Rhye's and Fall of Civilization - Aztec strategy

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Contents 1 The Aztecs (Generic) 1.1 Overview 1.2 Basic strategy 1.3 OK. ‘Nuff long-range stuff. Let’s get back to opening moves. 1.4 Further expansion 2 Emperor strategy

Please feel free to add your own strategy guides, or to improve existing ones.

The Aztecs (Generic)

by Abegweit

Overview

UHVs
1) Enslave 5 European Units
2) Allow No Europeans in Central America, South East US, or Carribean
3) Enter industrial age by 1820

The unique power of the Aztecs is slavery. So never think of training a worker. You will get plenty simply by taking out the barbs, never mind whatever civs you might have to fight. In fact, you won't know what to do with them all. For much of the game, you will find that about the best project is building long roads to future cities.

Basic strategy

The Aztecs start out with a huge continent all to themselves, just waiting to be filled out. The downside, of course, is that they are backwards and vulnerable to the superior knowledge and weaponry of the Europeans. As the Aztec civ awakes, the Europeans are able to cross the ocean to make contact but cannot yet colonise the continent. Your objective is to use that contact to not just come abreast but to leap ahead in technology while simultaneously taking all that glorious empty land.

Played properly, you should be able to deny the entire continent to the Europeans while simultaneously beating them in the Liberalism race. In fact, you should not just get to the Industrial Era in the required time-frame for the UHV but get there first.

The starting location is magnificent. Two Corn, several hills and a Dye. Production power. Commerce power. And food to back it up. If there ever was a location which cried for Bureaucracy, this is it. A couple of your towns, including the capital, will need Sailing to get Lighthouses but you won't go far wrong if you go straight for The Money instead of satisfying these needs. The bottom line is that the research path must be either Sailing-CS or CS straightaway.

There is a second reason to go for CS too. The AI likes the top and bottom research paths. If you go for the middle one, you are likely to garner monopoly techs which you can trade for several on the other paths.

Finally, if there wasn't enough reason already, CS gets you halfway to Maces - and Maces are the great equalizers which give you the capability to defend yourself from European incursions. To the point that the hardest part of your UHV may be to find Europeans to enslave. Well... you can find them in Europe

In this regard, continue in the same direction through the tech tree with PP, Paper, Education, etc. More trade-bait. You should be need able to get everything else you need through trade. The only thing you should keep an eye out for is the key military techs: Machinery, Optics, and Astronomy. Machinery gets your maces. Optics gives you contacts. Especially make sure to get to that Great African Tech Whore. You and he will make fine music together. You need Astronomy mainly for protection from barb galleys. It’s not time to invade Europe. Yet … Machinery should be easy to trade for. Optics, and especially Astronomy, will be harder. If you can’t get to Astronomy on time, make sure to have several caravels ready on both coasts.

When you get to Liberalism, you can take any path you choose. I personally like to go for rifling to prepare for the next great challenge… the arrival of the Americans.

OK. ‘Nuff long-range stuff. Let’s get back to opening moves.

Settle to the northeast. Switch civics immediately before secondary cities are impacted. HR and slavery are tough to beat, and only cost one turn, so go for it. However, T... whatever its name, should not be whipped. The location is powerful and, under Bureaucracy, the capital should be big so let it grow. At most take the occasional settler off it. Don’t hesitate with whip elsewhere though. I like to settle the other two cities to the north just above the Spices and to the Northwest, just east of the clams. The northern city should get a whipped library. The Northwestern one gets a work boat and a library, both whipped.

Send all the Jaguars south-east. There are a couple of Mayan cities which are well worth taking. Don’t be afraid of the poor odds. The game has been rigged and you will win! This seems to be a general characteristic of late RFC starts. The first three or four attacks are 100% sure to succeed. Tikal will eventually turn into a nice city. Chichen Itza will always be poor but, with a lighthouse and library, it will certainly pay for itself. Build the workboat out of the capital. It will take too long to build at Chicken.

If you have good success, you can move on to the Incas. Their city of Quito is well worth having. Grab it and they will be trapped on the coast forever. Just raze the next city down the coast (I forget its name) so that you get the corn. Stop there. The others will alway be small and a drain on your economy. If you tackle the Inca, the only thing which can go wrong is that they get mercenaries. War elephants, in particular, are extremely dangerous because they can enter the jungle. So be careful about the Mercenary situation. You might even hire them yourself for denial purposes.

