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 ........

************************************

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.

[tinkthank]

Main thing is to have fun, and that is what you are doing, so bravo!

Maybe this might help:
- There are at least two very helpful threads on Machaka on these Boards, one was started by me begging for help; enter "Machaka" in the search field by "subject", and you will find them easily
- There is a very good article on dominion and preaching; I have it on my computer but cannot seem to attach it here; when I found out where I got it I will let you know, possibly Arryn's site
- try out your idea, sounds neat; you might find, however, that relying on zero magic is a bit tough for Machaka, which has some of the best magicians around. Since Machaka has some of the best forgers in the game (second perhaps only to Ulm and Van), you will be crippling yourself; Machaka has some of the best support mages in the game as well, and they are now going to have a tough time. If you find libraries quickly, well fine; if not, you will need to research with 250-gold Black Sorcs (and since they are researching, they can't do anything else, such as site search, or fight); your lovely 80-gold WDs you will not purchase, since they really can't do anything; they will have a reasearch value of 0. Ouch! You may find that 10 dominion is very nice, but not quite necessary from day 1 -- considering, too, that you will have enough gold for some temples. A 0-magic wrym is a fine idea for Machaka (not my cup of tea, but who cares -- I think many people do this) -- however, not having researched Construction, your poor Wyrm will be naked; not having researched Gift of Health (and having no items to boost to be able to cast it), your poor Wyrm will soon be crippled with no way to get healed.
But this is a very interesting road you have chosen, it will surely be fun and a learning experience!

[tinkthank]

I think the article on dominion that I meant is here:

http://www.maladjustite.com/dominion.pdf

[tinkthank]

ce ne marche pas = it doesn't seem to work

yes, I am having problems clicking on that too, don't know what the deal is -- it is not an article on Machaka, btw, but one on dominion and dominion spread. The stuff on Machaka you can find by searching this forum with "Machaka" as a subject field search (not text body).

Maybe that dominion article can be found on Arryn's site? Or Sunray's? I'll check.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
your lovely 80-gold WDs you will not purchase, since they really can't do anything; they will have a reasearch value of 0.

Research ability can never be lower than 1, no matter what the drain scale is in the province.

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

---

Originally posted by tinkthank:
your lovely 80-gold WDs you will not purchase, since they really can't do anything; they will have a reasearch value of 0.

Research ability can never be lower than 1, no matter what the drain scale is in the province.

---

I'm an idiot -- I didn't know that!
EDIT: still kind of drag to have a research value of 1, however. Even 20 WDs will take a while to get anything to level 4.

[ July 19, 2004, 13:31: Message edited by: tinkthank ]

[archaeolept]

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

heh, your dominion won't really affect any of the other nation's researchers, as everyone has their own scales. Drain-3 is murder.

i'd knock a couple points of productivity -you can manage. just build another castle fairly quickly.

put heat to 3 - there's normal seasonal variability, and putting to 3 will only mildly affect you, while helping to push your heat dominion in your border provinces.

maybe misfortune to 2, just for the points, since your order 3 is reducing the number of random events.

growth to 0 - machaka doesn't especially need the growth scale.

Magic to something reasonable like 1

dominion 8 - a few temples and your dominion will get up there anyways.

this should give you a couple hundred points to use in order to give your pretender a bit of magic (though the worm has expensive paths). I'd suggest giving him Air, since machaka doesn't get air magic normally. as well, your wyrm will become a mass of afflictions from taking out indies, so giving it mistform and mirror image will help quite a bit. Say air 4 .

also, you'll want to give him a ring of fire resist/burning pearl in order to protect your wyrm from the harsh effects on fatigue of the machakan heat dominion.

[Borg]

Thanks very much Thank for digging up that very helpful article.

I know now that I don't have a fixed Dominion lvl from the start but that I can increase it by building multiples of 5 Temples.

Because of the small success rates of preaching in high-black-candle-dominions I can also see the success of Prophet Assassins being reduced.

It seems to me now that the best choice for a Machaka Prophet(for my strategy at least)is the Lvl 3 priest.
Making him a prophet makes him a Lvl 4 priest
With Ceremonial Faith, effectively allowing him to preach a province up to Lvl 8

I reckon a starting Dominion lvl of 7 is good my strategy as such as I'll likely build 5 temples within reasonable time.

