[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Pocus:
worshippers of a Spider Queen, which have pointy ears and a dark skin, and which use wrist attached poisonous crossbows?

not very original I would say. Hope thats something else?

Machaka is nothing like Dark elves and no spider queens or such in site. They just use spiders instead of normal horses. And they are very powerful indeed. I played them in Last game and I kicked some serious ... (censored ) with them. They have more then just those spider thingies with them. A large variety of spell casters that cover almost all skill in magic and (I think the only thing missing is blood magic) and special troops that wear spider armor and 2 weapons (spider warriors I think they are called, since they wear some sort of spider armor which is much stronger then normal armor and not as cumbersome as Ulm armor) - something like human Lord Warden commanders but more protection (and they are standard troops). Another thing is that they have access to almost cheapest shortbows in game, which gives them an early edge, and they DO have heavy infantry (protection 19) so they don't suffer from frontal melee attacks like Man does.

These nations themes seems really interesting. Just hope that Ulm will not draw the shortest straw once again with theses.

Don't know what problems Ulm had in Dominions I (didn’t play a lot of it, unfortunately) but if it's any indication in all games I play, Ulm is usually the strongest power there is. It even kicked the crap out of Ermor in one of those games (they did it alone, and Caelum only arrived at the end to pick the leftovers) and if you play without Ermor they are mostly 1st-2nd place.