[Wauthan]

Machaka virtually begs for a blesseffect strategy, considering their terrific sacred units. I usually pick one of the dragons for a single 9. Because their mages are not sacred I don't have to worry about a nature9 blessing causing my mages to run into melee. Or I skip bless and magic completely and just max the scales and castle.

Light protection indeps: Machaka got very cheap archers and almost arrowproof hoplites. Use hoplites to tie up troops and wither them with massed archers. Spiders are also arrowresistant but too expensive to risk to friendly fire. Put them on fireclosest to let them web enemies.

Medium protection indeps: Massed Machaka warriors on fire closest and a few flanking spiderknights on attack archers. Build one big regiment and get some priests to keep morale up.

Heavy protection indeps: Bring out them sacred units and mages, they'll make short work of them. A nature9 blessed group of four spiders will beat the snot out 20 knights. Especially if they got some magic support.

Machakas PD is propably the worst available. It was one of the very first things I modded in the game. Basicly you can just as well go "naked" and stick a though summoned unit or two in there (like a giant scorpion) with a cheap priest on pray (or perhaps 5 PD since the priest cost upkeep). Summoned units gets you a lot of bang for the buck and demand no salaries. Giant Scorpions are propably the best province defenders available for Machaka.

Machaka sorcerers can take out a lot of enemies all by themselves. Just learn a few good boost spells and put them on attack. First hit will turn them into huge spiders (with all the magic boosts intact) and they'll simply level small forces without any help.

I use enough spies to keep tabs on the frontier. Since PD can not be relied on (without modding) you need to see where your enemy will strike you.

Banespiders fragile? You must have had a bout of bad luck. The only thing I ever needed to worry about was mounted commanders. Their defence is a bit low perhaps.