[NFP] Civ6 Maya implementation question/discussion

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I was very disappointed with the way Firaxis implemented Mayans in civ 6, as the civ 5 Mayans were my absolute favourite civ to play bar none.

In civ 5, they were not only a very good civ by itself, but Firaxis opened up an exceptionally unique playstyle for the Mayans which perhaps gave them the most flexibility of all civs, and opened up some very fun off-meta playstyles.
I am of course talking about The Long Count ability, which would give you a free Great Person of your choice every 394 years (which early in the game equals a lot of free GPs).
This opened up all sorts of fun choices - should I get a free GS to plant down an Academy to turbocharge my science game with +8 science? Or should I get myself a GE to grab that key wonder I want? Should I get myself a Prophet to found one of the first religions in the game? Or should I perhaps get that Great Admiral (lol) in order to discover every corner of the world in the classical era, and thus open up the diplomatic game (world congress and trading) many eras before it's intended?

In civ 6 though, the Mayans are so incredibly bland. Their bonuses are really boring (a negative bonus compared to Koreas' flat percentage science/culture buff, while equally as boring), the Observatory is often worse than a regular campus, they get a slow start due to housing issues, and otherwise encourage a turtl'y playstyle.
Sure, they can go tall(ish), but they do so really only through increased housing from farms, while offering no real bonuses that would further encourage a tall playstyle.
The Mayans should at least have some mechanics resembling the civ 5 Tradition meta (bonuses tied to population count) if they wanted to encourage tall play, because simply having a large population is not fun or even that useful in civ 6 by itself.
Super boring!

TL;DR:
Bring back some version of The Long Count!

 

[tedhebert]

I've thought and expressed from the very start that 6 tiles is too short a radius for the malus. If they made it 8 tiles, it would allow for much better placement of your limited cities. I stand by that opinion.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I've thought and expressed from the very start that 6 tiles is too short a radius for the malus. If they made it 8 tiles, it would allow for much better placement of your limited cities. I stand by that opinion.

But I like that 6 tiles forces you to change your normal city placement. The bonus just has to be stronger--and when you're at it extend the bonus to include the capital itself as well.

 

[tedhebert]

But I like that 6 tiles forces you to change your normal city placement. The bonus just has to be stronger--and when you're at it extend the bonus to include the capital itself as well.

I just feel that the 6 tiles limit forces you to settle on bad tiles/placement. changing that to 8 would not create havoc with the obvious wish to have maya play as Tall. It would just allow you to still place cities intelligently. Especially since you're forced to place your capital without any knowledge of what the surrounding terrain is.

 

[Revanchist]

Increasing the bonus wouldn’t give you as much flexibility as extending the radius. Cities were already placed uniquely due to the lack of fresh water bonuses, granting a stronger bonus doesn’t mean much when the tiles you want to settle are covered by water or mountains

 

[Sostratus]

I just feel that the 6 tiles limit forces you to settle on bad tiles/placement. changing that to 8 would not create havoc with the obvious wish to have maya play as Tall. It would just allow you to still place cities intelligently. Especially since you're forced to place your capital without any knowledge of what the surrounding terrain is.

I think we settled on something like 11-12 cities you can technically pack in around your capital in 6 tiles. BUT, that supposes a perfect terrain layout. (This even includes which column of the map your city is settled on.)
In reality you might end up with 4-7.

But for a second let's just pretend it's 6 cities. +10% * 6 cities = +0.6 cities of output.
Settling 4 cities outside the Holy Ring = -15% * 4 = -0.6 cities of output.
11 cities total is not exactly a global empire on most map sizes- remember that 7 of those would be pack within a 7 tile diameter hexagon!

I don't even think the malus is needed for balance reasons. People will always try to maximize the capital aura, but the malus drives psychology such that if you capital region cannot hold a lot of cities you actively feel like you are losing.

 

[Pure24]

Remove the production malus, and then add two bonuses; +20% production towards builders, and Maya can build farms on hills [from turn 1]

That would be my change.

As for the rainforest issue, meh... maybe give Observatory minor adjacency bonus +0.5 per rainforest (upgrades to standard +1 at the Guilds Civic).