One thing the article didn't mention.
Do odds increase when multiple preachers at the same time at the same place ?
Can you confirm / deny that ?

I mean, maybe the chances of increasing a dominion (from lvl 1 to lvl 2 for example) are ((20% times priest Lvl) times number of preachers )
with their priest lvl still being the cap of course.

So, one lvl 2 priest has a 40% chance
2 lvl 2 priests would have 80% chance to increase the Dominion from 1 to 2 (but even together they would not be able to raise the dominion above 2)

Is that correct or am I just making this up for myself ?


And maybe one more question about Magic, Thank.
What would you suggest for Machaka to research first ?
With all the Gems you get from the start (2Nature/2Earth/1Fire) does it make sense to concentrate on summonings or is there a better/more usefull/needed path to consider ?

Thanks very much for your help btw.

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Borg:
Thanks very much Thank for digging up that very helpful article.

I know now that I don't have a fixed Dominion lvl from the start but that I can increase it by building multiples of 5 Temples.

Because of the small success rates of preaching in high-black-candle-dominions I can also see the success of Prophet Assassins being reduced.

It seems to me now that the best choice for a Machaka Prophet(for my strategy at least)is the Lvl 3 priest.
Making him a prophet makes him a Lvl 4 priest
With Ceremonial Faith, effectively allowing him to preach a province up to Lvl 8

I reckon a starting Dominion lvl of 7 is good my strategy as such as I'll likely build 5 temples within reasonable time.

One thing the article didn't mention.
Do odds increase when multiple preachers at the same time at the same place ?
Can you confirm / deny that ?

I mean, maybe the chances of increasing a dominion (from lvl 1 to lvl 2 for example) are ((20% times priest Lvl) times number of preachers )
with their priest lvl still being the cap of course.

So, one lvl 2 priest has a 40% chance
2 lvl 2 priests would have 80% chance to increase the Dominion from 1 to 2 (but even together they would not be able to raise the dominion above 2)

Is that correct or am I just making this up for myself ?


And maybe one more question about Magic, Thank.
What would you suggest for Machaka to research first ?
With all the Gems you get from the start (2Nature/2Earth/1Fire) does it make sense to concentrate on summonings or is there a better/more usefull/needed path to consider ?

Thanks very much for your help btw.

You may want to check out a couple of those threads on this board as to spells to research, they were helpful to me. But I still like:
- Flaming Arrows (Enchant 4): *great* support spell
- Construction 6 (most nice path boosting items, including the cheapo skull of fire)
- Evocation 3> -- once you get fireball, you're happy, and once you get magma eruption, you are laying down the smackdown
- Gift of Health (Enchant 5): you'll need some +nature boosting items
Of course, summons are always nice, but Machaka has a nice range of troops and isn't really "lacking" anything; still, upkeep-free and/or un-hungry troops are always nice to have.

Don't worry *toooo* much about preaching yet; it is great to preach, and fun to eliminate opponents without ever battling them by preaching them out; but you may not be doing it all *that* often.

I think that additional priests each get a chance of increasing the dominion, but someone else I am sure will know the real answer to this.

You may enjoy making a stealthy unit a priest, such as a Bane Spider -- start em off preaching in -2 or -1 dominion areas, he might get it up to 0, and from then on, it is easy.

Archeolept gave some nice ideas on why and how one could invest in points, scales, and magic -- that all makes sense. (But I find growth to be quite ok with Machaka btw., since I do a lot of patrolling for extra cash with my Eyes of the Lord, and that kills pop. Not a lot of growth, but maybe a point.)

Enjoy!

[Endoperez]

If you want to keep your original idea - high scales and dominion with no magic - you could lower your dominion and growth a bit and take atleast neutral magic as well. If you need, you could take unluck, as all your other scales are positive. Well, Heat might give droughts, but negative luck is not as bad for you as for most others.

Machaka has access to so many different magics even without randoms that it is a shame to not use them, even if it would work. And they have some cheap mages that are really boosted with magic scale.