VirusMonster
Quechua General
*** Updatad now for 1.61 HOF play ***
Hello all,
In this article, I will discuss my warmonger approach on beating a huge map on deity difficulty. The article will focus on giving you a head start on what I think is the optimum strategy, game preferences, and civilization. This strategy has evolved a lot through feedback on the forums and is being updated regularly based on my latest HOF deity huge map attempts. So if you want my latest advice on beating a huge/deity map, you should check out the article again, especially underlined and bold parts. For the more experienced players, I have updated expansion, diplomatic, religious, and military strategy sections on post #2. Some still complain that the strategy is luck-dependent, but I have done my best to improve the strategy for HOF play and I also must confess a huge deity map still remains a challenge for me as well.
For those of you who want save-proof that this strategy works even under the current 1.61 HOF rules, I am putting up my most recent successful quechua-rush saves up. Look them up before digging further into this long article.
3310BC: I delay the conquest until the workers finish 3 ivory camps and 2 farms outside first target city. As military strategy section of the article talks about, the ivory resource is crucial for post-quechua wars. I also let the initial target city grow size 4(!) before war declaration. Additionally, a religion has been founded inside the city just before capture.
View attachment 127247
3055BC: I capture 2nd target city at population 3. I wait a few turns for it to grow to size 4, but sometimes the land is poor and additionally, AI decides for a settler build. Don't delay the master plan. Have strict deadlines for city capture and stick to them. Mine was 3000BC for 2nd city.
View attachment 127248
2905BC: I raze 3rd city, because it was surrounded by jungles. 1st civilization wiped out. Only capture cities worth keeping, population 4 or higher.
View attachment 127249
2770BC: I need ancient era happiness resources. I locate a gold city nearby, build a road up next to it, let it grow size 4, declare war, and capture it in 2 turns.
View attachment 127250
2650BC: I follow a blitz krieg and play very short wars. I capture my 4th city at size (4) again. These cities are immediately added to the trade network, because the AI has it all road-connected. They are profitable by themselves, i.e. do not run on deficit.
2485BC: 2 cities captured simultaneously, and 2nd empire wiped out. I should have only kept their best 3 cities, but I am greedy and keep the extra 7th one surrounded by many jungle&forests. My empire has 7 cities, 19 population, and still runs at %40-50 research rate. Exceptional start for a deity huge map! You can continue warmongering or try Godotnut's cultural win strategy from this point forward
View attachment 127251
Assuming you are curious about the saves, here is how to quechua rush at deity on a huge map!
How I decided to write this guide
I had not seen anyone write up a detailed deity huge map strategy and decided to come up with one myself only to realize how hard it actually is. To cut the long story short, the AI simply outbreeds, outsettlers, outproduces and outtechs us. Its advantage grows exponentially starting from the first turn, and peaceful builder tactics, at least on a huge map, never catch up on the AIs advantage. You want to grab as many cities as you can and as fast as you can to catch up AIs bonuses, but how? Now that chopping has been nerfed with 1.61, effectiveness of fast researching bronzeworking has also been greatly reduced. Let me know if you can pull axeman chop&rush off, because I have failed it myself many times. Fortunately, there is an ancient race that works better than the axeman rush: The Incas.
Want to attack the AI as early as possible? Want to grab as much land as you can before AI starts to build up his powerhouse cities? Want to get a chance to beat the AI on deity on a huge map without any exploits?
Quechua is your baby. Ancient era AI is all about archers, and quechua is all about anti-archer. Add the aggresive trait; he becomes a rambo. The AI at deity is too inexperienced to produce any regular warriors to fight quechuas, so all you encounter will be archers vs whom you get %100. Moreover, quechua is the cheapest attacking unit in the game, costing only 30 hammers on marathon speed. His reign can easily extend to after bronzeworking era if you occupy important bronze and horse resources for the civilizations you are attacking. I will show you how to get your first quechua in 6 turns after game starts on marathon speed, so you can stack up 5 of them in 24 turns instead of going for the slow "24 turn-120 hammer worker&chop first" build. Then, with those Quechuas you are going to capture 2 cities with improved land, 2-3 workers, and oppurtunity to capture more from the next civilization. At that stage, you would have to stop because of upkeep costs, but that is where Financial trait kicks in with cottage spamming. You are in for a fair fight with the AIs at the deity level. I know that quechua rush is not the most original ancient idea, but I made some fine tuning for deity play.
