[NFP] Maya First Look

I think it's fair to say thay Maya will have a few drawbacks.

They are probably going to be very map dependant (In firaxis' shoes I might have been tempted to give them a guaranteed inland start like the opposite of the Maori's start).

Their dependance on infrastructure makes them vulnerable to disasters. Which is kind of a cool nod to history.

They will want to adjust their early game priorities like Mali needs to. Still, depending on whether you get a high production tile you you may be able to go scout > builder some of the time... The first few turns will probably be a judgement call a lot of the time.

That said, I don't think any civ with a half-price campus will ever be lower tier and I also don't think any civ with an unique archer will ever be lower tier.

I can see how they might not suit all playstyles but this is one of the civs I have felt the most anticipation towards trying out.
 
It amuses me how inevitably the discussion for any new first look swings from “OMG SO OPPPP!!!!” to “Worse than Georgia!” in about a day’s time.

I think they’re quite well balanced, though will require being clever to play well. They’re going to have an exceptionally easy time hitting the +3 for rationalism and the 10 pop, so even with the -15% in colonies they’re going to wreck shop in the renaissance. Plantation luxuries are more spread out than mountains, so they have great settling options. Spamming farms that give gold is going to be bananas. For anyone else, spamming farms has no benefit after hitting pop 10. The Maya can use it to roll in gold. And the housing bonus of 1.5 each is nuts. They could hit 50 in a city if they can keep amenities met.
 
I don't know how bad Gerorgia actually is but I'm pretty sure it dont have any penalties while Maya have two major ones, -15% to all yields for cities more than 6 tiles from capital and lack of fresh water. A Heavy water map likely mean you can get many cities inside 6 tiles nor many farms.
 
I'm a little surprised to hear people say that the +1 gold from farms will make them "good." A normal earlygame farm is just about the worst thing you can work short of an unimproved flatland tile. Slapping one gold onto it doesn't really change that much. If you start the game by rushing a builder for farms, it'll take you upwards of a hundred turns to earn back the cost of that builder. And that's if you actually work those godawful pre-Feudalism farms. It's a bit better if there's rice or wheat, but that's not something you can count on, especially if the civ has a rainforest start (which seems pretty likely).

And I bring back the question: what the hell are you supposed to do if you simply start in an area without farmland? That's even worse than Mali without a desert. It's not at all uncommon to start in a giant pile of hills or rainforest or whathaveyou. Do you spend the first five turns moving your settler? Kinda seems like you'd be forced to do that. I feel like people are really downplaying this issue. Any location without farmland is also largely ruled out as an expansion. People talk about settling this and that amount of cities within six tiles of your capital, as if that's something the map generator doesn't usually prohibit. But you need get lucky twice with the map RNG as there has to be not only room for cities close to your capital but also land to build farms on.

And even if everything falls into place and you get that perfect flower formation of cities with room for a farm triangle in every one, what's the reward? The entire civ pretty much comes down to +10% yields in your capital's 6-tile radius. All these restrictions for a core civ ability that's worse than what half of the existing civs get without crippling early-game disadvantages. Oh, and one amenity per luxury you settle next to, even though it's normally better to settle on them. And one measly gold per farm. And to get that, you saddle yourself with a requirment to basically rush builder+granary in every city, and you're playing a science civ that's just about incapable of getting really big campuses since you miss out on those juicy mountain cubbies and fissure/reef jackpots.

The more I look at this, the more I think the Mayans could literally be worse than a blank civ.
 
lqwertyp said:
Her first ability immediately reminded me of civ 3 corruption system.
Would the 6 tile radius bonus and further-away-tile debuff mean some sort of corruption system Will come back with this update? Maybe to encourage some more tall play?
Might even be combined with a specialist buff of some sort?

What do you guys/girls think?
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I doubt they would introduce anything in the near term that would make the Maya uniques less unique. But they could be experimenting with it in view of bringing back a corruption-like mechanic in Civ VII or perhaps in an optional mode for Civ VI sometime in the next year.

I also immediately thought of Civ III's corruption, which I hated, but which I think could be good if implemented well. The Maya version seems to me a good start, we'll see how it plays out.
 
