Quote:
Originally Posted by chrispedersen
That is not at all what I am saying. With a N9 bless, 3-4 spiders take any indy. And with the blessing I proposed you can easily afford
O3, r1, h2-3, g3, magic 3, luck x.
Each turn you can build an expansion team of 3-4 spiders and a bless monkey.
In fact, since you start with a priest and you can make a prophet you have a leg up. The spider commander prophetized will solo most provinces.
Use the starting troops to patrol, and set the tax rate at 120.
Your income most of the time will be roughly 600 or so.
If you go light on your initial expansion teams (3 spiders) your cost is less than 300.
This means that on turn 3-4 you easily have enough money to build your first fort.
I may be misremembering, however, my remembrance says that sorceresses are 190 for 7 rp. Regardless, you need the second fort to make the eyes of the lord (unit with patrol bonus?). Churn them out to lead troops, and to patrol.
Machaka units (other than spiders) are all resource intensive, and fairly uniformly, crap. However, your spiders are pretty darn good against thugs and SC's.
If you push forts, (while not interfering with your regular expansion) you ameliorate the glaring weakness of machaka pd.
Like I said v, I've got no problem hitting 15 with this strategy, with a 2nd fort built and third on the way in the first year.
What strategy are you promulgating? (and sorry I came across snippy).
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You are paying far too much for too little gain. With the scales you have there, you should be able to hit 15+ provinces, as well as a couple of castles, the first year without any bless whatsoever.
I think Black Hunters are generally underestimated here on the boards - probably because past incarnations of CBM made the price discrepancy between them and ordinary spiders so large - but their strength lies mainly in the opening game. Machaka really has no problem there, so investing in a N9 bless that gives you little afterwards is not the best idea.
About 6 Black Hunters without any bless can take practically any indy, pretty much the same as your 3-4 N9 expansion parties. Add in a minor N4 and possibly E4 (the latter helps against largish numbers and might be something you want anyway) and you can shave off a couple of hunters.
Do not get me wrong, you will of course get a better expansion rate with N9 than without, but once the indies are gone, the benefit of the bless will be greatly reduced. Human oponents really do not find it much harder to deal with N9 hunters than unblessed ones.
Also, Machakan troops are certainly not resource intensive. Apart from the hoplite, the regular troops are all very resource cheap. The combination of very cheap archers and good ability to cast Flame Arrows is excellent. Since Machaka has access to both the nature and earth protection spells as well as Iron Bane, cheap troops without armour has an occasional use. Combine with Curse of Stones for more fun.
Lastly Sorceresses have f1e1d1 + 10%fedn and cost 110gp, so 110 for 5rp is more accurate.