Further expansion

Don’t go much further into South America than Caracas (at least not in the second phase). It's too far away and, in any case, you should be concentrating on claiming the US. Getting iron or copper is especially important to be able to build those maces. There is copper in the desert to the north, but it’s a terrible location. Seattle also has some and it’s a nice spot. Still, you should be building towards the Europeans, not away from them. Chicago is an absolutely magnificent location and there is iron just to the east. Reach for it. So New Orleans should be your next city after the initial five or six. It has some nice food. Then comes Chicago. This location should contain your FP. It is nice and central to your American core, if slightly north, and will be a powerhouse. Charleston, New York and Sydney to the east. St. Louis, Winnipeg and Sudbury to the west and north.

Then sit back and wait for the arrival of the Europeans. Or take the game to them if you prefer. Just remember to be ready for the Americans. Cannons and rifles in New York and Chicago (which can use them for happy issues if you still have them) will make sure that they get a fine welcome.

Emperor strategy

by Pacifist

The above guide might work for monarch or viceroy and pre-BTS but with Emperor there are some major problems:

1. Conquerors event; once they conquer one of your cities, they will be impossible to dislodge
2. AI will not trade with you except at huge advantage, and you're 2 eras behind everybody
3. Expansion instability

On the other hand, more dog soldiers will be in your spawn area so you have a little more protection against their cohorts later. So here's what you should do: basically play a totally pacifist game until your tech is caught up, which means unfortunately a late win (mid 1900's).

Here's what I did:

1. Found Tlaxcala on the coast (gives more food, eventually you can grow it to 10 pop). Send other settler north right next to the jungle on the coast.
2. Switch to slavery. When you have monarchy and feudalism switch to vassalage and HR.
3. Research (this will differ depending on your preferences but do not take the Education or Chemistry route to scientific method since it is too long) sailing (for trade with all your coastal cities, and your cities will have a harbor automatically once you have sailing) monarchy (unhappiness starts at pop 5) feudalism (longbowmen are much stronger alphabet (building research) CS guilds (grocers) paper, printing press (prerequisite for Scientific method) iron working, metal casting, machinery compass, optics, astronomy, scientific method. When Christianity spreads to you research meditation and monotheism and switch to Organized religion. When you see horses in southern USA get animal husbandry.
4. Capture Tikal and Chichen Itza as above, do not lose any troops both of them can wait, just reload
5. Tlaxcala builds a workboat right away and sends it towards the eastern most shallow coast to meet the Europeans; just to make sure that none of them see your land (Portuguese carracks are a nuisance with their extra sight across water), send one of your converted dog soldiers north to pick the 2 goody huts and meet them in the most northeastern tip of Canada. If you do this you will not see the conquerors event, and plague may not even hit you until later.
6. All cities (except island cities) build walls (whipped if needed), archers and libraries. Build lots of cheap warriors for happiness and the eventual plague to take them out first before your precious archers and longbowmen. Your North American cities build barracks also so that your longbowmen will have an advantage against dog soldiers. Settle all great generals in Tlaxcala.
7. Settle all the available land after you meet the Europeans. In order of priority:
   1. the 2 islands (Spain likes them first)
   2. New Orleans (France)
   3. northern South America (where England likes to build either Bridgetown on the island or Georgetown where your city will be); convert it to Christianity and whip a monastery ASAP to encompass it in your territory Florida (Spain)
8. After you've built all the above, you can open borders with everybody (your trade will be terrible since you won't have optics to explore their land but it buys good relationships)
9. Before the Americans show up in 1733, you need to settle ALL of the Midwest and western USA. I usually build at Chicago, Denver and Grand Forks to get all the resources. You can also get one big city on the west coast but by now your expansion stability will be 2 stars at best. Whip your Florida city and one of your outlying island cities for missionaries and troops. As soon as you see the Americans, give them your island city and they'll make it their capital! This prevents Washington from eating into your cultural territory. If you're large enough America may even offer to be your vassal, even though you're 1 era behind them in tech. Make sure you don't declare war on any of the European powers though: you'll be decimated if they do decide to invade your land.
10. Spawn a great spy in Chicago and send him to Washington, and steal banking or education from them. When you meet the Incans also try to trade whatever you have for one of the techs listed above (I gave them feudalism and monotheism for iron working).
11. By 1900 most civs will be way ahead of you and start building spaceship parts. Don't worry, this is actually good news as some of the older techs will be much cheaper (as little as 1 gold). You'll start to rise from the bottom to about 5-6th place as long as you've put in good infrastructure for research and commerce. Buy a map from America for half price and your commercial contacts will be set.
12. When you hit assembly line and combustion, stop research and convert all your troops to infantry and build lots of tanks and marines. Send them towards your closest European NA colony and declare war. Just defend, don't attack (most of the time they are really entrenched and have advanced mechanized infantry and gunships); they'll hurl themselves on your stack and be enslaved). Just be sure that there are no guided missiles near your stack and nuclear weapons are disabled. Warren G. Harding will be the best you can do; if somebody has a better technique let me know. (I tried using riflemen vs. European infantry and failed miserably)