Machaka – a sorcerer’s fevered arachnophobia

[Baalz]

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.

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.

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.

The spider riders have short bows, but for archery they’re generally way too expensive to be useful in using them. There are some situations where you’ll want to remember they have bows (attacking barbarian indies, casing flaming arrows) but by and large you’ll want to script them to attack in melee. They’ve got 0 protection and 10 hitpoints and are going to die in droves, which is exactly what you want. The great spider which you then get has 26 hitpoints and 14 protection – drastically more durable. And here’s the sneaky part – spiders don’t draw a salary. Once you’ve got rid of that pesky rider you don’t have to pay any upkeep for your swarms of spiders, and over time this will prove to be a dramatic advantage if you compose the bulk of your army from spiders.

Now, here is the first thing we come to that requires finesse. These spiders are decent, but you have to know how to use them. Their fangs have death poison, but you have to be able to hit and do 1 point of damage for the poison to be delivered. The hitting isn’t generally a problem even for high defense units because of the webbing, but high protection can be a problem. The fangs are doing only 13 damage and the spiders are size 5 so only one per tile, so things like knights (protection 17) generally take several rounds to poison, then a few more to die while dealing enough damage to kill a lot of spiders. It is a small comfort that even loosing battles often result in many more of the enemy dying as the poison keeps working, but obviously that’s not what you’re aiming for. If you stick to the weaker indies though and use appropriate battlefield strategies you can expand very briskly and reliably. Use your shortbows against indies with no shields, and separate your spider riders from your riderless spiders. Riderless spiders generally should be scripted to fire closest, they’ll close to a short range and spray the enemy front lines with webs, breaking them up and letting them straggle through piecemeal for the spider front line to eat rather than being swarmed by the small mammals. The spiders who still have riders will (rarely) be using their bows or (often) scripted to attack closest. The 14 protection and high hitpoints of the brown spiders is sufficient that an occasional friendly fire shot from a shortbow won’t hurt much, so use the cheap Machaka archers with your spiders to help overcome the reduction of damage output which comes from being size 5.

Now, generally you’re gonna be recruiting spider riders, but on the turns where you are tight on gold (putting up a new castle or whatever) go ahead and recruit some spider knights. You won’t be able to build too many because of the resource cost, but they’ll nicely round out your options for dealing with the tougher indies and still end up as spiders when they do go down. If you’re *real* short on gold, the same logic applies to hoplites, though of course no spiders, no free upkeep, and sad Baalz.

Now, onto the next drastic divergence from how Machaka is usually played…well, to be fair how every nation is usually played. Your sorcerers are going to be used as workhorses. There’s a lot of stuff you’re gonna need them to be doing from a very early point. You also need some critical research done very early. This proves to be a problem as you can’t get done what you need done and have a bunch of people hitting the research early. So, you need to do what you always should be trying to do and use your pretender to plug the hole you need filled.

You’ve got some room to tweak this of course, but look at something like an awake great sage, 2 in most paths but a 3 in earth and 0 in blood. Now, let’s do a little math to see why I suggest the most urgent thing your pretender can do is just research. With magic-1 scale witch doctors have 4 research points, sorcerers have 8. For year one with tight finances, lets assume you use mostly witch doctors for your research and for simplicities sake lets just say each researcher contributes 5 research points. Let’s say in an ideal scenario you don’t do anything but recruit research mages who all only research – no site searching, no forging, no leading armies, nothing but research. So, on turn two you have 5 research points, turn three 10, etc. By the end of year 1 you’ve researched 5+10+15+20+25+30+35+40+45+50+55 = 330 points worth. The great sage I suggest above has 33 research points in magic-1, so by himself he generates 33 X 12 = 396 rp in the first year. My pretender is not “just” researching, what he’s doing is contributing all the work I can get out of every mage I recruit from my capital in the first year *and still* leaving me ahead in research. When you put it that way you can see why this makes a lot of sense for a nation focused on sorcerers.

