Machaka in CB

[Cainehill]

Arralen said:
Regen is based on current hitpoints. As long as we're talking about Black Hunters, not the spiders, IMHO regen is negligible @ 2HP/turn.

True, it's not a lot of regen - but with 27 protection, they don't tend to take much damage, even with the open-ended roll. And because they go berserk, they tend not to rout, even in small numbers, often driving the opposing forces from the field after they would have routed, if not for berserk.

So - 2 regen I find is often enough, especially since, as importantly as anything, it gives 1/10 the chance of afflictions. Oh, and the E9 bless gives 4 fatigue back a turn, so they don't accumulate fatigue so quickly as to allow their protection to be halfed.

Yes, riderless hunter lords keep their leadership and experience. Dunno if they even keep their magic - guess they do @-1, because it's a 2nd, animal form. At least the other commander which can change voluntarily do.

Don't remember if they keep the magic, but definately keep leadership - my prophet stayed prophet after losing the rider, and was still leading the other spiders around. Think he still had enough holy for blessing, although I usually try to send a cheap priest to do that since the hunter lord does have spell casting encumbrance of 16.

[halfzware]

I ran a bunch of tests on black hunters over the last couple nights.

The N9 bless isn't worth it for regen on the first form, the benifit is berserk adds attack - which the hunters need as their attack rating sucks (for high end troops). Also, the berserk + e9 bless brings their armor to 27 i think, which gives them survivability against non-ap troops.

The second form also benifits from the dual bless giving them over 20 armor, and 5-6 pts of regen - which again... makes them worth it.

If you use them in packs of 5 or more, they are imo actually worth it, as they're capable of handling groups of 15 knights solo (with support they should keep their casualties and afflictions low enough to make it worth while).

[PrinzMegaherz]

I find it actually kind of strange that the black hunters do not spread fear. Actually, I can't imagine something that is more terrifying than a huge hairy spider.

[Saber Cherry]

PrinzMegaherz said:
I find it actually kind of strange that the black hunters do not spread fear. Actually, I can't imagine something that is more terrifying than a huge hairy spider.

Imagine yourself, at the army recruiting center, with four possible assignments:

1) Front lines, against berzerk flaming spiders of Machaka.
2) Scout out the Unfettered that may be oozing around the area, devouring villages.
3) Sleep with an Illithid until you conceive a Star Child.
4) Go into the Void Gate, and, uh... pray.

Dominions isn't a pretty place. I don't like big, hairy spiders either, but... they might not be the scariest things out there. Personally I'm much more afraid of giant lampreys. A nation consisting entirely of kangroo-legged bipedal leeches and lampreys would be horrifying, especially if they could latch-on to enemy soldiers's backs, drill into their spinal columns with a toothed tongue, and puppet the host's body while its mind is still conscious by directly driving the spinal nerve axons, forcing them to fight their friends while screaming "Get it off me! It's sucking me dry!!"

Spiders are scary the way space ameobas or carnies are scary. Kangaroo-leeches, especially undead ones, are utterly terrifying - like multivariable calculus final exams.

[Boron]

Saber Cherry said:
3) Sleep with an Illithid until you conceive a Star Child.

This has been drawn by the artist Dorian Cleavenger .
Doesn't really look like the worst out of the 4 possibilities. It's not nice but i would say overall its the best out of the 4 possibilities you listed .

OT: I agree with Ironhawk. Unless we are playing a game on a rich world what breaks Machaka as a bless nation is especially the huge resource cost. Even with CB 38 resources (don't know vanilla cost). Keep also in mind that with CB each point of sloth is -15% resources.
Iirc base resource points at your capitol are 80 on normal world richness.

For E9N9 you probably take the earthmother. Machakas heat 2 preference helps somewhat, 120 free points from heat 3 scale. But still your scales suffer a lot. Also keep in mind how expensive Machakas Mages are (expect the witch doctor but iirc he has a built in research cap so he doesn't profit from positive magic scales). Also to get more resources you will probably take another castle than the watchtower which is further limiting you.

Compare Black Hunters to White Centaurs. They do awesome with a N9E9 bless too but cost about half of the gold and less then 1/3 in resources iirc. So Pan needs no productivity to produce their sacreds and it even benefits somehow by turmoil scale with the maenads.
Machaka has +120 points from heat 3 but Pan doesn't need productivity and turmoil is not that bad for them neither with the maenads.

