are the Aztecs way better at slow pace??

[Rpger29]

The longer period of relevance will allow you to build a core of 6-8 jaguars with the promo that carries over to upgraded units. If you're careful, you'll retain 50% of them all the way to the modern era.

This is actually true of most UU's. Faster speeds are the great equalizer. They decrease the importance of UU's and increase the importance of BPT and a strong economy/production.

 

[woodshadows]

What I do with the Aztecs that generally works like a charm is take Liberty until I get my free Settler and Worker, then take the right side of Honor (the culture duplication from barbs with Aztec/Honor opener is awesome). I will build mostly Jags and try to Rex to 4-5 cities. Barb hunt like crazy and head for Ironworking A.S.A.P. With about 6 Jags, and hopefully some iron to upgrade them, I can usually take out my nearest neighbor (usually a few archers thrown in as well). After that it's smooth sailing. I connect my luxuries, garrison my troops for happiness, build up my cities with floating gardens and play the diplomat with all my resources for a while. I then have the ability to choose whether to go for domination or space race.

What speed/difficulty/mapsize and type are you playing?

I thought the first three liberty policies kind of pointless for most maps/difficulties? Increased settler speed and increased speed of workers doesn't seem like a policy that will matter for the majority of the game, tho it will provide a boost early on, but there seem better boosts to take? The first liberty is good, but only after you have a few cities built, before that it's giving you only +1 culture for your capital, a poor choice for a first policy imo, not much bang for your buck and won't greatly speed up the time to your next policy.

Taking the first honor tree seems vital with the aztecs, the ability to locate newly spawned barb camps, increased combat bonus against barbs and a whopping amount of culture for every barb killed seems like the better choice over the first liberty policy which will only give you +1 culture per turn per city (likely only have one city at this point).

Next policy you would take is a free settler or worker? If you're looking to pull off a rush (assuming a close neighbour) then wouldn't it be better to grab the next honour tree policy, gain a great general and increased speed in producing melee units (jaguars), since producing melee units is what your city should/will be doing at this stage, to maximize barbarian hunting and prepare for the swordsman upgrade.

I'm not saying having an extra worker or settler isn't helpful, but it seems like for higher difficulties that is going to extremely impede the speed with which you can field an effective army capable of taking a close neighbour out. With 4-5 cities you'll be slowing your ability to get quick policies and maximize military benefits of the honour tree as well as forcing you to build happiness buildings, go for happiness/money techs and build more workers to deal with your many cities, as opposed to what you should be doing in beelining ironworking, building a bunch of jaguars and using them to hunt barbs for mass culture and rapid honour tree exploitation.

I generally find 3 cities to be the magic number on pangaea or continents standard size map normal speed. I'll often have the majority of my conquering forces built before I even build my second city and that second city is often a settler I buy with barb/citystate/artifact/open borders gold just to get Iron. It allows a very early rush with highly upgraded troops with 10% near adjacent unit, a great general and 50% quicker experience. I'll buy my third settler for my third city soon after crushing my first enemy, with the gold I get from them.

This worked consistently on Emperor and thus far in my recent Immortal game it has proved just as useful. Plus, unlike the Liberty tree settler and worker policies, these honour tree policies will be useful throughout the entire game in the one area of the game in which the human player has an edge and a chance of using that edge to come out ahead - the military. The only liberty tree I might get is the very first one, but only AFTER I've conquered a sizeable amount of cities which will cause the +1 culture per city to be powerful. Really I try to avoid liberty and tradition for domination games, focusing exclusively upon honour and patronage (patronage is amazing).

Also, is there really no diplomatic penalty for abusing the trading system? I haven't seen it mentioned on these forums tho I'm sure others do this as well: You are prepared for declaring war on an enemy, your troops are all arranged and ready to move. You open a diplomatic screen with your intended victim and ask them what they want for all of their lump-sum gold on hand. They ask for every resource, luxury and strategic you have, you agree, you close the diplomatic screen after having gotten between 200 - 500 gold (I'm not sure whether it's necessary to close the diplomatic screen but I do just in case). You reopen the diplomatic screen with the same civ and declare war, cutting off the flow of resources before the ai has benefitted from them and you meanwhile still get to keep the gold. This is also something which is useful to do against civs on the other side of the map whose army you dont have to fear.

 

[turtlefang]

The Aztecs are a favorite civ of mine and I play about half my games on marathon. But the Aztec cultural kills don't scale with the increased cultural cost of the SP - although you can kill a few more barbs due to spawning.

Overall, the Aztecs are great. The jags upgrade with 2 pts healing after a kill, 50% defense in jungles and star with woodcraft. Add in a couple of promotions for barb hunting, then upgrade to swordsman and you literally have the best swordsmen in the game - and the abilities carry all the way to mech infantry.

Floating Gardens is one of the best UBs in the game - period.

So no, IMO, I don't think the Aztecs get much advantage from a slower game other than the Jags advantage - due to the military being more important in slower games - is more dominate.

 

[Liegence]

Jags are basically the best unit ever.

 

[SlithyTove]

Well, aztecs are not the greatest civ no matter what speed you are on.

That said the Aztec Cultural Warpath is one of my favorite scenarios to play, so I think they are great fun. Create a small tall empire and raze the world to create the Aztec utopia!

I shudder to think what Monty's idea of "utopia" is though lol.

