Can someone tell me about Machaka?

[Gregstrom]

To be fair, chrispedersen never said he was actually blessing the Hunter Lords.

[thejeff]

Machaka's all about the Spiders. Not the big Hunter spiders but hordes of Spider Riders and then upkeep free Spiders when the Spiders die.
Later, Fever Fetishes in vanilla and drakes & cheap death summons in CBM.
Sorcerors & Black Sorcerors are both good for battle magic.

Maybe a minor bless in paths you need for diversity, but that's incidental.

[vfb]

Rings of regen and "lots and lots of forts" are not a good expansion strategy.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by vfb

Rings of regen and "lots and lots of forts" are not a good expansion strategy.

Says who?

[vfb]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Says who?

Sorry, I may have misunderstood you. If by "expansion", you mean "expanding against your neighbors who already ate up all the indies", then it's not a problem.

If you're talking about expanding against indies, which is what I usually take "expansion" to mean, then waiting for a Const-4 item or spending all your 1st year money on forts is just going to get you killed.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by vfb

Sorry, I may have misunderstood you. If by "expansion", you mean "expanding against your neighbors who already ate up all the indies", then it's not a problem.

If you're talking about expanding against indies, which is what I usually take "expansion" to mean, then waiting for a Const-4 item or spending all your 1st year money on forts is just going to get you killed.

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).

[Amorphous]

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).

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.

[BigDaddy]

I don't think spiders would make me feel safe. For instance, if I was playing Abysia, like I said in the first post, and I came across him at turn 20, he could have 40 spine devils or more, and I don't think I could protect myself. I think those big spiders, especially the skinny ones, would fall like so much chaff to a reaper.

If I was in two player, I'd want one of Machaka's forts right up his butt... and then he'd probably quit.

Those spiders might be good enough on turn 12, but one turn 18, on turn 20... 25... I'm scared if I only have spiders and skelly spam.

Someone said I should get drakes. I always thought of drakes as something the enemy beats on while I hit them with spells.

What spells should I be casting ?

[BigDaddy]

So, how about some drakes and a sea of longdead + legions of steal?

Versus some spine devils, lots of summoned imps, and some minor fire evos... Abysia seems like a particularly tough enemy for Machaka.

[Amorphous]

You seem a bit hung up about the spine devils.

Please consider that 40 of them represent a major investment at the stage of the game you are talking about. Since they cost 3 slaves and a blood 2 mage turn per unit in addition to the requirement of a researched level of blood they are at least the equivalent of 120 blood slaves and 200 research points. You need to make a commensurate investment as Machaka to get the sort of result you want.

Machaka is primarily a mage nation, and this is where you should look for power. You do not summon a wave of cheap troops, that is what low resource troops and spiders are for. You blight your enemy's capital, spread disease among his troops and poisons his land. To battle you bring your mighty sorcerers that frighten, curse and burn the rabble that your enemy managed bring against you. Then you feed upon the corpses and dance upon a dead god's grave.

Sure, a lot of spiders and men will die against tough oponents, but who cares? Machakan spears are the blades of the singing grass of the savannah and the layers of crawling spiders in the Machakan forests are countless. Let lesser nations worry about troops dying - Machaka always has more.


To put the raving aside, you have top notch mages - use them. Most of your mages can self-buff with Eagle Eyes, which makes them deadly accurate. You can get far with the usual fire evocations, but where that is not effective - say against Abysian troops - you have things like Magma Bolts as well as poison and stun damage. And frighten is always fun.

With your very resource cheap archers, Flame Arrows is ridiculously good against practically anything not fire immune.

There are plenty of battlefield spells that goes very well with your cheap and fast troops. Look at spells like Iron Bane and Curse of Stones to get an idea of what you can do.


Finally, do not underestimate spiders. Poison is rather effective in a lot of situations and those wonderful webs makes everyone very easy to hit. While all varieties of spiders have their place, the vast majority of those you buy should be the resource cheap ones, so you should have a lot of them.

Edit:
CBM changes things around a bit, but not that much really. Flame Arrows is harder to cast and Fever Fetishes are not available, which makes fire gems less plentyfull, but at this early stage it does not matter that much. Dragon Master does make greater utilization of Fire Drakes economical, though. And that helps against Abysia.