First, let me point out the game setting I try to beat the deity difficulty to clarify the issue.
Game settings:
Game speed: Marathon, because quechuas won't get outdated as quickly while they travel toward target enemy city. I am also a big fan of big slow games; hence marathon.
Map size: I picked huge, because I think it is still a challenge even for the best civ 4 players to defeat huge map size on deity. I feel on other map sizes conquest or early domination victories might be possible, whereas on huge, you end up playing the whole game with all aspects. The downturn would be you won't get to score as high, because you would not finish the game as early as with smaller mapsizes. I am not after scoring high anyway, just beating huge deity first. Beating deity should get x2 more points in my opinion.
Map type: I prefer Terra to make the map even more larger and more earthlike Apart from being the largest map you can get, Terra maps are split into 2 continents just like the Earth. The AI will have even less land to settle until they discover caravels to travel over the ocean. Less land means, they won't be able to abuse their bonuses as much.
Tropical climate, high see level: Tropical means less land to settle at start due to the many jungles and high see level also implies less land. I wanted to give the AI as little land as possible to develop their empire. You could try a larger land setting, thus could increase your score with a late game victory.
Number of enemy civilizations: 17. Divide&Conquer is your friend, so you want enemy small and split in pieces. If you manage to control 2-3x more cities than your closest rival, you might have a chance to win the game. I also like the religious chaos atmosphere with many empires. There are usually two main religious alliances fighting on. Don't think you will be able to sell your recently acquired tech with multiple partners because of 17 civs. You will have a high trade penalty that make trading of new tech with multiple civilizations almost impossible. Accept to stay behind in tech for most of the game, be the underdog in the tech race until necessary, until you wipe out your biggest rival. Finally, when you have tech lead in one tech line, you will trade big time
Barbarians: I used to play with normal barbarian activity. I think no barbarians is kind of too unrealistic. I originally planned that barbarians won't cause much problems, because all land will be settled very quickly by the AI; there will be no room for the barbarians to spawn. Well, they cause some major problems early on: In my recent 1.61HOF mod games, animals started killing way to many captured workers on the way back to my capital. A_Turkish_Guy who had 500k points HOF record also strongly suggest no barbarians, because to his experience, the barbarians axemans show up too early. Hence, if you play for HOF, no barbarians should be your choice if you don't want to save/reload vs imba early barbarian axeman attacks.
If you want to stick with barbarian activity on, try keeping 1-2 quechues near each of your bases for a time and be ready to forcelabor a quechua if necesarry vs unexpected barbarian attack.
I would not suggest raging barbarians under deity difficulty
Rest of the setting are left as they are. Locked game assets, no new random seed on reload, etc, etc. standard HOF rules.
Civilization choice:
If I did not pick Incas, I would still focus on an early game advantage leader. I would not pick religious trait leaders, because religious ability effectiveness only comes much later in the game where you have knowledge of many civics. I would not pick any cultural leader due to obvious early game inability to produce many cities. I would not pick industrious, because the AI would outproduce my wonder no matter how hard I tried. Since I would not be able to build early wonders for GP growth, I would not be able to fully benefit from philosophical ability. Expansive trait would be alright for an aggressive chopping strategy, Julius Caesar is definitely a strong leader with Praetorians and organized trait, but I would prefer Washington over Caeser for ultimate warmongering with financial and organized. Anyway, aggressive is a nice trait. Combined with Capac's financial, I hoped to sustain my expansion and tech rate. Tokugawa is another leader I considered.
Other quechua strategies that are less effective
So after this much talking, btw they say I talk too much , let me explain my tactic on producing quechua's in 6 turns, starting from turn one. I tried several tactics, but producing non-stop quechuas works best, because it takes quick advantage of AI's lack of defence before the cultural defence bonus gets too high in the capital and surrounding cities. If you let the cultural bonus get too high or let the AI produce 3rd even 4th archer as defense of its cities, you will take him out much harder. You will be trapped into a small land with 2-3 cities vs huge AI empires. So we go for early wipeout to leave us with 16 civs. You will search the map with your initial quechua and capture your first worker, triggering war. As the worker heads back home to work on farms, your quechuas will head toward enemy. Usually, by the time you arrive at the enemy capital with 3-4 quechuas, he still would not have produced the 3rd archer and you will capture the city.
