Aztec Cultural victory? Can it be done?

[QueenElizabeth]

Thought I would have a go at combining the Aztec ability to generate culture from killing and the Jaguar ability to generate health from killing to try to win a cultural victory.
I'm on Immortal, pangea, standard, with 18 civs.

I think I was gifted an unbelievable start - a small piece of land bracketed to the north and east by the ocean and to the south and west by mountains.

There is a pass a tile wide between the ocean and the eastern and northern ends of the mountain range with two other passes, each two tiles wide in the southwest corner and in the middle of the western range.

Something like:

OOOOOOOOOOOO
H_____________O
M_____________O
H2____________O
H_____________O
M_______1_____O
M_____________O
MHHMMNMMMMHO

Where O is Ocean, H is Hill, M is Mountain, 1 is my first city and 2 is my second.
I've got a decent mix of hills, lake, river and grass. A marble next to each city, some bananas.

With 18 neighbours it didn't take long for someone, Siam to be specific, to come knocking. So having been busy building jaguars I'm a bit behind on Wonders, but the goal is to have everyone throwing units at me and in theory the Wonders won't really matter.
The upside of feeling the tip of the Siam spear(men) is that I already have two citadels, one just west of my second city and one in the south west gap to hold off Geneva.

The Iroquois have just declared war on me as well and will be coming round the eastern end, which I've stopped up with a couple of archers.

My questions are:

Can it be done?
Will the AI notice the citadels and take to the sea?
What else have I missed or do I need to focus on?

Cheers!

 

[CPCMaxwell]

While the effort to draw a... hum... map of your game is appreciable, posting some screenshots would definitly be better if you expect some help.

Will the AI notice the citadels and take to the sea?

Don't hold your breath...

 

[Bandobras Took]

The Aztecs have some strong points for cultural victory. In theory, the always war can be done, and the higher the difficulty level, the more units the AI will have to suicide against you, and the more quickly they'll get to those high-culture units.

Do you have horses? Mounted units help a great deal.

Oh, and please tell me you took Tradition as your first social policy.

 

[Azedenkae]

Can it be done? Totally. But calculations would probably have to be made, concerning how many cities you have and everything. I mean, you can't really churn units out fast if you have few cities, but having a large amount of cities will require more culture to adopt policies. If you're not careful and calculations are off, then those extra cities would be a huge liability...

 

[QueenElizabeth]

Do you have horses? Mounted units help a great deal.

Oh, and please tell me you took Tradition as your first social policy.

I don't have any horses.

Hopefully with all the hills I'll have some coal, aluminium and uranium...

And I did explore the Tradition and Honour trees with my first few policies.

Sorry about the lack of a screenshot, I'm a dreadful noob with technology. Don't actually know how to take a screenshot, much less upload one!

 

[QueenElizabeth]

Can it be done? Totally. But calculations would probably have to be made, concerning how many cities you have and everything. I mean, you can't really churn units out fast if you have few cities, but having a large amount of cities will require more culture to adopt policies. If you're not careful and calculations are off, then those extra cities would be a huge liability...

As you say, less cities better, and so I'm only planning on having the two cities.
With the citadels and the self-healing of upgraded-Jaguars I was thinking just two or three units could hold each of the mountain passes, rotating out as needed. With the odd unit bought from time to time if required.

 

[Soronery]

I'm worried you arn't going to have enough gold/science to win.

 

[Dermo]

The less than effective AI has been well documented, but let me give you a learning from a similar game I played.
I was going for the Bollywood achievement (≤ 3 city cultural victory as India) With a similar starting position I boxed off the mountain passes with citadels and defensive units followed by siege engines 2 or 3 deep to pound any would-be invaders. This worked for quite a long time into industrial/modern age. I had heavily promoted artillery and infantry from all the units the AI sent my way.
The next thing I see is gunships, lots of gunships, flying over the mountains and taking out the artillery in 1 or 2 turns, at that point everything fell apart.

Now I'm not saying that I didn't know gunships could traverse mountain hexes (I did), but I wasn't expecting the AI to adapt its strategy the way it did given all discussion in these forums about the AI's track record in combat.

Also, it did make a feeble attemp at a naval incursion (1-2 units at a time), however the siege engines/cites generally killed everything before or as the units dis-embarked

 

[QueenElizabeth]

Now I'm not saying that I didn't know gunships could traverse mountain hexes (I did)

Eep!
I didn't.

Good tip, thank you Dermo.

 

[bryanw1995]

first time I got gunships I had a huge tech advantage and mopped up the entire map with 6-7 of them. 2nd time I made it to gunships america was on the other continent and at tech parity. the gunships didn't last very long in heavy fighting on rough terrain, the no def bonus was a real buzzkill...

 

[aimlessgun]

Speaking from experience, you can do it, but in the end the culture you get from kills will be an incredibly tiny fraction of your total culture. The Aztec ability is great for grabbing early policies, but don't think you can get a culture victory without doing the normal culture victory stuff.

