MP: ComfortZone - All MA Nations - Running

[Omnirizon]

machaka certainly isn't bad, but they arn't good either. Yet for some reason they don't catch the same kind of negative press that nations like Yomi/Jomon/monkeys do, despite the fact that Machaka has ZERO wins ever.

The deal is they have a good base, but they just don't have any of those solid gigs that they can pull off that it takes to propel a nation through mid-game and into late. sacreds too expensive and cap only, top mages capital only, no nationals (NONE), no solid and affordable non-cap units. They have decent stuff available outside their cap, but for a nation that can't really swing a bless and has no summons, they just don't have enough. If the Bane Spider and the Spider infantry guy and/or the sacred spider rider were not cap only or if they had some good national summons they might be in business. Otherwise they are just a hair under par in ALL categories. The supposedly weaker nations then them typically have SOMETHING they can do, Machaka is just too pale; which is odd considering they're all black.

[Otherling]

Well, Machaka certainly looks like a wonderful pick, what with that sales pitch and no one wanting it.

Nonetheless, I think I'm willing to give it a try. If you don't mind a fairly newish player (only a couple MP games so far), count me in for Machaka.

[slayers_ai]

i'll take the Jotunheim then

[Xietor]

Though I have never played Machaka in mp, but if I did I would take a nasty bless and ride those spiders as far as I could go. I would take either a f9 or n9 bless, though they likely need e4 as well. Maybe a f9 n4 e4.

But since they are capital only, to win the game, you need to think of a way to gate(astral) those spiders around the map in the midgame). Without having even tested at it, maybe an imprisoned monolith with f9 e4 n4 s4. shrug.

You do get some design points with machaka, but you likely need some production as well(:

[vfb]

Why would you take F9? Spiders have high-damage attacks with death poison. They do not need help dealing damage. I'd go E9 to crank up their already high protection and keep fatigue at 0. Once the rider dies, the spiders are cool and have nice HP, but they've got an MR of 6 or something. It's better to keep the rider alive IMO. E9 on a Colossal Fetish is doable. And your Fetish will let you actually grab some land early.

Spiders have got 3 attacks at 12/12/13, so they don't need a lot of help hitting. E9N4 will help keep them alive longer. Even though in rider form they've only got 13HP, with their great protection they will take just a few HP of damage usually. E9S4 gives a bit of protection versus Smites (while you've still got a rider), and sets you up better in the late game. At S4, your god is vulnerable to Magic Duel, but E9S6 is expensive.

Besides the spiders, you'll probably want Flaming Arrows ASAP.

[cleveland]

Good morning! And might I say WOW...we filled 23 slots in under 3 days. Outstanding.

And the icing on the cake: Xeitor has provided the Fallacy map!

I've tweaked it ever so slightly, and it is now available at the bottom of the first post. I ask that everyone please download it and provide feedback asap. If there are no glaring problems, I will open the llamaserver game at 10pm GMT tonight, so design your pretenders accordingly.

The map is shown below. Velusian's version has the following characteristics, which haven't been changed:
1) There are no set starting locations.
2) All lands with fewer than 5 land neighbors are NoStart.
3) All seas with fewer than 4 sea neighbors are NoStart.
4) There are no preset magic sites.
5) There are 330 total provinces, 35 of which constitue a continuous central sea. (14.3 prov/player, be ready for a knife-fight!)
6) Mountains are impassable.
7) Invisible land bridges join the 2 continents.

A brief changelog from the original map:
1) Minor connectivity inconsistencies were resolved, mostly regarding impassable mountains. Overall map connectivity has not been significantly changed.
2) Mountain & Boarder Mountain terraintype issues were resolved, resulting in an overall increase in both. With such a tight packing of players, the boost to planatary resources will be helpful.
3) Many provinces were given the Fresh Water designation. This is a wet map, and should be treated as such. All inland lakes are considered Fresh Water, and provinces touching them were set accordingly. Total Fresh Water provinces have probably tripled, though this has no impact on gameplay other than altering the frequency of certain magic sites (and maybe population?).
4) Inland provinces adjacent to fjords were given a connection to the closest sea. It's not unreasonable to assume an aquatic amry could traverse up a fjord unopposed, as is supposed by the narrow causeway in the Eastern portion of the map. Plus it acts to increase connectivity, and therefore strategic options. In practice, only 6 new connections were made (represeted by the yellow lines in the image below)
5) All provinces with only 1 neighbor were changed to Caves. 4 total (represented by the orange dots). This is mostly for flavor, and is aesthetically pleasing

[Xietor]

f9 bless gives the spiders a magical attack, and your attack skill can never be "too high"
especially when machaka's sacred spiders can fight angels and other thugs with very high defenses effectively. Plus you get fire damage on all 3 attacks.

But as I pointed out, I did not actually sit down and design a bless for machaka. All I said is if I played them, I would take a very heavy bless and ride the spiders as far as they would take me.

It would require a lot of testing for me to ultimately decide upon the best bless. And to do that you also need to look at some of the units they likely will be fighting.

If memory serves, their pd is awful, so i likely would not take misfortune for design points.
But good luck to the player that took the spiders!

[licker]

Originally Posted by Xietor

f9 bless gives the spiders a magical attack, and your attack skill can never be "too high"
especially when machaka's sacred spiders can fight angels and other thugs with very high defenses effectively. Plus you get fire damage on all 3 attacks.

But as I pointed out, I did not actually sit down and design a bless for machaka. All I said is if I played them, I would take a very heavy bless and ride the spiders as far as they would take me.

It would require a lot of testing for me to ultimately decide upon the best bless. And to do that you also need to look at some of the units they likely will be fighting.

If memory serves, their pd is awful, so i likely would not take misfortune for design points.
But good luck to the player that took the spiders!

If you dig in the forums I started a thread discussing a machakan bless strat using w9 since I feel that it offers them the most benefit. f9 would be easier to get without mangleing your scales too much, but I didn't find it really helped that much (though I would recommend that you take a f4 minor bless if possible).

I believe I used a divine glyph (AWAKE of all things...) with f4w9s6, of course scales were not great, but I've not found the misfortune (at 2) to be too bad considering that you should also take O3. Drain is a bit of a pita, but you should be able to forge skull mentors natively, once you find some death income, and in MP finding death income is nominally not too difficult if you find someone willing to trade for hammers or fire or earth gems. You will probably also need to take a touch of sloth, but unless your capitol has a really bad starting position with respect to neighbors with resources, once you clear the area around it you have enough resources so as not to be limited there with your spider production.

[Xietor]

I would definitely want n4e4 in there at a bare min. Once the rider dies, the spider has a ton of hps and can really benefit from regeneration. That also helps keep afflictions down.

E4 is also key as fatigue can bring down even the best sc. In fact that is how I typically kill sc's.

Given their low mr without a rider though, and the number of s races in the middle era, maybe a s9 n9 e4 bless is the way to go.

And if you run into ethereal right off(ermor) use flaming arrows. Flaming arrows has to be high on your list as machaka I think in any event.

[Xietor]

With respect to the machaka spider bless, you can do the s9n9e4 with an imprisoned Sphinx order 3, 1 prod, 3 heat, 2 misfortune 1, 0 luck, and 2 drain. If you do not like bad events, or micromanagement associated with misfortune, scrap the 1 production
and take 1 death and 0 luck scales.

The berserk at n9 gives some protection boost, attack boost, and of course good units that fight to the death are always nice. Especially units with high hps, protection, and regeneration.

With 22 players in the game, make friends with a race with high research(ctis) and trade with them for some lightless lanterns and that drain 2 is more helpful than not.