Alternative strategies I considered with quechuas:
1) Worker first, quechua 2nd strategies: No need, because you can steal your first worker and get plenty of workers from captured cities where all warfearing workers waiting to be captured.
2) Settler first, ... : No need, because you will capture 2 cities of a civilization and wipe him out reducing anarchy related problems in your cities.
3) Barracks first: I did not really try to pull this one off, because barracks is a huge investment with 180 hammers compared to 30 hammer quechua on marathon speed. +4 experience would not really help anyway, because quechua needs 5 experience to get both cover and city raider I.
4) Fast searching bronze working would be a big mistake, because we did not start out with mining. The reason we picked quechuas is to delay the axeman production ourselves. Furthermore, there is extra tech research penalties on deity level which further harden axeman possibilities for a long time. Huts can provide basic techs, such as mining, but you can't depend on research through huts, because 1) AI will grab most huts before you due to his scouts, and 2) you can't get always a tech unless save/reloading, which I did in my test game I got 2 basic techs from the total 2 huts I captured.
5) Slower rate quechua build: (8-10 or even 15 turns per quechua instead of 6). The advantage is you might get better population growth, but delayed quechua production. This plan has potential to tranform into a quechua massing plan, because it might be slightly more beneficial to produce quechuas with a size 2 city if you don't have a 3 hammer tile within your city radius. In any case, even if you will let your city grow to size 2 quickly, after so many games at deity, I would strongly suggest to get out 5 quechuas until 3310BC. 3310BC is where most AI capitals grow size 4. You need 5 quechuas to be sure to capture a capital non-hill city, thus you need those quechuas rather fast out.
I also prefer my quechuas out fast to gain experience at enemy cities, so I decided to go for an all shield to quechua's build. In the inital game, I tried a mediocre starting location with 10 turns per quechua, so I was only able to arrive with 3 units at Washington(3505BC). This is where my strategy entered a critical, life or death, combat. Had I arrived with 4(3+initial 1=4) units using the 6turn/quechua build, I would have been fine. Another idea probably would have been to attack the weak city with no cultural defense first, gain experience and then head for the capital, but the capital blocked my way first Had I attacked the weak city first, still my combat odds would be 2.20 vs 2.40 with a probability of %26.6 for winning. Again, I would have needed 4 quechuas and a 6 turn/quechua build.
6turn/quechua starts are pretty rare; therefore, the final conclusion I reached was that 3500BC is too early for capturing the first capital. You can get a few more quechuas until 3310BC and also let 1st capital grow size 4.
Details from my test game:
In BC 3535, I am attacking my first city with 3 basic quechuas. Because enemy capital gets +%20 cultural tile defence bonus which makes it extra difficult for me to kill 2 archers with 3 quechuas. I could have waited for the 4th, but I know from practice that after reaching population 3 with the capital city and in war, the AI produces a 3rd archer. Therefore, I had to act quick and capture that capital as soon as possible. I needed luck or save/reloading or restart. 2.20-2.85, and my odds of winning are %18.2, but 4 quechuas would have easily taken it out. The superb news is that your quechua gets 5, yes 5, XP points for killing a full HP archer; therefore, immediately turning into excellent archer killer with cover and city raider I. After save/reloading, I now posses 2 excellent quechuas with which I can take down almost any ancient era city. Keep in mind they will advance even further to city raider lvl2 and city raider lvl3.
In a real HOF game, you would have to arrive with at least 4 quechuas to succeed at those odds. As I outline in the last part of this post, arriving with 4 or even 5quechuas is possible with the right city setup. Unfortunately, killing a damaged archer might give you less experience than 5, because the experience gained equals floor(4x(adjusted archer stregth due to hp loss/quechua stregth)) For subsequent city attacks, you would have to continue pumping out quechuas.
In BC3445, I am attacking 2nd city with 2 quechuas who have combat I, cover, and city raider I. America's archer is fully fortified with no city tile bonus. Combat calculation shows 2.20-1.76 where my odds of winning are %69.7. I could have sent a 3rd unit to make sure I won, but 2 were sufficient. As you can see, once the first 2 quechuas kill an archer and lvl up, your job is much easier. Americans wiped out. You contol 3 cities and have 2 upgraded units which could capture further cities.
