[MaxWilson]

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