Earth Maps in general and Montezuma UB.

[thadian]

It kind of bothers me that Montezuma was given a UB that is incompatible with earth maps - never is there a "lake tile" let lone more than one, nor would it make much sense to add one, right?

I wish they would have given Montezuma something friendlier that he could use without having to load a "Lakes" map, because it is frustrating to never see a real use of his UB.

I know that as with Hiawatha, there is generally bad execution in how and where civ's start as well as weather a civ is good or bad in a certain spot.

Montezuma is not "weak" without lakes but his building doesn't much exist without them. Monty doesn't suffer too much from this the way Hiawatha can, because all he loses is a building.

Are there any other civ's people have observed to have such a worthless building that is normally not buildable?

I don't really know a "fix" for aztec that lets their building extract more use.

 

[spider1]

The Inca's UB is useless without hills next to mountains. That's why I like to play the Incas on a Highland map. Montezuma might do OK on a Highland map as well. If you go to the advanced set up, you can specify the water to the scattered lakes only. You'll get a lot of lakes which will play into Montezuma's UB. However Montezuma still won't be able to take advantage of the Highlands map as well as the Incas, but they both should do well.

I might just fire up a highlands map and play Montezuma this weekend just to check it out.

 

[Bezurn]

The lake benefit of his UB is only 1/2 of the equation. As long as the building is built along a river you can build his UB as well. The more powerful aspect is that it gives you the population growth potential as Landed Elite from the Order tree. As long as there are enough rivers nearby you can leverage the UB to get some very big cities, especially if you unlock Landed Elite early.

 

[CYZ]

Agree with Bezurn. The floating gardens is still a great building without lakes.

 

[turtlefang]

Monty UB is extremely powerful when combined with his killing units for social points. The extra 15% growth Monty gets for being by a river combined with getting to landed elite quickly lets him grow city faster than anyone else. And if he's lucky enough to have even a single lake in his city radius, then the growth even faster in the early days.

The bigger problem Monty can face is happiness. Because his cities can grow so fast and so large, he can literally outgrow his ability to keep the empire happy. And late in the game, Monty's cities can become literally production/science giants unlike anyone else except maybe India.

 

[M_Sparkle]

No ones mentioned Spain yet... there are only 5 (6 if u include great barrier reef) tiles on the whole map that use their ua!

 

[Kraydak]

The 15% food bonus is somewhere between 90 and 99% of the value of the floating gardens on anything but the Lakes map script. Even on the Lakes map script, the majority of the advantage comes from the 15% food bonus.

 

[anandus]

I haven't played the Aztecs yet, but just to make sure if I understand this correctly:
The floating gardens' +2 food only work on worked lake-tiles, tiles next to a river don't count?
(I always thought they just meant 'freshwater', but it really needs to be a lake?)

 

[Keejus]

He only gets +2 food from worked lake tiles, yes, but the building itself can also be built if you're next to a river, and gives +15% food, which is the only bonus of its kind.

The lake benefit of his UB is only 1/2 of the equation. As long as the building is built along a river you can build his UB as well. The more powerful aspect is that it gives you the population growth potential as Landed Elite from the Order tree. As long as there are enough rivers nearby you can leverage the UB to get some very big cities, especially if you unlock Landed Elite early.

It's +15% food, not growth, which means his cities also have a higher population cap than anyone else's. The Floating Gardens may be on the situational side, but even as they are now, they rival the Bazaar for best UB in the game, make no mistake.

 

[vampy420]

No ones mentioned Spain yet... there are only 5 (6 if u include great barrier reef) tiles on the whole map that use their ua!

Their UA is mostly usless .. if you are lucky enough to find 2 first you will have more than enough gold to buy a worker .. or library .. or settler ..
Spains real power is the Conquistador .. powerful mounted unit, embark with defense and can colonize if it is on a new 'continent' or island.. unless you are on pangea map, then spam scouts and try to find as many landmarks as you can

 

[Babri]

I think the OP did not realised that Aztec UB also gives 15% food bonus making it one of the best UBs in the game. The lake bonus is just extra like the bazar oasis & oil bonus.

 

[bhavv]

Its definitely much more usable than Inca's UB (or UI).

Even if there arent any lakes, a city built next to a river will still get +15% foor from the Floating Gardens.

Inca can dominate on Earth Maps if they start in either central Asia or the West coast of America, but I always find I have to restart the game a lot to get these starts for Inca. On a normal map, the terrace is hardly ever going to get used.

 

[ColinTH]

To Thadian - I fully realise this is not an Earth map as such.

I was playing a two player tiny map as Montezuma versus America, all victory conditions enabled. I came across this huge lake just below the start position, it is Deity difficulty, but you are welcome to use the save file if you wish.

EDIT - Won a space race victory July 1919, my first Deity win post patch. I know I am cheating by choosing an ideal map for Montezuma, but a win is a win!

Interesting occurences in this game.
1 - I was able to match the USA all the way on techs despite their obvious population superiority (I never fell more than 2% behind). The Scientific value of Jungle, Universities, trading posts, observatories and the Rationalism Policy Tree is a force to reckon with, I reckon if I had enabled Policy Saving I probably could have finished 200 turns earlier!
2 - They continued to build a City in the same spot (North West of screen shot), as soon as they built it, I razed it along with all the Atomic Bombs, B17s and fighters which they immediately transfered there. They wanted to Atomic Bomb my cities, but as long as I maintained a decent size space between theirs and mine they couldn't do so.
3 - They built the UN and then decided to Atomic Bomb the one City State I puppeted time and time again (they needed both City States for a Diplo win).
4 - They were using Giant Death Robots towards the end of the game (I hadn't seen these before, they are not vey good against multi promoted troops in their own back yard)!
5 - An info bar came up near the end of the game,"who likes the shiny things the most", USA had 176,000 gold!
6 - They built the Appolo programme 21 turns before me and had two boosters before I started building parts. I had the Statue of Liberty, Hydro Plant and Nuclear power Stations.

Being at war for the whole game (since BC) I find very tedious in terms of game time (especially Marathon) and I won't be playing any more games of a similar nature if I can help it.