The Inca (Immortal)

So, I've been lurking in this forum for a while, looking at some advice on playing Civ 5. Namely G&K, at a somewhat casual pace. Stopped for a while, but restarted once I got BNW. In G&K, I mostly stuck to King, though I managed to win an Emperor game with William. Since I got BNW, I only played a Prince game as Portugal. A bit too easy, so I decided to try Immortal (and 12 players at that!).

Since I might need to step up my game in some areas, I decided to join. I don't necessarily go for maximum efficiency in my games, but I do try to play a Civilization to its full potential, at least.

So, the Inca. I was thinking of going wide, aim for Construction, and try to set up a few cities with Terrace Farms ASAP. As long as I have access to at least one Luxury per city, Happiness shouldn't be much of a problem (not at first, anyway), but I fear Gold might run out as well (still unsure of what to expect of BNW's income).

There's also the issue of opening up Liberty to set up this plan (in the current map I'm in, I might need to set up 5 cities, too), when Tradition guarantees some stability. When I go Liberty, I'm usually playing a Civ with a strong military, and this might not necessarily be the case with the Inca (though their natural defenses should help).

At least this is what I garnered, and my current game seems to allow me to go this route (as long as Genghis khan forgive me one case of forward-settling). But I have also read comments defending that the Inca should only go tall, not wide, which I thought was curious, as they seem better-geared to expand.

What sort of experiences do you guys have with this civ?

Inca are great and flexible. Either tall or wide approach can work, just depends how many good terrace sites there are nearby. With wide you get more mileage out of the UA, and you can also use the free liberty GP to bulb Maccu Piccu. With tradition though, the growth bonuses (free aqueducts) have good synergy with the terrace farms. So it can work both ways.

One lux per city? gee... that city will start garnering unhappiness past... size 2
Incas do not waste gold on road maintenance if they are on hills so you don't worry about gold that much, however happiness is a bigger problem.

I would vouch for tradition (monarchy in particular) regardless of wide or tall simply because the UA is basically free license to expand to those treacherous mountain crags where other civs' cities would starve, so you seriously do not need to worry about expanding quickly. I do particularly enjoy having fewer, taller cities due to the UI though, simply because it's almost impossible not to get tall with them the terrace farms will get worked regardless of food or production focus so unless you avoid growth, your cities are going to grow, and by ideology time if you overexpand your empire is going to be drowning in unhappiness pretty fast.

I have failed to achieve victory with this civilization in immortal before but lowering the difficulty really got me to finally get a victory... for the inca. Free movement in hills does work out better than other civilizations sometimes.

kb27787 said:

One lux per city? gee... that city will start garnering unhappiness past... size 2
Incas do not waste gold on road maintenance if they are on hills so you don't worry about gold that much, however happiness is a bigger problem.

I would vouch for tradition (monarchy in particular) regardless of wide or tall simply because the UA is basically free license to expand to those treacherous mountain crags where other civs' cities would starve, so you seriously do not need to worry about expanding quickly. I do particularly enjoy having fewer, taller cities due to the UI though, simply because it's almost impossible not to get tall with them the terrace farms will get worked regardless of food or production focus so unless you avoid growth, your cities are going to grow, and by ideology time if you overexpand your empire is going to be drowning in unhappiness pretty fast.

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Huh, really? I haven't hit happiness problems yet, so I'll see what I can do to mitigate them early on.

The problem with going tall with tradition is that then the Inca sound like a slightly different version of the Aztecs... but without all the war culture. The Inca definitely sounded more versatile than that, so I'd rather try something different.

If Immortal doesn't pan out, I'll try this Liberty strategy with a lower difficulty. Otherwise, I'd rather go with the Aztecs for Immortal.

The Inca have a hill start bias, so it is definitely worth going for tradition if you want to settle good cities with them. The only thing liberty actually assists with, is faster settlers, workers, and a little extra production, none of which are that useful for Inca. I'd go tall with the Inca any day, and get a nice benefit from those observatories in every city I have, plus the ease of outright buying science buildings as they become available, while keeping food caravans going between my cities.

Don't go liberty with the Inca. Tradition is definitely where the highest value would be.

1 luxury per city is definitely not enough to grow the cities properly. To get enough happiness you are forced to go to Colosseums and often build them over other builduings you'd usually get in a Tradition 4 city empire. I'd only go Liberty if you want to go to 8 cities from a level 3 capital, but you'll need a good religion game to get more happiness and gold (mostly gold).

I've been playing with the multiplayer ICS guide against AI and friends and my biggest early problem is always not enough gold.

kb27787 said:

One lux per city? gee... that city will start garnering unhappiness past... size 2
Incas do not waste gold on road maintenance if they are on hills so you don't worry about gold that much, however happiness is a bigger problem.

