civ strategy analysis: aztecs

[bigvic]

well, randomnized everything, chose standard size, monarch, 16 civs, no domination victory, sped up production, heavily modded bic. got aztecs. at first i inwardly groaned, but that was the deal, stick with what ya get. so far, fascinating, having a rollicking good time.

a few words about my mod (will attach it as well as current game for those interested)...
unique units are a bit stronger than unmodded, stay around longer, upgrading to higher units (example - legion ups to rifleman, is 3-3-2), unless no upgrade, in which i made the uu a bit strongerr. unit hit points increase as they become higher tech. also made road movement 9 and road construction faster - hate slow @$$ games where troops take 50 - 300 years to cross a continent. any way, feel the same pretty much applies to un modded strat.

anyway, the aztecs seem to me one of the weakling civs overrall - notice them starting strong (no duh, jaguar warrior), then getting wiped out fairly quickly mid game a lot as ai. and it was rough for me. i expanded early, ran into the russkies, fought a long drawn out war of hit and run jaguar warrior raids, almost quit, then stuck it out. strangely enough found an effective use for those pesky little gowling, belch-and-die wackos. its now almost cavalry time, and still finding cool uses for them.

early on my dissapointment in their ineffectiveness almost made me give up on 'em. then, i started using them to soften up tough opposition, cranking them out 1 every 1 or 2 turnsin select cities with barracks, and human waving them. cool thing is, with ability to retreat, i starte using them as human artillery, hitting and hitting with hordes and then retreatingif possible to heal up and come back.

then of course there is the mil/rel aspect of them. have generated numerous leaders, 1st 3 went into armies to build pentagon, 3 others to hurry wonders, 1 more in army when no wonders were available. went to monarchy as soon as could and have stayed there, since all the ai's ganked me.

have managed to bust it out pretty well, though a supposed "sneak attack" by me got everyone hoppin mad. quicky temples are cool in newly captured cities.

well, thats it for now. bedtime for bonzo.

[bigvic]

here's the actual game