A couple months back there was an Inca GOTM. I hadn't played Huayna before, and I was suprised and pleased at what a powerful civ it is.
Since then, I've played them a lot, and I've gotten to the point I can beat the game on Immortal - but only as the Incas.
It's the combination of Mysticism + Financial + Quechas that does it. The UU means I can spend the early game building the most powerful unit of its age. I can at least cripple - and sometimes destroy - my neighbors. I sometimes go millennia without having to build my own workers.
Early religion provides a critical level of extra happiness, and shrine gold + financial keeps me in the game tech-wise.
On continents, I dominate my own island, and then play catch-up with the others. On pangea, I generally keep going until everybody's gone.
Anyway, what strikes me as about the Incas is that they turn the AI's strengths against them.
Take Quechas for example. The Quecha is an archer-killer, but at higher levels, archers are all the AI will ever build, early on - and if you deprive them of their resources, that's all they'll ever build. Free archery turns out to be a handicap.
The AI gets free workers - but with Quechas, their free workers turn out to be your free workers, so it really doesn't matter.
The main thing though, is that the Incas' war-mongeriness allows you to exploit the AI's greatest weakness - its inability to fight. Disrupting the AI's development - right from the beginning - seems to be crucial to winning.
All of which brings me to my question - how do you defeat Immortal without Quechas, and/or religion?
Since then, I've played them a lot, and I've gotten to the point I can beat the game on Immortal - but only as the Incas.
It's the combination of Mysticism + Financial + Quechas that does it. The UU means I can spend the early game building the most powerful unit of its age. I can at least cripple - and sometimes destroy - my neighbors. I sometimes go millennia without having to build my own workers.
Early religion provides a critical level of extra happiness, and shrine gold + financial keeps me in the game tech-wise.
On continents, I dominate my own island, and then play catch-up with the others. On pangea, I generally keep going until everybody's gone.
Anyway, what strikes me as about the Incas is that they turn the AI's strengths against them.
Take Quechas for example. The Quecha is an archer-killer, but at higher levels, archers are all the AI will ever build, early on - and if you deprive them of their resources, that's all they'll ever build. Free archery turns out to be a handicap.
The AI gets free workers - but with Quechas, their free workers turn out to be your free workers, so it really doesn't matter.
The main thing though, is that the Incas' war-mongeriness allows you to exploit the AI's greatest weakness - its inability to fight. Disrupting the AI's development - right from the beginning - seems to be crucial to winning.
All of which brings me to my question - how do you defeat Immortal without Quechas, and/or religion?
