What social policies to do first as Maya

KingGustaf

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I was really pondering this last night, and would like to know what the pros think. The Maya's best characteristic, arguably, is their pyramid UB. In this case, they scream for a piety opener so these pyramids take half the time to build. But in order to build many, they would really benefit from the Liberty > Republic > Collective Rule track, to pump out cities. I always go with the tradition opener first, to boost culture production in the early turns, but don't think this would work here, as that delays the more important policies.

My question: what path of social policies would you take? And would you stick to finishing a tree, or jump around between them?
 
I am not exactly a pro, but as long as you have enough space, Liberty seems like the way to go. Republic and collective rule then maybe the worker one (citizenship?) then piety if you want to go that way. I like to save the golden age policy for later when it makes a bigger difference. You want a lot of cities and a lot of pyramids.
 
I don't find piety that good, even half cost pyramids wouldn't make up for what you'd lose from not taking tradition/liberty. But I didn't play with piety much, maybe it's just my lack of knowledge.

I am not exactly a pro,
As far as I know there are no pros in Civ 5. Although if someone makes living out of playing (or rather winning) Civ5, that's incredibly cool.
 
Go full Traditional then straight into Rationalism (if you have to waste a point somewhere else because you acquired policies too quickly so be it) and aim for a Space/Domination victory. ICSing is complete trash in BnW since each city that you found increases tech costs by 5% and it usually incites wars from your nearest neighbors due to aggressive expansion. This makes opening Piety and ICSing fairly terrible. Shrines don't even take take a long time to build, especially if you settle on a hill. The rest of the tree is pretty terrible and the bonuses just aren't worth it. Going with a 4 city tall build is just so much better because you can use religion to boost your growth and since population= science and science= everything it just makes much more sense to focus on it. It's really hard to have a decent beaker count when you ICS because dealing with happiness is Hell, growing your cities is hard and even when the stars align you still have to find a way to overcome the 5% increase in costs. Also, finding ways to generate gold is really hard because small cities cost you a lot and produce very little themselves. There's so many disadvantages to the strategy and for what? So you can claim more land and potentially a few more strategic resources? It's so pathetic how lopsided the trade-offs are.

Note: I'm ignoring the cheesy Sacred Sites strategy for the time being. I'm just assuming that it's going to get patched out eventually. Obviously that tactic is overpowered as heck and Mayans are one of the better civs to abuse it with. The gist of the strat involves opening Piety and rushing the "final policy" to get Sacred Sites as your Reformation Belief. From there you use your Faith to purchase as many Faith Buildings as you can in as many cities as you can. You can basically just mass expand into 1 pop cities if needed. You'll win the game despite having no gold, no happiness, no units, no tech, etc. Your Cap can basically do nothing but churn out Settlers and workers because you don't really need anything to make this strategy work.

Alternatively you can open Tradition then go into Liberty straight to Collective Rule so that you can churn out 2 Settlers (3 total if you include your free one) and then go back to Tradition + Rationalism. Don't worry about finishing Liberty off. This tactic works well mostly because the AI never builds the Oracle (even at Deity) so you can usually snatch it up before or after your NC. As long as you get Amphitheaters and hopefully Sistine Chapel (another wonder that AIs usually ignore) you can still power through most of the trees. It's slower, that much is clear, but being able to churn out Settlers quickly is awesome. The faster that you get your cities the faster that you can acquire and sell luxuries and that early GPT is essential if you want to buy Universities, Public Schools and Research Labs and such in your cities as they become available.

Maya is secretly (not secretly) one of if not the best science civs in the game. Yes, that's true even though Korean and Babylon are civs. Mayans get a non-trivial early boost to science and their UB ensures a religion at which point you can get growth modifiers (+10% growth, +15% growth if not at war, +1 food from Shrines and Temples, etc). Once you pair those bonuses with your bonuses from Tradition you can grow 4ish big cities extremely quickly. In addition, the Mayan UA no longer hinders your ability to produce GSes ever since they changed the way that the GP pool works (at least to my knowledge it doesn't). What this means is that you can still churn out GSes at a reasonable rate while taking full advantage of your freebies. Your UB is just there to ensure your religion and to provide you with a decent tech boost in the early stages of the game (where it arguably matters the most). Don't look at it as a "well now I need to mass expand" enabler.

That's how myself and many other people use Maya to dominate Deity and multiplayer games. The sad reality is that there's just no good reason to ICS when you can peacefully grow 4 cities extremely high extremely fast and out-tech anything. You will never get out-raced to space victory as Mayans if you play them properly, even against Deity computers. You might lose to diplo, you might lose to war but you will just never lose if you use religion to grow tall and peaceful with 4 cities.
 
