Does anyone how the Inca stuff works?

[Polycrates]

Another thing to be tweaked in the mods...

Frankly I am pretty bummed at how rarely they are worth using. On any hill by a river, you are better off with a regular farm.

I think the real advantage of bonuses like this is not that it makes all your regular cities so much better, but rather that you can settle more marginal areas and still get good cities out of them. You have more settling options, you can go after important resources earlier without sacrificing overall development by taking a rubbish site just to get the resource, you can take areas that the others aren't really interested in, etc. In Civ V, rivers are super-important, and non-river land is pretty second-rate; I reckon the ability to have fertile, flourishing non-river cities is a great advantage, even if the tile itself is not always necessarily as good as riverside grassland or whatever.

 

[Sneaks]

Except food is freely available from CSes, making it the least important yield to worry about in most cases.

 

[Polycrates]

Except food is freely available from CSes, making it the least important yield to worry about in most cases.

But not nearly as easily now, at least for non-capital cities. Are maritimes even the best use of gold now? I honestly have no idea. In any case, extra food never hurts!

Anyway I've just been playing an Inca game and I really quite like them.
The civ trait is actually pretty great (considerably better than Hiawatha's, I think) - I was always a fan of Brennus in Civ IV and this is his hills bonus on crack. The extra mobility is just great in a whole range of situations, both in getting to a fight and getting away from a fight. It also helps out early scouting and thus your chances of more ruins.

The slingers perhaps benefit the most from it; they can move to a hill and fire in the same turn, and they can more easily escape and harry a pursuing melee unit. Their actual ability is nothing special, but it gels well with this; it cuts down on the need for screening units and lets you operate them as skirmishers rather than necessarily as part of a formation, and it lets you risk bringing them a little further forward. They're also really good against barbarians.

Cheap roads mean trade routes really pay off, and even better mobility since you don't have to be so picky about where you build them.
And it's hard to quantitate, but the increased mobility of workers also probably adds up to some quite significant turn advantage too.
So yeah it's actually a pretty massive efficiency bonus, and not just tuned to warmongers.

As for terrace farms, yeah they're situational but I like them. With one mountain they're like a post-civil-service riverside hill farm (without the gold admittedly), so more of those on tiles away from rivers is pretty sweet. With two or more, they're like a resource special. For a civ that is designed for large empires, it's great for letting you settle land that the others don't want. Especially for making ludicrous production cities in the hills where the lack of water might choke another civ.
Also with all the other hill stuff it means the Incas are basically dwarves, so you can give all your cities names like Boatmurdered and Oilfurnace and have cool dwarves-vs-elves battles with Hiawatha and so on.

 

[Montov]

Normally, when a unit is embarked, any ship with a combar value can move onto the same tile as it to insta-kill it. This is supposed to make embarkation risky, as even your most powerful units can die in one 'ram' attack as you call it.

If you can 'defend' yourself on embark, this simply means you can't be taken out like that (same as Askia's ability) - no more insta-kill. Since they seem to be treated as civilians (take 4 damage per hit regardless of strength of anything) this means that your unit went from dying in one turn to dying in three, which may be enough to reach the mainland and survive

I can kill a worker with a Jet fighter in 1 turn for example, does this also apply to the defensive embarkation situation?

 

[glaivemaster]

Also with all the other hill stuff it means the Incas are basically dwarves, so you can give all your cities names like Boatmurdered and Oilfurnace and have cool dwarves-vs-elves battles with Hiawatha and so on.

I need to load up an Incan Duel map now...

 

[Bibor]

Here's a screenshot of my recent encounter with Inca:

 

[Rathelon]

I can kill a worker with a Jet fighter in 1 turn for example, does this also apply to the defensive embarkation situation?

Nope, unfortunately, embarked units only take 4 damage per attack, no matter how powerful the attacker. I shot an embarked unit with a nuclear submarine, and it only did 4 damage.

Playing my Inca game now and just noticed that the slingers retreat ability does carry over after upgrading. Kinda cool, I say.

 

[Roghar]

I'm playing Inca at the moment on a Highland map and really enjoy them. They explore very fast and with the road maintenance bonus, you can expand very fast to capture good sites and luxuries with the trade routes keeping your economy strong. As has been mentioned, terraces make some marginal cities decent, especially near the tundra line if there are some special resources you want to grab. Slingers are awesome early on, hit and run tactics make them very effective. One got a goodie hut upgrade to crossbowman well before I was capable of getting them, very useful

 

[braindrain]

inca is pretty solid even when not on a highland map. Their bonuses are all kind of subtle, but really add up! i played one game as inca, now every other game/map i've played since, i've wish i had them.

 

[Fanatic Zealot]

The thing about units being able to defend themselves while embarked doesnt even make any sense. The only way to attack a unit at sea is with ranged attacks, which they have no defense against. Unless a naval unit can 'ram' attack like they do with work boats, it is useless. And if that is the only way they get to defend themselves, the enemy isnt going to 'ram' them - they'll just sit back and range attack.

Embarked units defending themselves isn't so much a military advantage as an exploration advantage. If you are sailing off to unexplored seas there is quite a good chance that there are barbarians in coastal encampments. There is nothing more annoying than having your embarked army wiped out by barbarian ships passing through you. The conquistadors and Songhai enable you to explore the seas without buying caravels to guard you and getting away with it.