So, spiders are going to be your initial focus. This means we don’t need resources and can take sloth-3. We also pick up nice points from taking heat-3 since our preference is heat-2. We’ll want to take order-3 (to crank out swarms of spiders), and magic-1 (you’re playing sorcerers man!). As I mentioned, you can tweak your pretender’s paths significantly, but at that minimum I already suggested this leaves you enough points to take a dominion of 4 with luck-3 and growth-2. These are *excellent* scales and luck-3 actually does a *whole* lot for Machaka in the first year. The tiny resource cost of the spiders means any large gold income event translates into an immediate extra expansion party, and thus an exponential increase in gold. Gem income events (common in a positive magic environment) are also extremely good for reasons I’ll get into in a minute. The other various good things are of course good, but any one of several gold or gem income events happening in the first year can have a dramatic impact on Machaka. Plus, you’ve got a couple very nice national heroes. Combine with this the fact that your sorcerers already have a very impressive magic diversity, and there’s not a heck of a lot your pretender needs to bring to the table in that regard, and most of it is covered by just having a 2 in the path.

Alright, so your scourge of spiders is spreading out in all directions, now lets examine the use to which we’re gonna put our sorcerers. Now, on first blush it seems ridiculous to have such a widely rainbow pretender, but leave him home researching while you manually site search with other mages. The thing is, what you really, really want is earth, fire, death, and nature gems. Your pretender isn’t gonna do any better a job at looking for those than a pair of sorcerers, but is going to contribute drastically more to research. In your first turns what you want is to have 2 black sorcerers and 2 regular sorcerers out site searching. This will give you a level 2-3 search in fire, earth & nature, and 1-2 in death. Because of the path overlap in an ideal situation have none of them overlap where they’re site searching, but when you inevitably do need to overlap try to have the sorcerers overlap black sorcerers so at least you’re covering a new path. Make sure you focus on the terrain that yields more gems: wastelands and swamps, then mountains and forests.

With just a little bit of luck your initial gem income will grow quite rapidly. Just one or two magic sites makes a very large difference at this point. Why? Because your pretender has meanwhile been hitting the books labeled “construction”, and very quickly hits level 2. Level 2 means dwarven hammers, which is why you took level 3 earth for your pretender, hoping you get the right random on a black sorcerer isn’t gonna cut it because timing matters a lot which is why you really want some initial earth sites. The second you’ve scraped together 15 earth gems (worst case scenario your capital income will get you there on turn 8) you’re gonna make a dwarven hammer. The dwarven hammer goes to the witch doctor you simultaneously recruited who then forges a fever fetish every turn forever.

Now, the reason you want initial fire sites is because your capital only fire income is only 1 and thus it’s a sputtering start to start forging fever fetishes using only it. With anything other than horrible luck though your 4 site searching mages will net you at least one extra fire gem income which is all you need, the fetishes will quickly start producing the fire gems you need. Now note, you only want to forge these using a dwarven hammer, the difference in rate of return is immense. 6 gems vs 10 gems, you’re practically doubling your return percentage. Your capital only nature income is 2, so as long as your roving site searchers turn up at least one nature site you can comfortably crank out fever fetishes forever. Hopefully you will have an easy time getting a bit more nature income and can scale up your production each time you can afford a new dwarven hammer.

Gah, this sounds like a micromanagement nightmare. Can you imagine trying to juggle a hundred fever fetishes around? Rest assured, I most certainly could not and would never (again) set myself up to do so. That’s ok though, once again the spider’s have you covered. While you’ve been prepping this fever fetish factory you’ve also put up your second castle, preferably an 800 gold hillfort in the mountains. From this castle you recruit a neverending stream of spider lords at 50 gold a pop. These guys have 13 hitpoints, which in and of itself is nice for a guy holding a fever fetish, but (you probably know where I’m going with this my now) once he dies you get a giant spider commander with 26 more hitpoints! This means that with no juggling or micro at all this guy will hold a fetish for 39 turns. Double bonus – no upkeep while he’s a spider and that’s not inconsiderable when you’re talking about the scale you’re gonna be farming at.

