LordKestrel
King
I picked up this game last night, and have played a single Monarch level game as the Maya. So my results are far from scientific, and could be plain wrong.
The Maya are Agricultural and Industrious. Agricultural gives 3 food in the city square (2 in despotism unless on a river) and starts you off with Pottery. Industrious gives extra shields in the city square as your city grows, faster workers and starts you off with Masonry.
The Maya's UU is an archer replacement, the Javelin Thrower. This is a 2/2/1 unit costing 30 shields. It has a bonus feature called enslavement, which gives a free worker occasionally when killing units. In my game, it was in the 40% range, but is probably 33% or 1/3.
The only Agricultural wonders I could find were the Pyramids (Religious, Agricultural and Industrial), Hoover's (Agricultural and Industrious) and Suffrage (Agricultural). I feel like Firaxis changed that last one over to Agricultural because they needed more wonders, but IMO it's a terrible choice. If they wanted another wonder for that trait, they could've just added another one in the Industrial Era, perhaps with Electricity, and have it give a free Aqueduct in all cities. Anything would've been better than changing Suffrage to Agricultural.
As for my game, I played a standard size map, random opponents, random barbs, random type and warm/wet/4 billion. It ended up being a 2 continent map, with 2 civs on one, and 6 on the other.
I was on the small continent with India as my neighbor. After getting a pair of 4 turn settler factories going (much easier with the extra food), I quickly noticed that you can't settle on marshes. A full 50% of the island was marsh, so it took longer than I expected to fill the island. I eliminated India relatively early, as they were stuck with 4 cities because of the marsh.
After doing a 50! turn minimum research run on Writing, I went for max research on Philosophy, and scored Literature as my free tech. I popped a Scientific Leader when I learned Philosophy, and used him to rush the Great Library. After that, the game was over. I ended up winning by building the UN, but as I had met the whole world by the time I built the GL (thanks to that wonderful Curagh), I put on 0% science until I learned Education, and by then I had the infrastructure to do 4-6 turn research for the rest of the game. I never had anymore Scientific Leaders, and as I was involved in a single war all game, only one Military Leader, which I used to build an army.
Now for the fun part, the Mayan UU.
A 2/2/1 unit for 30 shields doesn't sound like much at first. The key is the enslavement. This works when fighting anything, INCLUDING BARBS. The random barb setting ended up being restless, so I had an ample supply of barb fodder. I averaged about 40% enslavement rate, which meant I had an enormous amount of barbarian workers. Playing with raging barbs would just make it easier. And because it's 2/2/1, you can have a stack of them and not need a spearman escort. In fact, you don't even want a spearman, as you can enslave when defending as well. Also, killing barbs doesn't trigger your GA, so you don't need to worry about a too early GA when enslaving barbs.
I used my UU purely for barb slave making, so didn't trigger it until I built Hoover's as the game was wrapping up. An earlier one would've been fine, but my aim was spaceship/UN, so there was no need for one at all.
The AI doesn't know how to handle marshes. Even at the end of the game, large tracts of the other continent were unsettled because they were covered in marshes. I never left my island, but I could've dropped ships full of settlers/workers/defenders off on the other continent and doubled the amount of land I had, just by settling marshes.
The slightly slower Industrious workers are still great. They aren't as fast, but they definitely are faster than slaves or regular workers. Also, it appears that it takes 3 slaves to equal the speed of an Industrious worker, but that changed once I became a Democracy and learned Replaceable Parts, and I think it became 2/1 then.
The Maya UU needs to be changed so that it can't enslave barbs. By allowing it to enslave them, it creates a giant slave army, without any need to go to war, or trigger a GA.
One nice thing was that adding barb slaves to your cities makes them permanently unhappy, as you are always at war with them, and your citizens are protesting the war "Stop the aggression against our mother country"
. I think they end up getting assimilated eventually, but I never checked. I also didn't check to see if you can sell them, but I assume you can.
I enjoyed my first taste of Conquests, and really enjoyed having contact trading pushed back. One thing I didn't like was that you can't even trade Territory maps until you learn Navigation. I can understand pushing back world maps, but territory maps as well?
