[Anaconda]

AAR

I played Machaka completely wrong from the turn one. Instead of researcher I relyed on SC pretender and she was designed horribly. Because of that, she died. Then, I didnt concentrate on massing spider riders out of the assembly line, but militia, archers and hoplites. That was my second mistake and the worst of the (4 or so) major mistakes. Before turn 10 I got attacked by Phita, and his small hydra parade made my PD **** their pants (if they got those, I dunno).

I achieved a small victory and was able to stop his parade with hunter spiders from Foul Sacrifice. Even then I didnt realize I should start massing spider riders, but instead tried to muster underwater raiding forces. Underwater raiding was kinda successfull but given my current situation by far sub-optimal decision.

While I was confused and didnt really do anything smart, Phita got their thunderstrike communion ready and used it to bring down my oversized chaff PDs. Meanwhile I was finally trying to prepare vine men and wine ogres in order to counter the poison threat, but even those by far too late and they never saw serious action no matter some were ready to take up arms. Those, even if fielded, were ofcourse too late because Hydras werent anymore the threat but the lightning communion, which I couldnt figure out how to counter at all in the end.

My single most successfull move was to hire a assassin and equip him. He, under my service, took out two theurgs and one indie commander so hiring him was very cost effective. It could have have been a smart move to equip even two or three more, because if I could have been able to take out more theurgs Phita's thunderstrike communion would have failed bad and I would have bought mi self more time. He actually lost quite a few of his slaves because of exhaustion anyways - I can only imagine what the outcome of the last battle would have been if he just would have had couple of them slaves less than he did.

And BTW, the assassin is still out there. He left my service when the kingdom collapsed and most likely he will look opportunities to avenge the fate of his former masters... we got pretty close I have to admit.



Mistakes made in nutshell:

- wrong kind of pretender
- lion tribe shamans
- wrong kind of troops
- not planning ahead, and unable to adapt when the need arise.


Lesson learned:

- science pretender
- income scales
- massed spider riders, no matter if facing poison or not
- dont waste your money on lion tribe shamans
- waste your money on assassins instead, and equip them with boots giving more APs.