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Magic:
In sorcery, you get great access to Blood and good access to Nature, with enough access to Death to get you ramping up to cast Lichcraft. Nature can get you nice things like Mass Regeneration - don't go relying on Wooden Warriors etc., because you don't really want to give your troops an extra 25% fire vulnerability on top of what they have already. It's just asking for trouble. Research goals are always going to depend on circumstance, but... Blood 4 gets you Rakshasa Warriors and therefore a big supply of quality sacreds. Blood 8 gets you Mandaahas and Davanas. Con 4 gets you Skull Mentors, Skull Staffs, and Air and Blood boosters. Importantly, it gets you Sanguins Dowsing Rods. Con 6 gets you Robes of the Magi, which are powerful trade fodder and important boosters. Also, if you have any fire income at this point it can turn into Lightless Lanterns and boost your research. Evo 4 gives you Thunder Strike. Ench 6 provides Arrow Fend. Alt 4 supplies Wind Guide. Goals: You'll have goals and strategies in the short and long-term. Here are some suggested ones. Early Game: Buy squads of Anusara with Kala-Mukha leaders - script the Anusara to Hold and Attack and the Kala-Mukha to (bless)(bless)Cast Spells. You can put out one of these every turn or two initially, and they should take most regular indie forces. Your starting forces can be put on patrol orders to get you more taxes if you want - they won't do you much good if you send them to attack indies. Get a second castle ASAP. If you're taxing and patrolling, that'll be easier. Otherwise, sacrifice a turn or two's troop production. Once you can afford it, shift to making Palankasha as you may need them against a neighbour. Be careful about all-out wars though, as taking enemy forts can be tricky. Mid-game: Once you're established, you'll want to diversify your magic paths. This isn't too difficult, as what you'll need is Earth, Water, Fire and Astral. The elemental paths can all be found on Enchantresses, who live in Nature sites. Therefore, make sure to do thorough site searching in Nature early on. Use Yogini and Haruspex, and you'll find all the level 3 and 4 sites as you go. Getting Astral is as easy as finding a Crystal Amazon or Lizard province. Hire a couple of S1 mages, start site searching and then once you have an Astral income start with the Arcane Probings to find all the interesting stuff. When possible, do a complete search for Blood sites. The sites that give you a 40% or 60% discount off Blood spells will repay your investment within a couple of turn's use even if you've spent over 100 slaves on Bowl of Blood castings. If you have an E9 pretender, get into searching for Earth sites ASAP. You might not find a use for the gems... until you cast a great big global, that is. If you can get a Forge up with a few hundred gems in it because you couldn't do much else with them, so much the better. Assuming you've found Enchantresses, start clamming. You'll find a use for the pearls sooner or later. You can blood hunt with 3 Raktapata (each with a Dowsing Rod) in a province at 0% taxation indefinitely, without running out of population. It may even grow. Late Game: Start slaughtering Blood Slaves in their hundreds. You'll want lots of demons. Try to be the first to Heliophagii - you can't summon Arch Demons and Ice Demons easily. One of the Heliophagii will get you a chance at Arch Devils if no-one else took them, which is nice. You can cast Infernal Tempest with only a couple of boosters. Storm Demons are among the best archers in the game, and can fire straight through storms, Air Shields and other obstacles. Get lots of them. In fact, get lots of all the demons. Eventually, swamp the world with your demonic hordes. Then you've won. Maybe I should have called this guide 'Monkeys? What monkeys?' 8.22 Machaka 8.22.1 An assortment of tips
Once I'm starting to use Black Sorcerers, I research Stoneskin and Ironskin. If enemy uses lightly armored units,black sorcerors can cast Summon Earthpower and Blade Wind. -> I found a combo of massed archers plus machakan hoplites pretty useful. 8.22.2 Machaka screwed thread -> Original message:
I think it actually got worse in Dominions3. I played Machaka yesterday a bit, and soon learned to respect Atavi Infantry. Bandar Log's stone/stick throwers cause much pain to light machakan infantry, which has only shields. I dare not to think what would Blade Wind do to them. Hoplites are nice, but mostly nice compared to other Machaka units, and you still need Productivity to use them. But their shields are rather unimpressive, and they're slow. Light infantry is really sad (except for massable shortbows), which wouldn't be that bad... but that's all you start with, and almost all you get for Province Defence. Spider riders and knights - would be nice, except for gold cost of 50. Spider Riders are esentially 50 gold light infantry... with curious ability to fire shortbows at 10 precision. It doesn't matter with price this high. Spider Knights are perhaps worse: I don't like units which need to die to reach their full potential. Spider Knights are neither cannon fodder nor cost-effective cavalry. Additionally, all spiders are big and easy to gang on. Web spit would be quite useful tactically, but not on 50 big, 50 gold units; you can put many archers in small room, but not spiders. Black Hunters... 