 

[Civsassin]

Well, aztecs are not the greatest civ no matter what speed you are on.

That's purely a matter of opinion. If you polled everyone on the forum for the greatest civ, and everyone that plays responded, you would have votes for every civ. The argument of greatest civ, OP units or traits, OP wonders or buildings, and/or play style is a silly one. It is best to keep opinion and statements of fact separated.

 

[woodshadows]

That's purely a matter of opinion. If you polled everyone on the forum for the greatest civ, and everyone that plays responded, you would have votes for every civ. The argument of greatest civ, OP units or traits, OP wonders or buildings, and/or play style is a silly one. It is best to keep opinion and statements of fact separated.

Despite the claims of the detractors I find the civs to all be well-balanced with eachother, at least as of the most recent patch, I never played prior to this latest patch so I can't comment on the past. Every civ has enough bonuses which can be exploited to come ahead so it really becomes a question not of greatest civ but greatest player. A good player should be able to do better with no uniques than a lesser player with every unique.

 

[Civsassin]

Despite the claims of the detractors I find the civs to all be well-balanced with eachother, at least as of the most recent patch, I never played prior to this latest patch so I can't comment on the past. Every civ has enough bonuses which can be exploited to come ahead so it really becomes a question not of greatest civ but greatest player. A good player should be able to do better with no uniques than a lesser player with every unique.

I agree with you. Whether a player can do better with one civ over another has as much to do with play style as it does to player strength. Because of the unique traits, some civs support certain play styles better than others. Another serious consideration is map type. Come to think of it, most of the player-selected variables have different effects on different civs. Speaking of Montezuma, play him on a lakes map, and you will obviously make his UU even stronger.

 

[Martin Alvito]

As with any warmongering civ, the Aztecs are considerably better when you slow the game down. Unless you turn raging barbs on, the bonus from kills scales poorly. Adversaries won't be able to replace units they send into tactical meatgrinders (because the AI fails at tactics) nearly as quickly, but costs rise sharply.

Despite this problem, any civ with a potent early UU is going to perform better at slower game speeds. By slowing the game down, the player is able to conquer more civs with the same core force of units. The reason is that transit time from target to target isn't nearly as punitive; the next prospective victim researches fewer techs while the invading army approaches. As with the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Iroquois, the Aztecs get more mileage out of early, upgraded Jaguars on Marathon than they would on slower game speeds. Iron rushes can take down several victims instead of just one or two.

 

[SlithyTove]

Some civs are more powerful than other civs. This is not an opinion, but a statement of fact. It's impossible to completely balance a game this complicated and it would probably be wrong-headed of them to try.

Polls for greatest overall civ have occurred and while you find some who will vote for anything, there are very clear favorites and losers. Ottomans are widely considered bottom tier for example. France, the most easily directly comparable to Monty is widely considered top tier.

A statement that Napoleon is better than Monty in every scenario except OCC is based on my best min/max analysis of their traits, not a vague opinion. It is, of course, always possible that I am wrong.

But here is an opinion: Monty is more fun to play than Napoleon

That's purely a matter of opinion. If you polled everyone on the forum for the greatest civ, and everyone that plays responded, you would have votes for every civ. The argument of greatest civ, OP units or traits, OP wonders or buildings, and/or play style is a silly one. It is best to keep opinion and statements of fact separated.

 

[Martin Alvito]

A statement that Napoleon is better than Monty in every scenario except OCC is based on my best min/max analysis of their traits, not a vague opinion. It is, of course, always possible that I am wrong.

That's a pretty heroic argument. France produces a reliable quick start backed up with UUs. In most cases that's going to beat Monty, but a serious warmonger would probably prefer the hard-to-kill Jaguars coupled with the useful UB and UA.

That said, your more general point that some civs are better than others is clearly true. There are a few standout civs at both ends of the spectrum and a lot of relatively indistinguishable civs in between. The one positive thing I will say about the balance of the civs in the middle is that many of them are quality risk/reward exercises. A civ like China will produce solid, reliable results. Civs such as Polynesia produce a wide range of results that are setting-dependent. Civs such as Russia and Rome are heavily map-dependent; their suitability to the game cannot be predicted until after they are selected, the map is rolled and a number of turns elapse.

 

[woodshadows]

Some civs are more powerful than other civs. This is not an opinion, but a statement of fact. It's impossible to completely balance a game this complicated and it would probably be wrong-headed of them to try.

Polls for greatest overall civ have occurred and while you find some who will vote for anything, there are very clear favorites and losers. Ottomans are widely considered bottom tier for example. France, the most easily directly comparable to Monty is widely considered top tier.

A statement that Napoleon is better than Monty in every scenario except OCC is based on my best min/max analysis of their traits, not a vague opinion. It is, of course, always possible that I am wrong.

But here is an opinion: Monty is more fun to play than Napoleon

I'd argue the opposite, France may get a leap on culture/policies but a warmongering Monty isn't far behind and access to a UU from turn 1 of the game is very powerful, upgraded right through each era, collecting promotions along the way. The floating gardens can also be extremely powerful, even without inland lakes. With France you won't have a UU until gunpowder and then have to hardbuild muskets who will only have as many promotions as military buildings you have in your cities can give. Foreign Legion is a great unit but by the time you get it a lot of win or loss momentum has already accrued and would be hard to change with just it alone in your favour.