Dominions 6 - MA Machaka Strategy at a Glance
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- A new series where I do my best to give my first impressions on how I would recommend playing some of the nations of Dominion 6. A lot has changed and I hope my perspective as a Dominions 5 veteran helps you get started!
Do note I have not actually played a full multiplayer game as many of these as the game has only come out recently. I may redo some of these videos with more practical experience and information in the future.
If you have other ideas or suggestions on playing the nation, please write them in the comments below for others to see and discuss!
Shoutout to Sturm for creating the viewable summons at pretender screen mod
00:00 Summary
00:26 Units
02:05 Commanders
03:38 Summons
04:25 Spell Recommendations
06:44 Pretender Design (Bless)
08:47 EarlyGame
10:40 MidGame
11:20 LateGame
12:33 Outro
Here are my written notes if that helps too
MA Machaka
Summary: A nation of African inspired stealthy assassins, spies, spider riding knights, and hoplites.
Their magic access is strong and varied, if a little reliant on their capital.
Unit Summary
The majority of the roster is awful.
Hoplites are good. More defense/dmg compared to Arcoscephale hoplites.
Pygmies are good with archer buffs.
Poison arrow archers in forests (does not stack with poison arrow spell, but does with fire arrows)
Spider Knights have a hard time using their ranged attack right now, and that makes them a little weaker before. Very low damage now. Maybe needs a better weapon? Or more strength on their mount?
Black Spiders have become VERY strong in dominions 6. Hard to hit rider, better weapon, strength scaling on the spider bite, high MR on spider.
Commander Summary
Good commanders
Good Priests
Stealthy spies
Stealthy assassins
forest recruit mages
strong, but expensive recruit anywhere nature mage
A lot of contention for capital slots. Glamour vs Earth
Summons Summary
New spell to summon riderless sacred hunter spider for 2 gems each, cast capital only
Spell Recommendations
Ignite Arrows+ -- mention poison arrow, but that it needs to do damage and fire arrows does not.
Nest of Asps
Howl
Group Luck
Shadowblast
Banefire
Group Ironskin+
Gift of Giant Strength+
Furious Warriors+
Gift of Splendor / Nightmare Masks
Pretender Design
Bless the black hunter without tanking scales, this nation is expensive
Recommend not tanking production OR order
Alternatively bless the stealthy sacred spies to incite unrest everywhere
Can fit a titan on this nation too.
Gameplay
(Early)
Clear your cap circle ASAP with black hunters
Mass black hunters and rush your opponents
Prioritize forests -- for 600g you can start recruiting witch hunters and jumpstart research. Also poison arrow archers.
Recruit spider assassins when you can spare the resources
Use the tempo from not building a fort for research to attack a neighbor. Likely one that uses cavalry, since they have a bad time versus black hunters
Look for lizard shamans.
(Midgame)
Amass a good amount of stealthy spies and place them ahead of time in your intended target. Incite unrest as the war begins.
Leverage your magical versatility
Use what assassins you can, but keep in mind Earth magic is very good and only from your capital. Probably worth giving them items to make them more effective.
Traditionally this is the strongest phase of the game
Look for lizard shamans.
Twiceborn special mages (10% randoms in good paths)
(Late)
Capital mages surprisingly resilient versus remote attacks, spider riders not as much even if the spiders themselves are.
Really good access to late game glamour, death and nature (with boosters or summons).
Keep up the pressure, be relentless with spies, trade and prioritize nature gems for more sacred spiders.
Not having astral can be scary with mind hunt, so make sure you have something with astral magic. You'll need antimagic around this stage of the game. - Hry
You have to admire illwinter for giving the Hunter Spider both the smart mount and the stupid tags
Are the summoned spiders smarter or dumber since they have neither of those tags?
Smarter. The mount tag would be meaningless on them.
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...
the lore running deep
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.
I'm trying not to mention items for brevity, but Eye Pendants are 100% the solution. It's also not too tough to hit N4 with the out of cap sorcerers and just cast cure disease too!
I think losing repel is fine considering how much harder it is to hit the rider, and how beefy the spider itself is. Fair tradeoff for spider tank, and the falchion is a good weapon imo.
Idk about the elephants, N gems compete with more sacred spiders now in 6!
I like your point on #5. With how expensive research is on the nation investing gems on tall researchers does make a lot of sense. Holy cow you are right that the nation gets access to boosters from 4 paths! The research rush potential is real, if expensive! Outside of lanterns, I think the other 3 are available at const5? Thats pretty damn strong...
@@ZanGames yeah they are all Const5 items, hitting that early can get your research skyrocketing.
Given this, I think you either go for a super early war OR Fort up and tech rush using the money from your strong expansion.
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.
