I posted a while back asking who the best rex'er was. Generally everyone agreed expansive, imperailisitic and creative were the best traits. I'm partial to creative myself because I hate building monuments.

Then I thought, why not have basically all those traits? If you play unrestricted as Joao of Inca you can get double speed granaries which generate culture and still have the half cost settlers.

I can't wait to try this out, I already have a game with Joao going but I may just abandon it in favor of this combo.

It's still not quite Creative, but sounds fun. If only we had CivIII's Pyramids back. That would be...

Putting REX traits on top of quechuas is redundant.

You might not have any neighbours to conquer, Mr Cottages :p Or they might be too far away for doing a quechua stunt.

I'll be using this on a huge terra or big and small map, probably low sea level, with 11-12 players so I doubt that neighbors will be close enough to quecha rush.

try cathy

Powerhouse expanding, no economic power to maintain the empire, it's a recipe for disaster. Give me Darius of the inca any day. For that matter, give me Darius of Persia.

Fast growing cities with cheaper workers doesn't count as economic power?

Normal speed...

If my math is right, Joao of inca, for the cost of a normal civ's monument, gets effectively 2 monuments and a granary built. Assuming you send a worker with the settler (a likely assumption since the workers are cheap too), whip at size 2, say about 8-9 turns, and 5 turns later, the border is popped. So he's working his full BFC about 13-14 turns after settling AND the city will grow lightning fast.

A normal civ, all of this takes 90 hammers, right? A monument and granary both. That's two 1-pop whips plus some downtime in between to get some hammers built into the granary. At best, you're talking about what, the borders popping about 18-19 turns in and the granary complete about 25 turns in. That means each city is online and ready to grow 10 turns earlier with Joao of Inca. For a cottage site, Joao gets commerce faster than the normal civ, and for a production site, he's churning out units faster than a normal civ. That comparison also ignores the fact that Joao got his settler to the site maybe 5-10 turns faster than a normal civ too with IMP. New cities always seem to be an economic drain for 20-30 turns - not with this combo.

Sign me up for that. Darius of anything is obviously nice, but Joao of Inca is a pretty insane combo. I may need to try that for my next deity attempt.

try cathy

I just tried Cathy for the first time. Prince Marathon Huge Terra, 20 cities by 1 AD without a war. She's incredible. Also, I don't need to worry about Cathy declaring on me.

I just tried Cathy for the first time. Prince Marathon Huge Terra, 20 cities by 1 AD without a war. She's incredible. Also, I don't need to worry about Cathy declaring on me.

That's also one of the hidden benefits of playing Toku. You never have to have him as a neighbor then. :)

Powerhouse expanding, no economic power to maintain the empire, it's a recipe for disaster. Give me Darius of the inca any day. For that matter, give me Darius of Persia.

I don't get what you mean, financial isn't economic power, the commerce tiles you're working is. Financial just enhances the power you already have.

Organized isn't economic power, it simply saves you money on civics. Having the cities and tech to run those civics in the first place is the power.

We're basically talking horizontal growth vs vertical growth.

Yes but Organized saves you a huge amount of money on the higher difficulties, and financial makes it so that your gold mines give a ridiculous amount of gold, and fish and cottages automatically start at 3 commerce.

We're talking about the best rex'er here, not who's traits are easiest to win with. All my highest scoring games have come with expansion trait leaders- mehmed, sury. Even though a win with darius is usually more garunteed, if I expand enough then guys like sury can squash guys like darius. Plus half the reason for playing persia is the uu not the traits. That uu makes any leader dynamite.

It's just a different approach, and one you might like to try out. Everyone has fun praet and immortal rushing, but it's also fun to rex super fast with joao, to build a huge economy with elizabeth, or to non stop rush everyone with boudica. Variation is what keeps civ fun.