I do not think this is about that. I recently played VS an inca in ladder, and I felt I had to gain an established victory piece by piece (had done a 5-6 vill raid), painfully, because every inch of ground is a struggle, and if I slip, I loose. It is not hard, it is just not interactive : he could do nothing to slow me down, except hope that I slip, I could to nothing except slow-push.
I am completely OK with priestess conversion (maybe like a banshee possess from war3, you could sacrifice the priestess for a convert, but the unit would not cost pop / train quicker in exchange)
The frustrating thing is their military garrison mechanic. AoE3 has no siege ram like aoe2, that can threaten this strategy. You are left with mortars in age IV or worse versions of it for siege (AK, Hand Mortar…)
I would happily see Inca buffs if this is removed, or …
If we get more counterplay options. A good way to go would kancha houses:
Kancha Houses get a high (1 f/s ?) base rate and low (800 ?) hp
Other houses debuf nearby kanchas ( smth like -10% in a 15 radius, stackable) , meaning you need to expand these houses to get more production, and thus expose them.
Chincha brewing now buffs kanchas base rate AND debuff radius by 50%
High risk, high reward age 2 card, that would allow for counter play.
Note that it would also make sense thematically and historically : Inca were an expansionist empire, and foraging/farming gets worse if multiple teams occupy the same land…
Here is the thing. You nerf huaracas, what mid game skirmish unit does Inca have? 17 Range jungle bows? Vs 26 range longbows, forest prowlers? we can’t even talk about their max strength in the late game because it won’t even get that far. Look at inca unit scaling and compare it with japan for example.
You make skirms that can kite jungle bows to death with cannons and cav. Realistically what can Inca do?
Cannnons have 26 range, the fotress base stats has 24 range. Countering cannons with huaracas is like countering cannons with slower firing abus , nice lets nerf huaracas. And saying oh, but Inca have chimu vs cannons is like saying aztec have coyote for cannons or brits have hussar for cannons. When in fact both of these civilizations have a 30+ range unit vs cannons. The reason why people complain about the fotress is because they haven’t played a single inca game, don’t know that petards exist or that falconets out range the fotress at first or that inca eco is slow, huracas are very expensive and train slower and very soon in mid game skirmishers will rek them or that when inca goes ff they legit have worse eco than you for more than half of the game or they don’t know that age 3 artillery/morar cards exists. Same people complaining about inca don’t even know the difference between bolas and huaracas. They expect to win vs 6,7 huaraca shipments with 7,8 skrimishers shipments and wonder why they lose. Imagine trading like that vs ottoman abus, I think people need to evolve with the game, learn new mechanics instead of trying to make this game boring and nerf things that they just need to get behind, so many people destroy inca on the ladder and so many inca players actually lose more game. Is Inca annoying though? Yes. Does Inca have good matchups like vs lakota? Yes. But Inca has the worst boom in the game for an economic civilizations there is no discussion about it, also inca has no age 2 musks and has to train pikes and longbows if wanting to play age 2 while also having to afford 180wood kancha house which gives like 0.60+ food per second… a single torp can have 1+ gathering on multiple resources in the early game for 135 cost. They already reworked inca and nerfed them multiple terms hard because of the lake of tears from people wanting de to be like vanilla but as long as inca has stronghold or one half decent strat people will scream for nerf and push this point untill the civ they dont like playing against becomes even more unplayable. If you want to change anything with inca they should make jungle bows more viable in mid game and remove or nerf hp cards for inca stronghold if anything. The huaracas are purposefully garbage vs cannons and are far worse than abus in terms of scaling, so you can imagine how good skirms or larger mass of normal skirms will ■■■■ on them, value wise and efficiency wise. Nerf inca one more time without postive rework this civ is unplayable, i’m telling you, no one will play it because it’s pretty borderline garbage to play as is. Civ likes india, japan, brits, china will be so much more smother, stronger and rewarding to play. My advice if you haven’t played inca and seen both sides of the coin don’t give balance suggestion.
