Inca

I would like us to take a look at the Incas, after Funak's post on the 2015 UA poll, I think the Incas can use a simple face-lift. Their UB and UU are fine, I just think the UA needs some update to it.

The free movement on hills is great, if used correctly it can easily allow military units to quickly reposition and out flank any other Civ’s army. However, I feel the cheap/free road part is a bit bland and boring. I can understand why it is their UA, but I think this part of the UA needs to be either improved on, replaced, or some other special needs to be tagged on to their UA to make them stand out a little bit more.

Some random thoughts for minor UA additions
- Hills provide +1 food, even if a mine is built on them. This would help if there are no mountains around to boost the terrace farm.
- +10% influence bonus when you complete City-States quests to City-States that you have a trade route with. This would reflect the peaceful assimilation the Incas used to acquire more tribes under their empire.

Here are some info from Wiki on the Incas and my thoughts on how to incorporate them into the UA as either a replacement to the road part or addition to their UA

Better spies/diplomats
“Pachacuti sent spies to regions he wanted in his empire; they brought reports on the political organization, military might and wealth. He would then send messages to the leaders of these lands extolling the benefits of joining his empire, offering them presents of luxury goods such as high quality textiles, and promising that they would be materially richer as subject rulers of the Inca.”

- Maybe their spies could provide you with updates more often when they are spying on other Civs and City States. Such as letting you know more often what is being built in the City or maybe even provide unique information such as if a great person was just born there or if the city has just assigned a new trade route and lets you know where it’s going. If you send your spies to City-States, maybe they could update you on the influences gained by other Civs.

- Another idea would be to make their Diplomats exert a higher tourism percentage than the normal +25%.

Military buff
“The Inca army was the most powerful in the area at that time, because they could turn an ordinary villager or farmer into a soldier, ready for battle. This is because every male Inca had to take part in war at least once so as to be prepared for warfare again when needed. By the time the empire had reached its largest size, every section of the empire contributed in setting up an army for war.”

“Roads allowed very quick movement for the Inca army, and shelters called tambo were built one day's distance in travelling from each other, so that an army on campaign could always be fed and rested. This can be seen in names of ruins such as Ollantay Tambo, or My Lord's Storehouse. These were set up so the Inca and his entourage would always have supplies (and possibly shelter) ready as he traveled.”

- Maybe have a small production bonus to military and defensive buildings, say 10-15%. Or maybe a small production bonus to all land military units.

- Defensive structures on hills provides even more of a defensive bonus

- Their military units can heal +10 more if resting on an Incan road. In order to make this not abused, it should be only on roads that are a part of a city connection and not just some tile with a random unconnected road. But then again if the Liberty policy stacks with their UA and they can get free roads on all tiles, this special would be broken as hell as there would be nothing stopping you from making ridiculous city connections.


Please share your thoughts and ideas on this. I know these aren't the greatest ideas, but am I the only one who doesn't like the Inca roads thing? Anyone else want to see a little more umph in their UA?

I like the Inca as they are, but since they have always been my example for a wellbalanced civ I might be a bit biased.

For the Incas, could we perhaps add a +1 (or 2) food on mountains?
It would make them quite interesting when you get the observatory and would be interesting with the pantheon that gives +2 faith on mountains.

The hills movement thing is incredibly powerful militarily.
If I wanted to spice up the UA, without changing it drastically, I might give their units mountain-walking a la Carthage after some tech like construction or compass.

hokath said:

The hills movement thing is incredibly powerful militarily.
If I wanted to spice up the UA, without changing it drastically, I might give their units mountain-walking a la Carthage after some tech like construction or compass.

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That would make more sense than having it for Carthage anyways

I like the idea of extra mountain yield for Inca That's something unique... well yeah, that's certainly more unique than less maintenance.

I'd be entirely in favor of moving Carthage's mountain walking to the Inca. I understand where it's coming from in a historical sense, but it doesn't fit Carthage's gameplay at all. The free harbors and powerful early trireme make Carthage much more of a navel military civ than a land-based one.

Llednar Twem said:

I'd be entirely in favor of moving Carthage's mountain walking to the Inca.

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I like this idea as an add on to the Inca's UA. I wonder if it might be too powerful with them already hill walking, but it does make more sense for the Inca to have this trait instead of Carthage.

