I know that Speaker is the captain of this team, but I wanted to open a thread to start discussion. I played some of the scenario last night (on diety) to get a feel for what we are doing. I didnt come across anything monumentally insightful, but I wanted to share some of my findings....
The Aztecs are militaristic and, more importantly, religious. The combination of these two traits will give a a lot of cheap buildings. There are numerous religous buildings. One turn anarchy is also very nice.
We will want to research or acquire masonry ASAP. It reveals where stone is located similar to the wheel for horses in the normal game. Stone is required for temples and sacrificial alters. Probably for more higher-religious buildings as well. Early temples and alters will be critical for reaching our culture goals.
Our UU is the jaguar warrior. It is 2-1-2 and becomes available with the Enslavement tech. Attack value of 2 is the best in the game for a long time. The biggest benefit of the 2 movement is the potential retreat. There is so much rugged terrain that the movement is largely negated when not on friendly roads.
The spear is the best defender for a LONG time. They should accompany any offensive thrust. They probably won't have much trouble keeping up with jags due to the rugged terrain.
The barb tribe to our south also gets the jag warrior with the enslavement tech.
I found the various new bonus tiles, luxes, and resources somewhat difficult to sort out by sight. There are a lot of differences from the standard game. This isn't a major deal, but it can cause some confusion.
A 5CC conquest seemed doable on diety. Though given the time constraints, it might be a challenge. I didnt not play far enough to get into a war with the Mayans, but the barb tribe didn't offer too much resistance. I really have no feel for the difficulty of Sid. We may want to go with 5 founded cities and allow captures. Unlike the Mayans, we will have enough land to settle, given that we are at the north end.
Order of Play:
Speaker (Starts game about Sunday)
Ridgelake (On deck)
T-Hawk
Coffee
Edit: One More Thing (TM): Tech will be our biggest problem. There is no Great Library to capture. The variant rules prohibit GPT deals. That is going to make life VERY challenging.
Also, I found that the Myans and Incans were the definite tech leaders. The lesser tribes, our potential twofer partners, were much less able to acquire techs.
Another One More Thing (TM): Taking down the Incans will be very tough in the given time limit (if at all). They are very far south. We will be forced to effectively eliminate every other civ before we can get to them. Geography dictates that we choose our opponents fairly linearly. This will allow us to focus on only one front, but may make it tough to acquire the necessary "resources" to do our required sacrificing.
The Aztecs are militaristic and, more importantly, religious. The combination of these two traits will give a a lot of cheap buildings. There are numerous religous buildings. One turn anarchy is also very nice.
We will want to research or acquire masonry ASAP. It reveals where stone is located similar to the wheel for horses in the normal game. Stone is required for temples and sacrificial alters. Probably for more higher-religious buildings as well. Early temples and alters will be critical for reaching our culture goals.
Our UU is the jaguar warrior. It is 2-1-2 and becomes available with the Enslavement tech. Attack value of 2 is the best in the game for a long time. The biggest benefit of the 2 movement is the potential retreat. There is so much rugged terrain that the movement is largely negated when not on friendly roads.
The spear is the best defender for a LONG time. They should accompany any offensive thrust. They probably won't have much trouble keeping up with jags due to the rugged terrain.
The barb tribe to our south also gets the jag warrior with the enslavement tech.
I found the various new bonus tiles, luxes, and resources somewhat difficult to sort out by sight. There are a lot of differences from the standard game. This isn't a major deal, but it can cause some confusion.
A 5CC conquest seemed doable on diety. Though given the time constraints, it might be a challenge. I didnt not play far enough to get into a war with the Mayans, but the barb tribe didn't offer too much resistance. I really have no feel for the difficulty of Sid. We may want to go with 5 founded cities and allow captures. Unlike the Mayans, we will have enough land to settle, given that we are at the north end.
Order of Play:
Speaker (Starts game about Sunday)
Ridgelake (On deck)
T-Hawk
Coffee
Edit: One More Thing (TM): Tech will be our biggest problem. There is no Great Library to capture. The variant rules prohibit GPT deals. That is going to make life VERY challenging.
Also, I found that the Myans and Incans were the definite tech leaders. The lesser tribes, our potential twofer partners, were much less able to acquire techs.
Another One More Thing (TM): Taking down the Incans will be very tough in the given time limit (if at all). They are very far south. We will be forced to effectively eliminate every other civ before we can get to them. Geography dictates that we choose our opponents fairly linearly. This will allow us to focus on only one front, but may make it tough to acquire the necessary "resources" to do our required sacrificing.
With the patch coming out so soon (tomorrow hopefully), I think we should wait a day or two to make the start file for RBC4c. If it looks like the patch is going to be delayed until after Christmas, I may go ahead and make the file. Anyone terribly object to this? I would like for you to start us off T-Hawk, so be prepared for that. It seems that the team consensus is against 5CC and cultural victory (which is likely impossible), and that is fine by me. We may not get to build more than 5 cities anyways. 
So look for the start file tomorrow.
