[NFP] Maya First Look

What's been everyone's experience with AI Maya? She didn't build any of her archers in my game and was way past the tech. She also didn't build one of her campuses until her sixth city - which I conquered and razed before she could even complete. She seemed to focus on holy sites, encampments, and also built an entertainment complex. But no campus in the first 5 cities.

Not that bad (Deity, Epic Speed, Huge Contints&Islands map) for my taste - at least if I compare with civs like the Mali, which the AI has really troube to play:

MayaAI.jpg

Six nice cities inside the 6-tile-range and the 2 Observatories I spotted there have adjacency boni of 6 (Wak Kab'Nal: Plantation + 3 Farms + 2 adj. districts) and 4 (Yaxchilan: Plantation + 4 adj. districts)
 
@Pfeffersack There's one west of Palenque, to the left of the mountain. But still, I would expect her to spam them, or at least prioritize where applicable. Watching The Game Mechanic's Gran Columbia stream on Thursday I saw the same thing - he completely conquered her with no archers or campuses in sight.
 
@Pfeffersack There's one west of Palenque, to the left of the mountain. But still, I would expect her to spam them, or at least prioritize where applicable. Watching The Game Mechanic's Gran Columbia stream on Thursday I saw the same thing - he completely conquered her with no archers or campuses in sight.

Well spotted...Plantation, 2 Farms, 2 adj. districts equals 5 adjacency bonus here. You might be right that L6S could perhaps focus more on them, but bad placement doesn't seem to be an issue.
 
I think some would need to be reminded of there's no must to settle on turn 1 - better use the Settler lens to spot tiles close to cities (red) or at coast (light green).

I'm just here to say that "Lord Chocolate" is the greatest name for a spy in the history of Civilization.
hehe I would try counter him with a seducing Lady Marmalade..
 
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I second this. I'm sure they're very knowledgeable of all the mechanics but don't know how to convert that to high level. Carl's justification for GC's +1 movement is....zone of control. "Yeah but look at ZOC from the city center" ignoring the accelerated carpet bomb of units across the map and the units that ignore it to begin with. With double general movement stacking with the +1 movement bombards can literally dance around units and still get a shot off thanks to 6 movement points. My promoted Cavalry literally had 10 movement points at the start of their turn in home turf. Also, now I'm not sure if he's joking, but I think he believes stone circles is a viable pantheon (it's terrible).

As far as the Mayans go, my early impressions aren't too positive. I appreciate the idea of strategic city placement, but too often the map scripting kills the dream. I rolled a bunch of starts, and while plantations were prevalent in more than half the games, the land was pure garbage overall:
  • Excessive amounts of flat land (production is king). Does L6S have a flat land starting bias?
  • Coast (lol)
  • Mountains and deserts blocking expands within the 6 tile radius (12 buffed cities around the capital is max....can I even get 6-8 buffed cities that aren't total dumpster fires with this terrain?)
  • City states just outside the range or within the range but I don't want to kill them because they'd actually be very useful for science victory. But they're blocking me either way.
  • Simply superior city spots outside the ring. Sure you can settle these anyway, and I would but what if they block the 6 ring city locations?
Getting lucky with one or two +6/7 campuses with the rest being +3 or worse due to no plantations doesn't sound like a great science civ to me since all other civs are either Korea or can take advantage of mountains/reefs/fissures, which are often plentiful. At the very best it seems the adjacency will even out. 1/2 cost is really good, as well as the +5 combat strength, so it's not all bad. It will be interesting to see what unique strategies can be adapted with them. However, in the current state I don't see what TGM calls a "specialty science civ" being too noteworthy at science.

What's been everyone's experience with AI Maya? She didn't build any of her archers in my game and was way past the tech. She also didn't build one of her campuses until her sixth city - which I conquered and razed before she could even complete. She seemed to focus on holy sites, encampments, and also built an entertainment complex. But no campus in the first 5 cities.

