Pachacuti Needs a Stronger Start Bias

[sTAPler27]

Pachacuti can be a fairly strong leader but given it's so rare to actually get mountains in his start its rare you can use him to his fullest potential. It's funny how a leader like Isabella pretty much gets a gaurentee'd natural wonder while he can't even get a single mountainthat mind you he can't even work until the next age.

 

[Leucarum]

It's rare to see a title so concise and accurate on a forum thread.

Though maybe you could go further and say the map generator seems less prone to create mountain ranges in general...

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

Though maybe you could go further and say the map generator seems less prone to create mountain ranges in general...

One can, and I will.

We have two mountain-based Civs and one mountain based leader, all of whom base their entire game plan on a coin flip. Ignoring Pachacuti for a moment (who gets the worst of it- his abilities give him nothing if he has no mountains), the Civs are also dealt a bad hand by the map generator.

I've seen a fair share of mountains, but the number of them varies wildly from game to game, resulting in a lot of games where it makes no sense to pick Inca or Nepal at all. And that's a shame! Those two turn into wasted or "dead" Civ slots for players, which is especially egregious for a DLC Civ.

Anyway, just for fun, let's be methodical about this. How dependent are Inca and Nepal on Mountains exactly? I did the math.

Counting their Civ ability, individual tiers of civics, policy cards, and their unique units and infrastructure as one "bonus" each, the Inca lose 6/12 of their bonuses with no mountains.

Using the same method on Nepal, they lose 9/14 of their bonuses with no mountains.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

In Civ VI, on Pangaea maps, I frequently had mountain ranges that spanned the continent, cutting off one side of the land mass from the other except for a couple of 1-tile-wide 'passes - which were almost always occupied by City States.

Now, this could be massively annoying, especially when I, as I usually did, included my personal 'victory condition' of building a trans-continental railroad from one side of the continent to the other and ended up having to hack the railroad through multiple tunnels along the way!

But this shows that:
a) Mountain Ranges are possible
b) Mountain ranges have several attributes that could make them very attractive to people beyond The Pach, the Nepalese and Pach's Incas.

First, because they break up a big continent effectively onto smaller continents, which increases the time that Scouts are useful and makes your sea trade routes not just Nice To Have but a necessity to reach certain ports/Resources on the other side of the Mountains.

Second, because Mountain Ranges could be a way to bring more variety into the Exploration Distant Lands Legacies and mechanics.

What if Distant Lands could include those on the far side of the Mountain Range - or Ranges?

That immediately increases the variety of the 'Treasure Fleet' Legacy line by 100%, adding the chance of hacking, say, a route through the passes - which could be special terrain requiring Exploration Age to make them traversable.

I've said it before, the game needs desperately some more variety of Victory/Legacy paths, and this could be one way to get some.

 

[Leucarum]

One can, and I will.

We have two mountain-based Civs and one mountain based leader, all of whom base their entire game plan on a coin flip. Ignoring Pachacuti for a moment (who gets the worst of it- his abilities give him nothing if he has no mountains), the Civs are also dealt a bad hand by the map generator.

I've seen a fair share of mountains, but the number of them varies wildly from game to game, resulting in a lot of games where it makes no sense to pick Inca or Nepal at all. And that's a shame! Those two turn into wasted or "dead" Civ slots for players, which is especially egregious for a DLC Civ.

Anyway, just for fun, let's be methodical about this. How dependent are Inca and Nepal on Mountains exactly? I did the math.

Counting their Civ ability, individual tiers of civics, policy cards, and their unique units and infrastructure as one "bonus" each, the Inca lose 6/12 of their bonuses with no mountains.

Using the same method on Nepal, they lose 9/14 of their bonuses with no mountains.

Inca are doubly hurt by wanting rough yerrain near mountains which is piling the unlikely on top of the improbable. Nepal are doubly hurt by wanting mountains just outside their borders so you have to do some bananas planning just to make them work.

I like both civs. But Inca are 'early machu pikchu' as a civ. Nepal need such in depth awareness of the systems to plan 2 days in advance that new players are just going to get confused.