We all remember how overpowered the Aztecs used to be a few years ago, but for over two or three years now, they’ve remained relatively underwhelming.
According to current statistics from aoestats, the Aztecs have a win rate of just around 47.5% in 1v1 ranked games (48.51% team games) placing them among the bottom-tier civilizations.
And they have the particularity to be under 50% in all range of elo.
While they can still snowball with early aggression, their late-game power has been significantly outclassed by other civilizations with stronger economic bonuses or more flexible tech trees. The last patch was supposed to make them more decent.
The new Jaguar bonus does not seem to help much and the UU is still totally niche in comparison with anti-cavalry Incas UU and Solid Mayan’s Plume archers.
The Jaguar Warrior still need to be redesigned or potentially transform them into Xolotl Jaguar Warriors stronger, with better mobility and utility.
It’ll never happen. I genuinely think that Xolotl Warriors should remain a bonus unit to use in the event you can convert a stable, as Eagle Warriors have them generally better covered for mobility. Maybe, maybe you could convince me that the Xolotls should be a UU, but 1. That’s definitely not an Aztec UU despite the campaign (more like Tlaxcala with their alliance to Spain), and 2. They get no upgrades, since Aztecs dont get cavalry upgrades, so they’re basically weak-as-possibly-can-be knights.
Let me remind you that for one civilization to be above 50%, another must be below 50%. Thus goes life. If anything, the return of the MaA meta brought the Mayans and Vikings back into OP territory. So certain stats might be a bit off.
Actually the winrate of Aztecs is rising especially on Arabia for all elos except the “mid ones” around 1k. This is also where the most games are happening.
At the same time the play rate has rizen drastically.
What I think is that a lot of people picked aztecs without having their builds optimized yet, so they kinda struggle to utilize them well so far. And it is to be expected that they will get better with aztecs soon.
You always have to consider this “getting used to effect” when a civ gets a higher play rate as reaction to patches, people need to figure them out first - especially in the mid elos where people don’t have as much experience with all the playstyles and utilization of unknown bonusses.
Absolutely, like the Georgians who seem improvidently poor when they remain a tier S+ civ in Arabia. Simply because your average 1000 elo doesn’t know how to kill MaA with Scouts.
They would still retain the base stats of a knight, unless you start in post-imp. For the price of a knight, without bloodlines & husbandry, and requiring to convert a stable (not for Mayans). So in the end it would still be weaker than a saracen knight.
They used to have to deal with 35 HP, 7 ranged, 4/4 armored, and 65% accurate hand cannoneers.
Now, they are facing 40 HP, 9 ranged!, 5/5 armored, and 75% accurate hand cannoneers, as well as discounted 90% accurate, pass-through damage-dealing hand cannoneers!
While some nations are getting crazy hand cannoneers, the Aztecs got several nerfs, and their skirmishers/archers remained the same.
I think it would be cool if Xolotl warriors were redesigned to have the cost and stats/tags of a light cavalry with free +2/+2 armor bonus. Fully upgraded they would be equivalent to Vikings light cavalry.
Imho (and at my range, frankly I dont really know how it plays out at 1000elo) when I play Aztecs, my plan always involves some eagles & archer combo, which they are not strong at (eagles maybe, but is so hopeless against either CAs & longswords).
Late game options are not wonderful either. It kinda falls into “I have some units but they are so medicore at their job” feeling
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Aztecs is their monks. Very strong, get lots of hp quickly, and generally the best monks in the game. And monks are a powerful unit. Aztecs also have good skirms (due to UT), but their monks are killer.
Their Feudal age should be better now with the recent patch, but I think Aztecs need to make things happen early. Make use of their extra starting gold in a MAA rush, or a drush, or attack with eagles or archers. But I don’t really play Aztecs, so what would I know?
Introducing Devotion was the first blow, and giving Missionaries endless buffs was the second. Now, it’s easier to kill Aztec Monks with archers than to kill Missionaries because of their armor. That was never the case, and the Aztec Monk was supposed to tank arrows much better than Missionaries thanks to the Aztec Monk’s +30 HP advantage.
I have no idea why it’s so hard for some people to respect and understand the original creator’s intention. Missionaries were clearly not intended to be armored, and there was a reason for this.
The last two buffs Missionaries received in patches absolutely have to go. And the other buffs are also questionable.
Introducing devotion hurt monk play generally, but I think Aztecs were less affected by it than most other monk civs. Reason being is Aztec monk hp means they can afford to spend a little extra time converting. And devotion itself is a cheap tech that Aztecs can get to improve their own monks’ hp (a bit of a silver lining there). And getting devotion requires investing into a monastery (which isn’t a terrible idea given that Aztecs have a relic bonus, but still is an extra cost if all you want is devotion).
Missionaries have been getting buffs because they have just paled in comparison to normal (Spanish) monks - speed doesn’t do much since they can’t move while converting or healing. So their main advantage ended up being access to bloodlines, which was mitigated by the reduced range (moving them a bit closer to danger) and being vulnerable to anti-cav damage (such as from pikemen). Inquisition requires a castle, which makes it mostly irrelevant for a monk rush. And monks (and missionaries) don’t really scale well into late-game.