 

[Aurelesk]

I just feel that the 6 tiles limit forces you to settle on bad tiles/placement. changing that to 8 would not create havoc with the obvious wish to have maya play as Tall. It would just allow you to still place cities intelligently. Especially since you're forced to place your capital without any knowledge of what the surrounding terrain is.

If you increase to 8 tiles, you increase by 71%* the area available, and go from an hardly achievable optimized layout of 12 cities to a highly improbable optimized layout of 18 cities, increasing by 50% the number of cities possible. This solution do not solve the problem: it makes it worse!
* : Maths was a long time ago. Here my calculation, be free to correct me: [(8 + 7) × 6] ÷ [(6 × 7 ÷ 2) × 6 + 1] = 90 ÷ 127 = 0.71.

Now, let's try the opposite solution: decreasing to 5 tiles. It decreases by 28% the area available, and go from an hardly achievable optimizaed layout of 12 cities to the absence of real layout where you can put 7 cities at most with more freedom overall.
To compensate, the bonus need to go from +10% to +20%. The capital / first ring of cities can now exploit more than 18/17 tiles (where some are dead with Farms and districts), while having almost 1 Governor per city. But you kind of loose the "symetry" in the process, except if you go with 6 cities (I guess the +5 CS should go up to 8 tiles, just to cover the city at 5 tiles away + his territory 3 tiles further away). This is not a serious proposition, I just wanted to show that the more you increase the range of the ability, the bigger the issue is getting.

Furthermore, maybe the +5 combat strength should increase to 8 tiles around the Capital, to cover all the tiles in which the Maya could have a city tile.

 

[tedhebert]

I sometimes wonder if a simple solution to maya's city placement problem wouldn't be alleviated by simply giving them a 10 tiles radius of fog-of-war clearance on the map right at the start !

That would certainly help you choose a much better spot for the capital.

I can see that it might create other problems, like seeing another continent or even worse, meeting CSses right from the start and getting the extra envoy associated, on top of the era scores gains; Plus, on small maps, it would be a very big advantage. Maybe making it so none of those events can happen on turn 0 ? Like NOT giving an envoy if a CS is in range ? I dunno...

But I remain totally convinced that's the core of the problem is that you're forced to plop down your capital without having a chance of choosing the right spot for it, and the limits/maluses then have a high risk of being majorly crippling.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I sometimes wonder if a simple solution to maya's city placement problem wouldn't be alleviated by simply giving them a 10 tiles radius of fog-of-war clearance on the map right at the start !

That would certainly help you choose a much better spot for the capital.

I can see that it might create other problems, like seeing another continent or even worse, meeting CSses right from the start and getting the extra envoy associated, on top of the era scores gains; Plus, on small maps, it would be a very big advantage. Maybe making it so none of those events can happen on turn 0 ? Like NOT giving an envoy if a CS is in range ? I dunno...

But I remain totally convinced that's the core of the problem is that you're forced to plop down your capital without having a chance of choosing the right spot for it, and the limits/maluses then have a high risk of being majorly crippling.

It's not exactly what you're saying with capital placement but I do think the scout should have an extra sight. Then maybe some civs should start with one instead of warrior

 

[tedhebert]

or even this. Maya starts with TWO scouts and no warrior, and they're placed 5 tiles away from settler in opposing direction, not adjacent to it !

 

[GAGA Extrem]

It's interesting to see how different the perception of the Maya can be. I am neither a good nor a competitive player, but to me they feel like one of the most unique CIVs in the game, one that actually can play tall and get away with it, too.

Their start is a bit slow and rigid (since you need to get a builder for the capital asap, and ideally one for each of your settled cities) and they are very susceptible to early game flooding, but once you have the key techs (Engineering in particular) they really start to flourish.

I think the one big thing I'd change would be to apply their 6-tile radius ability to the city with the Government Plaza instead of the capital. It would require some effort to enable the bonus, but in return they would gain some flexibility to mitigate a poor starting position. And I suppose the Observatory could also use an additional secondary adjacency bonus, be it from mountains (major) or jungle (minor), that way you aren't completely doomed if your spawn lacks plantation resources.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

It's interesting to see how different the perception of the Maya can be. I am neither a good nor a competitive player, but to me they feel like one of the most unique CIVs in the game, one that actually can play tall and get away with it, too.

Their start is a bit slow and rigid (since you need to get a builder for the capital asap, and ideally one for each of your settled cities) and they are very susceptible to early game flooding, but once you have the key techs (Engineering in particular) they really start to flourish.