The nation has solid access to so many good paths it was hard to choose buffs. I think I'd swap out the furious warriors one if any, but I want to include it to get some vision on new spells in old paths. I don't think any two players would play Machaka the same, which is pretty cool. Other than super spiders of course. Spooder stronk.
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'.
You may be on to something. I think the important thing of the black hunters vs marignese knights is that hunters are silly with anybless, cant go wrong. Marignese need something. I think, haven't used them in 6yet.
In my head I'm thinking of MA Aby for my "first time player game" guide/series. One because they were the first on my channel, two because Abysians go brrr and have small path diversity, and three cause I can break people's fear of blood early(at the end of the series ofc). Maybe.
@@ZanGames imho there's fear of blood and there's not wanting to deal with the tediousness of blood. having to recruit patrollers and two scouts to ferry to and from a fort to get your slaves is beyond annoying, even with the shortcuts. they should change it so you blood search directly on forts and it pulls pop from the adjacent provinces like resources or something, and it puts the slaves directly in your stock
i love dominions and 6 is a godsend in some places but it still needs a lot more qol upgrades lol
@@ZanGames also, andramania might be a good beginner nation as well. good troops and simple easy to use mages that don't really require communions to perform, and can make a small one to cast high path spells. communions are less scary than blood, especially small ones, and its often one of the things that new players are interested in dominions for. if all else fails, a bunch of mages casting body eth on the senatorial guards is all it takes against the AI and it teaches the importance that a aoe1 buff can have. also dogs, people like dogs
Loving these, good stuff.
Glad to hear it!
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.
Great catch, didn't realize they had such low natural encumbrance.
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!
Oooh that is pretty cool. I saw some insect related mod nations starting to float around the steam workshop! Haven't looked further than the surface, but those may interest you?
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.
That is also very true. The displacement mechanic is SOOOOOO good tho.
This kind of video soooo helpful thanks. Need MA Abysia and MA C'tis :)
MA Abysia on the horizon, Ctis a little further back but has now been added to the list.
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.
Yeah this is a really cool combo I'm looking forward to seeing!
I didn't realize they got glamour in addition to the buffs to spiders and all the incidental buffs. Pretty legit nation now!
Very legit nation now, strong as heck. Once they bring the mundane spider knights up to par...top tier MA I'm sure.
Love these videos wish they were longer haha I know your trying to keep them short:)
I actually realized this one got TOO long, but was too tired to make more cuts. I think I spent too much time often referring to dominions 5...
What's worse is the next one I have written down in my notebook is LA Pythium. How will I NOT spend half the video on their commanders...Oh boy...
Any dominions videos that are 15 minutes or less feels blessedly short so I don’t think that the length is a problem with the video.
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.
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.
How much prot does that put them too? Like 30? That's insane.
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.
Bonus points for being very thematic
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.
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.
Therodos was my first MP win! I honestly haven't even looked at them since then. If I had to guess, ghosts alone may start getting outnumbered if the numbers weren't tweaked. Melia thugs took a bit of a hit with the mossbody/prot nerfs too. Theoretically off the top of my head it doesn't sound good... Although the Telkhine should still be a major menace, and more gold gets you building forts sooner as you say... Hmmm.
Therodos' biggest weakness is that most multiplayer lobbies hate Underwater nations and popkill nations, so Therodos is almost certain to be banned.
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.
Oh wow thats significant.
I remember them absolutely trashing indie heavy cav in 5. Between the aoe1 ranged web, and their bites.
Now...they are awful.
I mostly do SP, but am trying Weaver of Tales dread/awe rainbow with not-trashed scales.
Great synergy between the two! Beware nations with berserkers and skeletons!
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.
Outside of the prophet, even with h2s, it can be tough cause big. Definitely why I think Larger is nearly an essential bless for them.
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!
(unsurroundable bless for black hunters proved to be a very effective defensive bless)
Yeah that is a great build! You're on the right track!The black hunters are so crazy strong they don't need much! The only concern I have about hellblessing them is how expensive the rest of the nation is, so imprisoned something sounds really good!
Also, thank you for mentioning you read the description. I've just been kind of adding that there and not sure if anyone was actually reading... Those are the notes I handwrite while bored at work // use as a semi-script for the video.
@@ZanGames Oh! I found the notes amazing! Not many people put effort into good video descriptions - I expect people that read the description are in the minority.
Truly terrifying.
♫ Spooky scary spooders
send shivers down your spine
silky webs will shock your soul
seal your doom tonight ♫
@@ZanGames That's pretty good. Definitely get points for that one.
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 did skip them, and I used them a bunch in my dom5 game. They were some of the early cuts in the video before I gave up and sent it as is (and longer than I wanted).
I do feel AI is a bit better at sneaking past your army for commander snipes, so beware!
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
The spider knights? I couldnt get them to do it reliably, how are you using them?