Now, option one is to just consider the transformation of 6 gems into ~35 a worthwhile job and don’t worry about it another second. Just milk the rubies every turn from your “pool gem” option and let the spiders die with the fever fetishes and it will have all been well worthwhile. The more anal of you are not gonna be able to do that so I’d like to offer a suggestion Meglobob gave me on how to manage this when you get to the end game and your spiders finally start dying. Rename your spiders with the turn number you gave them the fetish, each turn you just need to go through your nation overview and scan for one number which is at 1 hp.

Meanwhile, you’ve hopefully been able to scrape together a small death income with those 4 guys out site searching. Whatever death gems you’ve got will be funneled into dark knowledge which your pretender switched to research after construction-2. With any luck this will rapidly build up into a respectable death income as you’ve no shortage of death mages to cast it and your brisk expansion gives you plenty of juicy targets.

While your death income builds up, back to construction research. You’ll hopefully have a moderate death income and construction 4 researched before the end of year one, which is good because that’s about when you need to start worrying about opponents attacking you. You’ve probably stabilized to building 2-3 fever fetishes at this point, bottlenecked by forts to recruit spider lords (you really want to start cranking out sorcerers from some of your forts!). You’ve got earth gems and fire gems to spend on other stuff, so crank out a couple more dwarven hammers and set some sorcerers to crank out a stream of bane lords which is a quick step up from where you researched dark knowledge.

Bane lords cost 4D and require a level 2 death mage. With luck you could be fielding 2 per turn along with the 6E & 6F for a fire brand and golden shield. Your most likely bottleneck is earth gems, you can swap in different equipment according to what you’ve got available. Don’t use any gems wastefully though, because you’re far from through with uses for your sorcerers. If you’re struggling to equip what you can afford to summon, use some of your death gems to summon wights, they’re only 2 gems and are very cost effective if you’ve got the mages to steadily summon them.

The bane lords thus equipped are not quite tough enough to solo reliably, but used in small groups they’re hideously tough. They’ve got cold auras so for big fights where you’ve got several clumped together it can work very well to have your spiders hose the whole front line of both sides down in webbing to let everybody freeze while they struggle free. Note, these guys are not intended to be SCs, they’re frontline troops for armies supported by mages. They’re what you’re using once your spiders aren’t cutting it anymore by themselves. They are why you don’t have to worry about the rest of your anemic recruitable roster.

Ah, but that’s not it by a long shot. Construction – 4 has unlocked thistle maces for you. Forge one of those while researching enchantment, and now start enchanting your sorcerers who got a fire random with dragon master. Your sorcerous fever dream is now firing on all cylinders. You’ve got a steadily increasing flow of fire gems, 5 of which produce 3 fire drakes. Your bane lords are heavily armored and fire resistant from the fire brands, so this is wonderful synergy with a solid frontline and numerous deadly artillery who can eat most flankers which might try for the back. This synergy also works with the flaming arrows you’ll be wanting to shortly get.

Haha, lets see what else your black sorceries produce. Hammer out a couple cheap vine crowns and your nature random sorcerers can start building up a nice corps of vine ogres. You can also awaken some sleepers if your opponent starts laying down strong anti-undead measures – with some cheap equipment you don’t need many to hold your front line.

Now, these summons may not at first glance seem too intimidating, but I’d like to reiterate the time frame here. This is what you’re intending to fight your first war with, this is your year two troops. You’ve researched one school to level 4 and 2 more to level 3 and have a gem income from site searching with 4 multipathed mages while summoning very cheap things. Banelords backed by firedrakes sounds a lot more impressive when you remember they’re gonna be matched up against the national recruits of your opponent. Scoff mightily at your weak infantry, *this* is what the battlefield should look like for a nation subtitled “Reign of the Sorcerers”! Now note, you’ve built your nation up with very good scales and almost no upkeep from troops. You should be swimming in castles cranking out sorcerers and because your spiders cost next to no resources you can rapidly produce a staggering amount in short order if necessary.

