[B0rsuk]

Hey

It's fairly obvious that Machaka was implemented as an afterthought. I mean, it has curiously high number of units with one sentence description. Machaka is where all worst Dominions design decisions were dumped.
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.
------

To summariz my rant:

- 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.