Noble's Club CXLVIII - Huayna Capac of the Incas

[Noble Zarkon]

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 Capac of Inca, whom we last played in NC XCVIII. The Incans start with Agriculture and Mysticism.

Huayna is widely considered among the strongest leaders because of the combination of traits, UB, and UU.

• Traits: Huayna Capac is Financial and Industrious. FIN gives +1 on tiles that already have at least 2. IND gives +50% production speed for wonders (including National wonders) and gives double production speed of forges.
• The UB: The Terrace, a Granary with +2. Since basically all your cities need granaries, this is a bit like having a Creative trait also.
  
  
• The UU: The Quecha, a Warrior with Combat I and +100% versus archery units -- a great unit for an early rush at Monarch and above due to it's bonus against Archers.
  

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Big and Small, High Sea Level, Arid, Tiny Islands, Islands Mixed In. As these maps are bigger than normal added 2 AIs at the setup stage.

Spoiler edits :

Added metal for two AIs.

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine: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 number Leader 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 as the AI techs are the same. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery; Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

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.

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.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

* reserved *

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Some thoughts on the Map Type

Spoiler :

Big & Small maps have more land than most other types, and typically a number of landmasses ranging from one tile up to big enough for a decent sized Civ. Civs will tend to grow reasonably big and Conquest / Domination is not easy, although your Quechas should be able to take out 2 or 3 early on. One tactic that many in the Hall of Fame use (although it is even more effective on Large / Huge maps) is to aim for Sid's Sushi as the amount of sea food is out of proportion to a standard map. One example of this can be found here. An Empire with extra large cities can then be leveraged for whatever victory type you are aiming for - and often with a large score driven by the huge population.

 

[Ironlungs76]

Presumably a typo (HC of the Inca) rather than Unrestricted Leaders?

The map script's a bit large for my usual tastes but seeing as it's HC I may as well give it bash on Imm.

Initial thoughts are that I'd be tempted to SiP depending on what my quecha unveiled from moving onto the gold, although there's a case for 1SE too. Hmmm, look interesting

 

[Izuul]

Wow, among other things this is a 5HPT start. 3T Quecha > 3T Quecha > pray for a neighbor.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Presumably a typo (HC of the Inca) rather than Unrestricted Leaders?

Yes - got it right in the main text but wrong in the title, will need a Mod to fix it!

 

[dalamb]

HC with PH start, gold and floodplain -- wow! Not to mention Stone in the BFC. This could be fun, especially if there's a neighbour or two like Izuul said.

 

[TheSunIsDark]

Could either pop the hut with the Quechua and hope for a map (one of the only times you do!) or move the warrior onto the gold. Settling 1S gets the Ivory as well, but it's not a Plains hill. It is a 5H start... but then you get no food. Four quechuas should be good for a rush, so I'll then build a worker. Let's go conquering!

 

[TheSunIsDark]

Okay, so... I did the obvious. 3120BC update.

Spoiler :

Settled in place, MM'd it onto the plains hill. The first AI I found was Victoria. Built three Quechuas, one of which was wounded by a wolf.

On turn 15 I got brilliant news:



So, I DoW'd with four Quechuas. She only had one archer. Cost 2 Quechuas, the first did no damage and the second did more than it should have done.



A free holy city! Thank you! Cultural victory is obvious, with a holy city and IND/FIN.

 

[Gumbolt]

I also did the obvious apparently?

Spoiler :

Headed south after meeting JoaIIs scout and took out his capital. Outside London now with 5-6 Quecha. Victoria is not long for this world. This map needed 3-4 more AI.

2000bc. 4 cities and 2 settlers. Just need some cottages now and maybe the great wall.

Spoiler :

1640bc and I have 6 cities. Economy is crashed but who cares.

JoaII - dead
English dead.
Americans - 2 cities left. 1 razed.

My run has come to an end. Americans have iron. Grrrr.

Great wall complete too.

 

[Gumbolt]

Would be better to play this...

Spoiler :

banning early rushes with the UU. it's such asa strong start anyway. That or some of the closer Ai copper or horse? None of them are war mongers anyway.

 

[MegaLurker]

I actually Quecha rushed the closest neighbour on Deity and...

Spoiler :

With the surrounding land it may not have made the game any easier. Instead I could have built both the 'Mids and the Great Lighthouse (instead of just getting lucky on a late GLH) and already been settling numerous islands, getting myself to an extremely fast cuir or rifling or steel date to sweep the continent.

Distance maintenance even just that far is brutal on Deity, unit maintenance doesn't help when you need to amass ~10 units at a time. The saving grace - aside from the lucky GLH around 1000BC - was the barb cities popping up in all the right places to block land. Exactly where I would have settled myself, easily take-able with leftover Cover/CR quechas. Only the capture gold got me through to pottery. Was losing money at 0% slider until the GLH finished. Recovery should be quick, though. Nobody went for Aesthetics, another stroke of luck.

The Capital was stuck at size 2 forever, working the gold to keep me afloat financially. It's actually a pretty bad capital until that rice gets irrigated with Civil Service.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Interesting we get those two posts one after the other,

Spoiler :

the map is set up for a Quecha rush but what Noble players need to do is work out when to stop and then what next? Don't think the surrounding land is that great so just taking the other Civs out may not be the best play.

