UNGY-03 The Gods of the Aztec

[ungy]

The gods of the Aztec are angry.
They demand human sacrifice.
They also demand their warriors prove themselves in battle.

We play the Aztec (of course).

Our variant:
1. We accept no one-sided requests for techs/other stuff--the Aztec civilization is the one who's suppose to be asking for tribute from the puny civs. If relations with a civ asking for tribute drops to annoyed or less the Aztecs will declare war on the civ immediately in order to let their warriors prove themselves in battle (allowed to take peace when we want to).

2. If winning a war the Aztecs has to accept the capitulation the moment it's available in order to be able to sacrifice as much as possible of the opposing tribe to the gods. All captured cities must be whipped down as much as possible after coming out of revolt.

3. In order to be able to use the sacrificial altar a city must have constructed a temple first [must be of the state religion] and be running a priest specialist (all game) to perform the ceremony when it's complete.

4. free religion and pacifism not allowed.

5. All GGs born must be added to a Jaguar (warriors that were able to capture 4-5 enemies alive in battle were able to become an eagle/jaguar warrior thus any successfull general will want to join a Jaguar unit)

6. all military stacks in foreign territory post-IW must consist of at least 1 unit of Jaguars (if the Jaguar dies it must retreat immediately).

We'll play immortal again.

We have a full (or more than full) roster from the last game so we can't take any more signups.

We'll play a low sea level pangea and add a civ for spice.

Roster:

Ungy
Rusten
Mystyfly
Silverbullet
Melior
Olodune
Pigswill
Atropos

(roster in no particular order but I thought I'd start it off and Atropos is away for a bit).

 

[Liquidated]

Subscribed!



Monty is always a wild ride even without a laundry list of rules

Cheers!
-Liquidated

 

[ungy]

I roll one up: pangea, natural shoreline, 7 AI+us :

 

[ungy]

Oops I made a mistake and forgot to give us low sea level.
I'm going to reroll:

I hope I got this one right.

looks like we settle in place.

 

[ungy]

Hmm I guess we need the save (getting late here).

 

[Rusten]

Signing in.

My suggestion:
Move scout onto the hill 1 NE of our settler. It seems to be a pretty clear settle in place, but you never know. If nothing of importance is revealed I'd suggest fishing first as the corn isn't irrigated.

- part-build warrior while teching fishing and growing to size 2
- switch to corn when borders pop (2x5 = 10 + 3x4 = 12 -- 10+12 = 22 = size 2 at turn 9) and then switch to 2 plains forests while getting our first work boat.

Could part-build Stonehenge for cash too, but as we're stuck with a grassland forest for 5 turns that's probably not as good as if we'd have the corn from turn 1. Our warrior will have many hammers invested before fishing is complete (12 or so) so it might be better to just finish him and send him scouting/pop huts. We also start with a scout instead of a warrior due to hunting which means we'll need him for happiness anyway -> nay to part-Stonehenge here.

Seems our starting city will be a specialist centre again. We should keep our eyes open for a good spot and possibly cottage it early.

 

[silverbullet]

I agree with Rusten.Settle in place if we don't find anything interesting on the hill.

BTW, do you know at which year the AI start making demands? I think they normally leave us alone until 2000BC or so. Anyway, the game will get really interesting once we meet the AIs. Let's see if we can make some friends without one sided gifts.

Another point: after IW and before macemen, we must build enough jaguars for the rest of the game. If all jaguars die, we lose, even if we have 150 rifles against the AI longbows.

What do you think about "reinforcement stacks"? Do they also need a jaguar? It can get pretty tedious when we capture a city surrounded by foreign culture and have to get some horses to it in order to reinforce. So, just to make it clear, does the rule say that no aztec unit shall occupy a foreign culture square unless there is a jaguar there?

 

[Atropos]

Checking in. I'm always a big fan of settling in place in the absence of a good reason to move. Fishing -> Archery? Or maybe even Fishing -> Mining -> Bronze -> Iron -> mass murder?


Also, in my experience, it is a rare Immortal game that goes by without every civ asking you for something at least once. We will need to give serious consideration to adopting favored civics of our neighbors if at all reasonable. Lots of food plus the fact that our GGs will become less and less useful as time goes on, plus the fact that we don't need metal, plus the fact that you can get boxed in really early with a coastal pangaea start, all suggest an ultra-early rush will be useful.

