Please devs, do something about Inca. They are so bad against massed artillery … The only viable unit against them is the Chimu Runner but it’s not enough. You lose too much stuff. Huaracas have a terrible firing animation and they get wrecked by cannon fire as well.
Also please redesign how Kallankas and the Fort work… This “teleporting loading time into the building” thing is so annoying to watch. Your units are being killed while garrisoning. I am aware of the lame that people used to do with FF Fort Huaracas in-and-out strategy, but still, there must be other ways to avoid this lame strat without ruining all the fun of the civ.
11 Likes
Inca used to be my favorite Civ and main Civ since launch. After a long series of nerfs (10+) and the recent fort garrison time and huraca nerfs I have found them to be unplayable due to being in such an awkward state. It seems their only viable comp is mass chimu and bola with a few huraca but even then their units do not perform well vs cannons and feel very weak late game. Also the chimu stealth pop onto cannons has been nerfed with new stealth unit nerf. Sadly, I believe the mutilation of inca also had to do with the devs pushing people toward the new og turtle and boom Civ malta, to boost sales (they kneecapped inca just so malta could walk). Just and aoe 3 conspiracy joke but actally what happened to inca is sad. The devs have nerfed inca so hard and tried to give them options with new cards like lancers and buffed priestesses but the Civ as a whole is incredibly awkward to play now and weak. I would be interested in seeing the stats for ranked games of Inca’s play rate and win % because I feel both are very low. The inca situation is a primary example of a failure to create balance in the game and instead have created a piecemeal Civ that plays awkwardly and always feels behind. Many of Incas strongest features such as the fort and the military organization make sense for their time and history but because some abused them we all get a weak Civ now. Maybe some adjustments to the fort mechanic and the ability to train captured culverins would help but I would also be glad to see an entire rework of the Civ due to how destroyed they have become by nerfs. I hope the devs address this in upcoming PUP’s.
6 Likes
Malta has nothing to do with. The problem is that the initial design of the Inca was deeply flawed right to the core. Instead of reworking the core elements that caused the issues, they just hit them with nerfs to everything else until they were unplayable.
3 Likes
Even though I never played Inca when it was OP, I still liked the way the units looked and attacked when I tried it recently. I agree it is hard to win any games with them. However I would much rather have a civ nerfed into the ground versus be OP. There are plenty of other cool civs to play, I would suggest another native civ instead. When you have a civ with builidings that trickle resources, there is an above average chance of it wrecking the game and requiring substantial nerfs.
1 Like
I just tested huraca and macemen in the scenario editor. Macemen LOSE BADLY vs muskets on a cost adjusted basis! I thought they were supposed to be good against anything in melee, but if they lose to muskets, they are basically way overpriced pikemen. Huraca actually do better than I thought versus skirmishers, they trade well, and they hold up better than I thought versus artillery. And here I thought macemen were better, turns out they are terrible.
The macemen looks ok on paper but in reality it is probably the worse unit in the game.
5 Likes
think it’s dangerous to buff them because of the speed age 3 card because it’s still a unit with a lot of area and ok it’s not incredible against musk (which is normal btw) but it is still strong against skirms, the most important thing is not the damage, it’s the speed of the unit ( which is bad currently that true )
and so I think we’ll have to buff the speed of the unit a little bit and nerf the atk a little bit, because after all what makes a melee infantry strong? The speed and we have a lot of examples like the rods the inca pike and even the halb are good now because their speed has been buffed
2 Likes
It isn’t though, I tested skirms in the scenario editor as well (on a cost adjusted basis). Take the macemen and attack move to a cost adjusted number of skirms and see what happens. They aren’t even better than pikes on a cost adjusted basis you could get way more damage output using pikes. There is literally no scenario where using them makes any sense (probably why I can’t remember seeing them in any cast game), except for the fact that they look super cool when they send units flying and they make a great sound when thudding against a building. They are “all hat no cattle”. If you take 2 macemen vs 6 musks, they lose horrendously, I would expect even a cost adusted number of puma spearmen to do better, although I didn’t test that. The spearmen have about the same melee attack as most muskets and they would occupy each musk so that it couldn’t use it’s ranged attack. Unlike macemen, because they are about 1 maceman per 3 muskets. Maybe in age 4, if you have nothing better to do with the community plaza, but it would be better to spawn priestesses.
I think macemen need a price decrease in order to make them anywhere near viable, but careful not to make them too good either, that is the worst.
Price decrease and training time decrease might make them viable.
you’re confusing things a bit I think, a maceman shouldn’t destroy musk because it’s not his role and I think I have enough experience to say that maceman should be strong against skirms (in melee obviously), it’s not today because their speed is slow and suddenly they get kiting non-stop, but when they are in contact they do a lot of damage, also you have to understand that this is not the role of a macemen to destroy skirms and heavy inf so of course at equal cost the skirms should win, after all that’s how the counter system works the skirms win against the melee infantry so it’s just logical, I don’t want to see macemen destroying everything either right, so yeah I think adding a bit of speed and as OriginalKnot said reducing the training speed and the cost is a good idea too so the inca player can do timings more easily with some macemen pop when he defends
If it was me i would put their speed to 4.5 and 145f 145c but I’m just a little worried that the age 3 card who increase the speed for inf make them too good, so yeah have to be careful I think with this unit
Right, so macemen are good against only cav and buildings then. However they are less cost effective than the Inca plumed spearman for doing so? I can’t understand why anyone would ever make one other than ‘cool points’. I thought they were designed to fulfill the role of a jaguar prowl knight and tried using them as such, but they don’t work out. Skull knights are infinitely better as well. If you are going to protect hurraca or anything else from a cav charge, you would be way better off with 3 plumed spears or bola vs 1 maceman.
Plumed spear is actually the best inca unit. It is incredibly strong for the cost and really fast. Chimu, jungle bow, bolas are just second tier compated to plumed spearman. Of course maceman is the bottom tier.
1 Like
What the Incas need is an improvement of their kallanka units that are very bad, first of all, the bolas warrior cannot kill cavalry in third age and with its negative bonus against inf it makes it useless against it, the huaraca has a very low range and besiege while receiving fire from a tower or being shot by cannons and the maceman is simply an expensive pikeman who dies very easily, the solution to this would be simple, that the huaraca can shoot faster or enough to hit and run and that the bolas warrior do not have a negative bonus against infantry, if we follow that logic then the eagle runner should also have a negative bonus against infantry but it does not
1 Like
Huaraca need to take less damage from artillery, so that they can be a more effective counter to it, their infantry classification causes them to get blown away by artillery before they can do anything. Their role is supposed to be siege and anti-artillery. And obviously macemen need a reduction in cost.
1 Like
They need artillery to have a negative multiplier vs them as arrow knights have, either that or give them like +6 range.
I think macemen need something else as well because they’re just bad, 3 pop is terrible but even at 2 pop they still remain the same useless and expensive unit.