MP: ComfortZone - All MA Nations - Running

[archaeolept]

you can do the s9n9e4 with an imprisoned Sphinx order 3, 1 prod, 3 heat, 2 misfortune 1, 0 luck, and 2 drain. I

see - this is why "machaka never wins" - people keep trying insane bless strats. go for scales, a good pretender, and spider knights/hoplite armies

oh, yeah, their PD is truly awful. don't bother with it, other than a pt or 2 to dissuade scouts.

[rabelais]

Machaka's hoplites in dom2 were awesome... and their archers were cheaper...not sure why they were nerfed for dom3. It's true that a critical mass of web attacks are shockingly effective in sp... but they'e never been a MP scarecard. also giving the sorcerors a break in the age dept (they have magic/demon blood after all) would go a long way to restoring machaka's battlemage potential. eagle eyes + fire darts is fun, but it stops there, pretty much.

I think Man will be ok in this game, it seems to me that CBM makes them weaker, so the old version with range 40 resource 8 longbows will do pretty well, even with the weaker pretenders.

[Xietor]

I have won my share of mp games. It is my humble opinion that the best, though admittedly small, path to victory machaka has is through an aggressive early game on the back of its Sacred Spiders. But there are more than one way to skin a cat.

You can get some of both worlds with a monolith s9n9 3order, 6 dom, 2 drain, 1 growth, 3 heat. Those are pretty good scales and gives you growth to lessen the old age effects of your best mages.

I have fought Machaka when it has had good scales, and it is basically helpless with hoplite armies. The stealthed banes can be easily mind hunted. The early thugs with constr 4 gear like banelords will plow through any castle bought troop that machaka can throw out.

In fact in 2 of the games I won I had 1 on 1 wars with machaka. And in both games they had decent players. And in both cases they had no bless and in both cases they were soundly beaten.

Though Sir_D_D did have an interesting strategy with them he had the Pheonix and used flaming arrows, arrow fend, hoplites, and various death summons and had several stealth bane armies, plus evocation spells.

But in the end they just came up short-way short-against Shinuyama who i was playing.
And when i fought them as Pythium it was a pretty big mismatch.

I think the sacred spiders with their web attack, poison, and a good bless, could make
Machaka somewhat feared. You could possibly get by without the e4 bless until you got relief depending on who you fought. But stellar cascades could be brutal for the spiders without it.

And the Monolith is superior to the Sphinx in that it can gate armies around. Oracle can gate as well, but i hate the 10 hps more than the immobility.

I guess you could always take a sleeping Lich, d5, e3, a3, and try to tie into death and use the Lich to beat off all comers in your dominion. That is a valid strategy with any nation. basically what I did with la arcos in Kingmaker, and what I would do if I ever played Man, Oceania, or any other race that had no tie in to thugs.

With diplomacy, and a Lich with the proper buffs, it is always possible to pull a game out of the hat.

All of that said, I have never played them in mp, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.