For HOF purposes, delay war declaration until more(5-6) quechuas have gathered up, thus giving enemy city more time build land improvements and to grow in population.
Summary & Tips:
An important note is to wait until the enemy capital city has grown to size 3 or even 4(!) preferably, because as you capture the city, total population will fall by one. In my most recent HOF games, I prefer capturing first capital at 3310BC by 4 population.
Don't pillage AI's improvements. Treat his city like it is yours, because soon you will capture it.
Build more than 5 quechuas at start and you will start paying unit upkeep. I suggest making 7 at start, then only if you lose some quechuas capturing your first 2 cities, then build up several more in order to capture the next civilization. Look up my 2nd post for a detailed unit maintenance analysis.
Don't search bronze working anytime soon. You won't chop and you don't need axeman. Get builder techs and improve the land around your cities with captured workers. Get cottages up or capture cities where land is already improved.
I will continue with the rest of the article some other time, I can't say when, but before I finish, I would like to show you the optimal 6turn per quechua city.
THE ULTIMATE QUECHUA FACTORY SETUP
You need to settle your city on hills/plains to get 2 food/2 hammers on the center city square instead of the normal 2 food /1 hammer combination. Your city radius also has to include a hills/forest/plains tile with 3 hammers. Then you can produce 5 hammers per turn, resulting in 30 hammers in 6 turns. You will not be growing tough. It will be as if your growth has halted for a worker production. Just regenerate the map until you get a hills/plains start. The settler can actually start out on top of the hills/plains tile, so you can settle your city on 4000BC. Otherwise, you would have to lose 1 turn to move your settler to the ideal city spot. Alternatively, you could settle on resources with +1 hammer bonus, but you won't be able to get the extra benefits from that tile later on, you will only have access to the resource. Just settle on plains/hill for ideal quechua city setup. Here is two of the best starting locations I had for quechua rush. In the 2nd screenshot, I can get quechuas out in 5 turns, because I settled on a plains/hill with marble. The dream quechua factory would be settling on a hills/plains with stone or marble and having your other citizen work on a hills/forest with a deer. Thus, you can both get 6 hammers per turn and 1 food as well. I have yet to encounter such a perfect beginning.
Lately, I experienced that getting a perfect hills/plains start is pretty rare.
Settling on hills/plain is a huge bonus early on for the extra 1 hammer you get, but you don't necessarily need the hills/forest/plains, because once you grow size 2, you can pump out quechuas in 6 turns easily. Thus, if you can move your settler ontop of a plains/hill even despite losing 1-2 turns, you don't need the 3 hammer tile anymore. Produce quechuas at 4 hammers per turn or even 3, but once you grow size 2, you can switch to a 5-6 hammer per turn quechua build. In any case, try your chance on first capital by around 3310BC, after (4000-3310)/15=46 turns have passed. Even without a quechua factory, but at 3 hammers per turn, you can pump out 46/10=5(4+initial 1) quechuas that are sufficient to capture any non-hill capital.
I moved the screenshots to my 2nd post on this forum, because there is a 5 file per post upload limit.
I hope this strategy helps you get a good start on deity. On the next post, I will focus on warmongering upto 8-12 cities and keeping your advantage.
Until next time,
P.S. Check out my posts #16, #20, #33,#36, #37, and #39 on this thread. There is good discussion on some controversial topics.
Also check out discussions in these threads that I found to be useful in beating deity. Don't forget to vote them 5 stars and vote me 1-2 stars too pls. I want to have the lowest rated strategy article.
Immortal Rex
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158063
Religions in Emperor and above.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159544
Don't get surrounded by enemies. Expand toward oceans.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158401&page=1&pp=20
Warmongering for builders
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168739
Conquest oriented diplomacy
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=164517
Great discussion on save/reloading under the HOF rules
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168964
Learn basics of cultural defense so you attack enemy capitals before their defense is upto +40%.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=170230
Godotnut's article to deity cultural win: Could an initial quechua rush followed by a transition to a cultural win strategy be possible? We both think it is, and Godotnut recently scored a 1.61 HOF entry with an Inca rush followed by a cultural win. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171130
Orca and Walkerjks have 1.52 HOF entries on Emperor with an Inca rush followed by a cultural win; great scores too.