They could add in cards that boost cities 6 tiles from capital or simply change stuff like how buildings work so you are rewarding for growing big cities, without knowing what the patch will bring, it is hard to tell how good Maya and other civilizations will be.
 
Larsen said:
I'm a little surprised to hear people say that the +1 gold from farms will make them "good." A normal earlygame farm is just about the worst thing you can work short of an unimproved flatland tile. Slapping one gold onto it doesn't really change that much. If you start the game by rushing a builder for farms, it'll take you upwards of a hundred turns to earn back the cost of that builder. And that's if you actually work those godawful pre-Feudalism farms. It's a bit better if there's rice or wheat, but that's not something you can count on, especially if the civ has a rainforest start (which seems pretty likely).

And I bring back the question: what the hell are you supposed to do if you simply start in an area without farmland? That's even worse than Mali without a desert. It's not at all uncommon to start in a giant pile of hills or rainforest or whathaveyou. Do you spend the first five turns moving your settler? Kinda seems like you'd be forced to do that. I feel like people are really downplaying this issue. Any location without farmland is also largely ruled out as an expansion. People talk about settling this and that amount of cities within six tiles of your capital, as if that's something the map generator doesn't usually prohibit. But you need get lucky twice with the map RNG as there has to be not only room for cities close to your capital but also land to build farms on.

And even if everything falls into place and you get that perfect flower formation of cities with room for a farm triangle in every one, what's the reward? The entire civ pretty much comes down to +10% yields in your capital's 6-tile radius. All these restrictions for a core civ ability that's worse than what half of the existing civs get without crippling early-game disadvantages. Oh, and one amenity per luxury you settle next to, even though it's normally better to settle on them. And one measly gold per farm. And to get that, you saddle yourself with a requirment to basically rush builder+granary in every city, and you're playing a science civ that's just about incapable of getting really big campuses since you miss out on those juicy mountain cubbies and fissure/reef jackpots.

The more I look at this, the more I think the Mayans could literally be worse than a blank civ.
Click to expand...

At this point, your argument is “lol imagine if they got the worst start possible and their bias didn’t activate”, which I would put towards any Civ.

I suppose the crux of this argument is “if you don’t like them, don’t play them.”

I had this exact discussion with my multiplayer group about Phoenicia. I thought they looked strong, they were underwhelmed by no obvious win condition. And I’ve yet to lose a game with Dido, and I promise you they are more aggressive than any Deity haha.

I think Maya look strong. Unique campus and unique archer put them in the top 40%, but if you think they look bad - I guess don’t play them?
 
Larsen said:
I'm a little surprised to hear people say that the +1 gold from farms will make them "good." A normal earlygame farm is just about the worst thing you can work short of an unimproved flatland tile. Slapping one gold onto it doesn't really change that much. If you start the game by rushing a builder for farms, it'll take you upwards of a hundred turns to earn back the cost of that builder. And that's if you actually work those godawful pre-Feudalism farms. It's a bit better if there's rice or wheat, but that's not something you can count on, especially if the civ has a rainforest start (which seems pretty likely).

And I bring back the question: what the hell are you supposed to do if you simply start in an area without farmland? That's even worse than Mali without a desert. It's not at all uncommon to start in a giant pile of hills or rainforest or whathaveyou. Do you spend the first five turns moving your settler? Kinda seems like you'd be forced to do that. I feel like people are really downplaying this issue. Any location without farmland is also largely ruled out as an expansion. People talk about settling this and that amount of cities within six tiles of your capital, as if that's something the map generator doesn't usually prohibit. But you need get lucky twice with the map RNG as there has to be not only room for cities close to your capital but also land to build farms on.

And even if everything falls into place and you get that perfect flower formation of cities with room for a farm triangle in every one, what's the reward? The entire civ pretty much comes down to +10% yields in your capital's 6-tile radius. All these restrictions for a core civ ability that's worse than what half of the existing civs get without crippling early-game disadvantages. Oh, and one amenity per luxury you settle next to, even though it's normally better to settle on them. And one measly gold per farm. And to get that, you saddle yourself with a requirment to basically rush builder+granary in every city, and you're playing a science civ that's just about incapable of getting really big campuses since you miss out on those juicy mountain cubbies and fissure/reef jackpots.

