[BNW] Community Deity Game #33 - The Aztec

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CDG 33 – Montezuma

Please see the CDG Series Discussion Thread to express yourself if you have remarks and ideas. Some maps in this series use mods. This map uses the DLC map packs, so you will need “Explorers Map Pack”, “Scrambled Nations”, and “Scrambled Continents”, as well as the earlier (and more common) DLC such as “Wonders of the Ancient World”.

Please be encouraged to share your experience playing this map, but if you post in the first page of this thread, please use the SPOILER tag if you attach a picture, make a comment about your neighbors, nearby natural wonders, locations of ancient ruins, terrain features, luxes, resources, etc.

Before you download and start playing the map, please take a moment to speculate on your initial thoughts and plans for the game. Will you settle in place? Will you try to found a religion? What are your plans for getting the most from the UA, UB, and UU? What Victory Condition will you be aiming for?

Spoiler for starting screen shot :
civ5ss-montezuma4cdg-t000.jpeg

Spoiler for UA, UB, and UU :
Sacrificial Captives: Gains :c5culture: culture for the empire from each enemy unit killed. The culture gained is the same as the defensive strength of the unit killed.

You can train the Jaguar, which replaces the Warrior. The Jaguar receives a 33% combat bonus in Forest and and Jungle, heals 25 hp when it kills a unit, and starts with the Woodsman promotion (which allows the Jaguar to move through Forest and Jungle using only a single movement point). These promotions are retained as the unit is upgraded. The Jaguar becomes obsolete with Metal Casting (as compared to Iron Working for the Warrior).

You can build Floating Gardens, which replaces the Water Mill. In addition to the usual Water Mill benefits :c5food::c5food::c5production:, a city with Floating Gardens gets +15% food, +2 food from Lakes, and only cost 1 gold maintenance (as compared to 2 gold for the Water Mill). Unlike the Water Mill, Floating Gardens is available for cities next to a lakes.

Spoiler for the map type and other settings :
Map type is Lakes, younger world age, wet and temperate. So expect lots of hills and forests. Lakes maps have only a tiny bit of polar ocean but do wrap from left to right. Raging Barbarians and Strategic Balance. Standard size, standard speed, standard number of civs and CS. I used Rotate Start Position to pick the best spot and IGE to remove the ice strips at the top and bottom of the map.

Spoiler for hints about your opponents :
Civs have been chosen for having good mobility.

Achievements — maximum 6 points in each category:
  • Floating Gardens before NC: 1 point per expo with Floating Gardens before NC is completed.
  • Jaguar Army: 1 point for every 3rd Jaguar online at the same time. No partial credit!
  • Melee Veterans: 1 point for each Jaguar decendant that makes it to level 5 and that are alive all at the same time. For scoring, the units do not need to survive to the end of the game.
  • DOM VC: Winning by DOM (or DOM inspired CV) in the Information Era is 1 point. Winning by DOM in the Atomic Era is 2 points. 3 points for Modern, etc.
There are two save files attached to this post. For the file with lite in its name, the mountain tile has been replace with Kilimanjaro (!) and you start with a worker and an extra Jaguar.
 

Attachments

  • cdg33_Montezuma_BC-4000.Civ5Save
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  • cdg33lite_Montezuma_BC-4000.Civ5Save
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Hmm, not sure what to do for starting choices. I'll be playing lite so being two spots away from a mountain won't help for wonders (not like I'm going to get them anyway except Neuschwanstein maybe). But sheep and wheat are next to mountain so moving there away from river probably not a good idea. Oh, darn just remembered Aztecs UB so settle in place it is. Or maybe move Jag to east for possible settlement on Silver.​
 
Saw this in passing and couldn't resist. Fun map. There are tons of forests for Jags so no Scouts necessary. Close neighbour so I went full Honor, farmed barbs for Culture, General-bombed the neighbour's expo, and then made nothing but units and farmed XP off of their own unit spam.
Finished Honor T50-something, then went into Patronage as Commerce not yet available. Will probably take the closest neighbour then DoW another and farm XP until Rifles.
 
This was one of my favorite maps that I rolled, so I am glad to see it finally getting some love. As I recall, I maxed out points for the first three achievements, but could not manage a DOM VC. I will have to try it again, now that I have some company!
 
I'm not doing so well on the achievements... I only built 4 Floating Gardens before NC and only 5 Jaguars before they became obsolete. The Dom victory is still looking good though. ;)
 
Oh, and these were my thoughts starting the map:

I'll look around a bit, but probably settle on the Silver unless there's another river/hill nearby. Opening Tradition because of the Floating Garden growth bonus, but still planning a Dom VC. I won't bother with religion unless I stumble onto Uluru or something.
 
That is embarrassing. The flat grassland strips at the top and bottom of the map where suppose to be Ocean. IGE is visually buggy, I should have reloaded the map to check things. That is going to make building Prora tricky! Someone built both Great Lighthouse and Colossus though, so there must be at least one hex of Ocean!
 
Until Rifles? This suggests a dom strategy I'm not familiar with. What's the plan?
Well, as those who know me from the heyday of the original CDG/DCL can attest, I like to go to war early and then conduct a steady sweep of the map.

Here, however, it is considerable distance to the other civs (besides the near neighbour), so I think I would be better to farm XP with Jags until they are promoted up the wazoo, and meanwhile have a veritable legion of workers build roads to all my 'friends', then send Cannons and Rifles to show them the true meaning of Monty.

