Nobles' Club 243: Huayna Quechua of the Incas

[AcaMetis]

The Nobles' Club series started out as a way for Noble-level (and below) players to improve their game. Most of the original participants now play at much higher levels, so this has become a way for advanced players to help others learn to play better. You can play your own game at any level and with any mod, but it would be nice to comment on the games of other players and give them advice.

Our next leader is Huayna Quechua of Inca, whom we last played in NC 192. The Incans start with Agriculture and Mysticism.

• Traits: Huayna is Financial and Industrious. Financial adds +1 to any tile that already produce at least 2. Industrious gives a +50% bonus to all Wonders (World and National), and gives a +100% bonus to Forges.
  
• The UB: The Terrace, a Granary with +2. Half of the creative trait on the most powerful building in the game, unlocked within a minimum of two techs. Makes starting with Mysticism that much more of a waste unless you end up next to an actual Creative leader who's culture you need to push back. Except...
  
• The UU: The Capac-I mean, Quechua, a Warrior with +100% vs. Archery units and a free Combat I promotion. Yeah. Taking out multiple Deity civs in the early BCs with just Warriors not broken enough? Don't worry, in addition these guys directly upgrade into Maceman, meaning you can build them as cheap military police for much longer than regular Warriors. Because clearly they guys weren't powerful enough .

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Pangaea, High sealevel, Cold climate.

Spoiler edits :

Two resource swaps were done to give AIs nearby strategic resources.

The WB-saves are attached (zipped; they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (if you use one, if not, check out the BUG MOD), select "Play Scenario", and look for "NC 243 Huayna Quechua Noble" (or Monarch, etc., for higher levels). You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Deity, all are welcome! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.

Spoiler what's up with specific difficulties :

In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Prince. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

Spoiler for players on Monarch or above :

You should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows:

Spoiler how to add techs to the barbarians :

1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
6. Exit the worldbuilder.
7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.

If you're playing at higher level than Monarch, consider also giving them Hunting at Emperor, Agriculture at Immortal, and The Wheel at Deity.

Spoiler huts and events :

Note: The standard saves have no huts and have events turned off. If you want tribal villages and random events, choose the saves with "Huts" in their names. If you want huts but no events, select the Huts saves and use Custom Scenario to turn on the option that suppresses events.

 

[AcaMetis]

Game wants to SIP, honestly I don't see a reason to disagree here. The question is what to do with early tech. AH/Worker into Mining -> BW -> Fishing or Fishing/Quechua into Mining -> BW -> AH ? Maybe Mining/Quechua into BW -> Fishing -> AH while Quechuas go off to "liberate" a worker from whoever is nearby? No way to get 5 so no 3-turning Quechuas, not without moving around, but still, two or three can be build and send to borrow a worker, right ?

 

[migalhone]

Judging by the tundra, this is southern part of the map no?

Is any reason not to Quechua rush someone?

EDIT : my god the amount of commerce here is bonkers

 

[AcaMetis]

Definitely the south, yes. Close to the Antarctic, even, there's glaciers visible in the screenshot. As for Quechua rushing someone, doable, the problem is that we don't have a 5 production base from T0, so getting out an army of Quechuas will take longer. Not necessarily too long, mind , but all the same I think worker steals and choking someone is more viable than outright conquering.

Of course my military skill is on par with Gandhi, so if anyone wants to try and prove me wrong, go for it .

 

[Fippy]

What an incredibly annoying start..like aaaaaaah by Sulla when an AI farms their gems and refuses to tech mining.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Quecha 1 NE, but I really can't see not settling in place.

Coastal starts always mess me up. I think the "optimal" play is to build a quecha first and steal a worker while teching fishing > mining > BW. I'm just not used to / good at that style of play, so my concern is not having a close enough neighbor or a good enough opportunity to steal a worker. I'll still probably SiP and try it.

AH first seems weak to me. The cow isn't riverside, and we're FIN with a lake and three seafood resources. There's 0 chance of horse in the BFC, and we probably don't want to settle tundra for any that get revealed down there. Plus, we have quecha. Who needs chariots? Or HAs for that matter.

IND + 3 seafood resources and the possibility of more coastal cities has me thinking The Colossus could be good, especially if we get copper.

 

[MeowZeDung]

IMM NH, NE to T33

Spoiler :

I'm either unlucky, unskilled, or both. I'm not necessarily in a *bad* position, just not nearly as good of one as I should be.

SiP, Quecha/Fishing, sent starting Quecha NE.

Met several AI and spotted gold to the east and a juicy corn/gem site farther NE. We seem to be on a weird peninsula. I sent my second quecha northward along the western coast. My bad luck started when he got eaten by a bear despite being in a forested tile.