And the Mayan are THE overpowered civ in Conquests. Especially with high barb levels.
The Maya are Agricultural and Industrious. Agricultural gives 3 food in the city square (2 in despotism unless on a river) and starts you off with Pottery. Industrious gives extra shields in the city square as your city grows, faster workers and starts you off with Masonry.
The Maya's UU is an archer replacement, the Javelin Thrower. This is a 2/2/1 unit costing 30 shields. It has a bonus feature called enslavement, which gives a free worker occasionally when killing units. In my game, it was in the 40% range, but is probably 33% or 1/3.
The only Agricultural wonders I could find were the Pyramids (Religious, Agricultural and Industrial), Hoover's (Agricultural and Industrious) and Suffrage (Agricultural). I feel like Firaxis changed that last one over to Agricultural because they needed more wonders, but IMO it's a terrible choice. If they wanted another wonder for that trait, they could've just added another one in the Industrial Era, perhaps with Electricity, and have it give a free Aqueduct in all cities. Anything would've been better than changing Suffrage to Agricultural.
As for my game, I played a standard size map, random opponents, random barbs, random type and warm/wet/4 billion. It ended up being a 2 continent map, with 2 civs on one, and 6 on the other.
I was on the small continent with India as my neighbor. After getting a pair of 4 turn settler factories going (much easier with the extra food), I quickly noticed that you can't settle on marshes. A full 50% of the island was marsh, so it took longer than I expected to fill the island. I eliminated India relatively early, as they were stuck with 4 cities because of the marsh.
After doing a 50! turn minimum research run on Writing, I went for max research on Philosophy, and scored Literature as my free tech. I popped a Scientific Leader when I learned Philosophy, and used him to rush the Great Library. After that, the game was over. I ended up winning by building the UN, but as I had met the whole world by the time I built the GL (thanks to that wonderful Curagh), I put on 0% science until I learned Education, and by then I had the infrastructure to do 4-6 turn research for the rest of the game. I never had anymore Scientific Leaders, and as I was involved in a single war all game, only one Military Leader, which I used to build an army.
Now for the fun part, the Mayan UU.
A 2/2/1 unit for 30 shields doesn't sound like much at first. The key is the enslavement. This works when fighting anything, INCLUDING BARBS. The random barb setting ended up being restless, so I had an ample supply of barb fodder. I averaged about 40% enslavement rate, which meant I had an enormous amount of barbarian workers. Playing with raging barbs would just make it easier. And because it's 2/2/1, you can have a stack of them and not need a spearman escort. In fact, you don't even want a spearman, as you can enslave when defending as well. Also, killing barbs doesn't trigger your GA, so you don't need to worry about a too early GA when enslaving barbs.
I used my UU purely for barb slave making, so didn't trigger it until I built Hoover's as the game was wrapping up. An earlier one would've been fine, but my aim was spaceship/UN, so there was no need for one at all.
The AI doesn't know how to handle marshes. Even at the end of the game, large tracts of the other continent were unsettled because they were covered in marshes. I never left my island, but I could've dropped ships full of settlers/workers/defenders off on the other continent and doubled the amount of land I had, just by settling marshes.
The slightly slower Industrious workers are still great. They aren't as fast, but they definitely are faster than slaves or regular workers. Also, it appears that it takes 3 slaves to equal the speed of an Industrious worker, but that changed once I became a Democracy and learned Replaceable Parts, and I think it became 2/1 then.
The Maya UU needs to be changed so that it can't enslave barbs. By allowing it to enslave them, it creates a giant slave army, without any need to go to war, or trigger a GA.
One nice thing was that adding barb slaves to your cities makes them permanently unhappy, as you are always at war with them, and your citizens are protesting the war "Stop the aggression against our mother country"
. I think they end up getting assimilated eventually, but I never checked. I also didn't check to see if you can sell them, but I assume you can.I enjoyed my first taste of Conquests, and really enjoyed having contact trading pushed back. One thing I didn't like was that you can't even trade Territory maps until you learn Navigation. I can understand pushing back world maps, but territory maps as well?
And the Mayan are THE overpowered civ in Conquests. Especially with high barb levels.
