I genuinely didn't know that the Black Sorcerer turned into a Hunter Spider on death! Since they can't voluntarily shapeshift, that implies that the Spider is actually their true form...

You have to admire illwinter for giving the Hunter Spider both the smart mount and the stupid tags

A couple of things to mention: 1) your black sorcerers and sorceress's are tougher than they look, both have wounded shapeshift and turn into higher HP spiders. This makes the units far more resistant to disease than they appear, which is handy because they are both typically old. D3E3 at const7 give you Eye pendants for disease healing in the later game and is easily achievable, as is the disease grinder artefact and combos with the fever fetish to create a nice gem generation site in the late game for Fire and Death gems. 2) Your sacred black spider rider can no longer successfully repel, the mount-rider size change and the new falchion weapon makes repel pretty much useless. 3) Summoning elephants is fairly good, they cant trample your spider riders, and can act as a big force to push the enemy line into disarray and allow your spiders to engage favourably as otherwise you tend to have surrounded spiders. 4) Anasi are heretics, so you can experiment with some hellbless and rely on them to manage your candles, but their heretic score is lower than EA bouda's and the unit is fairly expensive. It is a good glamour mage, and is a path to fairy queens for late game magic diversity (water and Air access specifically) 5) Sorcerer's are good research slaves, especially with a research booster. They can use the Nature (+11RP for 10gems, cursed) and Glamour (+9RP for 5 Gems,-2MR) boosters and can also make lanterns or skulls if you have extra death gems. For this reason I personally like Drain scales, which also helps a bit with your lack of astral magic early-mid game.

Being a nation that excels so comprehensively, I think MA Machaka might be the new best nation to give to new players. They're maybe a little more cap reliant than one might like, but between Hoplites/Archers/Spider Knights (maybe also Spider Riders if they're as good in MA as they are in EA) for scales troops (yeah, there's some real stinkers on the roster, but I think the overall strength of MA Machaka's scales troops is actually quite high), exceptionally powerful sacreds (that proliferate beyond just cap recruitment) and a properly realised mage roster that doesn't rely on communions or weird low paths, you don't end up with quite the same issue as Ulm/Marignon where you're kinda quarantining off a large portion of the game to just focus on 'make guys and then red arrows'.

Other buff spells to recommend for this nation include the Temper Armors line (gets your Hoplites up to 20 protection with wide AOE and no gem use) and Group Regeneration; not many nations get enough nature access to do that one, but this nation does get enough N3 access that you can realistically paint it on a couple dozen squares of troops (An N3 can do 6 squares before sleeping). And Web is the other stand out combat spell; sorcerers can spam it quite a bit, and it amplifies the overall national approach of entangling the enemy army.

Something I noticed when trying to come up with a strategy for Machaka is that the one unusually good thing about their basic troops is that they have 2 encumbrance, which is lower than basically any other recruitable human troops in the game. They'll fatigue very slowly in combat compared to most infantry. I feel like they could exploit this by casting spells that make combats drag out and lower hit chances, like darkness and blur. Also, they'll be able to repel most kinds of units with their 4-length spears, which could waste opposing units' stamina even more. With some of the new buff spells in Machaka's paths, they might be worth a second look now. Especially as a first line to tire enemy units before your hoplites come in, since their encumbrance is much more severe, you don't want them to be in the fight as long.

as a bit of an amateur entomologist, I have been meaning to try out Machaka for years, hope the mount “bug” gets fixed soon! plenty of time to wait, so many cool changes to nations I love, so no rush! haha!

I think a contributing factor to the spider knights not webbing much is that they can now displace human-sized units, meaning that when before they would be stuck behind a line of human units for a time spitting webs, they now just push through into melee ASAP.

I didn't realize they got glamour in addition to the buffs to spiders and all the incidental buffs. Pretty legit nation now!

Oh man, I was waiting for this, MAchaka is a much improved nation. Two small recommendations for lategame magic: G random Anansi can use two gems to overcast Spirit Masks (AoE 5 Fear buff) and G3 Sorcerors can do the same to overcast Warriors of the Dawn (AoE 20 Awe). This should help make your high density Hoplites much more dangerous lategame.

Love these videos wish they were longer haha I know your trying to keep them short:)

All spider units should have at least FEAR: 100. Because let's face it, out of all the stuff in this game, gigantic spiders that shoot webs to entrap you while they bitey bite is the most terrifying.

Loving these, good stuff.

The reason spider knights are bad now is that they used to get 14 piercing damage bites, but now it's only 9 due to getting 11 strength. I complained about it as a possible bug on Steam forums as it seems weird for a size 7 unit.