Very well said. After all the nerfs the huaraca fort FF is the only thing inca can do, far from unbeatable as well. Kancha boom costs more wood than a brit manor boom and is worth 1/3rd the eco of their 20 free vills.
OP or not is one thing, but there is a reason some certain designs do not fit into a game.
Incas (along with Swedes) are still the worst designed civs imo. They completely lack certain functions then got one or two “multi-purpose” units (caroleans, bolas, huaraca, strongholds) that kinda fill in that role. Such a design not only makes it hard to balance, but also makes match up with them feel very weird.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for novelty. I like the later four DLC civs are nice though they need some balancing tweaks after release. What is their difference with Incas and Swedes? (1) they do not completely lack any unit function (2) (most of) their units are still normal units with a few stats tweaks. They may have a few gimmicky support units but not in mass, like natives or mercs.
Back in TWC Aztecs was a civ that looked super out-of-place but it turns out they still have all the same basic unit types like everyone else. The core of the game is still executed by making and defeating units, so they should be more standardized than other aspects like economy or age-up modes. I think that’s a thing to keep in mind in future designs.
Adding the Spanish archaic units to the Inca roster would do absolutely nothing to fix any of the Inca flaws. They already have archaic units that are mostly okay.
They do need some reform upgrades or cards but a double revolution goes too far. There should be an option to reform and gain European technology at least by age 4, and then maybe another option for a full revolution into an Inca flavoured Peru instead of age 5. That way staying as Inca or revolting would actually be a choice and not a necessity. If the reform options are not available until age 4, Inca needs good options for turtling and raiding to last until they can get their more advanced upgrades.
The reforms could do as follows:
Bolas Warriors get replaced by Bolas Riders. Bolas Riders would no longer be a native unit and could be part of the roster of a Mapuche civ. They would also be much easier to distinguish from Huaracas
Enable Light Cannons to be trained from the Stronghold. This would give them viable anti-artillery and let Huaracas be toned down into a more reasonable Abus/Grenadier unit.
Greatly increase archaic unit health and armour at the expense of speed. This could be a separate optional upgrade kind of like some of the advanced church upgrades.
Some of the other units are also far too multi-role and need to be split up into more dedicated roles.
Chincha Rafts should not be the entire navy. A Balsa Boat that takes on the Canoe role could free up the Chincha Raft to fill the stronger, more expensive ship roles.
Macemen should not be a siege unit, they should just be a strong infantry. Rams should be trainable at the Kallanka to fill the siege unit role instead. Rams would first need to not suck so some changes like this could be done:
Other ridiculous and gimmicky things like military garrisoning, converting priestesses, factory houses, invisible forts, and way too speedy pikemen could also be scrapped or reworked.
Seeing the game, I regret that Incas have this frustrating mechanic, but we also need to factor in that not every german match-up requires a semi-FF … 10 pikes or a 3 dops shippment would have WRECKED the whole strat by ither killing the chasqui or destroying the foundations.
Yes, that too. Or decrease the movement speed of the wagon itself.
I think there are plenty of ways to target this specific cheese instead of nerfing the inca yet again.
My proposal is to increase the cost of the inca fort to 400 gold and 400 wood, and remove the Machu Pichu card from Fortress age or send it to Industrial. The drop fort is very easy with the chasqui, killing them is not an option because they are very cheap and numerous (3 or 4 available if you do naked FF) and removing the option to receive shipments does not convince me.
The issue isn’t the cost though as the huaraca FF’s strength is just from the shipment, nobody builds the fort with the explorer. It’s also unfair for it to be industrial particularly as the inca are a turtle style civ by design and practically every other civ can get a fort with more hp, aoe damage and ungarrisoned attack in age 3.
Removing shipments to chasquis won’t even solve the issue because inca typically start tp and on most maps you can get the middle tp which also receives shipments so you can just ship the fort to the middle tp. Or just ship the 2 warhuts and put 1 mid map and ship the fort directly there.
