[NFP] Maya First Look

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'm not an "optimal" player so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but my assessment would be that the Maya are better suited for defensive war than offensive.

Given that the Civ is designed to start losing steam once they get too far from their capital, unless they give Lady 6 Pack the option to move her capital, any offensive effort is gong to run out of steam.
Best defense against the Maya would be simply to fall back until you are 8 tiles away from their capital, then counterattack when they reach the 7th tile.
Or as us Russian Military History types might put it, the Mayan Military Motto will be: Never attack anybody with a Great General named Kutuzov.

Speaking of which, the old lag about "The best defense is a good offense" is pure Croc. Ask Napoleon, Hitler, or the American Confederacy, all of whom basically attacked themselves to death.

It is much better to remember that:
"A weapon is offensive or defensive depending on which end is pointed at You."

- Which applies especially to the Mayan UU: a good ranged unit can be used either offensively or defensively and will dominate in either mode if you know what you are doing. Protect them against Cavalry and shoot util you run out of targets . . .

 

[King Rad]

@Boris Gudenuf , well said. One of the most famous military quotes by Admiral Faragut, "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead," was following by his ship being sunk by those torpedoes! The best offense is a well designed strategy that enhances your strengths, uses the terrain, etc. to your advantage, and minimizes any advantages of your opponent. Of course, there is the other quote about a plan only surviving until contact with the enemy!

 

[Deggial]

I like the general trait setup for the Maya. Certainly another very unique civ that encourages a new playstyle. Wow, a tall civ! Who would have imagined!
Unfortunately, this playstyle is not for me. As stated in that other thread, I like to wage wars (and paint the map in my color).
However, as with all available civs, I will certainly try them out and probably like the unique challenge!

Which makes me thinking ... you guys are saying that the Mayas don't have any "apocalyptic vibe"?
May I dare to object?

If I play them and if I stay true to myself, I certainly won't step back from warring. I guess, those wars will have different effects than usually in my games.
In the early game, I will probably raze conquered cities and replace them with my own ones, honoring the "magic capital ring". The razing will be even more neccesary, as the AI city placement will probably not take my special "Mayan needs" into account.
Later in the game, when I've exhausted suitable city spots, I will just raze those enemy cities without further expansion thoughts in mind, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind. Usually, I never raze cities!
Because I don't want and need those enemy cities, I'll have no objection to send out my soothsayers, calling havoc down on enemy territories. Plundering enemy tiles won't be hampered by the desire to use them myself soon after I conquered the city.

Well, apparently the Mayas will make the world burn in my hands.
Sounds pretty apocalyptic!

Hm ... maybe I was wrong ... maybe, I will actually love this civ!

 

[Lord Lakely]

"Running out of steam"??? The malus is a flat -15% across all cities that are too far away, whether that number is seven, seventeen or seventy. You can definitely invade with the Mayans if you want to, even if the new cities wouldn't be as good as the core of cities around your capital.

 

[Uberfrog]

"Running out of steam"??? The malus is a flat -15% across all cities that are too far away, whether that number is seven, seventeen or seventy. You can definitely invade with the Mayans if you want to, even if the new cities wouldn't be as good as the core of cities around your capital.

Of course! An extra city at 85% yields is still better than no city at 0 yields, particularly if it gives you access to more amenities/wonders/districts... all those reasons to conquer with any Civ. In fact it might seem
more appealing to let the AI build everything than try to get your own city up and running with -15% production.

Sort of reminds me of conquest in Civ 5, where puppet cities would have -25% science and culture, but were very much still worth having.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

• +10% to your first ~7 cities
  
• -15% to your late-game and conquered cities

One of these is way more impactful in a game built entirely on exponential growth, and it's not the second.

 

[civviefan]

Fantastic civ and leader! The ideal civ to build a powerful capital surrounding first hub of cities and then a colony on another continent to benefit from pilicy cards

 

[KayAU]

View attachment 555744 Saw this from Potato's YT comment.
13 cities for Maya. Thoughts?

I don't know how I overlooked this possibility, but I have a feeling it is a powerful setup, which I personally will probably never go for. It looks rather messy, with loads and loads of overlap, and the dense packing seems to contradict the focus on large cities with loads of farms. However, the way Civ 6 works is that much of your power comes from districts, and none moreso than the Campus. I think the 13-city Maya setup has a ridiculous potential to produce science.

My preferred setup would be with only the outer ring. That way I will only get 12 overlapping tiles, while controlling roughly the same area (6 tiles less). I will also go for a Government Plaza with an Audience Chamber, and possibly Civil Prestige. My Mayan megacities may not be optimal, due to the way the Civ 6 district system works, but they will at least look impressive.

