Huayna Capac, the wonder civ.

[SirIlya]

Is there a better leader than this? If yes, who and why?

Is there a better leader? It certainly depends on the desired victory.

I am finding HC to be highly flexible. You can play him, get an initial look at the lay of the land and almost immediately begin to pursue one of several strategies for victory without regretting your leader choice.

There are some very good synergies. I know that people think that financial and industrious are not complementing traits, but the combination with the quecha (early rush, plus you can use the free combat 1 later in the game just by stockpiling quecha's as garrisons and then upgrading them to axes or maces later on) and the terrace (quick easy, fairly easy non-religious culture) means that HC is probably in the top 5 leaders for just about every playstyle and victory condition.

In BC, HC is sorta an Aggressive-Financial-Creative-Industrious leader... because of his very early UB and UU. That's nice no matter how you slice it.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Martinus

There is no Organized/Financial just as there is no Philosophical/Industrious. Organized is a "low power/low maintenance" version of Financial just as Industrious is a "low power/low maintenance" version of Philosophical, if you think about it.

I’ve thought about it but still not sure what you’re getting at here. The closest I’ve got is that PHI can be better at getting wonders than IND but I’m not sure whether it is strictly true that FIN is better at generating techs than ORG.

[Blaupanzer]

FIN/ORG used to exist (Washington, I think). Just didn't get applied this time around. The PHI/IND leader did test out as a game imbalancer as I understand.

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
FIN/ORG used to exist (Washington, I think). Just didn't get applied this time around. The PHI/IND leader did test out as a game imbalancer as I understand.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know who the Philosophical/Industrious leader was going to be?

[nbarclay]

In my view, Industrious wonder-building provides a way to get great people without a need to sacrifice cottages for irrigation and specialists. I don't see why it would be necessary to run a specialist-based economy in order to make good use of the Industrious trait. Am I missing something?

Washington was one off my favorite leaders in the original Civ 4, my biggest reservation being the relative difficulty of getting an early religion not starting with Mysticism. Huayna Capac was another favorite because he combined the Financial trait with the ability to go for an early religion and a great unit for defending against early-game barbarians. The new version of Huayna Capac combines a lot of the best of both, plus a unique building that provides a lot of the Creative trait's cultural warfare power.

I haven't played the new version of the Incas yet; I'm still on my first Warlords game (playing a bit past the point of official victory), and I wanted to try out a couple of the new traits for that game. But at least on paper, the new Incas look fantastic to me.

[zeace]

Industrious gives you wonders, wonders give you GPPs. Philo gives you GPPs, Specialists give you GPPs... Using some of them together gives you LOTS of GPs.

I can see that a Philo/Ind leader would be a Great Person Machine... You'd have so many of them... mmmm...

[couerdelion]

But I don’t think that the Philo leader get a lot more GPs than any other civ. They simply get them earlier – although this is still a big advantage.

But back to the question on HC, I found it a fun civ to start with but got bored with it later. My only deity game was played with HC and the UU were absolutely useless. My first war was fought with axemen and spearmen and the Quecha simply got assigned to garrisons.

I’ve wondered if the warriors were actually called Quecha warriors – bit like calling a Navy Seal an English Marine or a Redcoat and English Rifleman after the language that they speak

[Martinus]

Originally posted by couerdelion
But I don’t think that the Philo leader get a lot more GPs than any other civ. They simply get them earlier – although this is still a big advantage.

But back to the question on HC, I found it a fun civ to start with but got bored with it later. My only deity game was played with HC and the UU were absolutely useless. My first war was fought with axemen and spearmen and the Quecha simply got assigned to garrisons.

I’ve wondered if the warriors were actually called Quecha warriors – bit like calling a Navy Seal an English Marine or a Redcoat and English Rifleman after the language that they speak

PHI/IND would be a monster of specialist economy, which is heavily wonder dependent.

[couerdelion]

Are you talking about an economy driven by the specialists themselves or one driven by GP? The latter does work well with PHI but the former rather relies on Pyramids.

Or course, the easy option here is to go Masonry, build the Great Wall and then rush build Pyramids. Could even then move on to Oracle rush of Metal Casting for a forge to get GE earlier.

So many choice morsels in this new game. It’s just a shame that a lot of these wonders are usually out of reach at the really high levels.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by zeace
Industrious gives you wonders, wonders give you GPPs. Philo gives you GPPs, Specialists give you GPPs... Using some of them together gives you LOTS of GPs.

I can see that a Philo/Ind leader would be a Great Person Machine... You'd have so many of them... mmmm...

Philosophical stacks multiplicatively with building lots of wonders and with using lots of specialists. Thus, Philosophical makes strategies of building wonders and using specialists more powerful than they would be otherwise.

In contrast, GPPs from specialists and from wonders are merely additive. Getting additional GPPs from specialists does not inherently make the GPPs you get from wonders more powerful.

Indeed, in a very real sense, the situation is exactly the opposite because of how each great person is more expensive than the one before. If you have no GPPs from wonders, and 900 GPPs from specialists, on Epic speed, you get three great persons (if I'm remembering the calculations correctly). But if during the same period you get 600 GPPs from wonders and 900 from specialists, you get four great persons using specialists compared with two and a third if you didn't have any specialists. With the wonders, specialists give you only one and two thirds extra great persons instead of providing three great persons. (Note that this example doesn't get into the complexities of GPPs being spread across multiple cities, which would require a much more complex analysis.)

So my inclination is that the more wonders I build, the less point there is in going out of my way to use specialists. That, in turn, makes the Industrious trait and a strategy that doesn't use a lot of specialists pretty synergistic in my opiinion.

[couerdelion]

I used to looked at the +100% PHI bonus as an "increase" in GPP numbers but now think it is more important for its "acceleration" effect. But the +100% can be replicated anyway with Pacifism so you can really only consider the PHI benefit as an early game benefit.

There is, of course, the question of whether wonders are built for GPP of their other use. It's really only the early wonders where the GPP have a significant effect on GPP production so this would imply that the IND/PHI strategy would be to bee-line to a wonder tech and get building some early wonders - but could be a tough strategy if no wonder resources nearby.

[Kuciwalker]

nvm

[Kuciwalker]

I used to looked at the +100% PHI bonus as an "increase" in GPP numbers but now think it is more important for its "acceleration" effect. But the +100% can be replicated anyway with Pacifism so you can really only consider the PHI benefit as an early game benefit.

PHI + Great Wall = Pyramids.