Quechua rushing!

[xxFlukexx]

Anyone else try rushing with the Quechua(UU for the Incas) It's fun!

I just did a few test runs on prince standard and they were a blast! I killed the opponents first(and only) city and killed him outright at around 2000 B.C.

Incans are interesting as they start out aggressive and with mysticism. So build Quechuas while growing your city and go for Buddhism all at the same time.


-If you start with a quechua, yay if not just build quechuas like mad.
-Barracks are not needed and will only slow you down.
-I've taken a city with 3 quechuas, but 5 is recommended because it's fun.
-When animals attack, grab promotions and then heal then continue.
-Give 1-2 quechuas the +25% archery upgrade, the rest go with city attack or vs melee.
-Perfect city has 3 citizens, one working grass(2f) and 2 working plains/forest(1f/2hammers) This will net you 5 hammers which is a quechua in 3 turns, very nice.
-You get 5 free-upkeep military units, 6th warrior cost me 1g upkeep so stop at 5-6 quechuas.
-Fan out your units a bit to maximize exploring, but basically pick a direction and there will be someone there sooner or later.
-Fully heal, waiting 5 turns doesn't matter.
-If you see copper or iron being worked(might as well grab bronze working, good to pop out a worker then chop for a fast settler and to see copper), immediately attack and raze it. Your first quechua should be walking around your targets borders going lalalala waiting for your posse to arrive so he can do that.
-Cross borders all at once, go for a hill or forest tile right next to the city, if that is not available any tile is ok, just don't attack across a river and you are fine.
-Don't forget to get his worker too, free worker yay.

After you kill one enemy, you can continue, might as well. If it takes ~15 turns to hit your next opponenet might as well give it a go, get open borders and check for spearmen, if no spearmen, kill him. After that, that's probably enough destruction, chance of running into someone with speramen/axemen goes way up. After this? meh whatever, you have founded one religion, with 2-3 cities, 2 of size 3, 1-2 workers and lots of room to expand without worrying about AI interference.

This mainly works because you get Hunting early on, but can't build Spearmen until you get copper or iron. But get this, you can't even see copper or iron unless you grab the expensive bronze working and iron working techs respectively. Most AIs correctly go for settlers/workers and terrain/religion techs which leaves them wide open to a quechua rush. Oh yeah it also works because of the +100% bonus vs archers that quechuas get, try this with warriors and prepare to be disappointed.

You would think that the AI would have copper/iron and able to make spearmen/axemen by 2000 B.C.(50 turns) but I made two tests and saw the same thing in every city, 1-2 archers maybe a warrior. One AI got copper and had a spearman by 1760 B.C., but then started making a settler again, so not much to worry about, as a quechua rush should hit at around 40-45 turns.

Oh and finally, I know Chariot rushes are just as good, but quechuas are cheaper (15 hammer to 25 for a chariot) So you get your units out and moving faster and lots of terrian is jungle/forest/hills so a quechua rush is probably faster. Also, it's buff to kill an AI with only warriors, mwahahaha x10.

[Cort Haus]

Yeah I tried it - but there was no-one on my continent

[UnOrthOdOx]

Hate it when that happens.

[The keeper]

Im doing a horse archer/jaguar rush right now with the aztecs.

[LDiCesare]

Just did it this game. Washington near to the north, with a worker building a road towards some horses. Couldn't resist. Steal the worker, send in 5 quechuas in a forest by the city. On prince, the ai attacked me with 2 warriors, leaving 2 archers inside. Attacking someeone in a forest when you're in a city with +20% from the city . Took Washington, bye bye Washington, and here comes a nice size 3 city.

[Jcg316]

The AI has absolutely no idea of what to do in order to limit a choke/rush. A half-assed quechua choke done against a one settler AI difficulty will work pretty much every time. Easy to prevent them from getting copper/iron/horses which leaves them with nothing that has a legitimate chance against the Quechua. A warrior choke is slightly harder, if that. A warrior choke to Jaguars (no specifc resource swordsman UU) should be about as unpreventable to an AI civ. Destroying a civ/s that way, on an equal starting unit difficulty, is like playing tackle football against a six year old. You can, but it isn't worth much.