120 gold sacred unit ? Nature seems a must just to stop aflictions. Air to stop crossbows. Perhaps astral to keep mages from ganging up too easily. And then I certainly need Fire, because their attacks have quite low Attack for something so few in numbers. I have to admit mages are mostly nice, especially their magic variety. But one thing that bothers me is that Black Sorcerers and Sorceresses (ones that transform into spiders) got old age ! Sorcerer is 60/40, and sorceress around 46/48. What's the special ability of God Mountain spellcasters ? Ah yes, spider transformation when seriously wounded. Which is a survival ability. It doesn't make them any more powerful, just grants them a chance to survive stray arrows or harpies. Something they sorely need without Air magic or Sacred status. Now, designers of Dominions3 basically took that survival power away, because you're soon to die from old age anyway. Why should I pay for Growth just to benefit from marginally useful survival ability ? What's worse, old age on Sorcerers results in -1 hp. With just 9 hp, it's even harder to survive long enough to count as 'seriously wounded' God Mountain mages aren't even best researchers. Black Sorcerer is 8 research for 250 money and not sacred, but with 60/40 age (currentage/maxage). Regular Sorcerer is 7 research for 190 momey. Not too bad for Machaka. ------
- light infantry of sub-Mictlan quality. Terrible province defence. If you complained about Markatas, machakan infantry is something they can easily kill. With so bad province defence you'd be expected to press attack, I guess, but with what ? Certainly not your starting army. Is Machaka 'insert SC to continue' nation ? Satyrs kick their asses. - hoplites and cheap archers are usable, but nothing to get excited over. Hoplites are sloow, and their forest survival adds insult to the injury, because they only get 'food bonus' in forests, not better mobility. Too slow to get anywhere. -Following units are full of self-contradictions: all spiders: high damage physical attack with added poison is bad. No synergy at all. spider riders: much too expensive to use as archers for their exraodinary (for l.cav) 10 precision. Much too big, too short-ranged and too expensive to slow advancing enemies with web. spider knights: just like blood9, it assumes you want your units to die. Otherwise, it's just too big and much too expensive heavy cavalry. black hunter: everything that is true for spider knights is also true for black hunters, but worse. mages from God Mountain: Kristoffer(?) made them more survivable with spider transformation, but realized it's too poweful ability for capitol-only non-sacred mages so they need a serious debuff. They're battle-survivable and fragile at the same time. spidar warriors: 7 encumbrance 5(!!!) defence stealthy heavy infantry for 30g/36r. I realize I should make use of their excellent priests (+10 stealth Ear, +15 patrol Eye) and varied mages, but everything else just sucks. Well, maybe Bane Spiders don't, but not for such price. It would seem I need order3 productivity3 Growth3 + SC to play Machaka...And milk my provinces to death with 15 patrol priests. And lots of Air magic battle pretender to stop arrows from obliterating my army&mages. -> Comments: A. Black Sorcerers are 60/46. Sorceresses are 45/48. AFAIK, the ages of the Machakan mages are automatically calculated. Human, lots of magic, etc probably equals 60 years. Human, Fire magic, etc probably equals to 46. Black Sorcerers have a 1/4 chance of getting Nature 1, which increases their maxage enough to make them not-old. They also have a 1/4 chance of a Death pick, which makes them more resistant to old age. What you SHOULD complain with their old age is the fact that it bestows them +2 encumberance... but then, they only start with 2, which is better than all humans and most other nations. Sorceresses don't usually start old. Startage of commanders is a bit random, but while some may start old, just as many should start with 6 instead of 3 years until the start of their old age. They also have Death magic, again, making them more resistant to the effects of the old age. Great Hide Shields are much worse than most shields for protecting the wielder... but with a parry of 6, they are very good at deflecting arrows. Only parry affects that. Tower Shields have parry 7, Great Hide Shields of the Hoplites have 6, and lower encumberance and defence penalty too. And about those cheap archers, and uselessness of Black Sorcerers... Flaming Arrows. Machaka is a Fire nation with cheap archers. Unlike Marignon, they can forge cheap Fire boosters (Skull of Fire). And Marignon's (and Abysia's, who doesn't even get native archers) mages are old, too, but suffer from it more than Machaka's, because they won't get any Nature or Death. And again, unlike Marignon, Machaka's infantry has shields, and good shields at that. B. 1. their mages have excellent battlefield magic 2. growth 3 and you won't have too many affliction problems because of old age 3. their mages can cast flaming arrows 4. their sacreds might cost a lot [again with good scales this is not a big problem], but if the rider dies you will still have the spider. So basically its 2 units in 1. They should work very well with bless combo / good scales, especially in raids. C. Also many of the Black Sorcerers can cast Twiceborn, all with a Skull Staff. That helps mitigate the age problem. As said, excellent battle magic: Blade wind, Magma Eruption, Flaming Arrows. Black Sorcerers with Fire Shield & Invulnerability make good thugs. That's what their spider form