Let’s not imagine that we’re sending our troops into combat without the very sorcerers our nation is built on, sorcerers and black sorcerers should be used liberally in combat. Machaka has some absolutely devastating combat mage options at every level. The magic path spread is such that you can easily do something drastically different each and every fight as your hapless opponent tries to counter you. Thistle maces, skull staffs, earth boots and flaming skulls are all easily forgable, pass them out freely. With boosters plus earthpower and phoenix power you have quite a bit of versatility. Consider some of these possibilities as your research progresses:

Falling fires/Magma eruption
Poison cloud/breath of dragon (spiders, bane lords & vine ogres are all poison immune and webbing drags battles out)
Panic/terror (webbing and poison are both great when your opponent routes)
Flaming arrows + cheap, low resource archers
Shadow blast
Bane fire
Charm
Strength of giants (works surprisingly well with spiders, makes it much easier to punch through armor and poison units)
Legions of steel (just what you wanted for your banes/wights!)
Marble warriors (perfect spell for vine ogres)
Incinerate

And many more of course…

As you round the bend into late game you should have a staggering fire gem income, you’ve been cranking 2-3 fever fetishes out every turn since very early so it’s not hard to imagine pulling in over a hundred fire gems per turn well before things get to the crazy stages of end game. I can hear the yawns from the audience, don’t you usually struggle to put fire gems to use late game? It’s not like they’re pearls. Allow me to paint you the picture that results from not having to worry about being wasteful with fire gems.

You already had a very solid research lead with loads of sorcerers each with a good research. Most of them also now have lightless lanterns, you should be one of the research leaders.

Second sun cast with a whole lot of gems – you’ve already got heat 3 scales.

Your spies have mapped out every population center and anonymous volcanoes erupt from every one. Raging hearts (anonymously) is spammed dozens of times at every enemy castle. Your opponent’s income will very rapidly be cut drastically and very likely go under his upkeep cost while any fort he doesn’t put a dome over will stop being able to recruit anything even if he does have gold. Unlike Utterdark or other options, this is not damage he can dispel or recover from even if he pops up domes everywhere at this point, population has been killed and unrest raised to the point it’ll probably take the rest of the game to come down unless he patrols and kills most of the rest of his population himself. Your spies let you know any place that needs the pressure kept up.

Flames from the sky cast multiple times per turn - *every turn* at any significant grouping of non fire immune troops.

Flaming domes all over your own territories.

And, of course a ridiculous swarm of fire drakes, who make pretty decent meat shields even into late game. Who cares if the get soul slayed? You’ve got the fire income to summon 60+ of them per turn (assuming you have that many dragon masters) and you’d probably rather have them targeted than the SC you’ve got leading them.

Fire helms & flaming skulls for every black sorcerer + phoenix power = 5-6 level fire mages, just one lower for regular sorcerers if your capital is the bottleneck. No reason to fight any battle without several people flinging flame storm….

Mass produced rods of the phoenix

Plus, of course you can always alchemize. 100+ fire gem income = 50+ pearl income so you can still empower up and cast a wish every other turn if that’s your cup of tea.


You don’t have astral or blood and your death magic is weak, so there’s no getting around the fact that you’re gonna struggle in the very late game. This is a recipe for a very aggressive sorcerous nation, and needs to be played as such. What you can’t really do is let the game grind on into the uber late game where flocks of tartarians are built up everywhere and angels are teleporting around casting master enslave. Played right you get a good headstart, but like any good sorcerer the deal you made with the devil will eventually catch up with you, so you have to get into a winning position before that tortoise can catch up with your hare.