No, I don’t agree, the problem is that you can send the fort very quickly, position it practically anywhere on the map inevitably (yep, inevitably, I dare you to kill all the chasquis that an Inca has on the map) and that on top of that this fort can receive shipments, produce units and garrison inside. That is, and always will be, the Inca problem. If the fort isn’t available as a early shipment, you’re forced to collect 700 res to build it with the WC (slower) or if the chasqui can’t receive it, it’s easier to knock down a Tambo than find all those elusive chasquis.
And enough to say that the European fort is better than the pukara, the pukara is better, the only thing higher is the HP, but with monumental architecture it is compensated, and on top of that they are rebuildable without cards.
A simple solution is just making the wagon build slower, it will directly nerf the FF without effecting the fort much otherwise. That being said I personally don’t want any changes, if they do change it they’re unlikely to undo all the nerfs that forced inca into this 1 dimensional play anyway and will kill them off.
Monumental architecture is also irrelevant though, a regular fort gets buffed way more than the stronghold by sending building hp due to it’s higher base HP of 9K. Before it was an issue when incas had building hp and monumental architecture but now there building hp card got nerfed it no longer is. They are also not the only civ that can build forts with the explorer.
Same top players that haven’t played a single inca game on the ladder? For example Kaiserklein he has barely touched inca and actually not played a single game with any of the newer civilizations all respect to him but the same goes for many top players, how is it it possible to give non biased balance suggestion for this civ when you don’t even know the strength or weakness or understand the units and match ups of the civilizations you’re condeming? Something can be strong but in order to find a nerf you need to understand all sides. You can’t take something away from a civilization without understanding what else you might be ruining. Easiliy more than half the players don’t understand inca because they do the wrong stuff every time… trading 1 to 1 skirmishers vs 2 huaraca shipments, trying to right click fort with cav, and cannons in range of the fortress, scared to make right number of cannons because they think huracas are like arrow knights with op multipliers etc I mean if top players still do this imagine the rest of the playerbase. Inca is a civilization that is so different to any other civilization in the game, ofc people are going to struggle if they still don’t understand the difference between bolas and huaracas. I gave my balance suggestion but some peoples suggestions will make this civ even more unplayable which is what most people want anyway, they don’t want to learn how to play against it and don’t like to play against it so they want it to be unplayable.
People seem to think huaracas are incredible when they are quite crappy units in reality, the only thing that makes them viable is the fort, even then the fort can’t hit falconets without getting the 600 resource upgrade and huaracas are massively out ranged by falconets and countered by them, despite supposedly being anti-artillery. huaracas are basically just abus guns that have a long siege range and considering inca have no artillery that’s fine.
People that don’t have a lot of play time with inca, particularly in previous patches don’t realize how bad they’ve been nerfed. The kancha boom is now the worst in the game by far in relation to cost.
They just get cheesed by the fort garrisoning and resign and immediately want it nerfed when there are so many ways to deal with it.
In my opinion, the fort should not have a garrison until Industrial, the huaraca needs range and siege resistance, and looks more like an Aztec AK, the chasqui should not be able to receive more shipments but it should be able to collect treasures or have default stealth. And they have to buff the Jungle Archer in a major way, more range would be ideal.
Another buff would be to restore the Native Americans to how they were before, plus the archer buff will make it more viable to fight in the second age. Then, if one goes up to third, with a combo of archers, chimus, bolas or huaracas it would be very viable and it would not be broken with the fort.
They could do that and I’d be fine with those changes, the fort wouldn’t be needed if huaracas could actually take out artillery cost effectively. The bowmen definitely needs a buff, more range for sure.
I’d also say the kanchas need to be looked at if the FF is no longer viable, at 180 wood each it costs like 300 more wood than a manor boom and provides less than a 1/3 of the eco. Make the kancha boom viable again and people will stop just doing straight FF with no eco.