Then I saw that Saladin's capital was positioned in just such a way to make a worker steal really unlikely/akward. He sent his settler out toward the rice, and I should have known that he would try to settle the rice/cow spot. PRO archer made this situation dissapointing:

So, I definitely failed to position my Quecha well and I ended up getting boxed into the north:

Fortunately, AI are predictable and I waited for the inevitable road construction crew. I wasn't dissapointed.

As I escorted him south I had another spot of bad luck:

That time it was an archer and I was only on a hill, but still, what the heck man.

So now I'm at pop 4 in the capitol with 2 improved clams and 2 FP being worked and a settler due in 11 turns. I'll probably revolt to slavery and whip rather than wait, but the trouble is I've lost 2 quecha to the RNG and my only remaining Quecha is slowly escorting a worker through forest/jungle. Settling the eastern gold / cottage helper city seems best to me, but there's a risk that it will be undefended for a couple of turns depending on if whip overflow finishes a Quecha in the capitol straight away.

Teching AH, then probably TW > Pottery > Writing, and grab up that corn/gems spot asap. With both stone and gold we're set for some nice IND failgold. If we're lucky there will be marble and/or copper around somewhere.

Sally will negotiate but won't take peace. Hopefully a few more turns and he will, but if not I'll have to send another Quecha up that way and stir up some trouble I suppose.

I'd say there's 5 decent cities here, and hopefully more seafood along the eastern coast, or a decent tundra seafood/resource city for #6.

 

[migalhone]

So i went Quechua-only from turn 0 and...

Spoiler :

Not worth it. Seriously what map is this??? Turn 42 got nothing to show but dead Quechuas, had 0.1% odds against Saladin's archers. How did he out produced my Quechuas? Just the plains hills where he settled Mecca?

I'm not sure i want to continue, turn 42, 1 turn to BW and capital at 1 turn of growing to size 3. Since i'm not a restarter, i'll pass this one, sorry

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Seriously what map is this???

That was my exact response when seeing this map. All the same it looked like it'd be a more interesting game than a bog-standard Quechua rush map like the last HC NC map was, so I went with this one. Though I was otherwise going for that kind of map, rest assured.

As for Quechua rushing someone, I believe you need about 2-3 Quechuas per archer to take a city with reasonable safety, depending on PRO and/or fortified and/or hill? It's a non-zero amount of production you need, which is bad when you're working with 3 instead of 5, and higher level AIs start with a lot of free archers. The best way to take AI cities is baiting archers to leave their city and taking them out in the open - that's like a 90% chance to outright win or something along those lines, much better than attacking even the weakest city.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Spoiler :

Kept chugging along, noticed Joao was just West of me (weeeeeeird map), and settled Gold city east of cap. Lost YET ANOTHER QUECHA to a barb WARRIOR (!) even though I was on a hill. That's three Quecha with native combat I promotion dead this game while placed on defensive tiles: the first to a bear while on forest, the second to an archer while on a hill, and the third to a warrior while on a hill. Needless to say I was salty about it. Of course it has a chain reaction and negatively impacted my ability to fogbust. TL : DR the barbs settled 1 NW of the corn and I absolutely despise RNG elements in games sometimes, even when they are somewhat reasonable. I might come back to this later in the week and start a brand new game, but I'm not going to bother razing a barb city just so I can settle the one really good city site nearby. /rant

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

"Deity" no huts no events normal speed, BC-4000 to BC-1360

No intention to finish

Spoiler :

I played a few dozen turns, looked around the spoilers, then wrote this. I am unsure why people are having problems, or why AcaMetis thinks a quechua rush won't work on this map.

Moved warrior 1NE away from the tundra and saw plains-hill. Move settler there.

Settle down and

Gold, floodplains, riverside, financial.

Scout around, gain experience fighting barbarians, and

Portugal capital discovered. Second border pop happens 2000-BC without wonders or religions. AI won't build monument in capital early on. Count tiles.

Conquest of Portugal. I gave up trashy non-coastal arctic city to barbarians and another AI took it. Coastal is better because trade routes and save worker turns. I didn't raze it because I actually want to take it later, when my finances are more solid. Since it's next to the capital, I might even culture-flip it later.

I did not move the capital to Lisbon manually. I let the barbarians take the original capital, then take it back.

Tech situation

Aesthetics, alphabet, mathematics... the usual game, except with a strong foundation. All the land around my original capital are still available for expansion.

 

[migalhone]

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

Yeah. I'll just disregard rushes from now on lol, so no wars before Construction

@MeowZeDung

Spoiler :

Thanks for the rant, i feel better for ragequitting my own game

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

In my game i met Saladin first so i went after him. Bastard settled his cap on a hill, i suicided my Quechuas against said hill city.

 

[MeowZeDung]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

My intention was never to Quecha rush since I don't think practicing a gambit available to only one civ will help my game all that much. I did intend to pursue a worker steal approach and only had trouble insofar as the RNG was a royal turd. I don't think my execution was horrendous or anything.

