Nations under CBM 1.6

[Mardagg]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Shouldn't the hunter spider have str 18?

after the rider died,they are strength 11,venomous fang attack is strength 2 then.

[Jarkko]

Mardagg, it might be a good idea to test your Machaka in MP. From the way it looks to me, it would be very apparent to any human player you rely heavily on capital only sacreds. The AI is not capable of doing the remote attacks, but you can be guaranteed humans will use things like Rain of Toads, Hurricane, Locust Swarms, Blight, Baleful Star on your capital; expect the raiders to land in your capital to wreak even more havoc (Machaka PD sucks donkey balls, so even half-witted raiders will rout the PD). Worse, your mages in the capital will be mindhunted if it is apparent you have zero astral mages there (there will be an Astral projection cast on your capital, and if it succeeds, next turn lots machakan brains will fry).

Those are not late-game strategies, they are the midgame ones; of course you can rely on luck and hope you find a site with astral shamans/amazons, but that would be quite a gamble. Besides, having somebody who can forge Crystal shield and crystal matrixes would be quite a big boon (with the chronical need for firegems Machaka has, one should not forget the possibility of Power of the Spheres and the artifical communions, which save firegems for more urgent needs).

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, admittedly SP, but here's my results with E9 plus some assorted other things (F4S4)

Independents:
As few as 3 spiders routinely beat independents and never acquired either an affliction nor lost a rider.

Typical deployment was 10+ of the machakan spear infantry (no armor, shields) front and center set to hold and attack with spiders (usually 5+) on the side set to attack rear, often leading to the spiders intercepting advancing meleers on the side (breaking up their formation, but generally resulting in at least one spider being swarmed). The good protection helped avoid injuries, but also webbing prevented numerous troops from attacking.

(Archers were used as appropriate against suitable indie types like barbs, although just 3 spiders generally did just fine against tribals or standard (militia/light/heavy infantry + archers) independents in not unreasonable numbers.)

Against AI:
AI armies were slightly more worrying, actually succeeding in occasionally killing a spider or two. Some afflictions resulted, although most of them weren't relevant. (Never Healing Wounds and Weakened are mostly irrelevant, for example. Never saw a crippled or limp black hunter, which would have been the most annoying. The worst affliction i got was diseased, and when the rider died the spider was not diseased iirc).

[Mardagg]

in my recent SP Game,i did attack 20 Knights,15 longbowman and some chaff with nothing but 7 hunters+prophet and the starting archers on turn 5.

I only lost 3 riders in that battle.

I just took the hunters in front,my archers in that case did not fire archers bc ive often encountered problems there ,with the knights attacking the archers.

Generally some of your own Archers on fire close,hunters in front,is enough for 95% of all indies,losing occasionally a rider only.
Your archers never ever hit your riders(gotta pay attention to your spiders,though) and make the indies rout earlier in close combat vs your hunters.

[Jarkko]

Mardagg, your point will be much stronger if you are succesfull with the "E9N4 bless on hunters" -strategy when 'everybody' knows you'll be using it. If it would be succesfull one time when nobody expects it, it would be just put down as a fluke ("yeah, it was succesfull in that one game, but that proves nothing" -style)

[Makinus]

In the past few days i´ve been looking at the discussion in this thread and tried playing Machaka with both schemes (bless strategy/riderless spiders strategy) to see what my mileage gets...

After some SP playing i find that the riderless spider strategy is unbeatable in the early game, and gets much more bang for the buck than the big blessed spiders strategy...

The big blessed spiders, at least in SP, is however more powerfull after you expanded a little and is able to max produce the sacred spiders from the capital and is more effective if you are able to produce 10+ sacred spiders a turn (either via initial dominion of by building temples to increase production). About the bless i found that an E bless does little to the sacred spiders, while even a small N bless does improve a lot the sacred spiders survivability (specially their riders). A good W bless do help a lot too.


I found both fun and strategycally sound, at least in SP, to create a F2W4S4N4 great sage pretender and produce only brown spiders for the first year and a half, then, after i expanded my nation and have at least a second castle, start producing sacred spiders in the capital and brown spiders elsewhere...

On the mage front, i always produce the Sorceress and forget about the witch doctors... some Black sorcerers for their paths but research wise i leave everything in the hands of the sorceress and they are very interesting as combat commanders because of their spider forms....

[Mardagg]

good point Jarkko

[thejeff]

Interesting. I find the Sorceresses weak. Not bad for research and neat for the spider form, but at 1F1E1D they're not what I want to be using my one capital commander slot for. I'd buy tons of them if they were recruitable everywhere. As it is, they get bought when I can't afford the real prize.
Like most top end capital only mages, I can't get enough Black Sorcerers. They're your high end mages in most paths, your best battle mages, etc.
Since they have the Spider form, they even make decent thugs. And you'll want a lot to get the random combinations.
Since Witch Doctors have lousy research, I'll buy a couple for specific duties, but I don't want a bunch of them sitting around.

On the uberbless vs minor bless vs no bless controversy, the big spiders seem pretty effective at expansion even without a bless. You'll lose a few more, but I'm not sure you lose enough to actually slow the expansion pace. And if you're not relying on a bless, you can build researchers instead of priests in the early turns.

I haven't played with the little spiders enough to say how effective they are for expansion.

[WraithLord]

riderless spiders are the way to go. 0 upkeep for great expansion parties and tough armies (when backed by mages).

The problem is, it's not enough. Machaka needs a modest boost to become good instead of Meh. Perhaps some spider like summons from the jungles and caves of Machaka's native turf. I don't know, something, anything to make this interesting nation actually competitive.

[Alpine Joe]

wraithlord's idea of the extra randoms is probably the best call. A simple change, but greatly increases the nation's effectiveness.