[Arralen]

Machaka needs high ressources for recruiting
- Hoplites
- Spider Knights
- Spider Warriors (heavy stealth troops; cap only)
- Bane Spiders (heavy assassines; way overpriced in vanilla, as they are capitol only and easily die to standard indie commanders)
- Black Hunters (cap only)
- Hunter Lords (cap only)

As nobody builds Spider Knights, Machaka actually only needs high ressources in it's capital, and could get along very well with a watchtower and a +50 ress site there.

Furthermore, unless you stumble upon some sages, you'll have to rely on Sorceresses for research (cap on Witch Doctor) and Black Sorcerers for spellcastings and battle magic. Both are cap only, too, further limiting the numbers of melee commanders one could build.

I always found it hard to get spiders or stealth troops in any meaningful quantity.

Compare that to Jotunheim (blessable Herses everywhere with Watchtower), Vanheim (...), Mictlan (ultra-cheap Animal Warriors), etc.

Machaka surely looks very interesting and diverse on paper, but unless you are in a very slow game, your possibilities are severly limited: Buying knights with 12HP which turn easily into spiders with MR4 isn't very high on the priority list, if you have only 1 place to recruit them. Especially, if you have to recruit your mages and your inf (high admin castle) there as well. And on top of it the troops (not to speak of the commanders) are as expensive as mages, so they do not only soak up the ressources, but the gold as well.

Oc, part of the fun with the game is to play your nations strenghts and work around the shortcomings. But it would be greater fun if it was about putting emphasis on one path, instead an absolute this-or-that decision.
As it is now, IMHO it makes more sense to build Sorceresses and Hoplites, with the occasional Black Sorcerer mixed in, than to wait for the spider force to build up to a usuable level over severel turns.