 

[mystyfly]

What do you think about "reinforcement stacks"? Do they also need a jaguar?

I say "Every stack consisting of more than 2 units must have a jag".

Nice start there, I'd settle in place. Tenochtitlan looks like a GPFarm with some production and lots of forests to chop for a wonders - GLib? We won't generate many GPs since we're not philo and won't use pac.
Tech: Fishing > Archery > mining > BW. From what I see we'll have no metals or horses in cap BFC. We can delay archery until after BW and partially build the henge, otherwise pump out some archers.
Early build order: warrior (part) > WB > finish warrior > WB > worker.

If we find some AI closeby we may go fishing > mining > BW > IW and rush. Thing is, we'll be in wars often enought.


How many turns do we play each set?

 

[silverbullet]

How many turns do we play each set?

I think it is until something unexpected happens, or you feel that there is a need for discussion. I would say roughly 20 turns at the early game, after that probably less.

Depending on how aggressive the first AIs we meet, we might find ourselves in a really early war. Leaders like Sitting Bull tend to make a lot of demands, especially when we have 2 of a resource. It may be wise to trade excess resources away quickly, so that we avoid these early demands, or hook only 1 of each resource until we want to trade it. I think AIs tend to demand excess resources more often than resource of which we only have 1.

 

[Liquidated]

One benefit I guess you could say is that you aren;t going to have Monty next door...

Then again Alex is always in the wings.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[ungy]

Ok I get us started.

Build warrior-wb.
I leave the warrior a turn from completion in order to get the WB out a turn sooner--since the AI are close there will be no hut for it so 6 turn delay is I think worth it.
Research fishing-mining.



The world:

Our capital:

Well we'll earn it this time if we can bring this one home. Sitting Bull on the E and I was able to confirm the capital is not on a hill.
Qin to the W. We meet Boiadaca and Zara in 3600 I think to the N-NW

I stop because I want to check in about how to proceed--I'm happy to continue a bit or pass it off.

I see a couple of paths.

1. build worker after warrior. Research ag then bw

2. build wb after warrior. grow to 3 then build worker. Then research BW-AG.
This allows for whipping the third tile away followed by pretty rapid growth building another warrior then start settler at 4 then whip. This looks better.

There was a bear earlier to the N--with luck the AI have taken care of it and we can get a look at the area around the ivory.

 

[mystyfly]

Wow this will be really hard - two protective AIs, one a lunatic and the last one of the strongest AIs.

I think taking out bull would be the only rush-opportunity I see - QSH is further away, with bull we know his cap is on flatland and there are lots of FPs that keep early research alive. Thing only is that we'll face CG3 Drill1 archers IIRC. Also Dog soldiers are a pain, even more so since they're resourceless.

I'd go path #2 you described, ungy, to grow the cap and reach BW faster. If we have copper closeby we could consider axe-rushing bull.


I think you played only 15t which is very few for the first set so I say play until we get BW in.

 

[silverbullet]

where are the pictures? I don't see anything after "the world:" and "our capital:"?
Are they missing from the post or is it just something I see?

Rushing Bull is going to be hard. Can't open the save right now though, so I can't comment much. If I played alone I would have probably regenerated at this point, so I am happy to see how we manage to win this

 

[Rusten]

I can see the pictures just fine.

I like path 2, but I disagree on the tile usage. I think it's better to grow to 3 while getting the work boat (corn+clams) and then get the worker (didn't calculate, just hunch so I could be wrong). In general it's usually better to grow right away if you're going to anyway--should take 5 turns to grow to 3. Once we're at size 3 we can switch to clams+plains-forest-hill+forest for 6 pt.

I don't think we have to rush here, there's some decent land. West has fish+cows and some unexplored, east/NE has crabs, sheep and irrigated wheat and to the north we have a lot of grassland so we have food and that's the main thing early on. I might change my mind after some more exploring though, it depends on how close Zara and Boudica are.

As long as we have food for specialists and are able to secure that ivory we should be able to fight our way out at a later point.