Game I'm playing as Bolivar has both Korea and Maya AIs. Korea is double Maya's output.
 
I second this. I'm sure they're very knowledgeable of all the mechanics but don't know how to convert that to high level.

I'd say that having one 'easy mode' civ and one that requires a specific playstyle suggests that they know exactly what they're doing - there's no point adding two civs that both appeal to the same players (also, diomination is a harder victory than science most of the time simply because of the sheer time it takes to go through all the civs, especially on non-Pangaea maps). The Maya suggest they've taken onboard complaints about the game being too easy or too undemanding in terms of strategic choices.

  • Excessive amounts of flat land (production is king). Does L6S have a flat land starting bias?
  • Coast (lol)
  • Mountains and deserts blocking expands within the 6 tile radius (12 buffed cities around the capital is max....can I even get 6-8 buffed cities that aren't total dumpster fires with this terrain?)
I was actually sad to have no desert tiles at all, because the Maya benefit from the University of Sankore if they can actually build it.

City states just outside the range or within the range but I don't want to kill them because they'd actually be very useful for science victory. But they're blocking me either way.

See, this is exactly why I like what they've done with the Maya. If your complaint is "I can't have my cake and eat it", it's a sign they're doing something right - and a sign of how badly wrong they've gone to this point that this is considered an unexpected hardship in a strategy game. In my case I kept my cake (Antioch) too long, when I could have turned it to science and grown it faster if I'd captured it earlier.

Simply superior city spots outside the ring. Sure you can settle these anyway, and I would but what if they block the 6 ring city locations?

Then don't. Again, it's a truly sad comment on Civ VI to date that players expect that they don't have to make trade-offs and consider it a negative if they do.
 
I don't think the Korea comparisons are necessarily apt. For the Observatory vs Seowon, the most a Seowon can give you is 4 adjacency, whereas the Observatory will rarely give less than 3 after finishing your improvements. Considering the science to mines and food to farms comes from the Civ ability, it's not apt comparison imo (unless you're also considering the Maya's).

I would say Korea is generally gonna have a better Science game, for sure, but they apply three of four bonuses to that effect, unlike the Maya who only do one.
 
I don't think the Korea comparisons are necessarily apt. For the Observatory vs Seowon, the most a Seowon can give you is 4 adjacency, whereas the Observatory will rarely give less than 3 after finishing your improvements. Considering the science to mines and food to farms comes from the Civ ability, it's not apt comparison imo (unless you're also considering the Maya's).

I would say Korea is generally gonna have a better Science game, for sure, but they apply three of four bonuses to that effect, unlike the Maya who only do one.

I would certainly rate the Observatory worse than the Seowon, but in some ways, I think Maya's biggest bonuses are that they essentially get crossbows on defense.

Having almost finished my first game with them, I don't think I would put them as a top tier civ, since as mentioned, they're hard to play. Your cities are tough to build up, needing builders/granaries ASAP. But at least having those super-archers on defense early means that you don't have to worry as much about the AI invading you.

On the offense, they're not a great civ. Not least of which is if you actually capture an AI campus, it's going to suck for you. Like I took an AI city that would have been a +4 campus (3 mountains/district triangle), but for me it's just the +1 for districts. You also have to search a little bit to get the eureka for having a university next to a mountain, since your campuses are not necessarily going to be placed that way. But that being said, they have a little bit more even spread of locations, since there are some games where I just don't have a mountain group, and your first campus or two needs to be just a +1 spot. Maya don't have to worry about that nearly as much, since it should be almost universal to have some plantations nearby to get that +2 (or +3 with the farms/districts).

All in all, a good civ, but not an over the top broken civ.
 
The Maya have more potential than Korea due to the +10% yield bonus, which IIRC works on the science buildings (library, university, research lab) and all other such yields (production, faith, etc). It's true that the -15% hurts a fair bit, but on Deity you don't have time to settle more than the multiplex of cities within the 6 tiles of the capital anyway.
 