I wanted to say why don’t we go with that idea and just give Carthage’s units the amphibious promotion for free, but that would be too close to the Songhai.

What else could we give to Carthage if we were to give the Incas mountain walking?

Damirith said:

I like this idea as an add on to the Inca's UA. I wonder if it might be too powerful with them already hill walking, but it does make more sense for the Inca to have this trait instead of Carthage.

I wanted to say why don’t we go with that idea and just give Carthage’s units the amphibious promotion for free, but that would be too close to the Songhai.

What else could we give to Carthage if we were to give the Incas mountain walking?

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I don't feel like starting the game to check, but do Carthage even have the mountainwalking anymore? I mean they already have free harbors and get gold when they found cities, why would they need mountainwalking aswell.

If they do I don't feel like they need anything in return for removing it.

They get bonus gold for making a city (how much? no clue and no idea if it scales with era), they get a free harbor, and yes they can still mountain walk which causes 20 damage.

Damirith said:

They get bonus gold for making a city (how much? no clue and no idea if it scales with era), they get a free harbor, and yes they can still mountain walk which causes 20 damage.

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Well Imho, just remove that, they don't need it and it feels stupid.

Llednar Twem said:

I'd be entirely in favor of moving Carthage's mountain walking to the Inca. I understand where it's coming from in a historical sense, but it doesn't fit Carthage's gameplay at all. The free harbors and powerful early trireme make Carthage much more of a navel military civ than a land-based one.

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I like this. Makes sense, and would definitely ease building stuff in and around Incan cities.

G

5/23 Patch - Inca: New UA: Units ignore terrain costs when on Hills, and Roads on Hills do not incur maintenance. After researching The Wheel, Units may cross Mountains, and owned Mountains create City Connections.

So the Inca's now have been changed to allow for mountain walking and for connecting cites with mountains (a little odd, but I'll take it).

Funak brought up a good point that with the new bonus to farms, it kinda craps on the terrace farm. Do you guys feel that the terrace farm now needs a small boost so that its still better than a farm or is the new boost to farms the problem?

Couldn't Terrace Farms just be given the same mechanic? Mountains would still give the bigger boost since they give +1f each while farms give +1f per 2 farms. The two mechanics might make for interesting results when taken together.

Llednar Twem said:

Couldn't Terrace Farms just be given the same mechanic? Mountains would still give the bigger boost since they give +1f each while farms give +1f per 2 farms. The two mechanics might make for interesting results when taken together.

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Given the same mechanic and count as farms for the sake of buffing other farms.

I think the Terrace Farm issue is pretty easy to fix compared to the other UIs that pretty much forces you to cut a farm every X tiles to build another UI. This pretty much leads to a loss of 6 food for surrounding farms every time you build one (assuming flat farmable land).

Well I tried copy / pasting the farm adjacency code I found and replacing IMPROVEMENT_FARM with IMPROVEMENT_TERRACE_FARM. Didn't work. That's about the extent of my amazing programming skills, so I guess I won't be trying this idea unless Gazebo decides to implement it. Also that wouldn't have made terrace farms benefit from normal farms and vice-versa, even if it had worked.

I was thinking, not because Inca are weak or anything, I really don't have a good grasp of their power. Anyways I was thinking that with the removal of all yields from mountains along with the Incan semi-new ability to use mountains in place of roads for establishing cityconnections(not that it makes much sense, but it's a cool ability) and the fact that mountains are still expensive as all hell.
How about letting Incan cities claim all mountains within workable range upon settling?
Since mountains can't have yields, and the only benefit you get from having them in your territory is the ability to build an observatory and two different wonders, this wouldn't really change much in gameplay, but it would actually make that mountain city-connection thing useful.
An alternative would be letter mountains form cityconnections outside of your territory, but that seems less fun.

Good point. I believe that claiming all mountains in range would help (it's so hard to get them naturally).

Finarvi said:

Good point. I believe that claiming all mountains in range would help (it's so hard to get them naturally).

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I forgot to mention this, but I naturally meant unclaimed mountains, I wouldn't suggest starting to steal other civs mountain-tiles.

All those incas stealing my mountains.