine for other uses.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I'd say that this is a broken mechanic. It's easy to see that it's WAD, but I'm not happy with it.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I told you not to seek the treasure...

IW is aware of this. Unfortunately it seems fixing it will break a lot of other things.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I was waiting for this :D

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I can't help but feel that there is just no point to the Hunters, which is such as waste. What is a good late game strategy for the Machaka, if they make it?

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

Tartarians, probably. You have Death and Nature, so you get a chance of Gift of Health and no difficulty summoning Tartarians.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

How is Hidden in Sand as a spell for Machaka.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

It doesn't really add magic diversity, but the troops are nice. If you've made blood stone factories, it's a nice option to have available.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

warning: thread necromancy

now that CBM 1.6 has become popular and gem generators gonne for good(perhaps) I wonder how this strategy will change. mid game seems to be relying a lot on bane lords+fire drakes(thanks to fetishes), without fetishes I don't think this is too reliable. the late game seems to be Tartfest that has no blood, so what will it be for Machaka? I guess Machaka does have plenty of D2(and maybe D3 with randoms? not sure) so working up to 7 is doable. you also got some nature for GoH/GoR and I guess challice is doable, but everyone is racing for those so it'll be tough. I do wonder if there would be another alternative for tartfest built on this strategy, upgraded for the current CBM 1.6 of course...

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

I would like to see strategical options for Machakan end-game too. Machaka can get to tartarians, but needs some empowering along the way (or a S4 pretender and the forging of rings). Machaka has no mages who can cast GoH, unless they have a pretender with S and N for the booster.

What makes all this more difficult is that Machaka has to spread out research in addition to enchantmet, conjuration and construction (like any other nation racing for those spells), but the to take advantage of the super-strong mid-game they have to research Evocations too. One option would be to forego evocations, but then the mid-game will most likely be more than slightly hairy.

As it is, Machaka has, as far as I can see, very close to zero options in end-game. It all depends on the pretender you have, but if you plan for end-game you may very well croak during mid-game. Would be great to see some strategies where there would be at least some hope for Machaka in the end.

Re: Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia
 

A well played Machaka shouldn't allow a late game to occur :D

But seriously, they'll have plenty of death and nature gems by late game, so a few empowerings aren't that expensive, especially when it's for a Tartarian factory. Plus they can probably count on the Fire royalty and the King of Banefires, and have a decent shot at the Earth royalty.

I really like poison golems for Machaka. They're kinda rare, thanks to it's weird D/E summoning requirements, but Machaka can crank them out by the bushel, GoR em, and turn them loose under Heat from Hell and Poison Cloud spam. They're reaper trait goes well with Volcanic Eruption spam.