[Amorphous]

Some shield-modding seems to confirm my beliefs.

I modded the machakan hide shield (armour number 105) to encumbrance -2 (to eliminate fatigue from the machakan warriors), defence 20 and protection 0, which ends up as defence 2, parry 18 and protection 0.

With the above, the machakan warrior without javelin ends up with 11 defence not including and 29 defence including parry.

If you were correct, they should be practically impervious to normal troops. In reality they die like flies.

These are the lines that modify the shield:

#selectarmor 105
#prot 0
#def 20
#enc -2
#end

I attach a small mod containing only this change, so that you can try it yourself. Just start a game as Machaka and go to town with the warriors.