Inca is one of the best civs now

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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The buff of inca suddenly makes inca really really good. They seems a bit like Byzantine now but actually they are better than byzantines.

Byz doesn’t have any eco bonus until clicking imp. Inca actually has something, llama, fewer houses, allowing 1 or 2 fewer vills on wood early. Like Byzantines, they have cheaper pike and skirms, to defend against archer/cav, but byz halbs are missing attack, inca one is fully upgraded. In late game inca vills are very hard to raid, which is really nice for survival, because a few light cav raiding and you don’t see it, you can potentially lose 20 or 30 vills and it is dead.

Cheaper militia line is essentially free supplies, which is very nice. Significantly cheaper kamayuk, synergies very well with the cheaper castle, which make it very easy to spam, and it happens kamayuk is a unit works well in large groups only, so being able to mass them really make a big difference.

Cheaper and potentially stronger slinger is a huge thing. They are unaffected by the crossbow/arb nerf, as they don’t need upgrade, just straight away usable in castle age, doesn’t need to switch eco balance if you make infantry, as they cost food/gold. They also are unaffected by the gambeson buff to swordman, crossbow will do quite a bit less dmg to swordman, but not the slingers with huge bonus dmg. Late game, slinger used to max out at 8 attack, which is terrible, arbs are always preferred. Now slinger max out at 9 attack, which is decent against even light cav, there is almost no reason to do arbalester upgrade, it had upgrade cost increased recently, but inca has slinger now it is unaffected by arbs nerf.

Then eagle nerf, also does not impact inca, inca has the same cost as before, even cheaper in imp. Not only inca is buffed, it synergies so well that a lot of previous nerf to units doesn’t affact inca. Nerf to crossbow/arb, inca uses slingers. Nerf to knight and buff pikes, great, inca doesn’t have knight. Nerf eagles, but not inca eagles. Then buffed kamayuk, pike, skirms too (especially kamayuk). And the slinger unit does so well against all the recently buffed units, militia line, unique infantry, pikes, they don’t do well vs recently nerfed units, like knight/crossbow. This makes inca comparatively much stronger.

Btw i am not complaining though inca is one of my favourite civ very happy to see it jump to top tier

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Ok i just,saw the latest aoestats data, inca has 2nd highest win rate among all civs. Make sense. Nunber 1 is Malians, it is hugely buffed too but I don’t think malians are very good vs Incas. Malians seems good vs archer or cav civ but not against infantry civs.

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Incas was like meso-version of Byz. Incas was pretty balanced and needed no buff except the old team bonus. Quite a number of balanced civs get overbuff imo.

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@AbuzzJam4677680 @ausmht Agree both of you. Alson byz tech switch is much harder then incas. Incas can switch between, eagles, pikemen, slinger with less upgrades and their units can both defend and attack so incas can adapt every situation much more easy.

I won my last 2 inca games just eagle, pikeman, slinger flow.

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Slingers are really too hard and cheap an infantry counter. Honestly, remove them or change their design and Incas are great.

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Incas are completely fine now, and such team bonus makes Chinese even more OP lol

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Chinese is not that great in team game. The farming bonus of Chinese has been nerfed pretty hard used to give 45 extra food now only 17.5, if you farm without horse collar. Previously is basically free horse collar. Now even if you farm after horse collar it still only give 25 extra, like half of pre nerf value

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Incas op now needs a nerf. Malians too

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What are you talking man, Chinese on open maps can play both Flank and Pocket perfectly thanks by such absurdly open tech tree (FU Cavaliers, Heavy Camels, Arbalests, Chu Ko Nu and even their cav archers are usable) and the tech ##########

We were complaining on how boring those civs were and now they need a nerf? while still left Chinese (whose supposed “nerf” wasn’t even a nerf but just to make the civ better for lower ELO players, while their tech tree is still untouched), Mayans (IDK if the eagle nerf and Infantry buffs are enough to tone donw their power) or Franks (Whose power is the same on TGs).

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Its still only a moderate change against non-meso civs.

For a minute you might think - whaatttt? That’s a huge food discount, its OP, its unmatchable and so on. But no, its not.
Inca aren’t a civ with cavalry or any other food intense units. You’d save 27 food if you went for maa opening. Another 40-50 food if you followed it up with spear-archers or eagle-skirms. You wouldn’t want to do too many spears and skirms early on, as you can’t attack with those units. Ideally you’d try to go up with market and do eagles. Compared to before the patch, you get 0 food discount in feudal and 1 food discount in castle age on your eagles. Slingers have no cost change in castle age either. Removal of supplies and thereby the lack of Gambesons makes longswords quite pointless for Incas. Overall the main effect of that bonus comes from late castle age when you mix a good amount of pikes along with eagles or transition into Kamayuks. So against non-meso, its primarily buff after 30 mins.

All of this is great and it finally makes them a solid civ. Before these changes they were below average. And even now they have no eco bonus. So they’re still not as versatile as many other top-tier civs.

It really depends on what your definition of “top” is. If its something like first 15, sure. If its like first 5 then no.

Stats dont make any sense when they’re 1 week old and when you look at all maps, elos combined.

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They are good but I don’t think it is OP. A good civ is fine, dont have to nerf it

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Chinese is not great. Dont listen to pros keep saying Chinese op. That’s only for pros. Even at 2000 elo Chinese is not strong people are still struggling to age early or defending MAA or some early scout stuff. They op only for pros. For those who can play in tournaments, at least 2k4+, if you are not 2k4 Chinese is not op.

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Chinese are definitely top tier, even disregarding the villager lead (which is most applicable for pros, yes - only they can maximize that benefit) they still have an enormous economy bonus of technologies costing less. Add their very open tech tree means you can do anything with them and your transitions are so smooth.

As a self-proclamed Incas fan, I was also very happy to see the buffs to the civ. I didn’t think they were boring, but they certainly could’ve used something more flavourful, especially considering the old team bonuses have been so bad and boring, they could’ve absolutely used some sort of great team bonus for trading or whatnot.

Free llama becoming a team bonus is cute, and probably one of the stronger team bonuses if you think about it (especially for Chinese). Food discount seems really enormous at first glance, but then you realise you’re not really producing high-food cost units mid-game anyway. So I think the ‘buffs’ were actually a pretty balanced nudge to have them stand out a little bit more from other meso civs, who thus far had just been eclipsing Incas in economy and having a stronger identity.

Now, their meso-Byzantine identity is even more pronounced with food-cheap highly effective counters, leaving them with very comfortable transitions in their very flexible tech tree for just a very smooth gameplay experience. I think that’s nice. Do I still wish they had some sort of trade bonus? Yeah, but beggars can’t be choosers, and that would likely be an overbuff anyway 11.

Maybe we’ll actually see Kamayuks being used on more maps now anyway. Always loved seeing them in Black Forest games, since I’m fairly sure they continue being severely underrated. Lowkey, with the new food discount, they might be one of the strongest unique units for their cost now. They demolish almost all cavalry (unless your name is Cataphract), and in mass can demolish almost all melee infantry - and those that they can’t, you have highly effective Slingers for anyway - and they’re reasonably resistant to Arbalesters, with 6 PA and 80 HP.

I’d really say Kamayuks are one of the few true ‘power’ melee infantry units, especially when fully upgraded.

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I’d say lets wait a while. The food Discount can Always be toned down, If it Turns out it’s too strong.

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