Civ of the Week: Aztecs

[liv]

Does Monty still get his combat bonus if he sells all his luxuries? If he does, then Monty’s ability is also a real money spinner ... and his unique building makes more sense.

No he does not get that. If you sell your first luxury your luxury attack bonus will say zero.

I am trying the Aztecs now. I miss not building a scout first. Get less huts now. But it seems more sense to just go with super warriors, right?

 

[Forster]

Yeah I plan on going eagle warrior heavy. I think in the past I built too many archers, it's hard not to, because even as bad as the ai can be, they often perch atop a hill and it can take you one or two turns to get next to him, in which case he takes over half your health making you unable to take him out. With overwhelming numbers, however, I should be able to do it. Assuming I don't run into bottlenecks.

Usually I build one slinger to watch my city then only build warriors until I have 4 or 5. You don't need slingers/archers until walls go up. The eagle warrior can take out archers with two hits if you have 2 warriors attacking at once, and that is the main reason for having archers early to take out opponent archers.

No he does not get that. If you sell your first luxury your luxury attack bonus will say zero.

I did not know that. Guess no more selling off early luxuries.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

Starting with the best! All of their abilities are very strong and their UU is amazing. I generally go very heavy on Eagle warriors and declare war almost immediately with anyone who is nearby. I try to get agoge in as soon as possible and beeline archery. I play combat somewhat differently with the Aztecs and focus more on killing enemy units than capturing cities at first. I like to move my early Eagles directly to the nearest neighbors and camp them out on tough terrain with archer support. Then I can snipe their units from a distance and make sure the warriors strike the killing blow. You can really strangle their development while you are free to expand at will and gobble up all the luxuries and pump fast districts. I will always try to build pyramids ASAP with Aztecs - keep all of your captured builders around with a single charge and then reap the benefits!

One thing I recently learned about the Aztecs is that their luxury combat bonus applies to religious combat too making them a great choice for RV as well. I usually go for domination with the Aztecs so I might explore a different route. I might try an inland sea map and post some screenshots if I have time to play this week.

There's a great video series by civtrader6 posting a super fast SV that illustrates the power of this civ in the early game.

 

[Liufeng]

I don't know if someone mentioned it, but with golden ages, this got much stronger. They can build districts (and thus develop their cities) even faster than before with the "Monumentality" dedication, wihch is a deadly weapon combined with the Eagle Warriors. But I sure would love to see a tourism bonus on the Tlachtli.
The only thing I really do not like is the Tlatoani agenda, which almost impossible to please ...

 

[Karpius]

Water Parks have the advantage of being able to be built in the water, which is a better use of space since not much else can be built there.

Thats my favorite part of Water Parks! Parks....on the water!

 

[Archaelicos]

I try to win a game with every leader, and Monty is one of them that I've been successful with. I ended up at war early, got a ton of builders, spammed out districts, captured the Oracle, and then won an easy culture victory.

 

[Disgustipated]

Interesting start so far. Did they tweak the Eagle Warrior ability? I seem to remember not getting captures (as I mentioned above, I believe I only got 1). Every single kill has been a capture (builder) so far.

It's a little bit of a tough start for me due to not a lot of production in my capital initially (just one quarry). The religious aspect mentioned above is interesting, but to make best use of the Eagle Warrior I feel like I have to skip religion. Otherwise you are just wasting your UU in my honest opinion. Even on epic techs are fast, and I feel like my UU won't last much longer. I'm in the middle of attacking Chandra right now, perhaps I should have hit an easier target, but I want him down before Varu come out.

Another aspect with Rise and Fall is your first city capture will be before your first governor, making holding that first city a little dicey. I got my first governor just in the nick of time.

I'll include my save in case anyone is interested. Barbs are off, continents map on King difficulty. While barbs off does give me a little advantage due to not having to defend my capital, the AI expands rapidly with barbs off. Chandra had 3 cities and had places a 4th city shortly after I declared war. First impressions (not really first since I've played this civ before) is the Eagle Warrior is a little too early warfare for my style of play. The question for you all is would you expand to a 2nd city before building up eagle warriors or stick to 1 city? I stuck with one city. Slinger, builder, eagle warriors. I was in last place in score when I declared on Chandra. I settled in place.

edit: Varu are now out, city strength is 43. Sigh. We'll see how this goes.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Can't load that save without DLCs unfortunately; will have to do seeds
-768171427
-768171428

Epic/Continents/Standard/14 Players/12 CS I think

EDIT: Removed incorrect game

 

[Disgustipated]

Ouch, this game isn't looking good for me. Any suggestions? I just suck with the Aztecs apparently. Maybe I should have expanded to a second city first. But 2nd city's production usually tends to be poor. This is why I can never rank them first tier civilization, at least for me. I struggle with them compared to say Rome or Macedon.

This is my current situation. It's not looking good for holding Patna. Loyalty was good, but suddenly went bad, and I'm 3 points away from a golden age and the era ends in a few turns.

 

[Disgustipated]

Is that it?

Not even close. Interesting those seeds don't seem to work?

edit: where do you see the map seeds? I can't seem to find them

 

[BenitoChavez]

The question for you all is would you expand to a 2nd city before building up eagle warriors or stick to 1 city? I stuck with one city. Slinger, builder, eagle warriors. I was in last place in score when I declared on Chandra. I settled in place.