is for. If they had a change shape command they'd be brutal. As for units, Spider Knights are pretty robust and once you've got a bunch of them, the web becomes surprisingly effective. Dual bless Black Hunters are also impressive. Fire/Earth works well for the Hunters, Fire/Nature once the rider dies. I wouldn't worry about arrows, they've got either good protection or lots of hp. The low MR of the spider form is their biggest problem. They weren't affordable in Dom2, but with the extra money in Dom3... Blessed Hunter Lords make good thugs as well. The spider form of the Black Sorcerers is sacred too, but I've never been able to get them blessed reliably. D. Imho Machaka is weaker than in Dom2. Some major changes disadvantage them a lot. Some of them were mentioned already, but i will list all changes that imho hurt them in a summary. -Fever Fetish nerf In Dom2 Machaka was really good at hoarding fever fetishes. You used those gems mainly for flaming arrows and for FftS. -Flames from the Sky price increase The combo of fever fetish hoarding and spamming of flames from the sky was quite useful for Machaka in the lategame in Dom2. -Minor nerfs for fire battlemagic Fire battlemagic was slightly nerfed, at least the midgame spells like falling fires. In lategame you get pillar of fire though. In Dom2 Machaka was an average nation, imho fine. In Dom3 i would still rate them average, but they are slightly weaker than in Dom2. E. in strict game terms the fever fetish nerf isn't so bad. Recruit an indy commander and stick a fetish on him 9 turns. You'll pay about 50 gold all told for the 9 gems, which is less than 6 gold/gem - a great price. The real world micromanagement of a big pile of fetishes is of course utterly grotesque. From the micromanagement point of view, they should incapacitate a commander somehow rather than kill him. At the very least if a fetish kills somebody in a lab the fetish should go back to the lab. Actually, that would be a good rule for any noncombat death in a lab. If I forget to take a booster off a commander aging to death can't the undertakers take the magic items off the corpse?
Nothing wrong with Machaka, its a powerful, fun nation to play F. Personnally the only problem I have with Machaka is the lack of death gems, which seem to be a site distribution problem (or just bad luck for me). I've noted playing Ermor and C'tis that I find many little death income sites with astral or water searches and the very good death gem sites only with d3 mages ; the d1 sites seem to be mostly battlefields giving just 1 gem. With Machaka you'll have lots of d1 mages, a small number of d2, only 1/40 black sorcerer d3, and you have no astral or water mages to find lifeless lakes etc..., what, coupled with no death gem capitol income makes death gems very rare (I've never found a death income site with a fire or earth search, don't know if some exist, I've found one or two dying forests with nature but they seem rare). So you have to hope having luck with Dark Knowledge, and DK cost 1 more gem than all other site detection spells, without a starting death income you won't be able to cast it a lot without alchemizing your other gems (and if you are unlucky you lose your rare death gems in the process without finding good sites). Don't know if I am cursed but in the 3 games I've played with Machaka I had less than 10 death gems income after 30 or so turns, each time with more than 30 provinces all explored d1 at least and some with dark knowledge, and you need a lot those gems for boosters as d2 is the minimum to make this path useful on the battlefield. Machaka has also the general "no air" weakness, a problem worse for nations with very light (weak against arrows) or very heavy (not cost effective against lightning) troops, the two kinds of troops Machaka have, but it's something that affect any non air nation. When there are anti-fire spells with water/earth, and when water magic is the easiest to develop, allowing all nations to use anti-cold spells/items, the only anti-shock / anti-arrows spells/items are in air magic, and air magic is ridiculously hard to develop with the boosters only forgeable at A4. The air nations are boosted by the new randoms system giving no way to all non air nations to have protective spells/items to counter wind guide or lightnings without an enchantress or crystal amazons province, or incredible amounts of gems for the empowerements (80 to have a mage able to cast thunder ward, 120 for arrow fend, 170 to start to forge air boosters... hum). I think it would be a good idea to add anti-arrows items/spells out of air magic, in example in fire ("arrow combustion"), an anti-shock version of "fire ward" accessible with two non-air path, or an air booster needing just a level 1 like the water one. Machaka has good access to Legions of Steel, which is a very effective anti-arrow spell. Lightning is a weakness, but I think it's good that most nations have weaknesses, and with Machaka able to field almost unlimited amounts of LoS'ed chaff (cheap warriors plus supply items), it's a pretty mild weakness. Lightning Machaka often means frying 1 or 2 10/3 warriors - big whoop. I agree Machaka would be far stronger with death gems. However, 27.5% of sorcerers, and all Dark Sorcerers, have D2, so D2 is easy to come by. The only units Machaka have that may benefit from LoS are hoplites and heavy spider riders, who are already good against arrows. Units with only natural protection like spiders without riders are