[NFP] Maya city clustering hard to pull off?

[yung.carl.jung]

Most of my rolls were either next to tundra or on sea side (on pangea), so half of the tiles 6 hexes from the capital were unusable... I don't know if it's because cities with different types of bias (for jungle or mountains for instance) are more likely to spawn closer to the center and I got displaced closer to the poles or the sides, or if it was just bad luck, but that was a real issue.
Finally ended up with a pretty awesome map though (low on plantations but with a nice Kili) and managed to put 8 cities around my capital. (and I'm not realizing I don't know where screenshots are saved)

Steam - View - Screenshots- Civ 6 - Show on Hard Drive. Hope that helped

 

[Bibor]

The -15%: for what would be 20 yields, you get 17. It's not the end of the world. I'd say having 3-4 core cities in good locations is way more important than an possible obsession with packing as much cities as you can within 6 hexes of the capital.

 

[megabearsfan]

The 2 games I've started so far really screwed me over with the map. In both cases, I had ocean on one side, and a mountain range on another. Only enough room for 3 or 4 cities with the bonus, with considerable overlap in workable radii between them. That 6-tile range sure is strict!

Maya would be a great candidate for a "not near ocean" start bias.

The -15%: for what would be 20 yields, you get 17. It's not the end of the world. I'd say having 3-4 core cities in good locations is way more important than an possible obsession with packing as much cities as you can within 6 hexes of the capital.

Agreed. Maya reminds me a bit of India from Civ V. People thought India had to play tall with as few cities as possible due to the global happiness penalty per city. But most people failed to realize that the reduced happiness penalty from population broke even with the per-city penalty at 6 population -- which is super quick and easy to reach as long as its not a tundra snowball city or desert sandball city, especially with domestic trade routes in the BNW expansion. After that, it's basically just half unhappiness from population, which is a really good bonus for a wide empire in that game. See my strategy guide for India in Civ V BNW for more details: http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2014/11/05/Civ-V-India-strategy.aspx

Maya doesn't have that "break even" point in its ability the way that India did in Civ V. But I think that people might fall into the trap of thinking that they have to play Maya with just a handful of cities clustered around the capital. So those additional cities won't be as productive; so what? If you specialize them well enough with good adjacency bonuses for their districts, they'll still be damn good cities.

Also, if you go out of your way to cluster your cities too tight around the capital, you might end up with poorly-placed cities that aren't as productive anyway. If you run out of tiles to work at pop 8 or 9 because you overlapped too many tiles, then you're just going to be losing out on yields anyway, and aren't going to be able to build more districts.

I think the way to play the Maya is to capture your "area" as fast as you can, any way you can. Anyone else inside your area - AI, city-state, grandma, ANYONE - they burn.

Sorry grandma. I love you, but not as much as I'm gonna love that extra .2 production per turn I'll be getting when I found a city next to your corpse.

 

[Casualty of war]

Time to find out if the forward-settle Maya tactic works! Whoo boy....

Spoiler :

 

[Casualty of war]

NOPE! 2 Hul'che, 1 Garrison-promoted, and a Warrior weren't enough to hold. I killed 3 Aztec Warriors but another one, deep into the Red, got me.

That's what I think Maya's biggest flaw is, that vast open Start bias. It is really, really, REALLY hard to withstand an early AI assault when nothing slows them down to let you take a shot on approach. I have a lot of 30 Turn Maya games.

 

[The Highwayman]

Yeah they have a tier 1 flat grassland and flat plains bias. That could be the worst part of the Mayan civ.

 

[Casualty of war]

And the enemy eats your crops when you're trying to kill them! It's quite rude.

Getting a little tired of being flooded back into the Stone Age too.