[NFP] Maya First Look

@Everyone else not having issues with the choice of name for Lady Six Sky, what build orders have you been using for the Maya? On Deity it seems too easy to be overrun by barbarians, but those workers do seem critical early on regardless. I often go for the pantheon belief that provides a free worker (free settler is good, but riskier, and often taken by the AI on Deity it seems).

I've actually ended up going slinger > builder > slinger > settler as Maya... And I'm not sure how insane that is... Builder first feels a little risky, plus slingers make decent enough scouts when you aren't being incentivized to scout particularly far afield. With the increased production cost and Maya's normally lower production I want as many as possible on the board before I research archery. And with +5 combat strength they're more useful vs barbarians than normal.
 
I've actually ended up going slinger > builder > slinger > settler as Maya... And I'm not sure how insane that is... Builder first feels a little risky, plus slingers make decent enough scouts when you aren't being incentivized to scout particularly far afield. With the increased production cost and Maya's normally lower production I want as many as possible on the board before I research archery. And with +5 combat strength they're more useful vs barbarians than normal.

That's a pretty typical build order for me generally on Deity, so I wouldn't call it especially risky. Indeed I wouldn't necessarily go for the second slinger until after getting a scout or a monument.
 
That's a pretty typical build order for me generally on Deity, so I wouldn't call it especially risky. Indeed I wouldn't necessarily go for the second slinger until after getting a scout or a monument.

With Maya I feel like you really want to get as many slingers as possible before researching archery. Without the production boost Nubia gets, having to hard build your unique archer is a bit painful. Still, you can always sit one turn away from researching archery until you're ready...
 
English is basically the Lingua Franca of the world, deal with it

That was never in question... :shifty:


This is only true of the last century or so. Prior to that it was considered quite normal to be called John in London and Jean in Paris and Johann in Frankfurt and Ivan in St. Petersburg.

Ahh but those are not translations, but equivalents. Still, very good and interesting point.


Where's the outcry over Peter the Great instead of Pyotr? Why isn't Catherine de Medici called Caterina de Medici or Catherine de Médicis? And Phillip II should be Felipe II, right? Should we rename Eleanor to Aliénor?

Indeed!!, I agree completely! although I think because those are names that have been in broader use in Europe at first (and later in the rest of the world). I don't know how the morphology of names has exactly made this transformations, but it is very interesting issue you raise here.
Maybe something to consider for Civ 7. There is a nice first step in Civ 6 in the voiced speeches of the leaders in their own language (the ones that we still know today, or could be reconstructed) :thumbsup:


You're free to change your own local files if you insist on using a reconstructed Mayan name that probably doesn't sound quite right anyway.

I did! Wac Chanil Ajaw sounds perfect to me, unlike Lady Six Sky which sounds awful to me (even worse in Spanish)
 
Indeed!!, I agree completely! although I think because those are names that have been in broader use in Europe at first (and later in the rest of the world). I don't know how the morphology of names has exactly made this transformations, but it is very interesting issue you raise here.
Maybe something to consider for Civ 7. There is a nice first step in Civ 6 in the voiced speeches of the leaders in their own language (the ones that we still know today, or could be reconstructed) :thumbsup:
You do realize Kwami was being sarcastic? You left out the rest of his post, which read in full:

Oh, please. We translate names all the time to make them easier and more comfortable. And it's not just for Americans because Americans are dumb or some other such nonsense.

Where's the outcry over Peter the Great instead of Pyotr? Why isn't Catherine de Medici called Caterina de Medici or Catherine de Médicis? And Phillip II should be Felipe II, right? Should we rename Eleanor to Aliénor? Nobody seemed to care about any of those name changes, none of which was done to please "dumb Americans".

Lady Six Sky is the name that scholars and historians use when writing about her. That's enough for me. You're free to change your own local files if you insist on using a reconstructed Mayan name that probably doesn't sound quite right anyway.