Full Honor, dip into Patronage, Commerce, poss dip into Rat depending on tech progress, then Autocracy, naturally.
 
T100 - Economy under control, finally. I was riding Honor finisher pretty close to the bone for most of my war. Neighbour immediately N of nearest neighbour will be Target #2. No one seems to like him anyway. I'll do Universities, then pounce.
 
Okay, I started over so I could get the achievements. :) So this is now a play-through with knowledge of the map.

Spoiler Game to T100: :

I killed the Celt starting settler, since he was silly enough to walk right up to my city, then nabbed their workers. I built Jag, Jag, Monument, Granary, then enough more Jags to demand tribute from all the nearby CS.

I went Liberty instead of Tradition and laid down 4 cities, took Edinburgh with CBs, and then took a break from war. I built 18 Jags to get the achievement, but with all the rough terrain and surrounding CS, it doesn't seem practical to keep conquering before artillery.

On the plus side, there aren't any close neighbors to threaten me or complain about my expansion. So I'm basically playing peaceful wide Liberty without the usual disadvantages. With the Aztec growth bonus, happiness is a constant challenge, but I'm sailing to an early tech lead. I plan to focus on peaceful growth and tech until Dynamite.
 
I finished with a Domination victory in T230.

Sweep order was
Spoiler :
Celts, Brazil, Songhai, Iroquois, America, Inca+Zulu at same time
 
Very nice @consentient! Can we get a achievement point tally?

Opening Honor did not work for me. Too much trouble with gold, which killed my science. Despite being a war the whole time. The Honor finisher was not enough. I tried Tradition, that went much better, but I still could not war fast enough. I see what you mean about having to open a second tree before even Commerce is unlocked. That happen both games, so I think it more the UA than Honor culture. It is enough to make me wonder, might Aztec might run a Liberty/Tradition hybrid even better than Poland?
 
T203 DomV. 20 pts:
  • Floating Gardens before NC: 1 point per expo with Floating Gardens before NC is completed. 5 pts (cap + 4 expos + neighbor's cap)
  • Jaguar Army: 1 point for every 3rd Jaguar online at the same time. No partial credit! 6 pts (built 18 of them right after NC, then gave most of them away to city-states)
  • Melee Veterans: 1 point for each Jaguar decendant that makes it to level 5 and that are alive all at the same time. For scoring, the units do not need to survive to the end of the game. 5 pts
  • DOM VC: Winning by DOM (or DOM inspired CV) in the Information Era is 1 point. Winning by DOM in the Atomic Era is 2 points. 3 points for Modern, etc. 4 pts (Industrial)
Spoiler :
After taking Edinburgh, I played peaceful wide Liberty until Dynamite, and I was really surprised by how well it worked. I think it's better than Tradition when there's this much room, at least for Aztec.

I went on the warpath after hitting Dynamite around T145. Not much interesting to report after that... just standard artillery domination. First army went to Washington, then North to Gao and Onondaga; second army went to Brazil; then both closed on the Zulu. I sent the third army to the Inca.

T203 win.PNG

Really enjoyable map. It was nice to be able to make effective use of the UU/UBs. FWIW, I slightly preferred having the green strips at the poles instead of ocean. It's kinda neat to have a "highway" available like that.
 
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Haven't played much recently after resubbing to warcraft, but I'll give this a go if others are playing it. Gonna try the lite version but still don't expect anywhere near the speed times you guys are capable of.
 
Very nice @consentient! ... I see what you mean about having to open a second tree before even Commerce is unlocked. That happen both games, so I think it more the UA than Honor culture. It is enough to make me wonder, might Aztec might run a Liberty/Tradition hybrid even better than Poland?

Better than Poland? No. Poland can pursue an entire additional social policy tree, while the Aztec UA will net you a couple policies at best. Relative to the policy costs, the value of the UA is fairly front-loaded.

Now, if you're just talking about a partial Tradition-Liberty hybrid, or a fun Trad-Lib game that is decidedly not better than Poland, then absolutely the Aztec are one of the best options, along with Siam.
 
Relative to the policy costs, the value of the UA is fairly front-loaded.

Right, but Poland is decidely not front-loaded. So for Poland, I think it must be the case that picking policies same as usual must be the strongest play. But that is kind of boring.

I had not considered Siam, but for Aztec, the extra policies come very early. But you are quite right, that even waring constantly, it does not seem like it enough to make much of difference since three policies early << two policies later.

So maybe with Aztec the strongest play is to play peaceful early and war latter (after commerce is unlocked)? It is interesting to me to still be finding out new things!
 
The key point is that the front-loading of Aztec culture can be misleading in terms of how many policies you'll actually get across the entire game, as it's the final policy costs that matter most. You don't get free policies, you're just ahead in total culture in the early game, so you can get your ~7th-9th policies before most civs and get further into a 2nd Policy Tree. If you were to play, say, a warmongery science game, this would most likely HURT your progression through the all-important Rationalism policies (same for Ideology policies). Now, if you were to hold back on war until the Renaissance, and enter it on your 7th or 8th policy with the Aztec, that could be an interesting experience. Of course, that's were a civ like Siam could produce the same if not better culture post-Education, with good CS.

Someone has most likely posted previously in terms of how many more policies an Aztec game can produce. My guess is 1-2, all else being equal.
 
Blatc, that's a really good point. I suppose the same argument applies against the Honor opener. It may earn an extra early policy, but you'll never kill enough barbs for that to translate to an extra policy in the late game.
 
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