big thanks to hellofresh for sponsoring this video hey guys Spirit at the law here in this
video we're going to be taking a look at what's recently become clearly the best of
the American civilizations in aoe2 at least according to the stats and that's the Incas
thanks to some recent Buffs to their bonuses and Slinger Incas have gone from pretty middle
of the road to now top 10 on most open maps and at least average on every land map while
they're technically an infantry civilization the reputation is more about being a flexible
counter civ with great defenses and whatever you throw at them they always seem to have at
least one or more often two good options to counter it while this doesn't seem to
translate well for the top one percent of players for especially lower level and even
intermediate players this seems to be quite strong in this video we're going to go through
their bonuses Tech Tree and surprisingly good unique units let's check them out
bonus Incas and all of their allies start with a free llama Chinese in particular benefit from this
given the importance of getting older villagers on food immediately though any civ is just going
to have a smoother start also delaying Farms a bit longer another example where this bonus
shines is on Mega random or Nomad where you aren't guaranteed a specific number of sheep
or boar remember small advantages early can echo later into the game and it doesn't get any earlier
than immediately starting with more food available in fact I would personally consider this one of
the top 10 if not top 5 team bonuses in the game though one small note I should make is that while
llamas used to have more line of sight than sheep and were then better at scouting that is no longer
the case moving on to their proper sip bonuses the first is that their military units have an
increasing food discount as you age up this impacts many different units and is obviously
helpful throughout the entire game even in the Dark Age you already save 9 food per militia
increase into something better than free supplies and Imperial age for Champions and also offsets a
recent increase in the food cost of Eagle Warriors even units you wouldn't immediately think of like
petards genitors and xolotl warriors are also affected so basically anything except crossbows
monks and Siege give unusually good value don't underestimate how quickly this bonus adds up and
also keep in mind that food is the slowest of the resources for villagers to collect moving
on their next bonus is a villager's benefit from the Infantry upgrades of the blacksmith
starting in Castle age much like these Spanish Supremacy Tech I see this mostly as a defensive
bonus making your villagers harder to raid for example they take 50 percent more attacks from
hussars than a generic civilization and roughly double the number of arrows from a lot of archers
and Cavalry archers while also doing up to four times as much damage in return if they actually
end up fighting hand to hand they're not as good as Spanish villagers especially in terms of HP but
in one extreme example against Elite skirmishers they go from taking 8 to taking 40 javelins so in
the right matchups their armor goes a long way on the flip side another obvious benefit is its
offensive potential to help establish forward bases or Castle drops in Castle age they take
these same 40 javelins from Elite skirmishers and are just going to survive that extra bit longer
against almost anything including surviving a direct mangonel shot which they're more likely to
survive with a couple of HP left over that's the kind of thing that can make the difference between
getting a castle successfully versus having it get stuck at 95 percent because all your forward
villagers are taken out somewhat related to this their next bonus is that their buildings cost 15
less Stone this saves 19 Stone per Tower 98 Stone per castle one stone per wall segment and even 15
Stone per Town Center if you're booming the Synergy with stronger late game villagers is
pretty obvious as your doubly incentivized to make aggressive castles of course it's not as big of a
discount as the Frank's 25 cheaper castles per se but again it's very on brand for Incas that
their bonus applies to multiple buildings again emphasizing flexibility and finally their last
bonus also saves some resources this time with houses supporting 10 population instead of five
theoretically this could save up to nearly 500 wood throughout the game on top of about 8 minutes
of building time though I think most people would agree the value is more about convenience
than total resources typically players start with the usual two houses though unlike other
civilizations after those two you're probably set Through The Dark Age that's 50 Woods saved right
there on top of 90 extra food from your llama and 27 Foods saved on three militia so while they're
more subtle bonuses their early advantages add up and always give an unusually smooth start to the
game the one downside of their House's Dimension is that if you don't have some extra houses as a
buffer you can actually get housed pretty quickly if they're being raised as your Pop Cap drops
