Learning New Race (Machaka)

[Teleolurian]

Seriously tired of victory with all my standard races (Man, Ulm, Jotun(Niefel)) and looking for a challenge. Booted up as Vanheim, but they were also relatively simple to grasp. Since I'm usually very bad at finding spells to research towards, I decided to check out a theme without one strong path in magic (Machaka). Since I don't know too much about this nation, here are my impressions from a quick game where I lost just about everything to Vanheim and indies:

1. Machaka has really good cavalry.
2. Machaka has very interesting priests.
3. The infantry seems more or less average or below-average.

Once again, these are initial impressions. I could really use some help from Machaka players regarding:

1. Pretender design (pretenders that work well with Machaka, scales, and magic holes to fill with my pretender).
2. Early spells to research towards.
3. A quick rundown of units to build.

Generally when testing, I'll set a unit to Order3/Misfortune2. With Machaka's range of magics, I also shifted Magic to +1 for a slight boost on research. I also always set the temperature scales to national defaults.

My general early play style is to research whichever path my nation has a lot of entries in, defaulting to Alteration, and splashing Construction. With Holy-3 Priests, I'll prophetize one of them; otherwise, I'll do it to a spy or a strong commander.

Regardless, my Machakan game didn't go over very well, as a result of two horrible pieces of luck (coastal flooding and hurricane), a nearby aggressive neighbor, and a poor showing versus independents.

Thanks in advance for any help offered.