This kind of video soooo helpful thanks. Need MA Abysia and MA C'tis :)

A fun fact is that every Sorcerer, ideally with a couple XP stars (for morale) can be a pretty solid PD raider thug with enchantment 3 and a Lion pelt... And a couple Glamour gems. Death randoms can be much heavier thugs with Soul Vortex. EA Machaka can do the same with their 140 gold witch doctors, BTW; one can defeat 19 PD with those with at least some poptypes. But only Machaka has plentiful access to the GDFN path combination needed to do all 3 of the Fear/Awe/Confusion buffs, plus personal Regeneration.

The God Spider with Fear and Awe is a very funny expansion, a monster with high enough protection and a bless that turns all of your Voice of the Hunters into cut rate versions of the same. You tank the heck out of your scales but Monster plus a couple of Voice of the Hunters in pairs means you can get outsized expansion. After a bit I was trying to get my god killed just to see what would take it.

Fun vid. New matchaka's spider sacred commanders are also fun if you give their spider blacksteel barding with a dmg resistance bless. Their size means humans almost never hit the commanders on top, so they can be kinda nasty prot-tanks without fluffing if you figure out reinv situation.

One thing to think about is the difficulty in blessing all of your spider sacreds. It's just kinda difficult to get them all blessed, so having blesses which don't require them to be blessed, such as Larger, is a pretty reasonable option overall.

I've not watched the video yet, but did read the video description. I chose an imprisoned pretender with, with non-incarnate blesses for black hunters, as well as bumping order and production scales. This allows you very strong mid game black hunter armies, but you can spam out Spider Riders for expansion. With Spider Rider, force them into melee and they make competent expanders. P.S I am a massive noob!

There's something very funny about the hunter spider having the stupid tag while also having smart mount (100). It'll find its way home but Pantokrator help you if you get in its way.

Playing MA Machaka right now and either spiders were fixed or you were off about the web spit, but they definitely use it and a decent amount of time too

Truly terrifying.

They have a national province enchantment now too (weavers of the wood) for buffing pd with spiders and catching invisible stealthers. You also skipped the eye of the lord! They're a useful utility commander for collecting taxes from provinces you take with stealth, and also just the cheapest commander for leading expansion parties or blessing your sacreds.

I like these quick overviews. They seem like a good nation to try transformation shenanigans with, i think that might help break into astral and other magic paths too. twiceborn + transformation if you feel like spending extra gems for insurance. And gift of health seems a great choice with those beefy sacred spiders to synergise with that. I'd love to hear what you have to say on Therodos and if their old strats from dom 5 are still viable given all the changes from that game. With the addition of caves they're a little bit stronger and the higher income means they might get their forts up a bit more easily. But i've only had a short amount of time to play around with them.

I mostly do SP, but am trying Weaver of Tales dread/awe rainbow with not-trashed scales.

EA Machaka also got a major facelift.

How do you avoid taking too much friendly fire from banefire/shadowblast? Banefire in particular seems worrying since decay seems to generally be a death sentence. You've got decent MR, but not incredible, idk if it's just not actually a problem or something though.

I personally don't think Black Hunters need a big bless. Larger is enough for them to crush expansion, throw some attack skill or whatever on them if you're taking the paths anyway and have spare points.

If only Machaka had decent +20 non fort PD, I never pay much attention to it in multiplayer games but against the AI... With the exclusion of the Pigmy. All other non armored units I don't think I have ever seen used. Even as siege chaff, maybe that's why Machaka died in the Middle Ages.

I think that the 2nd pretender design has magic path values inconsistent with the blesses and not enough bless points at least for a vanilla game. Not sure which actual magic paths intended e.g. Earth 3 and larger. You probably edited the paths after assigning blesses?

Is there special rules in multiplayer games? liek faster reaserch or such?

Also, I can't find the pretender "the great spider" physical form in my game. did you use a mod? Plus you put "Larger' bless with N3 E3 wich is impossible afaik

I was just thinking how they haven't changed all that much but shit - they can cast luck on their superior hoptlites now?? damn that's gamechanging

Can confirm: hunter spooder > black centaur

And here, I was thinking "Damn i've been asking so many guides to Zan but what I REALLY need RN is a deep guide about mutltiplayer game and how make most use of mages cause I rly feel like I never use my mages before lvl8 spells, but i've been spaming him too much lately so i'm gonna wait for his next video to ask that" *Sees Zan uploaded a video 17 min ago*

Obfuscate need 6 Glamour and LARGER also need 4 So Weatherr of Tales build as you showed is not real.

Please do Phaeacia

Does this game have gandalf?