not affected, as well as the machaka archers and the light infantries without armor. Also only 1/4 BS has D2, they have F2E2D1 + 1?. H. About fire vs air, fire is of course more destructive, and may kill the ennemies faster if they just cast offensive air spells (air lack a big ae medium level spell as efficient as falling fires). But most air nation have also access to water 2 mages to cast rain, some may have earth+water for fire ward, and fire indie mages also seem more common than air mages. At high construction levels, any nation having a fire 1 mage can empower him death 1 and forge fire boosters, when a non air nation will need a level 4 mage to start to forge them. Air can finally strike at a very longer range before high levels (once the fire nation has access to spells like pillar of fire this advantage of course disappear ). Finally the kind of national troops Machaka has will suffer against air in mid game (Machaka hasn't medium troops able to survive well against arrows, and the heavy hoplites cost too much ressources if they are to be killed by lightnings, lots of indie infantry with shields will have to be recruited). At really high levels there are counters to counters, like the use of shock immune summons, earth-fire, death-fire or nature offensive spells, mass protection earth spells etc... But Machaka will have big difficulties if targeted before by an air nation. Air nations: EA/MA/LA Caelum all have Water EA Lanka: no Water MA/LA Man: no Water EA Vanheim/Helheim, MA/LA Vanheim: none have Water Pythium: yes, it has Water too EA Arcos: Water via Mystics' randoms, good chance of Water/Earth Tien Chi of all ages: stronger Water than Air LA Marignon: some Air and some Water Shinuyama/Jomon: Water, Air via randoms I don't think Air/Water is a common combination. However, as Rain only takes Water 1 caster, even a single random is enough. Hum yes, not all have water mages, but Man at least has water in the crone randoms (up to a very rare level 2), and Vanheim can have fire on dwarven smiths (and may even have fire 1 + death 1 on an exceptionnal one).
8.22.3 Machaka a sorcerer¿s fevered arachnophobia Article Author: Baalz 8.22.3.1 Preface: This guide is written for the Conceptual Balance Mod, it seems like most games I¿m in lately are using it. You can use a lot of these ideas for vanilla games but the strategy verbatim won¿t work without CBM¿s changes. I also wanted to say this is a fairly advanced strategy I wouldn¿t really recommend for beginners, it requires a good amount of finesse and coordination of skills. Machaka is one of those nations you really want to like. Giant freaking spiders, I mean what¿s more fun that that theme? Unfortunately, they really struggle to be competitive for a number of reasons. For those bold enough to play a bit unconventionally though, the power of the sorcerers will have your enemies trundled up in a nice web awaiting you to get around to dinner. 8.22.3.2 No Black Hunters First, I need to dissuade you from the very flashy bait on your roster. Repeat after me ¿I will not buy Black Hunters¿. Keep saying that until you think you can stick to it. These guys are just so cool you can¿t help but want to tank your entire strategy to field them, dumping massive points into a good bless and ruinous amounts of gold into recruiting them. This unit is, I think the prime culprit as to why Machaka is so seldom competitive. Cool as they are, they just don¿t work as the centerpiece of your strategy. When you start thinking about recruiting them, remind yourself for that price and being cap only they¿re competing roughly with neifel giants, much more expensive than Vans or Knights of the Chalice, and the comparison isn¿t even close. Their hitpoints are too low, they¿re size 6 so they get swarmed and this drastically reduces their damage output, their second form (riderless spider) doesn¿t benefit from the same bless as their first form and has a terrible MR and damage output, etc. etc. They are very cool, and there are some niches where they¿re useful (they *LOVE* elephant snacks), but I don¿t think it¿s possible to be very competitive with them as the centerpiece of your strategy. This leaves you with quite a problem though. The Black Hunters look like badasses, while everything else on your roster looks anemic. If we¿re not gonna use the hunters, what are we going to do? Well, my subtitle gives my angle away, you¿ve got to play this nation thematically. Your strength is in your sorcerers and your spiders. 8.22.3.3 What should you recruit? - Spider riders Since I just went on at length about not recruiting the hunters, you¿ve by now correctly guessed I¿m looking at the smaller giant brown spiders. Don¿t get confused, I¿m not talking about the spider riders, those are merely the chauffeurs who get your spiders to the fight. If you look at the 125 gold Black Hunter and compare it to the 30 gold spider rider you will correctly conclude that he¿s easily worth the 4 times cost he¿s priced at. What that fails to consider is the spider that you keep when the rider dies. 5 Black Hunters (a reasonable raiding squad) cost what 20 spider riders do and can likely do a better job than they can, but are they worth 20 giant spiders? Generally no, and the brown spiders don¿t require a blessing nor many resources and thus are even more drastically cheaper. 20 giant spiders is certainly a reasonable raiding squad. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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