Machaka: one request and one question

[tinkthank]

I have always pictured the witch doctor as a guy hunched over his bubbling cauldron, a string of shrunken heads nearby, puzzling over new ingredients, experimenting, and had considered this to be a vital part of "research", so I had never seen the conflict in his high research costs. Be that as it may, I am slowly getting used to the "new" Machaka, although not entirely pleased; but one thing I have noticed:
- The new research value of 3 seems to be "stuck" in certain situations, that is even a magic level of 3 will not boost it up appropriately *until 1 full turn has passed*. Is this a bug?

That was my question.
Here is my request:

Now that the witchdoctor is weaker and less expensive, what do you people think of the idea of having either
- the bane spiders and their spiderlings OR
- the hunter lords and black hunters OR
- Black sorcerors and Sorceresses

be no longer capital-dependent? I tend to feel that bane spiders and their spider brethren should be available in all fortresses. I would like to know how you feel. And I would like to know if this is moddable (because my guess is that my request will not be met with enough gleeful support to make any official changes). If it is, could anybody make that mod if it is not too difficult? (I realize this is a lot to ask, but I am afraid I am a computer idiot.)

[fahdiz]

In the thread which got deleted, we were talking about some Machaka change ideas. Zen mentioned his idea for a new sacred unit - namely the Lion Hunter, who comes with one semi-random affliction. I think it's great and fits the theme perfectly. And the Lion Hunters could be available outside the capitol.

[Wauthan]

Ah yes, thanks Fahdiz. I had forgotten the "Summon Totem" spell from that thread. Lion Hunter eh? Sounds interesting but wich unit should it replace? Having a higher tier sacred unit is sort of redundant for Machaka since their spiders are perhaps the strongest of all sacred units. Making it lower tier means it will compete with the common units.

As I mentioned the only change that came about when I turned the militia into sacred "Hunters" was that in the presence of a priest they all died instead of running away. Fire9 allowed them to take some units with them though and nature9 caused them to stay put and give a lot of units affliction. Death9 was perhaps the best of all since you got a very long Lasting PD when all those crappy units turned into soulless. Basicly twice the meatshield for cost. Funny enough Water9 just meant they died faster since the militia outran my other units and thus died very quickly without injuring anything.

Indeed I'm starting to wonder just how I managed playing Machaka earlier. They got to have the worst PD of any faction.

[tinkthank]

Hello, and thanks for answering so far.

I think I posted Last week asking if the "research stuck at 3" was a bug, and I couldnt find this thread, and did a search, and saw it was no longer there -- was that the thread that got deleted? (I was away over the weekend.) Did I do anything wrong to make it get deleted? (And does this "stuck at research 3 for one turn" happen only to me?)

Oh most helpful Wauthan: I would be happy to have the bane spider and his apprentices be non-capital and somewhat weakened, perhaps a point or two less defense and/or defense for a slightly smaller gold cost. The lesser spiders have a map movement of 1 (I think), one could consider giving the bane gentleman a similar 1-movement. I would not like to see the Ear become non-holy, regardless of his priestly powers, since a 70-cost spy is a bit much.

Tons of thanks.

[Wauthan]

Errh... The reasons why that thread was deleted are a fair bit murky. Apparently it got hijacked and tumbled out of topic.

And it's not the abilities of the Banespider that causes trouble. They are fairly average and the Banespider actually dies a whole lot considering the high cost. It's his baneweapons which is more or less a onehit kill since decay causes the unit to make a Magic Resistance check or die. This might take some trial and error. Hopefully someone brighter than meself will jump and advice a course of action.

Oddly enough I have no problem whatsoever with the edited Witch Doctors. I never built them before I gave them 2 levels of Priest (ditched their stats to compensate) but that's just in my "wierd ideas mod" I use when I want to test ideas. Ironically when I did this Machaka AI steamrolled Ermor by massing Witch Doctors.

[tinkthank]

OK, fair enough.

But wont the bane spider's high cost keep him from being "mass produced", as you fear? Perhaps ditch the bane blades in favor of something else?

Priestly witch doctors sound good by the way, as long as their cost got upped. Where is that mod?

[Wauthan]

It's not so much as being mass produced in sheer number but the fact that since it could be produced in any castle. This would allow the Machaka player to produce Bane Spiders right where it would hurt the most as well as being able to produce a large amount of them (one in each castle every turn) in the later game when gold is less of an issue. I don't know about you but getting hit by fourty Bane Spider assassinations in my capital in one round is a bit scary.

The mod i mentioned is not one I sent to Illwinter. It's full of all kinds of crazy edited units like landlobsters, spellcasting bears and archers with 100 precision. I just use it to fool around with the game and learn how stuff works.

[tinkthank]

OK, thanks.

[Wauthan]

All the units you mentioned are produced by the special Machaka starting sites, so sadly it's not all the easy to do away with. I would really have liked to have the bane spiders, and their weaker brethren, as noncapital units myself.

I'll see if I can do something along this line in the next Version of my Empowerment mod. I need to test it though, and putting the most deadly "basic" assassin in a position where it can be massproduced sounds like it could topple the scales so to speak.

You seem to have given this some thought. What about adding another unit to Machaka? Something small and cheap that still works as a support unit perhaps... Perhaps one could add the "Spider" animal unit to Machaka, give it webspit and stealth and then add a sort of stealthy "Brood Keeper" unit to go with it. Both would be pretty weak units but atleast you get a cheaper scout unit that's available out of capital.

But then again Machaka already got a stealthy priest. Perhaps if I lost the priest levels to lower the cost and turned it into the "Brood Keeper"?

Sorry for rambling. Modding always gets the gears spinning in my head.