Aztec confusion

I'm currently exploring the Aztecs in Diety and trying to forumlate what the best gameplan should be (when to war, etc.). So far, my first build is always a second Jaguar. I don't even build scouts, since Jags are almost as good at exploring through dense terrain (with the exception of rivers and unforested hills). They both go forth and scout for goody huts and CSs. My next build is a shrine if I want a pantheon at some point (generally at 30 or 35 faith, probably fertility rites or sacred path). I tend to skip on the early granary because the jungle start bias doesn't tend to put you in the middle of a lot of wheat or deer. As for starting placement, you're almost always next to a river, but a place with a huge lake like I dream of is pretty rare. The luxes can be bad too if they're something like all sugar in marshes... say goodbye to the early extra income!

I know the Aztecs can excel at growth and go tall, which puts me at a hard decision between tradition and honor. Many people will at least open honor to double up on culture from early barb hunting. But should you continue and finish the honor tree? The finisher is enticing- get culture AND gold for each enemy killed! But it is a weaker tree overall.

A big decision for me is whether to war early or not or just use a small army to barb hunt for culture and CS quests. Jags are too weak a UU to take cities with, so it would be a generic comp. bow rush at the earliest. A huge priority would be civil service, so you don't want to dabble to much elsewhere.

I believe its best to scout the area and find spots for 2 or more cities. Focus on units early to secure these spots, fight if you have to. After the expansions are in place then you can start the growth. I don't believe its worth it to build the UB until your settlers are out.

not getting a good lake to start is a bummer for Deity. i do like to play Lakes map for Aztecs. It is a pangea map with more lakes running through it. And you can choose whether you want small, medium, large or random sized lakes in the settings. I pick small so as not to feel abusive but to also guarantee the Floating Gardens can use that secondary benefit a little. lakes with 1-4 tiles are usually within 1 move of the opening settler.

otherwise, i dont really plan on trying for pantheon (ie building shrines in my opening BO) on deity unless the opening terrain can give me good choices for any of the fpt pantheons or I meet two faith CSs and get one anyway. i dont bother with non-fpt pantheons if im not playing a civ with faith UB/UA (maya, ethiopia, celts, etc). you can war early just for the promotions. DoW to take a worker and come back with a couple archers/jags to level up. you can do with either AI or CS. if AI, it might also get you a good peace deal with gpt or a lux.

With Aztecs I usually mix tradition and honor. Tradition till monarchy and Honor left side. You can take honor opener before monarchy if you dont have happiness and gold problems and/or if there are lot of barbs nearby. This is assuming you are going for domination. UB will give enough growth for Aztecs when going to domination so other Tradition policies are not needed

paralistalon said:

I'm currently exploring the Aztecs in Diety and trying to forumlate what the best gameplan should be (when to war, etc.). So far, my first build is always a second Jaguar. I don't even build scouts, since Jags are almost as good at exploring through dense terrain (with the exception of rivers and unforested hills). They both go forth and scout for goody huts and CSs. My next build is a shrine if I want a pantheon at some point (generally at 30 or 35 faith, probably fertility rites or sacred path). I tend to skip on the early granary because the jungle start bias doesn't tend to put you in the middle of a lot of wheat or deer. As for starting placement, you're almost always next to a river, but a place with a huge lake like I dream of is pretty rare. The luxes can be bad too if they're something like all sugar in marshes... say goodbye to the early extra income!

I know the Aztecs can excel at growth and go tall, which puts me at a hard decision between tradition and honor. Many people will at least open honor to double up on culture from early barb hunting. But should you continue and finish the honor tree? The finisher is enticing- get culture AND gold for each enemy killed! But it is a weaker tree overall.

A big decision for me is whether to war early or not or just use a small army to barb hunt for culture and CS quests. Jags are too weak a UU to take cities with, so it would be a generic comp. bow rush at the earliest. A huge priority would be civil service, so you don't want to dabble to much elsewhere.

Click to expand...

Emphasis mine the statements I wanted to respond to.

The granary also improves bananas, which I find pretty handy. Between that and the Floating Gardens I can have some good surplus food to work a Mine if necessary; I find Jungles lack any production even from Forest tiles, so it's mines or nothing in my book. Clearing a lot of jungle for farms is time-consuming, so I like the Granary and Floating Gardens.

As far as Social Policies go, I pretty much always crack open Honor when playing as the Aztecs. I find the information alone on where the Barbarians will be coming from and are popping up is big. It lets me send units much much earlier to try and deal with a problem; I can move civilians in relative security; I can hunt for more culture easier*; and I can get more early game Gold from clearing Encampments. I only commit to more than the opener of Honor if I plan on doing some serious warring; otherwise I treat it as a nice source of info, and a way to close Tradition faster before I move onto something else.

About unit production: I like to get some Jaguars out just before Metal Casting is researched. Hang onto them if you can for their unique promotions as they're really really good if upgraded. Straight-up attacking with Jaguars is tough, but making a timing attack with Longsword-carrying Jaguars escorted by Crossbows is a good time. I love the bonuses of the Jaguar as it lets you be more aggressive with your melee than usual as they can finish units off and come out at full health. Consequently, my former Jaguars tend to accumulate a HELL of a lot of promotions; Medic 1 & 2 with Drill 1,2, and 3, plus both Cover and March means those guys are never ever dying short of a nuke.