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/index.php?show=cond&difficulty=Emperor&pubID=11&mapSize=Small&incBeta=on&speed=Any&submit=Go
Hello all,
In this article, I will discuss my warmonger approach on beating a huge map on deity difficulty. The article will focus on giving you a head start on what I think is the optimum strategy, game preferences, and civilization. This strategy has evolved a lot through feedback on the forums and is being updated regularly based on my latest HOF deity huge map attempts. So if you want my latest advice on beating a huge/deity map, you should check out the article again, especially underlined and bold parts. For the more experienced players, I have updated expansion, diplomatic, religious, and military strategy sections on post #2. Some still complain that the strategy is luck-dependent, but I have done my best to improve the strategy for HOF play and I also must confess a huge deity map still remains a challenge for me as well.
For those of you who want save-proof that this strategy works even under the current 1.61 HOF rules, I am putting up my most recent successful quechua-rush saves up. Look them up before digging further into this long article.
3310BC: I delay the conquest until the workers finish 3 ivory camps and 2 farms outside first target city. As military strategy section of the article talks about, the ivory resource is crucial for post-quechua wars. I also let the initial target city grow size 4(!) before war declaration. Additionally, a religion has been founded inside the city just before capture.
View attachment 127247
3055BC: I capture 2nd target city at population 3. I wait a few turns for it to grow to size 4, but sometimes the land is poor and additionally, AI decides for a settler build. Don't delay the master plan. Have strict deadlines for city capture and stick to them. Mine was 3000BC for 2nd city.
View attachment 127248
2905BC: I raze 3rd city, because it was surrounded by jungles. 1st civilization wiped out. Only capture cities worth keeping, population 4 or higher.
View attachment 127249
2770BC: I need ancient era happiness resources. I locate a gold city nearby, build a road up next to it, let it grow size 4, declare war, and capture it in 2 turns.
View attachment 127250
2650BC: I follow a blitz krieg and play very short wars. I capture my 4th city at size (4) again. These cities are immediately added to the trade network, because the AI has it all road-connected. They are profitable by themselves, i.e. do not run on deficit.
2485BC: 2 cities captured simultaneously, and 2nd empire wiped out. I should have only kept their best 3 cities, but I am greedy and keep the extra 7th one surrounded by many jungle&forests. My empire has 7 cities, 19 population, and still runs at %40-50 research rate. Exceptional start for a deity huge map! You can continue warmongering or try Godotnut's cultural win strategy from this point forward
View attachment 127251
Assuming you are curious about the saves, here is how to quechua rush at deity on a huge map!
How I decided to write this guide
I had not seen anyone write up a detailed deity huge map strategy and decided to come up with one myself only to realize how hard it actually is. To cut the long story short, the AI simply outbreeds, outsettlers, outproduces and outtechs us. Its advantage grows exponentially starting from the first turn, and peaceful builder tactics, at least on a huge map, never catch up on the AIs advantage. You want to grab as many cities as you can and as fast as you can to catch up AIs bonuses, but how? Now that chopping has been nerfed with 1.61, effectiveness of fast researching bronzeworking has also been greatly reduced. Let me know if you can pull axeman chop&rush off, because I have failed it myself many times. Fortunately, there is an ancient race that works better than the axeman rush: The Incas.
Want to attack the AI as early as possible? Want to grab as much land as you can before AI starts to build up his powerhouse cities? Want to get a chance to beat the AI on deity on a huge map without any exploits?
Quechua is your baby. Ancient era AI is all about archers, and quechua is all about anti-archer. Add the aggresive trait; he becomes a rambo. The AI at deity is too inexperienced to produce any regular warriors to fight quechuas, so all you encounter will be archers vs whom you get %100. Moreover, quechua is the cheapest attacking unit in the game, costing only 30 hammers on marathon speed. His reign can easily extend to after bronzeworking era if you occupy important bronze and horse resources for the civilizations you are attacking. I will show you how to get your first quechua in 6 turns after game starts on marathon speed, so you can stack up 5 of them in 24 turns instead of going for the slow "24 turn-120 hammer worker&chop first" build. Then, with those Quechuas you are going to capture 2 cities with improved land, 2-3 workers, and oppurtunity to capture more from the next civilization. At that stage, you would have to stop because of upkeep costs, but that is where Financial trait kicks in with cottage spamming. You are in for a fair fight with the AIs at the deity level. I know that quechua rush is not the most original ancient idea, but I made some fine tuning for deity play.
