Whew, that was a quick first 100 turns.
- What did you think about before starting the game, what was your approach to this game?
Thought about terrace farms as far as the eye can see. Wanted to plan out the best city locations to get the maximum value from the mountains that should be plentiful on a Frontier map.
- Where did you settle and what did you build first?
As discussed in the Announcement thread, where to settle was an interesting question before opening the game. However, after moving the warrior to the SE and seeing more mountains and a great 3-mountain terrace farm spot, I decided to settle on the hill/river/mountain, not on the Copper. Even though the Copper would be in range of the good terrace farms, it would lose the Cotton; and since I didn't see any more luxes in range, I couldn't risk that.
Build order was: Scout, Monument, Bought a Scout so I could build a Shrine. Ruins were: Culture, Gold, Trapping, Map, Barbs.
- How did the terrain and map settings affect your early decisions? - What were your initial priorities?
All those glorious hills and mountains are a young Inca's dream. First needed to scout all the mountains and find the best city locations. It turned out to be kind of difficult. The central mountain range had some amazing spots for terrace farms. But deciding on where to place the cities to take advantage of those spots, while also getting the luxuries that were spread around in not an ideal manner, was tricky. I took a screenshot at T31 to plan my city locations, which would later change of course... originally I had planned on building my second city on the Truffles to the NW of Cusco but then I spied an Aztec Settler heading that way. He was alone so I was going to capture him - but the turn before I could, he plopped down Teotihuacan blocking my Truffle spot. So I founded my second city on the Silver instead. This turned out to be good for the coming Aztec attack because it was an easily defendable location.
Third city I decided to build inland instead of on the coast as originally planned. There were other coastal spots for ships and I needed to be closer to the mountain range for the interior Terrace Farm locations; plus I could build it on a river/mountain to get my Pantheon happiness and an observatory.
- What tech path did you follow and why?
The normal Pottery, AH then to Construction for Terrace Farming knowledge (it also has CB which turned out to be good for what would happen later - the Aztec attack).
- What Social Policies did you choose?
Full Tradition. I kind of wish I would have gone Liberty after seeing all the plentiful land available, but Tradition is never a bad choice so its ok.
- What Wonders did you try to get and did you get them?
None, zip, zero, nada. Didn't try any yet, too much else to do.
- Did you get a religion? What religious beliefs did you pick?
Not yet. Got a Pantheon - happiness from cities on rivers since basically all my cities will be on rivers and the luxuries are not as plentiful as I like them to be.
A very fun game so far; the Inca usually are. A good combination of city location planning and fighting. It was a slow start though (I always start slow), made even worse when the Aztec DoW me.
I knew it was coming though from early on when he settled two cities toward me and then asked me to not settle my cities in his sphere of influence; I told him to go climb a tree so of course he didn't like that. Monte DoW me around T90 and I was slightly worried because I had seen many Jaguar wondering around. Then when his full army came I got really worried; I even feared I might lose the game right here. He had tons of Jaguar and Spearmen and even a couple of Swordsmen. And behind them were a bunch of Catapults and some CB. And he was attacking all three of my cities. Uh oh.
Machu was never in danger, he only sent an expeditionary force that way. I fought off his first wave at Tiwanaku, then he came in full force for Cusco. Luckily, Monte seems to be the absolute worst army commander of any of the AI. All he did was move his troops around every turn, rarely actually attacking Cusco. The hills and forests helped a lot; it was like he couldn't figure out how to position his Catas to take a shot. Screenshots from T96 show him in mid attack on Cusco. But by the next one T105, he was in full retreat. I think I'll take Tlatelolco and burn it to the ground to teach him a lesson.
They didn't kill a single one of my units. I think they only ever actually attacked a unit once, and it happened to be a CB that retreated from the attack jumping over a river 