The more I look at this, the more I think the Mayans could literally be worse than a blank civ.
Click to expand...
It’s actually better to spawn in jungle as Maya because bananas and cocoa at everywhere, each being worth double what a mountain is to anyone else. They’re looking at +6 campuses being a pretty regular thing. Even if you can only build an observatory between two plantations you can easily turn that into a +5 if you build two farms. An open flatland campus to them is a +3. Any other civ would be ruined by open flat terrain.

The gold isn’t game changing, but it’s something that can be spammed in every city, and spammed early. It’s not hard to see each city having farms worth an extra trade route in the early game.
 
kryat said:
It’s actually better to spawn in jungle as Maya because bananas and cocoa at everywhere, each being worth double what a mountain is to anyone else. They’re looking at +6 campuses being a pretty regular thing. Even if you can only build an observatory between two plantations you can easily turn that into a +5 if you build two farms. An open flatland campus to them is a +3. Any other civ would be ruined by open flat terrain.

The gold isn’t game changing, but it’s something that can be spammed in every city, and spammed early. It’s not hard to see each city having farms worth an extra trade route in the early game.
Click to expand...

I think the gold is enough to make up for the fact that you're going to be spamming builders. You can buy your other units while you hard build builders.
 
Denkt said:
Well for maya it is plantations and farms so that Point don't apply.
Click to expand...

And a dollar is more than a dime, even if they're both coins. You're not gonna have +6 campuses with the Mayans. You'd be fortunate to even get +4. There'll be a lot of times when you simply don't have plantation resources in your lands. It's pretty uncommon to have no mountains, fissures or reefs. If you don't have plantations, your campuses are hardcapped at +3, and that's only if you can completely surround them with farms, which is both unlikely given the map generator and also not something you'd be happy to do with your land.

I'm pretty sure that on average, a standard campus will have better adjacencies than an observatory. Take a hundred games of each, with random lands, and I expect the campus would just come out ahead. And that's without even looking into civs like Korea, Netherlands and Brazil who have a very easy time getting great campuses. I can guarantee that with plantations as the main source of adjacency, a Mayan empire will not even have +3 on average across its cities. As an added downer, mountains are also totally worthless to this civ. Korea gets a guaranteed +4 in every city in exchange for that.
 
Denkt said:
Not for Japan who have a +1 district adjacency to all districts as well as 3 half priced districts.
Click to expand...
The one downside of Japan is it takes time to grow pops for district capacity (to get enough to make their bonus work.) its hard to get around on otherwise mediocre terrain unless you start farming.

There’s a difference between districts that you have to hard build locally / need a governor to buy and builder charges, which you can walk over from another city.

Not that Japan isn’t flexible, they just have set up time. Although from these comments you’d think that building a single farm means your capital will burn to the ground.
 
Larsen said:
And a dollar is more than a dime, even if they're both coins. You're not gonna have +6 campuses with the Mayans. You'd be fortunate to even get +4. There'll be a lot of times when you simply don't have plantation resources in your lands. It's pretty uncommon to have no mountains, fissures or reefs. If you don't have plantations, your campuses are hardcapped at +3, and that's only if you can completely surround them with farms, which is both unlikely given the map generator and also not something you'd be happy to do with your land.

I'm pretty sure that on average, a standard campus will have better adjacencies than an observatory. Take a hundred games of each, with random lands, and I expect the campus would just come out ahead. And that's without even looking into civs like Korea, Netherlands and Brazil who have a very easy time getting great campuses. I can guarantee that with plantations as the main source of adjacency, a Mayan empire will not even have +3 on average across its cities. As an added downer, mountains are also totally worthless to this civ. Korea gets a guaranteed +4 in every city in exchange for that.
Click to expand...

No, I think this is entirely incorrect.

In fact, I think it’s entirely disingenuous to say that the Observatory would be worse than a campus on average. Reefs, fissures and mountains may, combined, be more common than plantations on their own but it is EXCEEDINGLY rare to find them together, to get those splendid campuses.

whereas a plantation and two farms is quite easy especially when the Civ has a bias toward them, and this is before we even mention the Observatory is half the hammers.

Im not sure what your exact beef with the Maya is but I suspect it’s not their abilities, because your hot takes are proving cold.
 
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