Getting a large well balanced army out quickly is hard for the Aztecs. In a similar way that it is for the Russians. There are just a lot more choices that the Aztec has to make on the way which make the first 7 minutes of the game an interesting optimization problem.

All of the native civilizations start out with only 5 villagers. This puts then at a sizable disadvantage compared to most of the European civilizations who get 6 or even 7 villagers to start with. Fertility dance means that the Aztec can have actually pull ahead but the villagers will still have to pay for themselves. I could go into much more detail here but I think the idea is pretty clear.

Sioux save wood because they don’t need to build houses. Iroquois get the first travois which most all of them will send forward as a war hut. Aztec run into a bit of a predicament with their bonus because they have to spend 100 of their starting wood on getting a firepit up to utilize the warrior priest. The exception to this is Yukon, where using the priest to heal the war chief may make it possible to claim enough additional treasures to make it worthwhile to use him for such.

Classically the idea would be to age up in 90 seconds and have a war hut constructed immediately upon reaching colonial and being able to produce units continuously from it. Using the fast age option gets you to colonial well before the war hut is up in most cases and therefore wouldn’t be the best choice. This is an extreme generalization but I work with it as a base case.

The constant problem Aztec players have shortly into colonial is that they’re housed. Sioux obviously can’t have this problem and Iroquois have less of an issue with it because of the travois. The Aztec wouldn’t be so bad off if he hadn’t aged up with 18 or even 19 villagers, which is entirely plausible with the fertility dance, then sent a shipment of 10 mace which requires another 100 wood. To have any shot at keeping production up the Aztec will need 450 wood just for the war hut and houses very shortly after reaching colonial. And that doesn’t include the resources for training units.

Aztec players vary in their ways to work around the problems involved in getting a war hut up early and massing an army. Depending on the situation one might be able to get away without even building one for a while. Relying on the jaguars produced by the big button techs in the TC and military shipments such as the 10 mace or maybe even 11 rods for 500 gold.

Aging up fast probably won’t give you a lot more time to make troops. What it does do is give you another minute to send colonial age shipments. Thus a reasonable plan would be to age up fast and immediately sending the 700 wood and using it to build the barracks and houses. The wood arrives 40 seconds after the 30 second age up and it would be reasonable to estimate another 20 seconds before the war hut is up. Economically this may make the most since, especially if you’re going mace heavy and thus spending wood quickly.

A different approach to the problem is to not fill up as many population slots. Send the hunting upgrade instead of the 3 villagers (this seems to most logically lead to fast aging, sending 600 coin and going for a fast 9 jaguars). And then not to send the mace card until housing will not be such an issue, instead using the 5 coyote and/or 6 puma. In this way you can delay building the 3rd house a bit longer. Clearly sometimes mace will be necessary, such as an ottoman janissary rush. But may be viable against a Russian who will probably mass strelets. I haven’t experimented with this very much. I actually think the best plan would actually be to use the fertility dance still if you send the hunting upgrade shipment.

So when do you want to use which build? Some of these ideas aren’t the brightest. And Aztecs should always be rushing right? Why not attempt to find the BEST one and optimize around it. Not surprisingly it’s because it varies with the situation.

Against slower ff like a German or possibly Spanish and certain Dutch varieties, taking down the TC is probably your best hope. This is going to take more than ten puma spearmen to do the job. My jaguar builds for this use have been too week/slow to do the job. You have to forward build and make more than the 6 puma that the shipment delivers.

For hard, fast rushes like a Spanish rod rush or a Dutch skirm & pike rush come fast enough that early jags are important. All the various flavors of Iroquois rushes that require massing of mace to defend against will require fast aging to get the necessary shipments. And then there’re the pesky truly fast fortresses with times under 7 minutes. Sure these are completely undefended but making someone pay for it is still a sticking point for me (Iroquois are the big ones here). While normally the response is just a somewhat slower fortress I have yet to find an Aztec fast fortress that works with any reliability.

If the above was in anyway coherent I’m sorry so let me sum it up. Aztecs are at a disadvantage in early colonial. There are a lot of different builds to choose from. It is important to pick one that best fits the current situation or you’re probably screwed. I also don’t make any promises as I’m about 3-20 in the last week with Aztecs. Hope you have better luck than me!

[This message has been edited by Flammifer (edited 11-22-2006 @ 09:36 AM).]