I agree with Kwami and others here who have pointed out that translating names for easier use (for example, by using Lady Six Sky) is totally fine. If you disagree, you should raise the issue with the Spanish localization staff, as we've discussed already. Names like "Philip II" and "Catherine de Medici" are used by English-speaking historians to discuss those figures, just as "Lady Six Sky" is used by English-speaking historians and Maya scholars to discuss her.

Frankly, I think Firaxis including the leaders' languages in game is already sufficient. We get their native names in their lines, like "Pyotr" for example, but still get to see "Peter" in the Civilopedia and game menu for us English speakers, so it's the best of both worlds. Although it should be noted that some leaders, like Catherine the Great, did not use the languages you might expect in diplomacy (Catherine used French, not Russian). :)

I've actually ended up going slinger > builder > slinger > settler as Maya... And I'm not sure how insane that is... Builder first feels a little risky, plus slingers make decent enough scouts when you aren't being incentivized to scout particularly far afield. With the increased production cost and Maya's normally lower production I want as many as possible on the board before I research archery. And with +5 combat strength they're more useful vs barbarians than normal.
Ambitious! I agree with the double slinger portion for sure, but builder first is risky I would say, unless you have sufficient comfort in fog-busting starting warrior abilities or are surrounded by mountains (happened in one Deity game recently - I had no barbs to deal with for a while, but the mountain blockage made getting farm bonuses for observatories down difficult), in which case it may be ok. I would say it depends on the difficulty level of the game. Are you playing on Deity? Agreed that the +5 combat strength is very useful v. barbarians. I sometimes purposefully wound barbarians with a scout to soften them up for the hul'che bonus vs. wounded units.
 
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In the end I only had room for 5 cities within 6 tiles of my capital so I have decided to stick to these 5 and see how well I can do. So far so good, I am far outstripping everyone in science and keeping afloat with everything else. It feels good to build campuses without pesky mountains in the way and it's also nice to see so many farms for a change. I haven't found the housing cap at all limiting, my cities are flying. Very fun, all in all!
 
I just finished my first game as the Maya, which is also my first Diplomatic Victory (even though I was actually aiming for Science). The Maya are swimming in Gold and Science. Six of my nine non-capital cities were located in the ring for the bonus, all three that were beyond that were "borrowed" from my neighbors because my giant close-knit cities were pelting them with loyalty problems, and I found the malus for distant cities barely noticeable.
 
And I just finished my first game as Maya! Won a Science Victory and had no issue limiting my cities to the 6 tiles surrounding my capital, although I did have to raze one of Poundmaker's in order to fit in my final one.
 
I just finished my first game as the Maya, which is also my first Diplomatic Victory (even though I was actually aiming for Science). The Maya are swimming in Gold and Science. Six of my nine non-capital cities were located in the ring for the bonus, all three that were beyond that were "borrowed" from my neighbors because my giant close-knit cities were pelting them with loyalty problems, and I found the malus for distant cities barely noticeable.

Eerie. I won my first game as the Maya, with a diplomatic victory, while aiming for science, and getting my non-capital cities through loyalty flipping too.
 
Right, so I played another two games, one with Inca (my usual go-to) and one with Maya, for comparison.

King difficulty, Pangaea map, no special rules, with my usual 4-city casual gameplay approach (so no number crunching, AI exploiting, etc.).
Finished the Inca game around T350, the Maya game around T340, both with Science victories.

City sizes where about the usual 25-35 by the end of the game, although the Maya seemed to have a bit better potential, thanks to the fact that they tend to end up with less mountain tiles inside city range, higher food income due to their focus on farm carpets and less neighborhoods (thanks to the extra housing from said farms).

It's interesting that I ended up with pretty much the same tech order for both CIVs. I grabbed Archery to deal with the initial barbarian swarms, then got Writing, Irrigation and the other essential techs before beelining to Engineering to get Aqueducts. I'd guess that's due to my playstyle - it's actually not uncommon for me to settle away from freshwater with the Inca, as mountain areas tend to provide powerful spots for an early game Terrace farm (that then get boosted further by the Aquaduct).

