Dominions 6: MA Machaka Pre-game

shenanigan bless hehe

Spooky spoooders in the month of October!

Just finished EA machaka video, great timing!

OCTSPOODERS.

RAIN OF SPIDERS!

MA Machaka is one of thise places that really fell off the wagon due to powercreep. You can tell because not only is it weak, but its fluff hasnt been updated to reflect what happened between EA and MA. There is NO mention of the former Lion Kings or even the other clans. No its ALL SPIDER ALL THE TIME. So Illwinter forgot about the guys, clearly.

The Machaka Hoplite is arguably a better Hoblite than the Arcosephale Hoplite. They have roughly equivalent armor when the shield isnt applied, and The Great Hide Shield gives a big enough parry bonus that it actually gets used reasonably often. Id rather have 27 protection a little over half the time than 40 protection around a quarter of the time. and to top it off, the Great Hide Shield is a lot less encumbrance than a Hoplon.

I like to plan a bless that keeps the human hunter spider riders alive as long as possible since you dont want stupid uberblessed hunter spiders attacking your own troops. Undying, larger, air shield, and regen are good. Maybe Awe or Fortitude. I like a low light vision/spirit sight since no one get it. Your Spiders from God Brood are magic beings who need magic leadership, which your voice of the hunter leader lacks so its something that could go into a bless. You also dont have astral natively so making leadership crowns isnt an option.I wouldnt go hardskin or barkskin as your mages can easily cast the armor skin buffs. Most of your mages are non-sacred and old so recuperation and mend bones wont work. Your big mages all transform and thus are quite tanky, if they buff themselves then attack. Transforming units with regen can double up on the luck buff healing back into their first form which is again lucky. Dom6 changed transformations where you no longer drop the items you have on you.This is a great construction nation for thuging due to solid paths for buffing, transforming mages and Voice of the Hunt chassis. Disease also will have a hard time killing your mages due to transforming when they hit the last hp. The hoplite will slow your otherwise relatively fast armies down so its ok skip them and not grab production scales. Ears of the Lord are critical to your armies for spaming luck and blessing on everyone. If you go construction you want an early Anansi to craft glamor veils for all your luck buffers. The addition of glamour and Luck was dom6 greatest gift to the sons of Africa.

i basically only play MA machaka and asphodel, so looking forward to seeing how you play this out. for pretender, i reeaaaally like larger + regen bless, and if u can fit it, enchanted blood with weaver of tales chasi (if you can fit all 3 it makes both the rider and the spider both super hard to kill, without enchanted blood it still works great but riders are in noticeably more danger). the shapeshifter is really useful in actually using the pretender without too much fear of him dying in battle like you would normally with a human-like pretender. i still wouldnt have him try to solo many things tho until you can turn him into a pseudo-supercombatant (if not actually a supercombatant, im not good enough at this game to tell if he is or not) with items

My favorite Gods for MA Machaka always have Larger. Berserk is also a good buy imo, but the key to understand is that you aren't building your bless for the tiny guy on top of the spider, you are building your bless for the Giant Spider that may or may not have a rider.

I love MAchaka, especially after the changes to them in Dom6 but if only the PD on MAchaka wasn't so worthless, I mainly play singleplayer games and against any hard+ ai & with misfortune events you will be bled to nothing because your forted provinces cannot hold against anything. Just give their little unarmored warrior some furs and a leather cap and it would fix most of the issue

I like this nation. I have gone imprisoned, but I also only play vs the computer. But it allows for good scales and pretty decent bless in my experience, and your spiders do not have that hard of a time to expand. Also, getting barding on your giant spiders makes them from very tankie to extremely tankie.

Spoder god is clearly the only choice for the reign of S(piders)orcerers

I do hate spiders. Might have to root for the bad guys. Which are good guys compared to spiders.

Might as well get 2born and stygian bless

Thuggie McBlessFace? Imprisoned hell bless would be great
Shame that Larger puts the summon spider at size 8😢

I am late.

I go with awake scorpion king 6e, 2f scale: 1 prod, 3 heat, 1 unlucky. bless: hard skin. since your sacred are mostly spider with 16 nat protection you get the full effect of increasing your nat prdot. If you cast Iron skin, you can get 26 protection on the spider.

for the scorpion king, I just took him for it 4 attacks. He will survive in mele. I equip him with regen ring and 2 fire mace ( the aoe 1 one). he slower than the sacred sadly.

addition: Test game is going very well. The double mace of eruption shred people. to bad my scorpion king is slower than the sacred and cannot push it. Currently tring to see if it it good alone. note: his prot is 32 (19 basic+ 3 earth magic + 5 bless + 5 Iron skin)

My fav middle age. Machaka gets discounted Lion pelts so needs the Earth random sorcerer and with a dwarven hammer thats1N 1E 18 invulnerability. Before the update I barely used Spider knight (and went just hunter expansion) but ironically now it can be be used in a whole series of one off formations* to get turn 2 expansion safely, early expansion party departure, and later to act as reasonable speed infantry role substitute (a bit like Sauromatian serpent rider v Lancer combo fast/cheap expand role) to pair up with the (as you say) very main hunter flankers - later can combine with real infantry again. That relies on: Weaver of Tales imprisoned D6 and 2 prodn/2 magic/1 growth and no other scale tanking, with enlarge/bloodlust/LV/Blur. I absolutely had no need for awake with that bless & scales needed to do fast expand (lost only 2 hunters by turn 25). *Basically prophet the 1st cmdr, and go with hunter/spider knight flank, then with reinforcement move knights to concealed diagonal attack nearest from behind the flankers stacked with the rubbish infantry so you can delay reinforcement until 2nd party out. The next fast expansion party goes out into last cap circle province with hunters/some knights so you do not run out of bless (the H1 spider commander advances after 2 blesses) or get too surrounded and only drop knights to H1 spider guards when 2nd H1 afforded - if you wait for 2 H1 spiders before expanding with poor scales it will be slow. Sorry for the pseudo religious rant but like Sauromatia in EA it is my favourite and for me they are very fast.