First, let me point out the game setting I try to beat the deity difficulty to clarify the issue.
Game settings:
Game speed: Marathon, because quechuas won't get outdated as quickly while they travel toward target enemy city. I am also a big fan of big slow games; hence marathon.
Map size: I picked huge, because I think it is still a challenge even for the best civ 4 players to defeat huge map size on deity. I feel on other map sizes conquest or early domination victories might be possible, whereas on huge, you end up playing the whole game with all aspects. The downturn would be you won't get to score as high, because you would not finish the game as early as with smaller mapsizes. I am not after scoring high anyway, just beating huge deity first. Beating deity should get x2 more points in my opinion.
Map type: I prefer Terra to make the map even more larger and more earthlike Apart from being the largest map you can get, Terra maps are split into 2 continents just like the Earth. The AI will have even less land to settle until they discover caravels to travel over the ocean. Less land means, they won't be able to abuse their bonuses as much.
Tropical climate, high see level: Tropical means less land to settle at start due to the many jungles and high see level also implies less land. I wanted to give the AI as little land as possible to develop their empire. You could try a larger land setting, thus could increase your score with a late game victory.
Number of enemy civilizations: 17. Divide&Conquer is your friend, so you want enemy small and split in pieces. If you manage to control 2-3x more cities than your closest rival, you might have a chance to win the game. I also like the religious chaos atmosphere with many empires. There are usually two main religious alliances fighting on. Don't think you will be able to sell your recently acquired tech with multiple partners because of 17 civs. You will have a high trade penalty that make trading of new tech with multiple civilizations almost impossible. Accept to stay behind in tech for most of the game, be the underdog in the tech race until necessary, until you wipe out your biggest rival. Finally, when you have tech lead in one tech line, you will trade big time
Barbarians: I used to play with normal barbarian activity. I think no barbarians is kind of too unrealistic. I originally planned that barbarians won't cause much problems, because all land will be settled very quickly by the AI; there will be no room for the barbarians to spawn. Well, they cause some major problems early on: In my recent 1.61HOF mod games, animals started killing way to many captured workers on the way back to my capital. A_Turkish_Guy who had 500k points HOF record also strongly suggest no barbarians, because to his experience, the barbarians axemans show up too early. Hence, if you play for HOF, no barbarians should be your choice if you don't want to save/reload vs imba early barbarian axeman attacks.
If you want to stick with barbarian activity on, try keeping 1-2 quechues near each of your bases for a time and be ready to forcelabor a quechua if necesarry vs unexpected barbarian attack.
I would not suggest raging barbarians under deity difficulty
Rest of the setting are left as they are. Locked game assets, no new random seed on reload, etc, etc. standard HOF rules.
Civilization choice:
If I did not pick Incas, I would still focus on an early game advantage leader. I would not pick religious trait leaders, because religious ability effectiveness only comes much later in the game where you have knowledge of many civics. I would not pick any cultural leader due to obvious early game inability to produce many cities. I would not pick industrious, because the AI would outproduce my wonder no matter how hard I tried. Since I would not be able to build early wonders for GP growth, I would not be able to fully benefit from philosophical ability. Expansive trait would be alright for an aggressive chopping strategy, Julius Caesar is definitely a strong leader with Praetorians and organized trait, but I would prefer Washington over Caeser for ultimate warmongering with financial and organized. Anyway, aggressive is a nice trait. Combined with Capac's financial, I hoped to sustain my expansion and tech rate. Tokugawa is another leader I considered.
Other quechua strategies that are less effective
So after this much talking, btw they say I talk too much , let me explain my tactic on producing quechua's in 6 turns, starting from turn one. I tried several tactics, but producing non-stop quechuas works best, because it takes quick advantage of AI's lack of defence before the cultural defence bonus gets too high in the capital and surrounding cities. If you let the cultural bonus get too high or let the AI produce 3rd even 4th archer as defense of its cities, you will take him out much harder. You will be trapped into a small land with 2-3 cities vs huge AI empires. So we go for early wipeout to leave us with 16 civs. You will search the map with your initial quechua and capture your first worker, triggering war. As the worker heads back home to work on farms, your quechuas will head toward enemy. Usually, by the time you arrive at the enemy capital with 3-4 quechuas, he still would not have produced the 3rd archer and you will capture the city.
