Analysis of the Incan Civ in Tet's Mod
Ok finally here's my report from playing the Incans. I've just hit the modern era, I wanted to wait until I was finished, but I'm going to be busy all weekend and then its thanksgiving, so it won't be finished for a while. Also this game was played on Monarch, default rules, and used the citymod version 1.70.
Before I got started I thought this would be one hell of a tough game, so I did a strategic analysis on paper first and this is what I came up with:
Strengths
1. Isolated from the rest of the world. I won't have to worry about being conquered like in real life since the AI is horrible at long distance warfare.
2. Jaguar warrior. Man this thing is awesome, just as powerful as a swordsman, but much cheaper. It keeps its usefullness for nearly half the game if used in the right quantities, preferaby mass quantities
3. Cities surrounded by mountains. Later in the game, especially with offshore platforms I should get some cities with very high production and commerce.
4. No competition for all the games strategic resources on one continent.
Weaknesses
1. Isolated from the rest of the world. Research is based a lot on how many other people you know that have what you are researching, so my research was going to be very slow in the beginning until I met some other civs.
2. Long distances to the rest of the world mean its going to be impossible to wage war outside the americas until the modern era.
3. Empire is very spread out. Corruption was going to be a big problem because of this and would hold me back some.
Threats
1. Militarily none realistically.
2. Other victory conditions would be a problem. Someone beating me to the space race is a very real possibility. Diplomatic not so much since the AI tends to hate one another on this map, and I could even take that since I will be peacefull with most civs. Only problem is making sure I am large enough for the vote. Cultural could be a big threat too.
Opportunities
1. Large abundance of various resources. Possibly trading them later on in the game for techs, etc could help me.
2. The southern tip of S. America looks like a good spot to expand with all the sheep down there.
3. Aztecs
4. Iroquois :rocket:
How it all played out
After making contact with the Aztecs I traded them for a few techs, then later with the Iroquois for a few more. After this initial exchange that was it for the game. I spent the start building up infrastructure, roads, irigation, etc. During this period I left research at like 10%, since even at 100% it would still take 35 turns per tech, at least at 10% I get some money.
Pretty soon after I had the basic structures in my main cities I started cranking out jaguar warriors left and right. As soon as I had about 3-4 together I sent them out barbarian hunting. Now, I knew that there were some dinosaurs in the mod, so I wasn't surprised when I found my first one. He was a pushover and didn't last against me. I must have done something, because once I crossed a river like 500 swordsmen came out of nowhere. Luckily just by defending my 10 or so jaguars killed almost all of them.
A little while later I was sending a settler and two jaguars across the continent to establish a city on the eastern side and I thought, gee, that grassland in the middle of the continent might be a nice place for a base...OH ****. Turns out that grassland had a Mr. T-rex in it. Bye bye settler.
I had set up a few new cities in various places around S. America when I made my first contact with the Songhai. Not sure what date it was, but I'm pretty sure it was close to just after 0AD. I had just gotten done researching literature when they landed. Once they landed I traded contact with aztecs and iroquois for contact with all the other civs in the world. My researching time went down by about 400% after doing that.
From here for the next 1000 or so years I set my slider to 100% money and just stole a technology every 4-5 turns. After that I would trade the tech to 2-3 other civs for an additional 2-3 techs. This continued all the way up until about 1250 when I was finally all caught up. During those 1000 years I fought a couple of inconclusive wars against the aztecs, each time takes a city or two.
Around 1250 I put a lot of funding into research and got scientific method ahead of everyone else. Then I built darwins and was another two techs ahead. The two techs I got from that lead me to build hoovers dam, again putting me a bit more ahead.
Right now it is 1450 and I have just entered the modern era. The lead AI civ just spent the past few years researching the mass production line of techs(which I promtly stole from them), while I researched the radio line of techs. They just got scientific method while I'm in the modern era.
Despite what I thought, a space race victory could happen if I keep up this lead in techs, although it will almost certainly stop. Diplomatic victory has a good shot at working too since I'll be the first to get the UN wonder built, along with a few of the other modern era wonders. Acording to the histograph I'm seriously behind in points, and I know my total production is much less than the larger civs, but I'm still 3rd overall. Of course I could always start a 600 year war and see what happens. I've got a base at midway, not hawaii yet, damn barbarians. My b-17's can only reach some islands close to japan, which is very close to historical acuracy. If I had them based in hawaii I estimate they could hit san diego, and maybe los angeles at best.
Right now besides me the big powers are Persia, India, and China. Turkistan for the longest time was #2, but I think they pissed off the wrong person and ended up getting ganged up upon. The persians are the only democracy of the bunch, so their research far outpaces the competition. China on the other hand is a behemoth far outproducing everyone else. India is a close second to china though.
Some suggestions
As I've said earlier communications advance needs pushed back. I'm not sure but I think only one nation needs to have to for both to trade communications. If this is true I would say move it back to the early industrial era. This should slow down things, but not too terribly much. What it will stop is certain native american civs from skyrocketing to the top quickly. Also, there is a huge disparity between civs. Simply increasing the research time won't work because it will only hurt the ones who are already way behind. There are some who are close to the modern era, and some, fairly good-sized civs who are still in the middle ages. I think the best solution would be to weaken the larger of the civs somewhat. China needs to be broken in two at minimum, 3 would be even better. Same for the Indians.
This is going to require shifting some of the civs around and eliminating some, but I think its something that would help the game a lot. Personally I think eliminating the Celts would be a good starting point since they are fairly innefectual being so spread out in different places. The celts would be good for dividing up India, and if the Koreans were expanded to control the northern half of China that would be a good starting spot.
Turn length: For most of the game it wasn't too bad. 2-3 minutes on my machine. I noticed when world war broke out turns came to a screaching halt. After peace resumed turns went a bit faster, but oddly enough now the period after the AI moves are made takes the longest. I get the messages saying such and such a city has built something, build something new, after I do that for all my cities it pauses for a long while, longer than the AI part even. I'm not sure what its doing here though. Moving to a smaller map would help a lot, on the other hand the game would lose a lot of its epic appeal. It would be much harder to cram 32 civs on a smaller map. Also you run into the problem of Europe being large enough for 3-4 cities, whereas now you can fit a lot of civs in it.
The more I think about it the harder its going to be to recreate a historical scenario for all of humanity. At best you can set it up for a fun game and see what happens, but a historical outcome will be damned tough. On the other hand your idea for an american revolution scenario sounds very promissing. I think rewriting the tech tree, starting it around the revolutionary war, and going into the near-future would be much cooler. You could have an entire era just devoted to WWI-WWII, instead of now how its really only about 4 techs, two of which are optional. I'm going to be busy most of this weekend so I might not get back to you soon.