 

[thomas0611]

This is great. Turn 1-5 will play entirely different for Maya as they 1) don't need to settle on fresh water, 2)want to settle next to 1 or if possible 2 luxuries (I wonder if their starting bias controls for that...). I'm always excited to see a Civ that invites a different capitol settling strategy. Also, Corn

 

[acluewithout]

Awesome Civ.

Love the leader design.

Up there with Mali for mechanics leading to interesting play styles. And +% can be quite impactful when done right. They’re going to be very sensitive to starting conditions. You won’t be happy if you spawn on an island, isolated coast or just not near any plantations. You’re also discouraged settling on luxuries, which sucks.

I guess it’s technically correct that they don’t use any RnF or GS mechanics, but they will leverage them a lot in practice. Those tall densely packed Cities are going to loyalty flip everyone around them. And Audience Chamber is going to be super useful, as will Autocracy Policy Card. I can see a lot of Aqueduct / Dam Industrial Zone Mega Cities too.

I wonder if Era Score will be harder? I sometimes get a few points settling cities on other continents or near wonders etc. That will be somewhat less of an option for the Maya.

 

[Larsen]

I have a hard time seeing how the housing issue isn't crippling. It seems like that detriment would outweigh all of the civ's bonuses. Starting every city with 2 housing is seriously debilitating, and especially your capital. You get -50% growth when you're one point from your housing cap, and your capital will start at 1/2. You literally begin the game at half growth rate until you start making farms. Think of any other civ and ask yourself how much you'd enjoy an opener of builder into farms. Not very much, I wager. Farms are seriously terrible until Feudalism, and not that great even when they get their adjacency. And what if you don't start in farmable land? That's practically a forced restart. You'd never get off the ground.

I'm not sold on the district either. It doesn't get adjacency from mountains, fissures, reefs and rainforest. Only from plantations and farms. That kinda makes it seem worse than a standard campus, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure that if you ran twenty simulated games with the Mayans and twenty with any given generic civ, the latter would have higher average adjacencies on their campuses. It'll be hard for the Mayans to get more than like +3, and most will probably be +2 at best because you can't expect plantation resources everywhere. You might not have any at all, in which case your campuses are literally hardcapped at +3, and even that is only if the land permits you to completely surround the campus with farms. Which is, again, hardly something you'd be thrilled to do with your land.

The unique unit is pretty good but I'm not convinced it's better than the Pitati Archer, especially considering Nubia's +50% production bonus. Having ancient era UUs is also a little underwhelming, and doubly so on a civ that's saddled with the burden of rushing builders. That said, it's pretty good for early defense. Unfortunately the civ doesn't lend itself very well to warmongering so you'll probably only feel this unit if you get attacked. Since there's already an archer replacement in the game and none for crossbowmen, I feel like the Mayan UU should have been a crossbowman replacement.

Without the housing issue, this would have been a fairly shrugworthy civ, probably one that people would put in the bottom third of their tier lists alongside the likes of Georgia and Spain. With that housing penalty, however, my first impression is that it might be worse than a blank civ. The first fifty turns are the most important stage of the game, and being saddled from the start with 2 housing and the resulting -50% growth is seriously painful. Having to rush a builder and plant two useless farms just to reach parity with all the other civs is such a big sacrifice, and I don't see that any of the other abilities make up for it. Maybe if Mayan farms had +1 production or something.

People call this a tall civ but I don't see it. It doesn't incentivize going tall so much as it punishes going wide. To play tall you need two things: accelerated growth and a use for large populations. The Incans have that in spades with their terrace farms and workable mountains, but that still doesn't make tall viable. I can't see how +10% yields will do it for the Mayans. With the need for a farm triangle in every city, you'll probably have to put some of your districts on hills, so that's fewer mines to use a tall population on. Once you get to about 10, yields are capped by availability of worthwhile tiles, not by population. Without any inherent advantages to going tall, what's the point? Half your citizens will just work farms to pay their own food cost. There's no reward for tall built into this civ.

What are the Mayans even good at? Certainly not domination, that much is clear. They get nothing noteworthy for culture, religion or diplomacy, either. With a unique campus, it's obviously meant to lean toward science, but when juicy campuses are pretty much out of the question, where's the science edge supposed to come from? Taking away their campus adjacency from mountains, fissures, reefs and particularly rainforests (given the actual geography of the Mayan territories) is pretty much a nerf to the district. I'd call Japan and the Netherlands better science civs, and the Mayans certainly can't hold a candle to Korea.

