Machaka game set up

[Borg]

Hello gents,

I'm starting to get pretty hooked on this game even though I'm only playing the demo (so far).

Yesterday I had a 26-turn game with the Machaka and that showed me a few things.

- some units are very cheap - gold and resource wise
- but most units cost a lot of gold while their resource requirements are low or medium (compared to Ulm anyway - the only other I've played so far and which is to be the most resource dependant faction I read)
- Stealthy preachers/scouts are a great thing as well as the Assassins which leads you to a very specific strategy of "expand by preaching" and "conquer by killing the enemy commanders"
Guess I'll try that approach (I'm new to this game , so bear with me )
- the Lord of the Sun which I used yesterday had 2Fire/2Death/3Nature but didn't use Magic that much besides summoning a Fire Drake - Pride of Lions and a bunch of Werewolf-led-wolves.
I'm sure I'm very unexperienced on the Magic part of this game but I think Machaka can do well without much Magic (please correct me if I'm wrong).

So, I'm getting ready for my next game

- Machaka
- Aran map
- Indy's set to 7 - everything else default.

Dominion :

- Order +3
Machaka needs all the gold it can get here (21%) and a random effects reduction is nice too as it will allow me to tamper with the luck scale a little.

- Productivity +3
I tried a sloth -1 yesterday as I figured I needed the cash more than the resources but when you eventually want to turn to the spiders, resources dwindle fast as well.
This setting gives me another 6% gold boost as well.

- Hot +2
A no-brainer as this is Machaka's favorite temp.
Gives me a point boost.

Growth +3
I welcome all the boosts here too.
6% gold boost.
More population means more taxes, more gold
and a huge supply boost which will really come in handy with the huge armies (lots of cheapies early on) I'm planning to run.

- Unluck -1
Taking a little negative here which is largely off set by the 3+ Order scale.

- Drain -3
I'm not going to invest much in Magic besides evocation, so I'll make it as hard as possible for everybody else.

Dominion 10
This gives me the maximum extra research points for my Drained researchers.
I'm still not quite sure about all the effects of having high Dominion - if someone could point me to an in-depth article on this subject I'd be very happy.
Anyway, high Dominion is supposed to fightoff the competition and make it easier to spread my faith across the map.

- Ceremonial Faith
allows my Priests to preach with a +2 Priest lvl bonus ( if I understand correctly) and since I'm going to use Stealthy Priests and a Stealthy Assassin as my Prophet to prepare enemy provinces for invasion / to spread the faith / to attack the other factions' income in those provinces, Ceremonial Faith looks like a natural pick for Machaka.

- Castle
40 Adm raises Resources and Gold considerably
150 supplies isn't half bad
and it stays in the 450 price tag Category.

Magic :
NONE
That's right.
I'm not taking any magic skills for my pretender,
I'm going to leave that to the Dark Sorcerers.

My pretender isn't much into Magic anyway but rather prefers a "head-on" approach.
The double-headed WYRM.
A relatively cheap (75pts) beatstick with a starting Dominion of 3 are the primary effects I'm looking for.

All this goodiness leaves me with about 4pts wasted - not perfect but I can live with it

Strategy is to swarm the best provinces early on with massess of cheap troops, leave the uninteresting provinces untouched and use the neutral armies as buffers against the enemies.

Stealthy preachers allow me to invade these territories and preach the "right faith" anyway

After establishing some control start cranking out the Assassins and spiders.

Strategy beyond that point ........

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If I have merely uttered things you all know already, I apologize in advance.

If you could give me any tips or advice on how to play the Machaka it would be greatly appreciated.