Montezuma's Revenge

[bogatir]

Greetings all,

I’m starting this topic to troll for your thoughts on playing the Aztecs. After playing the Romans for some time, I’ve played my last couple of games as the Aztecs. I find them interesting and challenging, and their unique abilities are a bit of a twist after conquering the world from ancient Rome.

Here are some of my observations so far:

I think the Aztecs are the "fast start" civ, which gives them an edge in crowded continent starts (say, four or more civs on one land mass).

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is their unique unit, the Jaguar Warrior. It’s not any less wimpy than the standard Warrior unit, but it has an incredible early-game edge: Mobility. From the very start of the game, the Aztecs are pumping out combat units with a move of 2, which lets them explore and stake-out territory very quickly compared to other civs. They’re quick to build, so you can have a lot of them running rings around the other civs. And they can retreat from a combat gone bad, which helps you keep experienced units around.

Since the Aztecs’ UU is available at the very start of the game, chances are that they’re also going to have their "Golden Age" extremely early in the game. This brings up the old debate about what’s more valuable – 5 extra gold per turn in 3800 BC or 200 extra gold per turn in 1600 AD. But in both games so far, I’ve found that an early-game Golden Age (triggered when I’ve got around 10 cities staked out) can help me get the jump on the other civs.

The availability of a UU from the start – and the unit’s big mobility advantage – are an incentive for early-game military adventuring. The Aztecs’ militaristic trait helps their units gain experience, and increases the chance of an early Great Leader appearing as well.

I haven’t had the pleasure of sprouting a GL really early in the game, but in my current game I got attacked by the English early in the Middle Ages and the resulting war (which was rather lengthy) saw the Aztecs spawn four GLs before it was over. That gave me a shiny new Forbidden Palace to rule my new conquests, an early Army (and, eventually, Heroic Epic), plus a couple of handy Great Wonders in quick succession.

Has anybody else found the Aztecs a bunch of real studs in the early game?

Cheers.

[pchang]

Actually, I found a couple cities in high food areas and start pop rushing my nearest neighbor when I have 3 or 4 cities. The higher the difficulty level, the more cities I need to have. I find that I can completely whack 1 AI down to 1 city and take all his techs and money. By this time, I am now pop rushing horsies and swordsmen. I still build JWs, but I find that I don't even need to pop rush them. I take my ever expanding army and do this to the next nearest AI. At this point, I am no longer behind in tech. I completely wipe out AI number 1, then completely wipe out the 3rd nearest AI before returning to wipe out AI number 2. Then, I wipe out 1 AI at a time until they are all gone. Depending on the map, I may have to wait until I get Caravels and Galleons. Most of the time, Galleys can suffice.

[bogatir]

Wow, whatever the widget is in the program that coughs up the random numbers, it’s really fickle. After generating a truckload of elite units and those four GLs in my Middle Age romp over the English, my Aztecs just finished a somewhat more humbling World War in the Industrial Age.

This war was a whopper, and involved all of the civs left in the game (thanks to my handy politicking). With a huge pile of veteran cavalry, I was hoping to completely snuff the pesky Egyptians. But then the English (should have wiped ‘em out earlier, dang it) declared war on me, and when I whacked one of their ancient bowmen running around, the Greeks (on another continent, doh!) came in on me under an MPP with the English. So I patched up hasty alliances with the French and Iroquois and went at it. The Babylonians, who I had reduced to tatters in the Ancient age, later joined my coalition when they allied with Iroquois.

But my veteran cavalry and my ironclad navy had a tough time of it. During the course of this very long war, my Aztecs generated only 5 elite unit promotions and no GLs. Worse, 3 of my 5 elite cavalry guys died in attacks against Egyptian conscript riflemen. Even more irritating, at one point I attacked a single conscript rifleman in some hills with a fresh cavalry Army (3 cavalry guys in there), and the conscript wiped them out. Argh. To top it off, my ironclads lost about half the time in battles against Greek frigates and galleys. Holy Schmidt!

"Admiral Quetzacotl, something appears to be wrong with our bloody ships today."

After reducing the Egyptians to 6 cities, I had to treaty out of the war in order to spare my burgeoning civ the wrath of war weariness. I could have switched govs to Monarchy, but I wanted to keep my research going full bore. I figure I’ll burn down both the Egyptians and the English after I build tanks. Heck, having a large civ around to build a big pile of tanks wouldn’t be any fun if nobody was left around to stomp with them.

Anyway, I also think that the Aztec ‘religious’ trait helps keep them strong in the mid-game after their early advantages wear off. It’s so much cheaper for them to build themselves into a cultural powerhouse. By the end of World War One (as it were), I had acquired one English and one French (oooops! Sorry, friend) city through culture flipping.

Hey, does anybody know how much time it takes for a civ to ‘forget’ about it’s previous war weariness? The Aztecs were starting to get grumbly (a few cities went into unrest) right before I treatied out of the war. They all immediately went happy again the turn after the treaty, but I’m guessing that if I went to war again next turn, they’d be grumbly in a turn or two. Is there a minimum number of ‘peace’ turns that need to pass before the war weariness ‘countdown’ is set back to zero?

Cheers.

[pchang]

I would guess 20 turns. 20 turns seems to be a magic number in this game. Anyway, cavalry vs. riflemen is not a winning combination. The attacker will lose more often than the defender. You need combined arms. If you had backed up your cavalry with your own riflemen (for defense) and cannons (to soften up the defenders first before attacking with cavalry), you would have done a lot better. Same goes with the ironclads. You should have sailed them in groups of 3 or 4 and bombarded the AI with half the stack before attacking with the other half.

[bogatir]

Yeah, I figured that out eventually and had more artillery rolling around than the Red Army. The cavalry deal should've been obvious to me, but I admit I'm still a bit surprised by the crappy results my Ironclads got. I actually had better luck attacking the AI frigates with Privateers.

Oh well, Lord Nelson I'm not. This was the first time I had noticed that I could actually bombard naval targets to soften them up.

Doh!