Alternative strategies I considered with quechuas:
1) Worker first, quechua 2nd strategies: No need, because you can steal your first worker and get plenty of workers from captured cities where all warfearing workers waiting to be captured.
2) Settler first, ... : No need, because you will capture 2 cities of a civilization and wipe him out reducing anarchy related problems in your cities.
3) Barracks first: I did not really try to pull this one off, because barracks is a huge investment with 180 hammers compared to 30 hammer quechua on marathon speed. +4 experience would not really help anyway, because quechua needs 5 experience to get both cover and city raider I.
4) Fast searching bronze working would be a big mistake, because we did not start out with mining. The reason we picked quechuas is to delay the axeman production ourselves. Furthermore, there is extra tech research penalties on deity level which further harden axeman possibilities for a long time. Huts can provide basic techs, such as mining, but you can't depend on research through huts, because 1) AI will grab most huts before you due to his scouts, and 2) you can't get always a tech unless save/reloading, which I did in my test game I got 2 basic techs from the total 2 huts I captured.
5) Slower rate quechua build: (8-10 or even 15 turns per quechua instead of 6). The advantage is you might get better population growth, but delayed quechua production. This plan has potential to tranform into a quechua massing plan, because it might be slightly more beneficial to produce quechuas with a size 2 city if you don't have a 3 hammer tile within your city radius. In any case, even if you will let your city grow to size 2 quickly, after so many games at deity, I would strongly suggest to get out 5 quechuas until 3310BC. 3310BC is where most AI capitals grow size 4. You need 5 quechuas to be sure to capture a capital non-hill city, thus you need those quechuas rather fast out.
I also prefer my quechuas out fast to gain experience at enemy cities, so I decided to go for an all shield to quechua's build. In the inital game, I tried a mediocre starting location with 10 turns per quechua, so I was only able to arrive with 3 units at Washington(3505BC). This is where my strategy entered a critical, life or death, combat. Had I arrived with 4(3+initial 1=4) units using the 6turn/quechua build, I would have been fine. Another idea probably would have been to attack the weak city with no cultural defense first, gain experience and then head for the capital, but the capital blocked my way first Had I attacked the weak city first, still my combat odds would be 2.20 vs 2.40 with a probability of %26.6 for winning. Again, I would have needed 4 quechuas and a 6 turn/quechua build.
6turn/quechua starts are pretty rare; therefore, the final conclusion I reached was that 3500BC is too early for capturing the first capital. You can get a few more quechuas until 3310BC and also let 1st capital grow size 4.
Details from my test game:
In BC 3535, I am attacking my first city with 3 basic quechuas. Because enemy capital gets +%20 cultural tile defence bonus which makes it extra difficult for me to kill 2 archers with 3 quechuas. I could have waited for the 4th, but I know from practice that after reaching population 3 with the capital city and in war, the AI produces a 3rd archer. Therefore, I had to act quick and capture that capital as soon as possible. I needed luck or save/reloading or restart. 2.20-2.85, and my odds of winning are %18.2, but 4 quechuas would have easily taken it out. The superb news is that your quechua gets 5, yes 5, XP points for killing a full HP archer; therefore, immediately turning into excellent archer killer with cover and city raider I. After save/reloading, I now posses 2 excellent quechuas with which I can take down almost any ancient era city. Keep in mind they will advance even further to city raider lvl2 and city raider lvl3.
In a real HOF game, you would have to arrive with at least 4 quechuas to succeed at those odds. As I outline in the last part of this post, arriving with 4 or even 5quechuas is possible with the right city setup. Unfortunately, killing a damaged archer might give you less experience than 5, because the experience gained equals floor(4x(adjusted archer stregth due to hp loss/quechua stregth)) For subsequent city attacks, you would have to continue pumping out quechuas.
In BC3445, I am attacking 2nd city with 2 quechuas who have combat I, cover, and city raider I. America's archer is fully fortified with no city tile bonus. Combat calculation shows 2.20-1.76 where my odds of winning are %69.7. I could have sent a 3rd unit to make sure I won, but 2 were sufficient. As you can see, once the first 2 quechuas kill an archer and lvl up, your job is much easier. Americans wiped out. You contol 3 cities and have 2 upgraded units which could capture further cities.