by 10 instead of 5 with every house destroyed so that's their bonuses and between the extra llama
food discount Stone discount and wood savings from houses we already get the sense this is a
civilization designed around flexibility that said when people talk about Incas as a counter
civilization they're usually not talking about their bonuses but more typically they're unique
units which we'll take a look at now we'll start with the kamayuk which is their Castle unique unit
now I recently made a video looking at them in depth but to hit the highlights the unit strength
doesn't really come from its stats which on the face of it are comparable or even slightly worse
than a long sword while individually each unit costs more instead its value mostly comes down
to its extra one range allowing them to almost always get an attack in first against enemy units
and also exploit pathing issues that exist in the game getting every one of the kamayuks involved
in the fight faster while enemy units bump off of each other now so far you might expect you need a
very large group to see this effect but as I found in that recent video even 5 5 they consistently
went against longswords who they otherwise lose to one on one it is true in larger groups though
their advantage continues to grow taking some very one-sided fights against generic infantry once you
start getting 10 kamayuks or more together you can even do some rudimentary hit and run
with that extra range as they're actually faster than the swordsman line maybe the more impressive
thing about the unit though is thanks to a bonus against Cavalry they can beat knights with equal
numbers which differentiates them from Pikeman who actually lose tonight's without a numbers
Advantage the downside is they cost 30 gold per unit and require castles to create whereas of
course Pikes and halberdiers are from the barracks and only cause food and wood in fact Incas in
general can be quite cold intensive but assuming you have the gold the kamayuk is a strict upgrade
over the pipeline especially once you can mask them they even end up doing pretty well against
archers in the late game after unique Tech taking about 50 percent more arrows than a champion and
around 3 times the arrows of the halberdier I wouldn't say they counter archers and you'd
want Eagles in that situation but anytime you need a meat Shield against either infantry or cavalry
and especially if there's enemy archers around the kamayuk is a great option now where kamayuk can be
thought of as the flexible answer to Cavalry their second unique unit is their answer to infantry
that brings us to the Slinger which is the Inca's archery range unique unit again I recently did a
deep dive into this unit and walked away pretty impressed stats wise it's nearly identical to
the crossbow at first glance though does have a number of disadvantages including the fact
it can't be masked in feudal age like archers can and they're also a bit worse than micro its main
selling feature though is that it has a plus 10 bonus against infantry just like the hand
Cannon ear this makes them a great option to deal with the increasing popularity of infantry units
in Castle age but even in Imperial age their high accuracy and Fast Fire rate makes them
at least as good as hand cannoneers against most infantry while also being significantly cheaper
given their similar costs stats and fire rate to crossbows they actually end up performing similar
to crossbows against Knights assuming you pick up their unique Tech Indian sling which removes their
minimum range and gives them plus one attack in late castle age at least that makes them
roughly as dangerous tonight as a similar size group of crossbows without thumb ring while they
fare poorly in contrast against heavy Cavalry and Imperial age after the unique Tech fabric Shields
they can actually win against our blasters with equal members meaning they aren't totally useless
against things outside of infantry of course like any ranged unit their hard counters are
mostly skirmishers and especially mangonels and onagers as Slingers only have 40 HP I
should also reiterate as well as it's not always intuitive they are affected by the Archer attack
upgrades both of their unique texts are also quite important to the unit and like archers
they're affected by ballistics chemistry and have their accuracy but not fire rate improved by thumb
ring so personally I consider thumb Rank by far their least important upgrade together the unique
units counter two of the basic unit types with their ego Warrior functioning as a third option
against archers Siege and monks completing the set now let's move on and talk about the unique
texts which do a nice job of enhancing these core units the first is Andean sling which is quite
cheap and recently became much more important its first effect is removing the minimum range
of Slingers and skirmishers but recently gained a second effect of adding plus one attack to the
Slinger bringing it up to now match the crossbow situationally that's helpful for skirmishers but
that new effect means this is basically a required Tech if you're making Slingers to any reasonable
extent as given their low base attack they're often largely negated by armor so while it sounds