All in all in a game with normal richness the black hunters are likely not worth it i would guess. How many of them can you recruit in the first 20 turns? I would be surprised if you get averagely more than 20.
20 Black hunters are still impressive but as Ironhawk says from turn 20-30 on battlefield magic gets so dominating that they are not as useful anymore. Ctis e.g. likely already has banefire and relief by then. 10 Sauros cost only 1800 gold but i am 99% sure they beat easily 20 Hunters which cost 2500 gold.
Ctis is maybe a bit extreme since they are one of the nations with extremely potent battlefield magic in midgame but pythium and arco could give machaka quite some trouble too and vanheim probably also.
Finally there is the question how they would do vs. a SC God. My assumption is that they can't beat a good earlygame SC God like a Cyclops or a VQ.
If uberblessed sacreds can't beat an earlygame SC God and don't have a useful other ability like stealth or ultra cheapness i rate them second rate. If we pick the VQ example:
Mictlan wins vs. the VQ with eagle warriors.
Vanheim has valkyries. So they also win. The vans are stealthy, that's ultravaluable. I always thought Gandalf exagerates some months ago when he wrote about stealth but QM tought me how useful stealth is.
Jotuns Niefels are so strong that they will probably kill a VQ too.
Pans White Centaurs might lose but they are stealthy. And Pan could employ a few harpies for help.

The Hunters though most likely lose vs. a true VQ.

But the other stuff Machaka has is very diverse and useful. Their mages are rather good and quite flexible and most of their troops are useful too. All in all Machaka is a very balanced nation.
Their troops all have some weaknesses though. I am no real Machaka expert (only played a few SP games with them and one vanilla longterm game which deceased on turn 8x because of server crash, but because the game was vanilla i hoarded ...) but i always had problems with using their troops really well. They seem balanced but if you compare them to the great troops other nations like Ctis or Pan have i always silently cry.
For their main problem, the low morale i have found no solution.
I think hoplites together with a few militia as chaff and archers are ok and bane spiders are ok though resource intensive stealth squads, the other troops seem all very niche though.

[Arralen]

Machaka needs high ressources for recruiting
- Hoplites
- Spider Knights
- Spider Warriors (heavy stealth troops; cap only)
- Bane Spiders (heavy assassines; way overpriced in vanilla, as they are capitol only and easily die to standard indie commanders)
- Black Hunters (cap only)
- Hunter Lords (cap only)

As nobody builds Spider Knights, Machaka actually only needs high ressources in it's capital, and could get along very well with a watchtower and a +50 ress site there.

Furthermore, unless you stumble upon some sages, you'll have to rely on Sorceresses for research (cap on Witch Doctor) and Black Sorcerers for spellcastings and battle magic. Both are cap only, too, further limiting the numbers of melee commanders one could build.

I always found it hard to get spiders or stealth troops in any meaningful quantity.

Compare that to Jotunheim (blessable Herses everywhere with Watchtower), Vanheim (...), Mictlan (ultra-cheap Animal Warriors), etc.

Machaka surely looks very interesting and diverse on paper, but unless you are in a very slow game, your possibilities are severly limited: Buying knights with 12HP which turn easily into spiders with MR4 isn't very high on the priority list, if you have only 1 place to recruit them. Especially, if you have to recruit your mages and your inf (high admin castle) there as well. And on top of it the troops (not to speak of the commanders) are as expensive as mages, so they do not only soak up the ressources, but the gold as well.

Oc, part of the fun with the game is to play your nations strenghts and work around the shortcomings. But it would be greater fun if it was about putting emphasis on one path, instead an absolute this-or-that decision.
As it is now, IMHO it makes more sense to build Sorceresses and Hoplites, with the occasional Black Sorcerer mixed in, than to wait for the spider force to build up to a usuable level over severel turns.

[PrinzMegaherz]

Saber Cherry said:

Imagine yourself, at the army recruiting center, with four possible assignments:

1) Front lines, against berzerk flaming spiders of Machaka.
2) Scout out the Unfettered that may be oozing around the area, devouring villages.
3) Sleep with an Illithid until you conceive a Star Child.
4) Go into the Void Gate, and, uh... pray.

Dominions isn't a pretty place. I don't like big, hairy spiders either, but... they might not be the scariest things out there. Personally I'm much more afraid of giant lampreys.

They might not be the scariest thing... but they are definitly scary. Most people fear spiders and the likes on a subconscious level. And those spiders are seldom larger than your hand. I imagine that a spider of the size of an elephant would be very scary sight, especially if it comes running for you.