 

[MegaLurker]

I think for people playing on Noble the Quecha rush really has nothing to teach. Actually I think that applies at any difficulty. It tells you nothing about streamlining the early tech tree, settling priorities, worker efficiency, tile management. It's an easy reward for doing the most mindlessly simple opening.

 

[dalamb]

I realize a lot of experienced players consider the Inca overpowered and disparage Quechua rushes, but as a relatively inexperienced player I think you're forgetting something:

Conquering somebody so early is fun. NC isn't just about learning; it's about having fun, too.

There's still plenty to learn, such as recovering one's economy and fogbusting all the territory between the various places you've conquered, plus everything that happens later in the game.

Here's what I did up to 1525 BC. Monarch, Epic, Events+Huts, No Tech Brokering, No Barbs.

Spoiler :

Right off the bat my game started off completely differently than other people's, because Warrior 1NW got:


I built a worker, encountered Joao to the south fairly quickly, and settled on a quechua rush (which I'd certainly been hoping for). After that built 4 warriors and attacked:

If I'd waited one more turn it would have been 1 archer in the city and an easy fight. As it was it went about as expected, losing one quechua for each archer.

Somewhere in there I encountered Vicy to the east and went hunting for her territory, building terraces and barracks in both cities and grinding out quechuas. By the time I felt ready to attack her I'd overbuilt my army because I still have plenty left over after taking her out. Nottingham auto-razed, and the English were eliminated.

My territory:

The casualties of war:

• Enemy killed:
  
• Mine lost:
  

What next?

Spoiler :

Find Lincoln, obviously, but I don't plan to take him out. My empire is big enough at the moment until my economy is much stronger. Finish alphabet, at some point, but I forgot that on this map the GLH is good so I think I need to switch to Fishing and Sailing and try for it, though this is probably too late. Failgold is good, though, when one's economy is relatively weak (40% on the slider, to go even lower when London pops out of revolt).

In a normal game I would use all those leftover quechua to fogbust, but I generally go with "no barbs" these days to reduce annoyance. I think I'll just use a couple to explore north, and place the others at suitable future city sites (which is sort of like fogbusting in a way).

No settlers for a while until the economy is better (not until Currency, I think), but as soon as it seems reasonable I plan to settle more floodplains for more commerce. I'm a little worried about the possible need to block Lincoln to the north, lest he move into the middle of "My" territory, but the sites up there don't look great and I do have plenty of land to the southeast.

I hope people will post some maps of where they planted cities, since I'd like the guidance.

 

[ecuwins]

I spy jumbos. Quechua are excellent for barb defense too.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay maybe a bit more thought out map.

Spoiler :

100ad. 11 cities.

Mids/GW/SH/Parth/Glib/NE all built. Americans are not trading with me. Same for Hammy so this is slowng me down tech tech wise.

Hammy and Hannibal at war.

Music is teched. 2 turns off COL.

At 100% science I am getting 340 beakers a turn.

I lack Archery, AH, med, mono, monarchy, COl, compass and constructions which Hannibal has. He needs music and Calendar from me.

Not too worried he has any of those 8 techs. He will trade five of them for music. Once MM completes I will run a golden age. Need an academy in my new capital first.

 

[NihilZero]

I must be an incorrigible eccentric, because I have never tried a Quecha rush, on any level. What is wrong with me?

Anyway, to me that looks like a frustrating capital because it's food poor. On the other hand, it reminds me of those starts Seriael posted in the awesome starts thread that were chosen for HoF Quecha rushing.

I'm not crazy about forum maps that are tailored for specific play, as for me a big part of the infinite fascination of reading people's writeups is the variety of different ways people play the same map. Not sure we'll see much of that here. I do get that this is what the Noble's Club is really about, though, and that's fine.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Monarch/Normal/NHNE

Tried to play this map 2 times. The first attempt was about testing the infamous Quechua rush. I failed miserably

Spoiler :

Joao spawned a new Archer in Lisbon every turn I advanced towards it 7 Quechuas vs 5 Archers = Epic Fail. Fail and ragequit.

Reloaded the game and stayed away from Quechua rush. This time things went well and the game ended with Domination victory in 1830 AD.

Spoiler :

Spoiler screenshot :

Peacefully captured the Marble to the south an managed to build a late Oracle. Got a free tech:

Spoiler oracle :

Since Ivory was available, I decided to choose the path of the good old Elepult war - against Joao.

Once Joao was dealt with, I libbed Military Tradition for Cuirs and declared on Vicky. Cuirs were short-lived, because I soon got Rifling. My Cavalry forced Vicky to capitulation and soon after, Lincoln and Hannibal as well.

Hammurabi/Suleiman had Rifles by then, so I decided to wait until Infantry/Artillery before taking any further military action. Once Suly capitulated the Domination limit was exceeded.

Final score

Spoiler score :

The overall tech potential of this map was very good. The AI wasn't that much behind either.

NobleZarkon, thanks for the map!

 

[ecuwins]

775 BC - emperor, normal speed, no huts, no events

Spoiler :

Really slow growth. It probably didn't help much that my first settler stole the rice from the capital. Construction is in hand, Horseback Riding is next, Joao is the target.

The Map

Spoiler :

Tech Tree

Spoiler :

The tech order went: Mining > Bronze > Wheel > Pottery > Animal Husbandry > Writing > Math > Masonry > Construction. I will be needing Currency after HBR.

The plan is to bang on Joao while teching towards Civil Service.