I think the one big thing I'd change would be to apply their 6-tile radius ability to the city with the Government Plaza instead of the capital. It would require some effort to enable the bonus, but in return they would gain some flexibility to mitigate a poor starting position. And I suppose the Observatory could also use an additional secondary adjacency bonus, be it from mountains (major) or jungle (minor), that way you aren't completely doomed if your spawn lacks plantation resources.

My first out-of-the-box game with Maya was awesome. I had like 10-11 cities crammed in the radius and everything was great. Then on later starts I understood what people were saying in that it's pretty dependent on where you start.

 

[tedhebert]

It's interesting to see how different the perception of the Maya can be. I am neither a good nor a competitive player, but to me they feel like one of the most unique CIVs in the game, one that actually can play tall and get away with it, too.

Oh don't get me wrong, I love the fact that they play differently. And I want that to stay. It's just that I hate it when they force you to make such a core decision that has a good chance to turn out bad. I'm sure there's a relatively simple way to help with that. Your idea for the gov plaza is a very interesting one, but I have a feeling it would be difficult for them to implement. The two scouts instead of 1 warrior solution is a very simple one to implement.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'd also like to see a better chance to have more plantation resources near the start. It feels real bad when you don't get to make use of the interesting placement rules for your campus.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

My first out-of-the-box game with Maya was awesome. I had like 10-11 cities crammed in the radius and everything was great. Then on later starts I understood what people were saying in that it's pretty dependent on where you start.

Yeah that is much more than I'd ever go for. I usually stick to a total of 4 cities, maybe 5 if I have exceptionally good terrain. And even then you can easily end up in situations where you have to settle suboptimally (even worse on Emperor and higher when they AI can easily forward settle you), but the interesting thing is: I had some really great games under those circumstances. And I am still not entirely sure how that happened.

My experience with the Maya was a quite interesting arc: I loved my first few games, then rolled some really terrible starts and almost dropped them, adjusted my strategy (mostly crucially rushing Engineering) and after a few more victories with rather dire starting locations I actually think that they are one of the really consistent CIVs in the game. You will still get a close to unplayable start every now and then, but that's something every CIV has to sorta deal with. I am sure that if I would actually wage offensive wars in this game I could just fight my way out of a bad spawn and transition into a wide strategy.

Oh don't get me wrong, I love the fact that they play differently. And I want that to stay. It's just that I hate it when they force you to make such a core decision that has a good chance to turn out bad. I'm sure there's a relatively simple way to help with that. Your idea for the gov plaza is a very interesting one, but I have a feeling it would be difficult for them to implement. The two scouts instead of 1 warrior solution is a very simple one to implement.

I mean, I'd take more LOS, regardless how I get it, but I feel in most cases the main problem for the Maya is less a suboptimally placed capital but rather that the terrible surroundings make it impossible to place more than one or two decent cities in range.

...thinking a bit about that, I wonder why they didn't go with something like "the first X settled cities" getting the bonus. Maybe too rigid.

edit: Something I should definitely test some day is a dense Maya game with minimum distance cities around the core.

 

[Myomoto]

Honestly, my only wish for Maya is an ability to move their capital

 

[tedhebert]

Honestly, my only wish for Maya is an ability to move their capital

yeah... I've thought about that. But would it really be a solution ? It would have to be something to use before settling a second city, or at max a third. After that, you'd be stuck with the placement of THOSE cities ;-(

 

[Revanchist]

I don't think moving the capital makes the start bias any better. If you don't have any plantations, you don't have any plantations. Furthermore, you will have to constantly warmonger to set up that next circle of cities and that will take a while in of itself. It's not like Phoenicia where you purely settle the coasts and claim islands that no one is likely to touch.

 

[Myomoto]

yeah... I've thought about that. But would it really be a solution ? It would have to be something to use before settling a second city, or at max a third. After that, you'd be stuck with the placement of THOSE cities ;-(

I had a Maya game where I started on a very long narrow peninsula. I had space for like 3 cities in the radius of the original capital. Meanwhile, I later found an ideal open space to plop down several cities in a tight circle, but they would all be outside the radius. I think letting Maya rebuild the palace and move the capital with it after some point wouldn't be too crazy.