Said aqueducts seem to be key for both CIVs - the Maya want them to get to a decent housing level without investing in too many builders, while the Inca can use them to get at least some powerful production tiles via their terrace farms. Both can use the Aqueduct to get a solid adjacency boost for an early Industrial zone. The key difference is that the Maya can beeline straight for it (thanks to the extra gold income from farms) while I usually want at least 1-2 Commerce districts with the Inca.

Overall I'd say that the Inca have a stronger early game (especially if you can plop down a good terrace farm or two), but they fall off later down the line as the relative impact of said terrace farms becomes less and less important. By the mid game they are pretty much just carried by the extra early game growth. The Maya, otoh, start very weak in terms of population, but once they have their basic infrastructure (Farms and Aqueducts) in place they will quickly catch up, if not surpass the Inca. I think getting Liang as the first governor helped a lot, because it meant I was able to get decent housing in all 4 cities with just two builders, which is seems enough to get the Maya through their early game.

The Maya are also much safer to play. I am a peaceful defensive builder-type player, so their UU and the extra combat bonus near the capital is really, really nice for those defensive wars against early AI attacks. However, their tendency to spawn near flood plains can be devestating. Just like in a previous game I lost my first three farms in the capital to a flood - which was a pretty big set back.

I must say, though, I really, really dislike the 6-tile limitation for city distance on the Maya. It makes them very reliant on map generation RNG and forced me to plop down sub-optimal cities in multiple games. And maybe it was just bad luck, but I haven't had a single game where I started in a spot with a good plantation resource distribution. It actually seems much easier to get solid Campus districts with the Inca, while my Maya games mostly ended up with +2 or +3 ones.

Addendum: It's probably worth mentioning that I usually play with a mod that allows the harvest of strategic resources. Gives an edge to the Inca compared to vanilla, since they tend to lose a lot of good terrace farm spots to those resource pop-ups.
 
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Right, so I played another two games, one with Inca (my usual go-to) and one with Maya, for comparison.

King difficulty, Pangaea map, no special rules, with my usual 4-city casual gameplay approach (so no number crunching, AI exploiting, etc.).
Finished the Inca game around T350, the Maya game around T340, both with Science victories.

City sizes where about the usual 25-35 by the end of the game, although the Maya seemed to have a bit better potential, thanks to the fact that they tend to end up with less mountain tiles inside city range, higher food income due to their focus on farm carpets and less neighborhoods (thanks to the extra housing from said farms).

It's interesting that I ended up with pretty much the same tech order for both CIVs. I grabbed Archery to deal with the initial barbarian swarms, then got Writing, Irrigation and the other essential techs before beelining to Engineering to get Aqueducts. I'd guess that's due to my playstyle - it's actually not uncommon for me to settle away from freshwater with the Inca, as mountain areas tend to provide powerful spots for an early game Terrace farm (that then get boosted further by the Aquaduct).

Said aqueducts seem to be key for both CIVs - the Maya want them to get to a decent housing level without investing in too many builders, while the Inca can use them to get at least some powerful production tiles via their terrace farms. Both can use the Aqueduct to get a solid adjacency boost for an early Industrial zone. The key difference is that the Maya can beeline straight for it (thanks to the extra gold income from farms) while I usually want at least 1-2 Commerce districts with the Inca.

Overall I'd say that the Inca have a stronger early game (especially if you can plop down a good terrace farm or two), but they fall off later down the line as the relative impact of said terrace farms becomes less and less important. By the mid game they are pretty much just carried by the extra early game growth. The Maya, otoh, start very weak in terms of population, but once they have their basic infrastructure (Farms and Aqueducts) in place they will quickly catch up, if not surpass the Inca. I think getting Liang as the first governor helped a lot, because it meant I was able to get decent housing in all 4 cities with just two builders, which is seems enough to get the Maya through their early game.

The Maya are also much safer to play. I am a peaceful defensive builder-type player, so their UU and the extra combat bonus near the capital is really, really nice for those defensive wars against early AI attacks. However, their tendency to spawn near flood plains can be devestating. Just like in a previous game I lost my first three farms in the capital to a flood - which was a pretty big set back.