Nice demo of what a Quecha rush can do on this map though. Since I wasn't planning to Q rush I didn't even think of moving the settler onto the PH, but it makes sense to grab the extra production if you're going all in on Quecha from the start.

Perhaps the takeaway for me is to be smarter about my scouting. The map is odd, to be sure, but I just assumed that coast to my West and tundra to my South and Southwest meant no rival civs were in those directions. I should have paid more attention to the map on the turns I met the AI and I might have seen a Portugese scout in the tundra. Instead I was so focused on Northward exploration since I knew the first AI I had seen (Sally) came from the north and the geography seemed to bear out my (incorrect) assumptions about the map. Even without a Quecha rush strategy and just a worker steal it might have been better to steal from Joao.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@MeowZeDung

Spoiler :

Worker-stealing generally means getting dogpiled later. The good players can turn the extra worker into a strong-enough start that it won't matter. I just get crushed. Gandhi would take a ceasefire but otherwise I wouldn't do it. That's got nothing to do with playing Incas.

I just wanted the floodplains, riverside, and plains-hill for any leader. That also has nothing to do with playing Incas.

I didn't start exploring the West until the Portuguese scout appeared from that direction.

Quechua are also great against barbarians. I thought AcaMetis would post an isolation map. The terrace is strong. Financial is nice. Not a fan of industrious, but I can see it being helpful in isolation.

 

[Willem V]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Nice results with the rush, can I ask you how many Quechas you used and what you faced from Joao? Never performed one myself, so curious how to go about one

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Quechua are also great against barbarians. I thought AcaMetis would post an isolation map. The terrace is strong. Financial is nice. Not a fan of industrious, but I can see it being helpful in isolation.

Putting HC on iso wouldn't show off the sheer power of Quechuas against the (Monarch+) AIs, so that idea never crossed my mind. I did consider setting up a trap on a continents-type map, basically put the player on a continent with Gandhi very close by and someone like Genghis Khan not so close by, but the (much simpler ) "Quechua free-for-all" idea on a cold/high sealevel pangaea won out. Of course than the game wouldn't give me the right map for that, and thinking more about it "NC 192 but moreso" didn't sound like too interesting an idea to me anyway, so I ultimately decided on the map that just defies any and all explanation.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@Willem V

Can't properly answer your questionsy. I didn't keep my save files. I am neither interested nor good at quechua rushes. I don't even consider the Incas the best. They're not very interesting to play; the ones better than you and I aren't playing this one.

Spoiler :

Archers and a chariot. From experience, AIs get axemen around 2600-BC ish. This map is filled with tundra, lots of barbarians. The AI are definitely slowed down by barbarians so I went blind. Quechua rushes don't have to be "complete". I can hook up copper and finish the job later. Portugal is a pushover early. No AGG, PRO, CRE, or religion.

 

[MeowZeDung]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

I just wanted the floodplains, riverside, and plains-hill for any leader. That also has nothing to do with playing Incas.

Yeah, but you didn't gain FP or fresh water; you already had both. You gained desert gold and lost 2 turns, 3x clam, and a cow. How is that better except for the extra hammer for quecha rushing? Serious question, what am I missing?

If anything it seems to show how much you can give up and still steamroll with this UU. Unless you're me and barb bears and warriors get a 150% RNG bonus

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@MeowZeDung Not claiming I make optimal or correct choices. Just sharing what went through my mind

Spoiler :

Assuming I was not playing Incas

I wouldn't build a lot of infrastructure in the 3-clam site except granary and lighthouse. It would be my third city (2nd new city). I would run caste system and five specialists. It will be my GP farm city.

The capital will work the desert-gold tile until I settle the second city (1st new city). That second city will work the gold tile once it reaches 2-pop or 3-pop. It will probably build barb defense military units, then workers/settlers, whole game. A monument may be needed to secure food and/or strategic resource. It will be a support city.

The spot where I moved the initial settler, I saw a very powerful bureaucracy-fueled cottage city with academy.

The real RNG problem with quechua is early axeman.

Quechua are still awesome though. Bonus against barbarian archers alone is awesome.

 

[MeowZeDung]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

The spot where I moved the initial settler, I saw a very powerful bureaucracy-fueled cottage city with academy.

I don't deny that it's a good city spot. It's where I settled my second city. I'm just flabbergasted that anyone would move the initial settler away from a site with 4 food resource tiles, 3 of which take advantage of FIN, to a site with 0 food resource tiles except for 2 FP. Yeah, it's a strong research city eventually, but the loss of whip potential alone in the early game baffles me. I'm not saying it's a bad play per se, obviously you are more skilled than I am and you made better use of it by winning than I did by SiP and quitting. I'm simply not comprehending why that move would occur to someone except to gain the PH production for a Quecha rush, or because they REALLY wanted to avoid fishing in the early turns.