Quote:
Saber Cherry said:
3) Sleep with an Illithid until you conceive a Star Child.
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This has been drawn by the artist Dorian Cleavenger
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Doesn't really look like the worst out of the 4 possibilities. It's not nice but i would say overall its the best out of the 4 possibilities you listed
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OT: I agree with Ironhawk. Unless we are playing a game on a rich world what breaks Machaka as a bless nation is especially the huge resource cost. Even with CB 38 resources (don't know vanilla cost). Keep also in mind that with CB each point of sloth is -15% resources.
Iirc base resource points at your capitol are 80 on normal world richness.
For E9N9 you probably take the earthmother. Machakas heat 2 preference helps somewhat, 120 free points from heat 3 scale. But still your scales suffer a lot. Also keep in mind how expensive Machakas Mages are (expect the witch doctor but iirc he has a built in research cap so he doesn't profit from positive magic scales). Also to get more resources you will probably take another castle than the watchtower which is further limiting you.
Compare Black Hunters to White Centaurs. They do awesome with a N9E9 bless too but cost about half of the gold and less then 1/3 in resources iirc. So Pan needs no productivity to produce their sacreds and it even benefits somehow by turmoil scale with the maenads.
Machaka has +120 points from heat 3 but Pan doesn't need productivity and turmoil is not that bad for them neither with the maenads.
All in all in a game with normal richness the black hunters are likely not worth it i would guess. How many of them can you recruit in the first 20 turns? I would be surprised if you get averagely more than 20.
20 Black hunters are still impressive but as Ironhawk says from turn 20-30 on battlefield magic gets so dominating that they are not as useful anymore. Ctis e.g. likely already has banefire and relief by then. 10 Sauros cost only 1800 gold but i am 99% sure they beat easily 20 Hunters which cost 2500 gold.
Ctis is maybe a bit extreme since they are one of the nations with extremely potent battlefield magic in midgame but pythium and arco could give machaka quite some trouble too and vanheim probably also.
Finally there is the question how they would do vs. a SC God. My assumption is that they can't beat a good earlygame SC God like a Cyclops or a VQ.
If uberblessed sacreds can't beat an earlygame SC God and don't have a useful other ability like stealth or ultra cheapness i rate them second rate. If we pick the VQ example:
Mictlan wins vs. the VQ with eagle warriors.
Vanheim has valkyries. So they also win. The vans are stealthy, that's ultravaluable. I always thought Gandalf exagerates some months ago when he wrote about stealth but QM tought me how useful stealth is.
Jotuns Niefels are so strong that they will probably kill a VQ too.
Pans White Centaurs might lose but they are stealthy. And Pan could employ a few harpies for help.
The Hunters though most likely lose vs. a true VQ.
But the other stuff Machaka has is very diverse and useful. Their mages are rather good and quite flexible and most of their troops are useful too. All in all Machaka is a very balanced nation.
Their troops all have some weaknesses though. I am no real Machaka expert (only played a few SP games with them and one vanilla longterm game which deceased on turn 8x because of server crash, but because the game was vanilla i hoarded ...) but i always had problems with using their troops really well. They seem balanced but if you compare them to the great troops other nations like Ctis or Pan have i always silently cry.
For their main problem, the low morale i have found no solution.
I think hoplites together with a few militia as chaff and archers are ok and bane spiders are ok though resource intensive stealth squads, the other troops seem all very niche though.