I haven't played Aztecs in a while but my build order with them was EW, Builder, Settler, 2 EW, Settler, 2 EW, other stuff. It seemed to strike a good balance between expanding and building up your army. 3 EWs was usually enough to go attack someone. 6 was more than enough to start taking cities and not have to build settlers any more.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Not even close. Interesting those seeds don't seem to work?

edit: where do you see the map seeds? I can't seem to find them

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/start-location-advice.631981/page-3#post-15120451 That's what you would need.

 

[Disgustipated]

Here's my starting location and the unenviable situation I find myself in. I guess I can say I hurt India a bit and I got quite a few builders, but I'm way behind in cities now.

And it sure would be nice if India and Aztecs didn't share the same colors.

edit: Things in Patna stabilized a bit after hooking up those oranges. Unfortunately I only have 2 luxuries. Not a good map for Aztecs.

 

[Disgustipated]

Yeah Aztecs just aren't tough enough to tangle with Chandra India, at least not with me at the helm with only 2 luxuries at the time (I now have 4). He's a toughie. I ended up losing Patna due to loyalty. Luckily Indonesia was easy pickins. This game is yet salvageable.

Loyalty is still a problem as I struggled with an Indonesian city until they were defeated.

Oh and I was not able to capture a builder from a free city warrior.(just tried with that really wounded eagle warrior on the left side of this image)

 

[Archon_Wing]

That really doesn't look bad. Just need to settle the stuff to the south and do a lot more chopping. If he's gotten Varu, that means your first attack took too long. You have iron, which means going feudalism+ stirrups would be good.

Also it looks like I switched the 2 seeds by accident. Should be
-768171427
-768171428

in that order.

However, I still can't get the same map. It looks almost the same; maybe this is because of DLC leader start biases?



EDIT: India is there at least

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Ouch, this game isn't looking good for me. Any suggestions? I just suck with the Aztecs apparently. Maybe I should have expanded to a second city first. But 2nd city's production usually tends to be poor. This is why I can never rank them first tier civilization, at least for me. I struggle with them compared to say Rome or Macedon.

This is my current situation. It's not looking good for holding Patna. Loyalty was good, but suddenly went bad, and I'm 3 points away from a golden age and the era ends in a few turns.

I like playing the Aztec allot. The trick, I think, is to build an extra eagle warrior, find someone to attack, then declare. Start farming builders. Build an archer or two, send them forward, then a settler. By the time the archers arrive, you should have more builders than you know what to do with. Pound the city with the archers, then bring the eagles in when it's at mid strength. As the city falls, settle close to it for added friendly loyalty. Move magnus there, use the builders to increase the population quickly. Take the rest of the civ.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, the map was almost identical except much less generous for luxuries. it is a pretty bad map though; not much production at all. I did get a CS in its place though which gave me an early pantheon. Could have taken Goddess of the Harvest but took Divine Spark instead in order to not skew things.



And then this happened.



But at least it was some free builders. India did eventually got the Varus and he is far away, but all I had to do against that was get a governor and build a monument. Eventually I chopped out a Government Plaza so it would stay on my side. Oh yea, enjoy your border gore.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Something I've always wondered about the Aztecs, but never tested myself, is how production overflow works with the civ ability. Say a district normally takes 100 production and there is 10 production left to complete the district. Instead of waiting for the city to finish you use a builder charge instead. Since a builder charge is 20 production in this scenario, will the city end up with an overflow of 10 production or would that production be lost?

I just tested this out. The answer is no, you don't get overflow. So if you really want to micromanage and maximize your production you have to use a builder charge then switch production to something else. Then the next turn switch back to the district, use a builder charge, switch back, and repeat.

 

[isau]

FWIW I'm pretty sure Monty's agenda is difficult to please by design. He's always been one of the more irritable Civ leaders, and hard to keep on your side.

 

[Disgustipated]

Well, I cranked out a win (essentially). I normally play King with barbarians on, so with barbarians off it was a little more challenge for me, but in the end it wasn't enough. The AI is toast. And I drank 6 beers, which is a lot for me. The AI should be ashamed of himself or itself. (I'm assuming the AI is genderless). The screen starts to get a little blurry after that many beers, I was at a disadvantage.

I'll finish this game in the near future, but the game is won already.

Final conclusion is the Aztecs are a good civ, but I feel they don't really excel in any one area. They are a jack of all trades civ. India was a bit too tough for me so I put them off for later and conquered Indonesia, Australia, and finally Brazil after finishing 6 beers (it's my Friday). Rio De Janeiro actually was very tough for me, and 2 crossbowmen took out several of my troops, but I was careless and trying to go too fast. Had to peace out and regroup. Brazil put up a fight, but in the end they went down like the rest of them. See the mini map.

I'm not sure what's on the other continent(s), but we'll see. Norway is making a big push for religious victory, but I doubt they will get it with so many civs in the game. I'm not sure where they are. Have to watch for cultural victory, but otherwise this game is won.

I feel like I still didn't get the full power out of the Aztecs, but as mentioned above, production wasn't very high on this map. I didn't want to chop my flatland forests as that was all the production I had other than 2 quarries. Magnus got in some good work in all the Indonesian jungles and hill forests too the West.

I didn't really intend on going full on warfare. But loyalty issues are an issue. I will have to deal with Persia because I'm in a dark age and they are in a normal age, and they are putting pressure on the last Brazilian city I took. I may as well conquer the rest of my continent. After that I could go space victory which I will probably do since I recently did a conquest victory with France, and I'm not in the mood to do it again. I may get culture before that though since all victories are enabled.

India is still there in the South, it's hard to tell since they share colors with me. I may spare them, not sure. We'll see how it goes.