[ayronis]

Over at MZO we've been having a Quecha challenge to test this unit out.

Original MZO thread

Finished my Quecha challenge game – I must conclude, the Inca are a very strong civ in the hands of a skilled player.

Quecha rush is extremely easy to pull off and can deal an unforgiving amount of damage to an early neighbor. The period of usefulness is quite short so you will only take out one neighbor and even that isn’t guaranteed. Nonetheless, it is a very useful unit in the early game.

The fact that you do not need any resources or tech for this unit allowed me to pursue a cultural/builder strategy while I was pounding my neighbor from the get-go. I leapt out to an early tech lead at the SAME TIME that I was conquering my neighbor. I took two excellent Japanese cities, eliminating them, and focused entirely on building a strong empire afterwards.

Aggressive made my units have at least three promotions throughout the game, and the builder strategy ensured that I always had the money to field the best units possible. Level 3- 5 units all around with the best technology money could buy were an unbeatable defense that allowed me to build anything I wanted.

Mid-game, I complemented my powerful defense with missionary trips around the world, building superior economy. Made two very useful allies in the process and had defensive pacts with them the entire game. Free trading of techs between us (knowing that they wouldn’t trade it outside the bloc) kept us way ahead of the others the entire game. My Financial bonus kept me ahead of my allies.

Late-game, I finished the Space Race about 10 turns before my allies and finished with a commanding 7000+ points.

Conclusion: The early dagger of the Inca sets you up for in a very strong position for the entire game. Aggressive trait ensures that you can play any style game you wish and Financial trait can almost promise you the win if you use the advantages earned from the beginning, in the mid-game. Although I personally would not enjoy repeatedly putting so much faith in the early rush, the Inca are a delightful civ that I think I could do well with competitively. I have to admit, I really enjoy the Quecha – it is now one of my favorite units.

[xxFlukexx]

Ohhh, thanks for the link, ayronis. The first rushes on that page were way too late imo, too much chance to meet someone with a spearman/axeman. One guy there, unorthodox, got it right about half way down the first page. I think speed is of the essence, to kill the AI before he can even found a second city.

Yeah the key is that you can rush while teching, founding religions and growing your city all at the same time.

I consider this kinda lame as the AI will get ganked by it every time. Most strategy game AI is weak in the rush, people can kill 7 toughest AIs vs themselves in Rise of Nations by rushing, but can't beat one toughest AI in a 1v1 match and Civ is meant to be a long game so I don't consider this to be a true win, even though it takes more thought and planning than a lot of my wins so far. Wow that was some run-on sentence there.

[Gufnork]

Just tried that challenge. I started next to Montezuma and knowing that he would attack me at first opportunity (he always does), I decided to get to him first. I declared as soon as I found him and had a Quecha harass him which prevented him from achieving pretty much anything. Took his only city rather quickly (Buddhist holy city too), then headed south for Tokugawa that had some really juicy flood plains cities that were poorly defended. Took his two newfound cities and made peace, since he started producing chariots. Headed north for Cyrus, the score leader. He had gotten defense in all his cities, so it went a bit slower, but he had no military resources so he had to make do with archers. Eventually he fell and gave me the hindu holy city. Two civs down. I decided to buddy up with Hatshepsut and when she asked me to finish off Tokugawa, I just couldn't refuse. By now I had Horse Archers though and we split up his lands between us. Then it was time to make peace, since I was dead broke.

The rest of the game was spent at peace, with the exception of a brief war with Frederick in the industrious age, where I used Victoria as a roadblock and stole two of his colonies. Then I finished Frederick and Hatshepsut (hey, she's usually the one backstabbing me!) and won a domination victory in 1876, with a game score of 21658. This was Immortal difficulty.

So yeah, I have to say that they're useful. I'd definetly get barracks though, it's dirt cheap when you're Aggressive and it really lowers your attrition rate.

[Solver]

The interesting part is, if you have Horses, you can use the strategy effectively for a long time.

