King of the World #6: Huayna Capac

Okay, I'm going to sum up my experiences as Huayna Capac in Earth18Civs for you (Note: this is based on settling 2W, and my thoughts; however, change it or disregard it as you please):

Tech Order: Mining/Agriculture (in any order); Fishing; Pottery/Sailing; BW
Build Order: Worker, Quechua, Settler, Terrace, Galley, Settler, Quechua, Barracks (Cuzco)

Settle Tiwanaku on the Dye; Build Order: Worker, Terrace, Worker/Settler (build Quechuas every so often to grow the city)

Settle Machu Piccu south on the Copper site to get Axemen going to barb-watch. From there, just settle as you please. Place a city on Panama or the tile just south of it (in SA), as both serve as canals.

We covered a lot of time with only a few screenshots in this round, but the Inca are all about the slow start on this map.

I decided to bow to the crowd and settled the capital two tiles west of the starting location:



As you can see, I've started on the Sailing path to get a Galley up and running, and Lima (still close enough to use the name, I guess) is training a Worker to farm our Corn. Also, our Quecha found one of the Seven Cities of Gold on the Pacific coast.

By 2600 B.C., we had said Worker, an extra Quecha, and a way to get out of our highland hell:



Techwise, after Sailing, I grabbed Mining and the Wheel to finish developing the land around our capital. Now we're working on Hunting. Let's just say that I have a hunch that there might be deer near our second city. And besides, it's going to be a while before we have metal, so Archers will be a priority.

In 2100 B.C., we finally founded our second city, Puerto Aisen:



The neat thing about Puerto Aisen is that it's a great production spot and all of its better tiles are in the first ring, so it was able to start with a Work Boat and then start pumping Archers without needing to worry about Culture just yet.

Founded in 1850 B.C., Santiago was quite the opposite:



It began immediately on a Terrace. Meanwhile, a second Worker (you can see the first one in the bottom of the screenshot there, dutifully connecting Santiago with Puerto Aisen) started building the long road to the Chilean Copper resource. It'll be a while before we have Copper, but it shall be ours.

In 1400 B.C., an Incan settling party found the Second City of Gold, guarded by a fierce band of savages:



With all the cities we're founding here, some spare change for deficit research is always a good thing.

Smelling the fresh Atlantic breeze, running their hands through the fields of corn, seeing the waters teeming with fish, and hearing skittish deer in the nearby forests, the group decided that it was good, and founded Buenos Aires on the site of the Fabled City:



And with that I decided to call it a round.

We have four cities:



Which I think is quite enough for now. We don't have any Cottages up and running yet (the majority of our commerce is coming from Lima's gold mines), and the hordes are going to come a-calling Real Soon Now (tm). We only have one Unit per city (plus the Archer one turn away in Puerto Aisen).

One sidelight I'm strongly considering is making a push for the Great Lighthouse in Puerto Aisen. I know we seem to build it every game, but I think it would be a major advantage in this map, without being cheesy like the Great Wall. Speaking of the Great Wall, someone beat us to it in 1850 B.C., but that's the only Wonder to have been built thus far. With Louis on the board, that strikes me as strange. Maybe Spain or Rome "took care" of him?

Here's our tech map:



Obviously, if we want the GLH, we're going to have to go Masonry once Iron Working completes.

So does all of this sound like a good plan? Stop building cities for a while in favor of Workers, Infrastructure, and, most importantly, military to prepare for the onslaught?

I agree with your plan, and nice round!

I would expand expand expand; there's so much prime cottagable land in the amazon delta that stifling your economy early on is probably worth it in the long run. When I played Huanya on the world18 I found my cottages weren't matured until very late in the game, which hampered my ability to catch up with the eurafricasian civs. Founding the dark-red, purple, yellow and dark purple city sooner rather than later and mass cottaging them would be the way I would go, along with moving the capital to the centre of things ASAP. The way this will probably play out, when you'll start needing serious production, you can run universal suffrage and levees for +2 hammers in all riverside cottage tiles: every city in the delta will have great production.
Converting Rio to a GPfarm and pumping out GS for academies in the main cities helps too.

Smart settling second city on the other side of the andes.

Can you post the save?

JammerUno said:

I would expand expand expand; there's so much prime cottagable land in the amazon delta that stifling your economy early on is probably worth it in the long run. When I played Huanya on the world18 I found my cottages weren't matured until very late in the game, which hampered my ability to catch up with the eurafricasian civs. Founding the dark-red, purple, yellow and dark purple city sooner rather than later and mass cottaging them would be the way I would go, along with moving the capital to the centre of things ASAP. The way this will probably play out, when you'll start needing serious production, you can run universal suffrage and levees for +2 hammers in all riverside cottage tiles: every city in the delta will have great production.
Converting Rio to a GPfarm and pumping out GS for academies in the main cities helps too.