I must say, though, I really, really dislike the 6-tile limitation for city distance on the Maya. It makes them very reliant on map generation RNG and forced me to plop down sub-optimal cities in multiple games. And maybe it was just bad luck, but I haven't had a single game where I started in a spot with a good plantation resource distribution. It actually seems much easier to get solid Campus districts with the Inca, while my Maya games mostly ended up with +2 or +3 ones.

Addendum: It's probably worth mentioning that I usually play with a mod that allows the harvest of strategic resources. Gives an edge to the Inca compared to vanilla, since they tend to lose a lot of good terrace farm spots to those resource pop-ups.

Yeah, disasters are a KILLER!

It’s one of the times where I get Liang with disaster immunity in and don’t bother with Magnus. The population grows well enough to handle the settler reduction and it’s not like I’m building 100 cities with Maya haha
 
Still working on that 1st maya game (sorry guys, I play huge maps, I play slow AND I'm one of the lucky ones who still has a job and must spend 7 hours a day doin it ;-) )

As @Mr Jon of Cheam has mentioned in another thread, choosing Maya with Apocalypse activated, so disasters set to 4, is a no-no. The civ is simply TOO dependent on tile improvement for housing, So I feel like I'm spending half my time micro-managing builders for fixing or re-improving tiles ;-(
As a side note, I now remember why I chose to always set disasters to 2... I really think there should be a lens or a 1 turn highlight of tiles that have lost improvements because of disasters. At least, when they're just pillaged, you can go on strategic view and identify them with the fire icon, but
when the improvement has just been wiped, you have to visually find them. Annoying as hell, especially on luxuries.

Another mistake was taking continent map. Another I dislike, but this time it's even worse as we have 5 civs on my continent and 7 on the other one. And since the beginning of the game, it's been Aid Request galore on the other continent, like one every 5-7 turns, and I was never invited to them until I got to cartography and made my way to the other continent. During the same time, not a single aid request on my continent. Anyways... I just don't like continent map, there's always a runaway civ on the other one.

I'm around turn 185 now (huge, immortal, normal speed) and frankly, my science has been catching up and is now taking over everyone, as is usual with my play style, so I,m not seeing much slowdown there. But from the look of things at the moment, I don't think there's any chance of me winning this game without going aggro
on the runaway civ on the other continent (Gran Colombia, of course). They already have double my score points, and are leading in every single aspect. So my hopes for a pacific game are pretty much dashed, unless I get the feeling I can beat everyone to a science victory. I'll wait and see when I get to aluminum and bombers ;-)

Finally, another problem I foresee with MAYA is Strategic resources. Already, I've had to adjust one city placement for Iron, now I got James Young GS so I got to see oil before the others, and I'm having to go and build a bad city outside the 6 tiles radius on a very bad tundra tile because it's the only oil that's even close to my region.
I was lucky on niter I got a lot of them, but hoestly, it's almost certain that there will NOT be any of either niter, oil or aluminum on your map zone, and that's just too crippling in this game. Too many units depend on them, and they're pretty much all can't be replaced by an equivalent unit needing a different resource.

In my mind, the aim of the CIV, which was pretty much to play tall and turtle and peaceful, isn't something that can realistically be reached, at least not of immortal/deity on a regular, steady basis.
 
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Right, so I played another two games, one with Inca (my usual go-to) and one with Maya, for comparison.

King difficulty, Pangaea map, no special rules, with my usual 4-city casual gameplay approach (so no number crunching, AI exploiting, etc.).
Finished the Inca game around T350, the Maya game around T340, both with Science victories.

City sizes where about the usual 25-35 by the end of the game, although the Maya seemed to have a bit better potential, thanks to the fact that they tend to end up with less mountain tiles inside city range, higher food income due to their focus on farm carpets and less neighborhoods (thanks to the extra housing from said farms).