Effectively getting ancient era crossbows i think is the biggest deal with the Civ, at-least on diety. Being able to fully defend yourself with nothing but a small force of archers gives you loads of extra hammers to spend on other things.

I agree Korea might be better at science but i would not underestimate the effectiveness of +10% on all yields for the whole game. This has a big impact especially on growth. In the mid and late game I've found myself nabbing cities off the AI just due to the loyalty pressure exerted by my small super populous empire.
 
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The Maya have more potential than Korea due to the +10% yield bonus, which IIRC works on the science buildings (library, university, research lab) and all other such yields (production, faith, etc). It's true that the -15% hurts a fair bit, but on Deity you don't have time to settle more than the multiplex of cities within the 6 tiles of the capital anyway.

The bonus is to all yields, so it's based on the total core science output of the cities.

Update on my game - I may have panicked prematurely, since although I'm still behind and two civs have launched satellites while my spaceport is under construction I do have Korolev (an unexpected gift from the Nobel committee) and will have Sagan, I'm now fairly quickly catching up in techs and my 7 cities are pumping out 365 science in the 230s. That's comparable or greater than what my larger empires generally put out at the same time period - the AI is actually quite a lot further ahead than it usually is at this game stage, rather than me being further behind than I'm used to (not sure I've previously seen satellite launches much earlier than turn 350, certainly not before 300, on Deity), which may be a sign that AI behaviour has been updated in the patch. Except for Antioch, which I inherited late with few spots left for an Observatory, all my observatories have +4 or +6 basic adjacency bonus, despite the fact that only one of them has an adjacent plantation. Insofar as I am behind I put that down entirely to my neglecting culture for longer than I should have (and missing a couple of Wonders - particularly Oxford University - but had I prioritised culture I might have been able to obtain policies that could have let me beat Kongo to it).
 
The bonus is to all yields, so it's based on the total core science output of the cities.
Powerful indeed. And the bonus production helps with spaceports too, especially when you get dams next to industrial zones and then run on coal power for example.
 
What if instead of only comparing the Maya to Korea (viewed as one of the top civs in the game) we compared them to everyone else in the game as well before completely writing them off?

If we're stuck on the Korea comparison, though... Maya is 100x more fun to play, and that's all that really matters IMO.
 
I enjoy the puzzle of playing the Maya, and I've not had any problems getting at least +3 observatories in almost all my cities when playing.

What I really don't like is the RNG nature of them. Since they stuggle to avoid settling suboptimal land, they are very much at the whim of the map generator. Since I've been playing more MP games than SP since lockdown, I'm doubting I'll play them as much as I would otherwise - don't want a whole session to be affected by an ugly start...
 
The Seowon really isn't that great compared to the observatory. It takes up a mine, which is huge, it's bonus is capped, which sucks because often you have mountains anyway, it can't provide adjacency for other districts or fit in triangles, can't be built in the first few tiles so you need gold to buy tiles, and it also doesn't get adjacency for fissures nor reefs. the only redeeming features of the seowon are the cost, obviously, the bonus for mines/farms and getting that guaranteed +3/+4. the latter only really matters for really wide games, anyway. Sometimes I think a regular Campus that costs half might be as good or better as the Seowon, which just shows how badly designed it is imho. Not a fun district, for me anyway :)

Observatories on the other hand have lots of late-game potential with farms or district triangles, and don't require hills, so they might even be better than Seowons.
 
Observatories on the other hand have lots of late-game potential with farms or district triangles, and don't require hills, so they might even be better than Seowons.

With the way Observatory adjacency works, it's going to be rare to get more than +4 on a consistent basis. And even that's probably the best case scenario.

I think they should adjust their starting bias towards luxuries with plantations only. Right now, how good of a Maya game you'll have depends on what kind of luxuries you roll on your continent. If you roll (like me) stuff like mercury and jade, then you'll struggle to get good observatories, whereas if you roll sugar and silk and cocoa, you're going to have a good time.
 
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