Click to expand...

I agree with you.

In addition to the above strategy, I would prioritize Monachy in the following round and station enough military units to those jungle cities. They will grow big and bring in lots of commerce.I recommend to try to grab a religion using a GS to lightbulb Philosophy. Running Pacifism to get GSs quickly to lightbulb to Astronomy ( u need to delay CS to do that which is a kind of sacrifice).

About the GLH, I doubt you will have ENOUGH foreign cities to benefit from it, so the trade route will mostly be domestic. by the time you have astronomy, most civ out there probably are running Mercantilism or if they war a lot, they tend to running Mercantilism. so the life span and usefulness of GLH will be significantly limited. Therefore I am against GLH.

I'd say - skip the GLH and focus hammers on archers, workers and even more settlers. Skip masonry for now and move on to more important techs : currency and code of laws. Whether you build the Oracle to grab Code of Laws or tech to it doesn't matter, you <need> it if you want to expand fast!

Financial leaders can expand just fine without Code of Laws.

I disagree. COL is still a good thing to have, no matter your traits.

Are you gonna try to get Colossus? That makes Water Tiles have 2 and 4 with the Financial trait

we will need astronomy ASAP, Colossus might not worth the investment, but the tech (MC) unlock this wonder is useful. (i list it the third important mid-game tech with monachy the first and COL the second).

this map doesn't give any stone or marble, which is ridiculous with industrial traits likely going to waste. maybe we can hook up all later-game wonders that don't require any bonus from resource.

on second thought, GLH might be worth the effort ( sorry for my inconsistancy ) because it is the only early wonder does not require a source to accelerate.

Genv [FP];7289231 said:

I disagree. COL is still a good thing to have, no matter your traits.

Click to expand...

Your exact point is unclear, since I didn't say it wasn't a good thing to have.

Jet, South America is a pretty big continent. With Code of Laws through the Oracle (or research), you might also still grab Confucianism. You can spread this, adopt Organised Religion and get your infrastructure up way faster. Those courthouses will also let you build the Forbidden Palace which will crank down the maintenance costs even more. Seriously, what's there not to love?

I would be wary of founding a religion withoht knowing if Monty had founded one ( he sometimes can get one of the early ones ). If he hasn't it is a golden oportunity of cashing, though.....

I think that CoL important, MC would allow forges and the Colossus. That would increase production and allow your coastal tiles to be much more powerful. I think you should do the CoL slingshot while going going for MC rite after.

With the combo of forges and OR your production should increase substantially

That's about as good a start with the Incas as it gets.
Code of Laws would be nice, but I think Metal Casting should take priority here. If you're worried about city maintenance, just move your capital nearer to where all your cities are.
But first priority has to be expanding like crazy.

Regarding Praise: Thank you.

Regarding Expansion: My concern with continued expansion is not so much economic (though that's certainly part of it), but military. Maybe I'm more paranoid than I need to be, but I'd like to have more than one unit per city before building new cities. That said, I am trying to build the cities in "layers" in order to maintain a constant frontier. So that said, I could probably get away with fogbusting the Cape and building Sao Paulo as a "Barbarian magnet" for a while.

Regarding the GLH: That's a fine point, EEE_BOY. All the other times we've built it, we've been surrounded by foreigners. And Masonry is kind of a waste of time, otherwise, at least in the short run.

Regarding the Oracle: We don't have Polytheism or Meditation, much less Priesthood. I don't think we have much of a chance of snagging it.

Regarding the Colossus: That's always a power Wonder, but without an Oracle slingshot, Metal Casting is almost prohibitively expensive.

Regarding Religion: That's another good reason for me to send the Galley up to meet Big Green. Other than building up Espionage Points, of course. Getting Confucianism would be nice if we can get it (and if Monty doesn't have Judaism, Buddhism, or Hinduism already).

Regarding the Save: Sorry. Here it is, for anyone interested:

Founding a religion? Why not sso if Monty has one and be his bestest bud?

On barbs I would say set up a defensive line on some jungle hills so you can spot them from far away, maybe entice them to suicide on the hilltop/jungle fortified archers or at least give youself some time to shuffle some defence around, but with slavery and Rio where it is, it shouldn't be a big problem to give each city an archer immidiately, that's surely safety enough. Until axemen barbs show up, try to expand fast, with plenty of workers, since clearing jungle+roading+cottaging takes along of manpower. When axes shown up, get some of your own.

Producing wonders might be a total waste, the Colossus is great but all the prime city sites are inland and MC is so costly. aesthetics->literature would have my preference for both the HE and the NE, there's no foeign competition for national wonders are they are a huge asset.

Because Monty is devoid of any logic when it comes to DOW