This was a much better and more interesting civ in V. Where's the pyramid? Where's the Mayan calendar? I can live with the fact that the leader's model and animations are copy-pasted from another civ, and the fact that the leader itself is a barely relevant historical figure noone's ever heard of with a three-sentence Wikipedia page, but the actual mechanics just look so unimpressive and uninspired.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

As for a reskinned model issue. I have a bad feeling it's not the first one in this Season Pack. I think they did not expect this fan reaction. If they did, why should they decide to cut a new leader animation if this could possibly affect Season Pack sales? That would be a perfect example of a not well-calculated cost-cutting. A whole pack has a new Lead Producer responsible for a whole Season Pack production process and I think she had a bad day yesterday. Anyway, we will see how they can handle this

 

[Lord Lakely]

I suspect they'll play very similarly to Scotland. Science victory will be their main focal point (and half-price campuses are generally better longterm than high adjacency campuses, since they yield more GP) and you'll want Industrial Zones and Entertainment Complexes to facilitate further growth.

It's basically the nature of asymetrical civ design. You give a strong all-round buff (+15% to ALL yields is good and stacks with other percentage based yields. Think Kilwa Kisiwani, think Pingala, think Power Plants, etc) but it comes at the cost of a nerf. The worse housing in the early game is your nerf, but it can be manageable. Mayans presumably start with a Plantation resource bias, meaning they have a better chance at starting near Bananas or Spices, two excellent resources in Civ 6 from a yields perspective.

The way I see it, is that the Mayan capital isn't very important to the Mayans. The cities they settle inside their magic circle are the real stars; I would grab a Government Plaza and Ancestral Hall, and then REX. Concern myself with building the districs in the satellite cities.

Early invasion? Hu'che + Agoge have that covered - Mayans gain gold from Farms, meaning they can support more Hul'che than most other civs can support non-Warrior units.

it will be PARAMOUNT to get as many farms as early as possible with the Mayans. I have no idea how that would work on Deity, but on King I would just go for the Builder first, like, 100% of the time. Then transition into at least 3 Slingers. Beeline Pottery, Irrigation, Animal Husbandry and Archery, in that order. This should, *theoretically* cover you againt Barbarians and psychotic early warmongering civs.

I think the Civ can be more than decent with the right playstyle and map seed. Maybe a mid-tier Civilization?

 

[AntSou]

Farms are seriously terrible until Feudalism, and not that great even when they get their adjacency

They're clearly not terrible for the Maya.

 

[Socrates-]

I for one can’t be bothered if the new leaders are build upon the animations of the ones that already exist. There’s no way this will have me play one less minute. People just move in similar ways.

(Bugs, exploits or a civ that’s not well thought trough: those are the things that make me enjoy the game less.)

 

[SammyKhalifa]

They're clearly not terrible for the Maya.

and of course we'll have to see what changes are in the game too (though I'm not expecting to see anything with farms)

 

[blackcatatonic]

I honestly don't mind the reused model, but I have only seen Amanitore a handful of times in my games (I've had the DLC since release - she just doesn't show up very often for whatever reason). I can definitely see the resemblance but it's not going to bother me very much in-game, I don't think. As has been pointed out, this isn't the first time it's happened with a DLC/expansion Civ and I can't recall a huge deal being made over those.

I am a little concerned that this Civ may turn out to be weak if there's not more done to buff the tall playstyle in the game. I do agree with those who have pointed out it punishes wide play more than rewards tall play. That said, I don't think it's a bad design: it certainly offers a different and challenging playstyle and really that's all I want from new Civs at this stage. Design-wise, this is still streets ahead of the majority of the Civs added in R&F.

Part of me wonders if the reason why it feels as if there's been more vocal criticism and disappointment than usual is because we were waiting so long for news, and the Maya were one of the most hotly-anticipated Civs, so we Civfanatics have had lots of time and impetus to build up expectations. I stand by what I said earlier that I'm glad they didn't go the route of having gimmicky mechanics tying in to the Apocalypse or the calendar (because, while the Mayan calendar is unusual compared to the Gregorian calendar we all know and love, it's not like they are the only Civ in the game who didn't use a modern calendar - so I don't see why the Mayan one should be singled out). Even as someone who likes to go wide, honestly this seems like a fun Civ to try out maximising city placement with.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Yeah I think it sounds like a really interesting design. I don't understand the grief.

Cities outside that area tend to be satellite settlements for getting resources, etc., anyhow. Oh no, I lose 15% of that four gold the city was making me.

 

[kaspergm]

They're clearly not terrible for the Maya.

Well, I'm gonna side with Larsen here. The fact that you need to invest extremely valuable early time and production into making some farms to give you something that other civs get for free doesn't make it a good investment. I know Maya gets some gold from their farms, but I still have a hard time seeing this as a big overall positive.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Colosseum is obvious, but I kind of want to plop Jebel Barkal into the middle of a big Maya city cluster