 

[Atropos]

Well, we NEED a rush as we cannot survive on that little land ... but it will not be easy. Is it conceivable that we might be able to reach the ivory? War Elephants might be quite helpful, although that will entail waiting for construction. Totem Pole-backed archers, not to mention dog soldiers, will be a very hard sell for jags, although if we mass whip and rush hard and fast we might conceivably be able to hit him while he's still in expansion mode. If we choose that path, we need to get writing ASAP as it looks as if scientists in the capital may be our only significant source of research for quite a while. To be frank, I personally would go for Qin, settling a city to grab fish and having it and the capital whip/chop a bunch of jags. Even a hills capital would be better than dog soldiers. There's no doubt that we're between a pole and a hard place, but hey, that's what makes this game fun I vote for going down in flames, although that's easy to say since I doubt the game will ever get to me.

Edit: crossposted with Rusten.

 

[ungy]

I like path 2, but I disagree on the tile usage. I think it's better to grow to 3 while getting the work boat (corn+clams) and then get the worker (didn't calculate, just hunch so I could be wrong). In general it's usually better to grow right away if you're going to anyway--should take 5 turns to grow to 3. Once we're at size 3 we can switch to clams+plains-forest-hill+forest for 6 pt.

for a change you are right
I checked it out and the WB comes out the same turn but your path has 5 extra food in the basket at the cost of one hammer.

As long as we have food for specialists and are able to secure that ivory we should be able to fight our way out at a later point.

Yes I think it's too soon to assume we'll be cornered but it is certainly possible.

OK--I'll play this line until BW. I'll try and scout up N obviously.

3120 Boudaca founds second city:

3080 We meet Wang due N. He's founded buddhism.

Hindu founded.

2880 BW in-slavery.

Well look what we have:

The map of the world:

Our capital:

Our scout has somehow avoided combat but it's living on borrowed time now.

 

[ungy]

As far as our chances of getting a decent amount of land, I'd say it's still too early to tell. If we can claim the elephant patch that'll be pretty big and I think our chances are pretty good for that.

Not sure if we want to go ag--I'm now thinking we might be better off with wheel-ag and hook up the bronze before farming the corn.

 

[Rusten]

Missed this before:

I think AIs tend to demand excess resources more often than resource of which we only have 1.

Not just more often, I'm pretty sure they never ask for resources that you have only 1 of.

for a change you are right

One has to get lucky sooner or later!
I agree with the wheel as our next tech.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm not a fan of making dot-maps but it's probably necessary in SGs. Here's my idea for a long-term plan (thoughts below the image).

- IMO there are 2 cities which we should really strive to get, and those are the yellow Xs I made on the map--I consider these absolute priority. The north-eastern one has 2 calendar resources, but it's important to note that they're both on a river, which means that they can be irrigated and thus be considered a food resource (the city even has 2 grassland river hills--/drool). IMO we should make those 2 cities very quickly and chop out settlers to stop QSH and SB from grabbing them even at the expense of later workers/improvements.

- The red X is simply a backfill for later, it's not a big priority as of now. It will serve as a great whipping city though, with copper and seafood (maybe even another if we're really lucky).

- The purple X is my dubious 3rd choice after the yellow spots as it does a very good job in blocking off Boudica in addition to putting extra culture on the ivory in the yellow city's 3rd ring. We will gain 2 extra ivory tiles which can get sold/traded around for several resources (valued high). This city is up for discussion though (and not as urgent).

- Once these 'yellow' cities are up we have quite some space and great cities with plenty of food. You probably noticed the yellow arrow aka future expansion--it's pointing towards QSH. I think QSH will be a very good target for a construction-war with siege and WEs+jags.

- Reasons for attacking QSH is that he is bound to make some wonders for us and that his land looks mighty good. Protective won't help him much vs elephants and siege, he should fall easily. He might also settle towards us which saves us the trouble of making settlers.

 

[phungus420]

Lurker's Comment:

You guys should consider making jags never go obsolete with this variant. Once maces come out, it's going to kill you otherwise, it'll be rediculously hard to build enough jags in the early game to maintain late game wars. It's very simple to make that change, and your games will be save game compatible.

Other then that, this looks like a fun one to lurk.