For HOF purposes, delay war declaration until more(5-6) quechuas have gathered up, thus giving enemy city more time build land improvements and to grow in population.
Summary & Tips:
An important note is to wait until the enemy capital city has grown to size 3 or even 4(!) preferably, because as you capture the city, total population will fall by one. In my most recent HOF games, I prefer capturing first capital at 3310BC by 4 population.
Don't pillage AI's improvements. Treat his city like it is yours, because soon you will capture it.
Build more than 5 quechuas at start and you will start paying unit upkeep. I suggest making 7 at start, then only if you lose some quechuas capturing your first 2 cities, then build up several more in order to capture the next civilization. Look up my 2nd post for a detailed unit maintenance analysis.
Don't search bronze working anytime soon. You won't chop and you don't need axeman. Get builder techs and improve the land around your cities with captured workers. Get cottages up or capture cities where land is already improved.
I will continue with the rest of the article some other time, I can't say when, but before I finish, I would like to show you the optimal 6turn per quechua city.
THE ULTIMATE QUECHUA FACTORY SETUP
You need to settle your city on hills/plains to get 2 food/2 hammers on the center city square instead of the normal 2 food /1 hammer combination. Your city radius also has to include a hills/forest/plains tile with 3 hammers. Then you can produce 5 hammers per turn, resulting in 30 hammers in 6 turns. You will not be growing tough. It will be as if your growth has halted for a worker production. Just regenerate the map until you get a hills/plains start. The settler can actually start out on top of the hills/plains tile, so you can settle your city on 4000BC. Otherwise, you would have to lose 1 turn to move your settler to the ideal city spot. Alternatively, you could settle on resources with +1 hammer bonus, but you won't be able to get the extra benefits from that tile later on, you will only have access to the resource. Just settle on plains/hill for ideal quechua city setup. Here is two of the best starting locations I had for quechua rush. In the 2nd screenshot, I can get quechuas out in 5 turns, because I settled on a plains/hill with marble. The dream quechua factory would be settling on a hills/plains with stone or marble and having your other citizen work on a hills/forest with a deer. Thus, you can both get 6 hammers per turn and 1 food as well. I have yet to encounter such a perfect beginning.
Lately, I experienced that getting a perfect hills/plains start is pretty rare.
Settling on hills/plain is a huge bonus early on for the extra 1 hammer you get, but you don't necessarily need the hills/forest/plains, because once you grow size 2, you can pump out quechuas in 6 turns easily. Thus, if you can move your settler ontop of a plains/hill even despite losing 1-2 turns, you don't need the 3 hammer tile anymore. Produce quechuas at 4 hammers per turn or even 3, but once you grow size 2, you can switch to a 5-6 hammer per turn quechua build. In any case, try your chance on first capital by around 3310BC, after (4000-3310)/15=46 turns have passed. Even without a quechua factory, but at 3 hammers per turn, you can pump out 46/10=5(4+initial 1) quechuas that are sufficient to capture any non-hill capital.
I moved the screenshots to my 2nd post on this forum, because there is a 5 file per post upload limit.
I hope this strategy helps you get a good start on deity. On the next post, I will focus on warmongering upto 8-12 cities and keeping your advantage.
Until next time,
P.S. Check out my posts #16, #20, #33,#36, #37, and #39 on this thread. There is good discussion on some controversial topics.
Also check out discussions in these threads that I found to be useful in beating deity. Don't forget to vote them 5 stars and vote me 1-2 stars too pls. I want to have the lowest rated strategy article.
Immortal Rex
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158063
Religions in Emperor and above.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159544
Don't get surrounded by enemies. Expand toward oceans.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158401&page=1&pp=20
Warmongering for builders
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168739
Conquest oriented diplomacy
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=164517
Great discussion on save/reloading under the HOF rules
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168964
Learn basics of cultural defense so you attack enemy capitals before their defense is upto +40%.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=170230
Godotnut's article to deity cultural win: Could an initial quechua rush followed by a transition to a cultural win strategy be possible? We both think it is, and Godotnut recently scored a 1.61 HOF entry with an Inca rush followed by a cultural win. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171130
Orca and Walkerjks have 1.52 HOF entries on Emperor with an Inca rush followed by a cultural win; great scores too.
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/index.php?show=cond&difficulty=Emperor&pubID=11&mapSize=Small&incBeta=on&speed=Any&submit=Go