Why Can I Never Get Incan Starts Like This?

[Hippie_Peace_man]

So many mountains... but I was playing on Songhai WHY!?

 

[tu_79]

So many mountains... but I was playing on Songhai WHY!?

There's no hilly bias in civy. The best you can do is to use really advanced setup for forcing x number of mountains nearby and, even then, you're not guaranteed to found more mountains or hills.

 

[chicorbeef]

You could still go Goddess of Nature to take advantage.

 

[Hippie_Peace_man]

There's no hilly bias in civy. The best you can do is to use really advanced setup for forcing x number of mountains nearby and, even then, you're not guaranteed to found more mountains or hills.

Really? I thought the Inca in regular Civ V have a hill bias? Is this why the Inca are so consistently weak in Vox Populi?
EDIT: I retract my statement about the Inca being weak. Just weird luck on my end I guess.

 

[Takagi Hiro]

Inca, consistently weak? You're joking, right?

 

[Mad Madigan]

There is a "Hills" bias, but "Hills" doesn't necessarily equate to "mountains" in the map script. The thing to remember is that the map script engine is designed to only allow for one terrain bias type per Civ, so you can assign a Civ to bias towards (or against) a type of terrain (desert, grasslands, tundra, etc.) OR bias them towards coastal locations OR towards (or against) a terrain FEATURE (hills, jungle, forests, rivers). But you CANNOT combine any of those.

VP does combine a few of the starting biases for certain Civs (I guess because maybe one day we'll be able to figure out how to overwrite the map script hardcoding?), but only one actually takes affect. The order of operations is: 1) Coastal bias? 2) Terrain bias? 3) Feature bias?

So if the game code says a Civ has a "Coast" and "Hills" bias, only the Coast bias will take effect when the map is generated. Or if a Civ has a "Desert" and "River" bias only Desert will take effect.

The Inca's only bias is "Hills" but hills don't have to be near mountains and it's very map script dependent if there are even any large concentrations of mountains on the map at all. Songhai's only bias is "River" so it should always start adjacent to a river.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

So many mountains... but I was playing on Songhai WHY!?

Mountains are relative rare in normal map scipts, but much more common on Communitas Map, PerfectWorld3 or Frontier.
I suggest you try the Inca on those map scripts and use the IGE. You are able to take a look at the map and can restart, if there are no mountains in your range.
Another easy way, play the Great Plains map, the west side of the map is always very mountainous and you should already see it from your starting position, if your in the west.

 

[Bromar1]

You could still go Goddess of Nature to take advantage.

You know I often find myself in a situation where I potentially have several spots for cities to take advantage of Goddess of Nature but the capital only has 2 or 3 mountains in range, similar to this. Is goddess of nature worth it if the capital benefit is minimal?

 

[soupwithsauce]

You know I often find myself in a situation where I potentially have several spots for cities to take advantage of Goddess of Nature but the capital only has 2 or 3 mountains in range, similar to this. Is goddess of nature worth it if the capital benefit is minimal?

Depends if you’re going wide or tall. In a typical tradition start, I’m picking the pantheon that will boost my capital the most, even if it means no pantheon yields for my other cities. One time I was playing Rome, only had 2 faraway neighbours so I picked progress. My pantheon choice ended up being Goddess of Nature but there were no mountains in my capitals range. It worked out pretty well for my other cities.

 

[CrazyG]

You know I often find myself in a situation where I potentially have several spots for cities to take advantage of Goddess of Nature but the capital only has 2 or 3 mountains in range, similar to this. Is goddess of nature worth it if the capital benefit is minimal?

I would hesitate if the capital had 0 mountains, but if it gets at least one round of the bonus, it could be a great choice, especially if you can get a natural wonder too.