It's interesting that I ended up with pretty much the same tech order for both CIVs. I grabbed Archery to deal with the initial barbarian swarms, then got Writing, Irrigation and the other essential techs before beelining to Engineering to get Aqueducts. I'd guess that's due to my playstyle - it's actually not uncommon for me to settle away from freshwater with the Inca, as mountain areas tend to provide powerful spots for an early game Terrace farm (that then get boosted further by the Aquaduct).

Said aqueducts seem to be key for both CIVs - the Maya want them to get to a decent housing level without investing in too many builders, while the Inca can use them to get at least some powerful production tiles via their terrace farms. Both can use the Aqueduct to get a solid adjacency boost for an early Industrial zone. The key difference is that the Maya can beeline straight for it (thanks to the extra gold income from farms) while I usually want at least 1-2 Commerce districts with the Inca.

Overall I'd say that the Inca have a stronger early game (especially if you can plop down a good terrace farm or two), but they fall off later down the line as the relative impact of said terrace farms becomes less and less important. By the mid game they are pretty much just carried by the extra early game growth. The Maya, otoh, start very weak in terms of population, but once they have their basic infrastructure (Farms and Aqueducts) in place they will quickly catch up, if not surpass the Inca. I think getting Liang as the first governor helped a lot, because it meant I was able to get decent housing in all 4 cities with just two builders, which is seems enough to get the Maya through their early game.

The Maya are also much safer to play. I am a peaceful defensive builder-type player, so their UU and the extra combat bonus near the capital is really, really nice for those defensive wars against early AI attacks. However, their tendency to spawn near flood plains can be devestating. Just like in a previous game I lost my first three farms in the capital to a flood - which was a pretty big set back.

I must say, though, I really, really dislike the 6-tile limitation for city distance on the Maya. It makes them very reliant on map generation RNG and forced me to plop down sub-optimal cities in multiple games. And maybe it was just bad luck, but I haven't had a single game where I started in a spot with a good plantation resource distribution. It actually seems much easier to get solid Campus districts with the Inca, while my Maya games mostly ended up with +2 or +3 ones.

Addendum: It's probably worth mentioning that I usually play with a mod that allows the harvest of strategic resources. Gives an edge to the Inca compared to vanilla, since they tend to lose a lot of good terrace farm spots to those resource pop-ups.
As you limited yourself to 4 cities, what do you feel was the impact on production? I have found Maya flatland bias to be crippling for empire building (hard to churn setters, builders, districts)... so if you wanted to expand to 8, 12, ++ cities do you think Inca would have outpaced Maya?
 
One of the hardest lessons I'm having to learn with 6Sky is to not settle my capital so close to the coast that I squander 2-3 optimal city spots.
Yes, coast anywhere near is a real pain. Felt very odd to move my first settler one tile away from a river in my first game, I liked that though.
 
Yes, coast anywhere near is a real pain. Felt very odd to move my first settler one tile away from a river in my first game, I liked that though.
It's still not horrible to settle Maya cities on rivers because they can get a lot of mileage out of Water Wheels.
 
As you limited yourself to 4 cities, what do you feel was the impact on production? I have found Maya flatland bias to be crippling for empire building (hard to churn setters, builders, districts)... so if you wanted to expand to 8, 12, ++ cities do you think Inca would have outpaced Maya?
Production wise I felt that the Maya were (surprisingly) fine. Main thing is that they have a tendency to spawn near rivers with floodplains, so you can plan for some quite juicy industrial zones with Dam and Aqueduct adjacency, and thanks to all that farm gold and speedy early game tech progression you might as well plop those Industrial zones down as your second district everywhere. As long as you have at least a few hills or forests in range for later you should do quite fine. That being said, I don't do Magnus chopping and all that any more, so I can't speak for more "serious" playstyles.

Would more cities push them ahead of the Inca? Depends, I guess. I you can squeeze in six cities around your capital as Maya you can probably stay competetive to an extend, but I don't think it is quite enough to compensate for how favorable the game is for wide play. I honstely haven't expanded past 4 cities in quite a while, so I can't even remember the pacing of district cost and all that.

Here is an example from a MP co-op game I just played:
Spoiler :
 
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