Aztec Advice?

[Roblord]

I want to play as the Aztecs my next game, but I need advice(as I'm not very good at the game). I'll be playing a large pangea map on King level at Marathon speed...standard numbers of CS and civs...I like to play the religion game..so I usually go for Stonehedge early on(Gods and Kings here).

1) I usually start off doing Liberty, but would Tradition be better here?

2)Regardless...after the first social policy tree...I have trouble figuring out what tree to do next.

3) Should I beeling to get the Floating gardens...or just do the standard Education beeline?

4) What Wonders should I grab(or should I even bother)? IMO...I like to grab some wonders just to keep the AI from ahving them.

Well...any advice the experts here can give will be most useful. Thanks

 

[Putmalk]

1. Yes, Tradition. Aztecs are one of the best, if not the best Population Growth civilization in the game.

2. Honor is nice for culture against Barbarians, but Rationalism is your primary. Grow tall and go Rationalism, you will be outteching the AIs by massive amounts if you have a decent amount of 20 pop cities.

3. Yes beeline to Floating Gardens. Every city by a river or lake. Build 3-4 cities and grow them as fast as possible.

4. Hanging Gardens, Temple of Artemis are my targets as Aztecs. Next, Notre Dame or Hagia Sophia are nice (for the Happiness bonuses). Great Library is also great (very doable on King).


Priority techs: Writing (science + GL), Civil Service (more Food from farms), Mathematics (Hanging Gardens), Engineering (Aqueducts), Education (Science), Fertilizer (Food).

Grow your cities to pop 30+ and watch you dominate the game with undestroyable buildings and uncatchable tech speed.

 

[Varek]

I like to go liberty/honor with the Aztec. I find the chiampas help them grow fast enough as is and I like to go wide and angry with them. I typically start with honor to get the culture boost going immediately and then hunt barbs as much as I can to speed through the policies.

I think you could make a case to play them either way, just have fun. As long as you're having fun you can't go wrong.

-Varek

 

[Fragamemnon]

Monty is a lot of fun. Here's what I did in my last Immortal game w/ him (didn't want to deal with the Deity level domination slog that day, but it would be fine there too.)

- Four city tradition opener. Liberty only seems reasonable in extreme circumstances where you have enough land to fill out seven or eight good cities. Gleefully settle in someone's face if you want, they will eventually declare war and you can farm some culture and unit exp with composite bows easily with very little risk to your cities.

- You want The Wheel to get roads and composite bows via Construction anyway, and the UB is honestly the strongest thing the Aztecs have. You want every city on a river or next to a lake. Between the UB and the tradition finisher, you can easily stack a very large amount of extra bonus food. This lets you get to huge, productive cities faster.

Your goal is to have at least four huge cities. Five is fine too provided the land and spot is good, just get it settled sooner rather than later and throw some cash at rush buys to get it up and running faster (preferably settle it turn 90 ish right after you build the NC). It's best if this city is a secondary production city as you'll need less infrastructure there and things will build faster, but a good science city in the jungle is fine too.

- two that make money/provide science
- one that is slanted for unit production
- your capital, which does everything

After construction, get IW to upgrade your jags, then onto the standard education beeline. Back down to the bottom of the three afterwards, get metal casting->machinery->steel->physics->chemistry and into industrial w/ fertilizer. Tech military science while building Oxford, use Oxford for dynamite and let the sacrfices begin in earnest.

For SP, I think it's game dependent after you fill out Tradition. A point into Patronage goes a long way if you have a lot of neighboring CS, but I would lean towards getting two points in the right side of commerce to get the synergy with the autocracy policy that makes units 33% cheaper (there is stacking going on). Rationalism is also a reasonable choice, especially if you have a lot of jungle tiles to trading post and your income isn't that all that great. As you chew your way through Civs you'll get tons of culture off of unit kills and city captures, but I would keep in mind a few things:

- happiness can be a pain if you are turbo-conquering large cities while you wait for them to burn to the ground. Last policy in the right side of commerce can be a super helpful boost, especially if you run into someone with size 35+ cities like Siam tends to have.
- All of the autocracy policies except militarism and the opener are pretty bad until you get to the very end of the tree. I wouldn't go all the way in that tree.
- A couple of points in rationalism can go a long way, especially (as I mentioned) with Jungle tiles.