Incans have just the right trait combination. The perfect unit combination (with Barracks) is Quechua and Chariots. Give Chariots Flanking promotions for an excellent withdrawl chance and use them to soften up cities. Then, use the Quechua (Cover, then City Raider) to attack cities. The great thing is, as a Financial civ, you can afford to keep more cities than you otherwise would be able to.

The only threat to you is metal units, but you can send a good number of Quechua + Chariots before metal techs, and use pillaging if you need to. Your units are dirt cheap, especially once cities get to size 3 or more.

It's extremely powerful.

[rayw69]

Re: Quechua rushing!

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
Oh yeah it also works because of the +100% bonus vs archers that quechuas get, try this with warriors and prepare to be disappointed.

I found this to be the most interesting part of the OP's post. I assume he is referring to the fact that you cannot use other Civs to attempt this strategy, when he refers to trying this with warriors.

However, you're also not going to be as successful doing this with Quechua's against warriors either. Not only is a warrior almost* equal to a Quechua when attacking it in the open field (ie no defense bonus on tile), but it also serves as a better defender than an archer when defending in a city vs a Quechua, assuming this city is NOT on a hill.

*If the opposing civ leader has the aggressive trait as well, then a warrior is in fact equal in the open field.

The below assumes no promotions, and ignores any city defense bonuses from walls/culture. Also assumes that the defending AI civ does NOT have the free combat 1 of an aggressive Civ.

Archer vs Quechua in City:
4.5 vs 4.2 if not fortified.
5.25 vs 4.2 if fully fortified.

Warrior vs Quechua in City:
2.5 vs 2.2 if not fortified.
3 vs 2.2 if fully fortified.

The above numbers also don't take the first strike ability of archers into acount.

Even if you take first strikes into account, you still have have to consider that you could use a combat 1 promoted warrior to attack a Quechua at even odds, whereas you cannot do the same with an archer. If you also consider that a warrior costs 60% of the hammers that an archer does, the numbers are going to skew heavily towards to warrior as the best unit vs a Quechua rush. For every 3 archers the AI can build, you can create 5 Quechuas. But the AI can make a superior unit, the warrior, at the same rate you make Quechuas.

So one of the problems the AI has, is that it may not recognize warriors as being superior defenders vs a Quechua.

Which isn't to say that building warriors is going to hold off a Quechua rush. Because I ultimately don't think it would. But its it an option that does "slow your roll".

[Dactyl]

I tried this strategy a few times on Monarch level. The first time it worked like a charm and I eliminated the Greeks, who were right next to me. The next two times, not so good because in one I turned out to be on a continent by myself and, in the other, it took me so long to find another civ that, when my Quechaca force got there, it found a couple of axemen.

It seems to me that this is one of those all-or-nothing strategies. When it works, it's beautiful but, when it fails, you're going to be left scrambling to build cities and infrastructure in order to catch up.

[Jcg316]

Done right, it isn't much harder with warriors instead of quechua. Using quechua allows you to do it a fair ways later in the early game and can accomplish as much with a few less units. Either way, the AI has absolutely no idea what it is doing and will lose if you do it right. Capac has a solid trait combination to choke/rush and tech, plus quechuas do not get antiquated as quickly as warriors, which makes it much easier, logistically. Quechua are by no means needed to do it, however, as warriors will work nearly as well in most facets, and nearly the same in others since the AI has absolutely no idea what to do in that situation.

In MP effectively used quechuas will force a player to start pumping out warriors which will leave them weak against a different, stronger, unit brought into the fray later on. While against warriors they can already produce a stronger unit, though at a price of nearly twice the cost.

Warriors are much weaker against the AI on non-one settler difficulties than quechuas. Otherwise its a breeze either way.

[Cort Haus]

If you get to the opponent's capital too early they may have 3 warriors in their capital - which are harder to shift than the archers. Get there too late and the culture defences can chew up 10 Quechas. I don't think it's a slam-dunk.

If the enemy is distant the away-from-home support costs can slow down research, so there's a case for building a road then a forward city to store the build-up.