[Demantiae]

I'd say swap out the death magic for nature on the Spider Elders (abandonment of ancestor worship and the corruption that went along with it) and adoption of a more naturalistic outlook of things. Essentially the more nature focused Witch Doctors/Sorcerers are worked into the former Black Sorcerers combining the two as one unit/concept. The Witch Doctors were very fond of abusing their power so I'd think they'd disapear along with the mages of God Mountain and the Griots are their perfect replacements. Those who want to learn the secrets of things instead go to Timbuktu and the great library there and learn what they can. I like the random magic path access too, just keep them away from astral and death.

An idea I had for the priest-kings would to call them Vessels of the Lord. I'd give them H3 rather than 2 as a priest driven society requires a H3 unit IMO. You could probably balance this out by removing the Ears of the Lord, the nation (being the dominant culture in it's region) may not need to send out priest-spies so much. In fact it might be very insular (culturally and religiously) like China was historically. Leave the Eyes as they are but add the Inquisitor bonus and you have a patroling inquisitor unit that can take care of all your societal control needs :-)

I like the idea of the rumours of the Black Sorcerers being related to a dead god buried inside God Mountain being part of the reason for their destruction. Perhaps a false god arose in the mountain and the sorcerers, together with their spider assassins sought to gain total control over the nation. The priests of course knew better (perhaps prompted by some deity from the depths of the God Forest) and they rebelled thus leading to a civil war - priests vs sorcerers. Of couse the priesthood won, purged the sorcerers and those witch doctors they found wanting and imprisoned them all inside the mountain for all eternity. The Driders are all that's left of them, showing their devotion to the (winning) god by taking on his/her form and staying within the mountain as guardians of the fallen mages. If the god of the forrest is now the lord of Machaka rather than the god of the mountain it would explain why Machaka might be cool with the idea of having the monkey tribes as vassals and levies in their army.

If anybody has any idea's for making Machaka better let us know! I'll have a go at modding something for LA but I can't make any promises. Had a cursory glance at the modding manuals but that's all. If anybody could recomend an easy mod I could pick apart that would be great. My only modding efforts to date have been in the Hearts of Iron/Victoria/Euroa Euniversalis games and they were text file based. I often just took existing parts of the games (or mods) and just made alterations here and there to figure it out. If this is possible with Doms 3 mods then I could work something out fairly easily. I will however have problems with the sprites as I have absoultely no idea where to begin with those.