Hammer Rabbi said:

not getting a good lake to start is a bummer for Deity. i do like to play Lakes map for Aztecs. It is a pangea map with more lakes running through it. And you can choose whether you want small, medium, large or random sized lakes in the settings. I pick small so as not to feel abusive but to also guarantee the Floating Gardens can use that secondary benefit a little. lakes with 1-4 tiles are usually within 1 move of the opening settler.

otherwise, i dont really plan on trying for pantheon (ie building shrines in my opening BO) on deity unless the opening terrain can give me good choices for any of the fpt pantheons or I meet two faith CSs and get one anyway. i dont bother with non-fpt pantheons if im not playing a civ with faith UB/UA (maya, ethiopia, celts, etc). you can war early just for the promotions. DoW to take a worker and come back with a couple archers/jags to level up. you can do with either AI or CS. if AI, it might also get you a good peace deal with gpt or a lux.

Click to expand...

In another thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=531262) we were discussing the map script: a big lake is actually a big hit against the relative 'value' of a location. Spawning near a sizable lake is therefore really unlikely. A 1-2 tile lake though doesn't change the spot value and is fairly common.

GoStu said:

I only commit to more than the opener of Honor if I plan on doing some serious warring; otherwise I treat it as a nice source of info, and a way to close Tradition faster before I move onto something else.

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I've played a lot of Montezuma and I have to say that I do not believe -- on Deity, at least -- whether you will actually close Tradition faster when you open Honor. You're already getting culture from barb kills, after all.

The problem with opening Honor is the geometric progression of social policy costs. I can't find a handy-dandy table that shows how much it costs to finish 7 policies instead of 6 with 3 cities, but I believe it's 200 culture+, and it's hardly guaranteed that you will get 200+ culture from Honor in that first 70'ish turns.

Worse yet, unless you set up a perfect barb-farming situation (and I have a lot of trouble with that, as the damned AI always has scouts running around ready to run into empty barb camps), Honor may end up hurting you long-term.

TheGrumpyBuddha said:

I've played a lot of Montezuma and I have to say that I do not believe -- on Deity, at least -- whether you will actually close Tradition faster when you open Honor. You're already getting culture from barb kills, after all.

The problem with opening Honor is the geometric progression of social policy costs. I can't find a handy-dandy table that shows how much it costs to finish 7 policies instead of 6 with 3 cities, but I believe it's 200 culture+, and it's hardly guaranteed that you will get 200+ culture from Honor in that first 70'ish turns.

Worse yet, unless you set up a perfect barb-farming situation (and I have a lot of trouble with that, as the damned AI always has scouts running around ready to run into empty barb camps), Honor may end up hurting you long-term.

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The time to close 7 policies instead of 6 is open for debate. Difficulty will play into it too; on Deity the AI is better at cleaning camps up, of course. I know the OP is asking for Deity, but I like to try and give advice that's generally true at most levels.

In my book, what makes the Honor opener worthwhile is:

1) Information on Barbarian Encampments. Losing a Caravan early on to an Encampment out of sight sucks, especially when you've decided to go for an early Caravan to mooch beakers off the AI's superior tech. Losing a Worker or Settler is also really bad.

2) Opening your fourth and fifth policies. Generally when I'm going Tradition I go for Legalism, followed by Landed Elite and then Monarchy. To me, Aristocracy and Oligarchy are by far the weaker policies of Tradition; adopted only for later Engineer buying and free Aqueducts. When you compare the tree completion times, consider what time you can get the +2 Food and Growth out of Landed Elite, and what time you start getting Gold from Monarchy.

For a decent comparison, I think we'd actually have to work empirically and run a bunch of games as the Aztecs with and without the Honor opener, and then compare against other Civs for a control - again with and without Honor.

3) Flexibility to go up Honor later if I feel necessary. If you're going to get Honor anyway, getting the opener early is 100% helpful as you can get that bonus earlier.

4) Combat Bonus against Barbarians. Helps keep your lands clear, and to finish off those City-State quests to clear out encampments, and to kill units by their border.

In my experience with Aztec and deity, honor opener is only worth it if you turn on raging barbarians. Otherwise barbs are cleared too fast so it's a waste. Also with honor opener the attack bonus against the barbs is important when they are raging otherwise you can get overwhelmed pretty quick.

I don't mind opening Honor with the Aztecs either; if you don't go after the Oracle you can essentially go 1 Honor, 6 Tradition and then roll right into Rationalism.

Depending on the terrain I see on turn 1, I usualy go Jaguar, Jaguar, Jaguar then something else, also depending on what I see. Those Jaguar are just one of the best units in the game if you keep them alive, promote and upgrade. Powerful infantry units all game long.

I always found Liberty to be the best opener for the Aztecs I like being able to get out of the jungle asap. Fast workers help with the jungle chopping.

The culture from kills helps speed through any tree. I dont like honor on Diety because fewer barbs. Exceptions for raging barbs, and huge maps. On a standard game / start, I prefer tradition or liberty. The honor finisher is very good though! it really does lean you towards a domination vic.

The aztecs are great for tall science producing cities. In some cases I dont even build a granary, just a floating garden, and the city grown just fine. The granary is best early (before you have watermill tech) and whenever you dont have a river or lake obviously.

After a playing a few games, I've decided that full tradition is the way to go, and any points in Honor is disapointing, even as the Aztecs. That final policy to get the finisher is just such a slog that delaying it by even one policy is a major hurdle. With one policy to go, it's not unusual to see something like 30+ turns til the next policy, so you either stop getting policies or you suck it up and build the Writer's Guild and work its slots (or build Oracle).

In one game, I did go Honor and completed a ton of CS quests, but I felt I was too far behind in growth and tech. Also, I do build granaries eventually, if only to send internal food trade routes.