As for Wonders, if you are playing on a lower level difficultly and can reasonably get them, the ones I like best for the Aztecs are Temple of Artemis and Big Ben. Stonehenge is very good way to get a religion on Immortal if you don't have a religious CS or natural wonder around, but I don't think it's reliable enough on Deity.

 

[MasterMishi]

to solve the happy problem in suce a build consider religion:

rush shrine in all city, settle natural wonders, or stonehenge

get the happiness pantheon on rivers, then founder happy shrines, and follower happy per city with religion

buy prophet before enhancing and spread to citys

city within 10 tiles pressures a follower and followers turn city to your religion

enhancer belief just war, +20% attack bonus near enemy city with your religion

spread religion to enemy city

spam units and keep going all the way go honour policys, attack with early xbows and knights and trebs if you have the best production (workshops) you go prod focus and dom vic.

plan b unis rationalism attack with ealy arty or go for research lab and inf, or all the way to culture win or sci or nukes )

 

[Civsassin]

The Aztecs are the most fun on a lakes map. It makes their UA that much more effective.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

It seems that a lot of people underrate the value of the Honor opener in general, but especially for the Aztecs. Open Tradition, take Legalism, and then open Honor and start raking in the culture from killing barbarians. Seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough. If you have any interest in going further down Honor (which you should have given that the Aztecs are well-tuned for war, anyway), the opener is a huge culture boost in the early game, and can end up generating about half of your cultural output through the barbarian killing phase of the game. This is obviously map-dependant. The larger the map, and the more central your starting position, the more you're likely to get from killing barbs.

But really, think about opening Honor as your 3rd policy as Montezuma. You'll thank me later.

 

[Putmalk]

It seems that a lot of people underrate the value of the Honor opener in general, but especially for the Aztecs. Open Tradition, take Legalism, and then open Honor and start raking in the culture from killing barbarians. Seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough. If you have any interest in going further down Honor (which you should have given that the Aztecs are well-tuned for war, anyway), the opener is a huge culture boost in the early game, and can end up generating about half of your cultural output through the barbarian killing phase of the game. This is obviously map-dependant. The larger the map, and the more central your starting position, the more you're likely to get from killing barbs.

But really, think about opening Honor as your 3rd policy as Montezuma. You'll thank me later.

Honestly I feel the best strategy for Aztecs is to prioritize growth first and then expand with war, puppeting your way to eiher a domination or science victory. I think Landed Elite is much better than Honor opening, for one.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

Honestly I feel the best strategy for Aztecs is to prioritize growth first and then expand with war, puppeting your way to eiher a domination or science victory. I think Landed Elite is much better than Honor opening, for one.

Well, you only want to open Honor if you're planning on going further down the policy tree, as a pure wasted SP is inefficient. But if that's already the plan, then the Honor opening is definitely good. The amount of culture you can generate from farming barbs is not to be underestimated. This is obviously map dependant, though. The bigger the map, the more barbs that tend to spawn in your sphere of influence. The fact that Jaguars manuever and fight so effectively in jungle/forests (their bonus extends to forests in G&K, which is awesome) makes this all the easier.

After the Honor opener, I would go right back to Landed Elite and probably go ahead and finish Tradition, but if you're going Honor anyway, opening it fairly early can net you hundreds of points of early culture if you can farm effectively. Progressing down Tradition a bit more slowly isn't that big of a deal, as the Aztecs already grow well with the floating gardens, but yes, it is a drawback.

 

[Tachii]

Liberty is alright with the Aztecs. You likely don't need THAT much growth especially if you got all your floating gardens up. It's kind of an overkill (especially if you have 3+ cities). And this allows you to warmonger early since you won't be facing with happiness issues due to explosive core city growth. Or you can remain peaceful (just defend but don't take any cities and take everything they offer for peace treaties) with your core cities until late Medieval when you beelined for Notre Dame or got a religion or enough happiness SPs going for warmongering.