What commands / formations? Are they sharing the group with other units?
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.
Are the summoned spiders smarter or dumber since they have neither of those tags?
I'm no mathemagician but I say smarter since hitting your friends is pretty dumb.
Is there special rules in multiplayer games? liek faster reaserch or such?
If you dont rename your prophet you live with eternal shame. I think loose diplo will be a thing in regards to the NAP system.
Otherwise the biggest difference is that there are a lot more fatal threats early that need to be accounted for. Like if youre playing MA Pythium, and someone is playing MA Machaka. We need a plan for what happens if hardskin+larger+regen black hunters beeline your capital on turn 10.
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.
A few different ways, none perfect.
The first is that the best turn for evocations to hit is turn 1. The second best turn is turn 2. And so on. Aka, the sooner the hit the less prepared your opponent is AND the less likely it is for friendly fire! A common script could look like: Evo1, Evo2, self buff, buff others advance and cast.
Second is a weird concept I at least play with where I am OKAY doing some damage to myself, as long as it hurts the enemy much more. In Dominions its a case of I can prepare for a spell better than they can since I know its coming. What means in practice is casting fire resistance on my units if I plan on fireballs hitting near them, likely its not enough...but thats okay. Some of my soldiers my day, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
No one said I was a benevolent pantokrator :)
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
The pretender is 'Weaver of Tales'. The pretender has a -1 path penalty in spider form which manifests on the summary screen. The pretender's paths are actually A2E4D4N4G6.
thx@@MogFlintlock
EA Machaka also got a major facelift.
I've heard crazy expansion stories with the lion warrior guys. Invuln strong early.
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?
The second pretender gets a -1 to all paths in the spider form that it shows. I editted in the human form above. Its the...weaver of tales? I think was the name...
No, it loses some paths in its spider shape and that ends up the one being shown on the preview.
Ok thanks to both explaining that.
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.
The spooders scale so well with hp / str. I don't know if they need too much attack skill due to the web attack. Unless that needs attack skill too since its not aoe1...i should have tested that.
@ZanGames Now I want to try a mass resilience Bless...
Please do Phaeacia
Added to the list, its getting kind of long... but up there!
A quick tldr to hold you over: The giants are good, I feel like larger battles favor the armored ones more. Air magic feels really strong now. Losing fire path is unfortunate, but now have access to wailing winds which is really strong. Pretender design depends if you are island start or not.
@ZanGames having tested a bit I feel like glamour is a reasonable replacement, and I agree that the heavy infantry are better with the possible exception of repel. As far as I can tell you still want to expand with the light infantry. I have yet to test thunderstrike vs the glamour sleep cloud as a base evocation however.
@@randoljr23 yes, still expand with the lights! Javelins are invaluable, as is repel and lower resource cost.
Honestly i forgot sleepcloud got moved to A-G. As someone who got wrecked by it in Lucid's finals, super strong!
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.
Yeah their province defense is really depressing. I wouldn't mind a minor rework on the MA *unit* roster. The commander roster is great.
@@ZanGames hell even if the shielded ones had furs and a leather cap I’d consider using them as siege chaff and arrow catchers but currently…. Waste of gold
Can confirm: hunter spooder > black centaur
Spooder stronk
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
Huge! Big facelift!
Does this game have gandalf?
It has Odin, does that count?
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*
I feel like dominions 6 really encourages using mages earlier once you get to the midgame buff spells. Once you start getting the Group X spells it really starts going, but you need a lot of mages out on the field. I know Dom5 was kinda "keep your mages at home until you get battlefield wide spells", but at a glance dom6 looks different. Which is good!
I wish I had more time to make stuff too :(
Yeah i'd like very much seeing more full blitz video from you to see how you actually use midgame mages with factions that depend on it (Feminie for exemple)@@ZanGames
I've been trying to find time to play the MA Pyrene SP game I did some time ago again. That should have some midgame magic in it. Just haven't been able to find a good 2-3hour window of inspiration.
I have a Feminie sample expansion written down for a quick video to do, but I don't think it will include big magic.@@Logidrake13
Edit: The LA Phlegra one too, that one was cool and was actually using magic!
Most midgame magic is just a handful of mages casting the group spells, or advance and cast with some evocations(make sure to cast some protection first!)
Obfuscate need 6 Glamour and LARGER also need 4
So Weatherr of Tales build as you showed is not real.
Weaver gets a negative to all paths when in spider form versus human form. Display issue
@@ZanGames Here's the thing. Didn't take it into account. By the way, the idea of Obfuscate would look good on knights and crones with MAN.
@@JOnatanKERtis no worries! Im glad people check what i say, makes sure that whoever is watching / reading gets the best info.
Obfuscate on man sounds oppressive. I havent fought them yet, but ive seen what those knights can do!