I would vouch for tradition (monarchy in particular) regardless of wide or tall simply because the UA is basically free license to expand to those treacherous mountain crags where other civs' cities would starve, so you seriously do not need to worry about expanding quickly. I do particularly enjoy having fewer, taller cities due to the UI though, simply because it's almost impossible not to get tall with them the terrace farms will get worked regardless of food or production focus so unless you avoid growth, your cities are going to grow, and by ideology time if you overexpand your empire is going to be drowning in unhappiness pretty fast.

Click to expand...

Don't u ever have games, where there are only 3 different lux in the area that can be settled ?

The 1-luxury-per-city guideline is just a temporary solution to get the city started on the right foot. It's not meant to power growth of that city all game long. You need to keep securing sources of happiness throughout the game to keep your cities growing.

The Incas are one of the strongest civs out there, while you don't have the science bonuses of Babylon or Korea, you have a production bonus from the starting bias. And a massive food bonus in hills, especially near mountains.
There is a gold bonus from roads on hills being maintenance free and even the ones on flatland are 50% off.
There is also a very good chance that your primary luxury will be a mining luxury, and those are the easiest to connect. (In addition most of the mining luxuries are suitable for a faith pantheon)

The movement bonus applies even outside your lands, which give you a mobility edge.
Just don't expect your ranged units to stand in place to defend workers and you'll be fine.

dragonxxx said:

Don't u ever have games, where there are only 3 different lux in the area that can be settled ?

Click to expand...

Yep, more the reason to stay small and tall at 2-3 cities... I've even done 3 cities with 2 luxes total in my empire before and it worked; just need to get some CS allies/trades/depending on how many copies you have.

Btw OP, monarchy is supremely powerful when your cities grow even without trying... here I just had one food route to my cap but look at its food... I did not click food focus at all the entire game after the terrace farms came online.

Yeah, as the game progresses, I see that Science becomes my greatest asset. At first, it looked like aiming for 5, 6, or more cities with cheap connections was the way to go, and even though I can, it doesn't need to happen early in the game.

It seems that following Tradition, with a detour for Citizenship (and/or the Pyramids) is the way to go.

Of course, I still don't regret going Liberty, as I needed to forward-settle Gandhi and Genghis early. Ended up being worth it in both cases. Plus, the lowest my Happiness ever got was -1 (which I recovered from), and I have few money problems.

I might attempt to try the Incas again some time later (this time avoiding mistakes like thinking Observatories can be built with mountains 2 tiles away), but for now, I'll just finish this run.

Seeing as I'm relatively new to BNW, a couple of questions I'd like to ask:

-When establishing an internal Trade Route (say, from Machu to Cusco), are those Hammers/Apples really created out of nowhere? Won't Machu lose that Production/Food at some point?

-I picked Freedom in this game, while most of the other players picked Order. Some neighbours (Pedro and Gandhi) surprisingly went with Autocracy, leaving Freedom as the minority. However, even before most others picked their ideology, I was already suffering from dissident unhappiness. Other Civs' tourism output doesn't seem to be that large on me (Exotic at best), so what exactly causes dissent?

JonnasN said:

Seeing as I'm relatively new to BNW, a couple of questions I'd like to ask:

-When establishing an internal Trade Route (say, from Machu to Cusco), are those Hammers/Apples really created out of nowhere? Won't Machu lose that Production/Food at some point?

Click to expand...

Yes, they are created out of nowhere. You don't lose the resources.

JonnasN said:

-I picked Freedom in this game, while most of the other players picked Order. Some neighbours (Pedro and Gandhi) surprisingly went with Autocracy, leaving Freedom as the minority. However, even before most others picked their ideology, I was already suffering from dissident unhappiness. Other Civs' tourism output doesn't seem to be that large on me (Exotic at best), so what exactly causes dissent?

Click to expand...

All it takes is one civ with a different ideology to cause pressure. It's a comparison of their influence on you, and yours on them. If they reach exotic against you before you reach exotic against them, they will be causing you 1 level of unhappiness. As soon as you hit exotic vs. them, it would go away.

chazzycat said:

Yes, they are created out of nowhere. You don't lose the resources.



All it takes is one civ with a different ideology to cause pressure. It's a comparison of their influence on you, and yours on them. If they reach exotic against you before you reach exotic against them, they will be causing you 1 level of unhappiness. As soon as you hit exotic vs. them, it would go away.

Click to expand...

Thank you I thought it only made a difference once it was past a certain threshold, but it's actually relative to others. Definitely more dangerous, thankfully, there is Universal Suffrage.

Also, just a more general question, at one point, I wanted to propose "Embargo Gandhi". At the time, he had a sizeable lead, and most were neutral towards him (no ideologies yet). If I did, would the others have seen it as a dangerous proposal of sorts? I've noticed some leaders congratulate/insult me on my proposals quite a few turns after the fact, so if India made new allies in the meantime, would they be suddenly angry at me (before the vote)? Or would it only be India's allies at the time of proposal?

(I ended up proposing the World Fair, and leave the Embargo for later. Better move, as the ideologies were picked later, and he ended up pissing off everybody else in the meantime, so I got a diplomacy boost just by proposing it!)