If you get a leg up in a military tech, like getting early longswords, get 2-3 highly promoted guys and go around 'harvesting' the AI. Just take a tour of the map killing units and ignoring the cities. Make sure your kill squad has March and Medic.

 

[Cuba Libre]

Will the AI notice the citadels and take to the sea?

Maybe, but not in force. They'll trickle in one or two at a time like they do on land. I'd recommend building a small navy, maybe 2-3 ships, and stationing them right outside your cities. Just run over embarked units as they come.

 

[Paeanblack]

I was playing around with Aztec cultural victory for a while...a few thoughts

-Diety is probably the best setting. More dead AI units = more culture.

-The hide-in-a-defensive corner approach didn't work very well, for a few reasons:
-I got outteched fast. Jag-heal Longswordsmen in a Citadel on a Hill are really strong, but are no match for Bombers and Mech Inf.
-I wasn't killing units fast enough. If you aren't killing quickly enough, then the AIs will build a giant carpet of units and totally block themselves. The traffic jam keeps them from flowing efficiently into your meat grinders.

In my second attempt, I hit the nearest neighbor immediately and conquered (puppeted) him. This allowed me to fight a two-front war and gave me Science, Culture, and SPs much faster.

However, for an Aztec culture victory, you need to leave AIs in the game with enough capability to keep throwing units at you. I failed to do this and just kept on conquering for a domination win instead.

My advice: Play Diety, attack right from the start. Puppet everything. Once you are the "right size", stop steamrolling and switch to defense. The trick is finding the "right size". You want every remaining AI to have a wide, easy path to your doorstep, but you also want them to be large enough to be throwing a big enough stream of units at you. Since Aztec culture bonus scales with the strength of the enemy unit, you also want them to be throwing advanced units at you.

Also, head straight for Dynamite. Ignore any tech that does not lead to Dynamite. (Possibly even Pottery!) Artillery are crucial. Build lots of Citadels. Keep your original Jaguars alive--their healing ability can make them almost invincible on defense. Build/buy a bunch of Jaguars before they go obsolete. Upgrade them.

Another tip: give/sell the AIs your strategic resources during peacetime. They will build units with those resources, and when you go to war, those units are fighting at -50%

 

[Paeanblack]

Speaking from experience, you can do it, but in the end the culture you get from kills will be an incredibly tiny fraction of your total culture. The Aztec ability is great for grabbing early policies, but don't think you can get a culture victory without doing the normal culture victory stuff.

The culture bonus scales with the strength of the enemy unit. Killing a Modern Armor is 40 culture points. A GDR is 75 culture. I've had a single Mech Inf earn more than 200 culture by itself during the AIs turn. Those numbers are significant.

 

[aimlessgun]

Compared to the insane amount of culture needed for late policies even with Cristo and Freedom?

When I did this, I got bored around the early modern age. But at the time I had quit, I would say continuously killing stuff the entire game had given me maybe 5% of my total culture. I guess 5% is significant. Just not enough to think you can skimp on other culture stuff.

 

[Paeanblack]

I would say continuously killing stuff the entire game had given me maybe 5% of my total culture.

I think you and I differ on what constitutes "continuously killing stuff". I'm thinking that means killing at least 10 units per turn, every turn. If those are advanced units, that can up to tens of thousands of culture points.

 

[Paeanblack]

If you get a leg up in a military tech, like getting early longswords, get 2-3 highly promoted guys and go around 'harvesting' the AI.

Yeah...this where we differ. You are fighting technologically inferior units, which give crap for culture.

 

[Celevin]

I think you and I differ on what constitutes "continuously killing stuff". I'm thinking that means killing at least 10 units per turn, every turn. If those are advanced units, that can up to tens of thousands of culture points.

In a standard game, you aren't killing ten units every turn.

Count the total number of units killed in a game, and compare it to the number of turns in the game. It's very low.

 

[Paeanblack]

In a standard game, you aren't killing ten units every turn.

Yeah, you need to set up a game that caters to massive amounts of AI units. Overcrowding a Deity/Great Plains map will do that.

 

[aimlessgun]

Yeah...this where we differ. You are fighting technologically inferior units, which give crap for culture.

Right, because I'm doing that the entire game, just fighting warriors the whole way on deity.

Unless you explicitly set up a for it, you won't kill 10 units a turn, and frankly, I'd like to see a video of you killing 10 units a turn for the whole game on ANY setup before I believe it. Sorry, the computer won't supply you with units that fast. 10 units a turn in bursts, sure. 10 units a turn for the whole game (past early game of course), not seeing it, even on deity.

EDIT: Ok I can maybe see it IF you somehow police the whole world so that a runaway AI doesn't go on a conquering spree and make half the map puppets that aren't making any units. If you can pull that off while at the same time defending yourself on a wide open Great Plains map, hats off to you.