Mayans are not strictly a wide civ. Sure their UB works great as you can rex without completely giving up on science in the early game but you are still facing happiness issues if you rex. At least on higher difficulties.

Their real most OP feature is the UA esp now that great artists are on a different counter than GS/GE. You can play them about anyway you want and still achieve great results. However, regardless of the game, liberty or tradition will always be better than piety.

Should you chose to go wide/religious intensive instead of a more generic approach jumping into patronage after the first tree, I recommend liberty->free settler->piety opener->free worker if you have too few (less than 1 per city), +1 faith per ub/temple. Get -20% cost on faith purchases first SP after you pop your 2nd GP for enhancement so that you can purchase discounted missionaries and work on completing liberty. With a wide enough start and some barb quests + faith quests won getting you a 1-2 cultural CS allies/friends, you should be able to get 7-8 SPs before renaissance.

The nice thing about liberty is that the finisher can be delayed for a clutch wonder (in fact it is often best to do so because you get to pop your first few GSs for 100 GPP cheaper) so you can halt at 4 liberty, 3 piety go 2 rationalism for secularism and then go ahead and fill piety or liberty for finisher bonus.
 
Maya are a top tier civ. You can play them in any way you choose, though they're especially good at wide play. I like to take left side of Liberty and then full Piety.
 
Maya is net negative on science; each and every one of your "free" great people slow down the next natural one; most importly science. *
Given that academies are far better for science that the UB science bonus ...

* Under BNW, The three culture people have their own counters as does a GP, which could greatly help avoid the slow first academy syndrome from G&K.

I'm thinking that selecting Piety as Maya would be religious overkill if you're intending a faith producing pantheon but could be spot on for a pantheon doing something else.
 
Maya is net negative on science; each and every one of your "free" great people slow down the next natural one; most importly science. *
Given that academies are far better for science that the UB science bonus ...

The fastest science win posted by one of the best players in the world (tommynt) was as the Mayans. Getting a strong religion + an early game tech boost far outweighs the lategame tradeoffs.
 
Uhh... You know the Mayans can pick a Great Scientist for their free great person, right? If you take the Scientist first you're getting an Academy faster than anyone other than Babylon. Now that BNW separated the artists only the merchant and engineer raise the cost of future scientists, and even then taking the engineer can be a net bonus if you use it on Pisa/PT.
 
Uhh... You know the Mayans can pick a Great Scientist for their free great person, right? If you take the Scientist first you're getting an Academy faster than anyone other than Babylon.
That's not where things have slowed down. It's when the long count comes around the second time. Instead of another scientist and engineer for Hubble netting 3 scientists at the end, there is the writer and musician in their place. That is zero BNW scientists not the 3 from G&K.
 
The artists don't increase the cost of your other GP's though. Maya tend to get a lot more faith than other civs too, so that is a lot of faith bought scientists/engineers at the end of the game.
 
That's not where things have slowed down. It's when the long count comes around the second time. Instead of another scientist and engineer for Hubble netting 3 scientists at the end, there is the writer and musician in their place. That is zero BNW scientists not the 3 from G&K.

gs->Gadmiral->GW->GA->GMusician->GG->GE->GM

@394 years per pop after theology, most games will be finished before your GM is poped. All you get going against a GS is that GE in the late game...lol

On top of that, you get an extra free GW about right into renaissance to pop rationalism/secularism faster than any civ besides Poland.

On top of that, can snag a free Gadmiral to explore and meet the island CSs without even needing a coastal city or astronomy.

O and you can claim some additional luxuries/strategic resources without ever going to war from that free GG. Extremely useful for peaceful tall.

I used to dislike Maya because the GA/GM would come too early and increase late game GS cost enough that I'd lose 1-2 GS. Now that artists are split into 3 and that they are on a different counter, they are just miles ahead of what they were, an already super strong civ.
 
@394 years per pop after theology, most games will be finished before your GM is poped. All you get going against a GS is that GE in the late game...lol
I know in G&K a person could get to the 2nd scientist and 2nd engineer from the long count by ~turn 200 (emperor.) That's in the neighborhood of 1200 A.D. That puts the 2nd scientist and 2nd engineer @ ~1600 A.D. and 2000 A.D in BNW. Tich was referencing tommynt's game where the finish date could still finish with an extra scientist/engineer. That time may or may not reflect a GL on deity in G&K. GL has also gotten to be tougher to get in BNW.
 
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