small that plus one can often mean 25 50 or even doubled the damage against enemy units though the
blacksmith attack upgrades for Archers give better value and are worth grabbing first following this
there are other unique Tech and Imperial age is fabric Shields giving plus one plus two
armor to kamayuks Slingers and Eagles as mentioned earlier this allows their Slingers to beat generic
R blasters one-on-one makes their kamayuks much better against arrows than the champion line and
also gives their Elite Eagle Warriors up to 10 Pierce armor making them even more persistent to
our blasters than Mayan Eagle Warriors now the tech is significantly more expensive than the
equivalent upgrade at the blacksmith but if you're against an opponent making a load of ranged units
then it's basically a must grab Tech if you can afford it with that said if you're relying instead
on other units or you're not worried about running into archers I would see this as more optional as
the 600 gold cost is significant if you aren't making good use of it so that's their unique
unit in tax with those two texts making your unique units and Eagles that much more dangerous
of course their food discount means lots of their options including trash units give especially good
value and now let's move on and take a broader look at their Tech Tree options starting with
the archers right away of course you don't have Cavalry archers but other than that it's a full
Tech Tree if you treat the Slinger as a hand cannoneer alternative you also have potentially
no minimum range on your fully upgraded and discounted skirmishers so the only thing to
knock is really that the crossbow line itself is totally generic that means despite their
flexibility they're not ideal as an Archer civ in a 2v2 game for example but I'll still give them
an A minus carried here by the Slinger they are often played as a crossbow civ in 1v1 games but
I wouldn't quite consider their archery range top tier next up for infantry you have fully
upgraded halberdiers Champions just missing gambesons and Eagle Warriors all with their
food costs discounted significantly their Eagle Warriors especially can be quite dangerous to
archers in the late game and throwing a cameo is an archer-resistant cavalry counter and you
have one of the most flexible infantry rosters I'd give them another a minus here as the tools
are definitely present though I don't think the barracks alone completely carries them they're
really at their best when combining an archery range and infantry unit moving on to the stable
while they can't technically build one they can convert one unlocking the gelato Warrior while
it's an unupgradable Knight and technically it would be an F here it's arguably better than the
dravidian stable in all honesty next up Prestige you have Siege engineers and basically everything
else you need bombard Cannon is always a nice option to have but of course you don't have
gunpowder and there's also no relevant bonuses here which holds them back still I'd say it's
a solid B and the siege dram especially is a nice option in the late game while monitors with maxed
out range are again all you usually need moving on now to the Navy traditionally Incas have been
pretty average on water according to the stats you do have the house bonus saving a bit of wood early
and cheaper Stone costs can also help defend the shore but you don't have a dedicated water
bonus they wouldn't be my first choice and I'd say they're a pretty generic feeling C plus on water
early as for the late game you have decent Fast Fire ships in galleons and it'll be interesting
to see if Incas eventually get the German or something comparable as for right now they're
one of the only civilizations that will struggle to bombard the enemy Shoreline again there's a lot
of civilizations I'd pick on water ahead of Incas and I'd say they're just a bee on water late or a
B minus Navy overall taking a quick look now at the monks lots of the good techs are here though
notably they're missing fervor and atonement fervor gives monks more speed and atonement
lets you convert enemy monks which isn't the most common situation but if you end up running into
an opponent that is also going for monks that can be a headache given your lack of Cavalry
and high HP units having at least Redemption and block printing adds an important option against
onagers in the late game which Incas can otherwise struggle quite a bit against and I'd say it's a B
for monks moving on to defenses this is definitely a strength of the civilization for a few reasons
the obvious ones are the stone discount letting you build an earlier castle and your villagers
having more armor and attack than usual having so many good counter units can also be great
when you're on the back foot and Slingers for example can help you stabilize against anything
from long swords to an infantry unique unit like the gbeto or chocolate thrower I'd say it's an a
for defenses and finally to wrap up with the trash units that is units that don't cost any gold you
are missing hussar but the halberdier and Elite skirmisher are at least discounted to make up
for that while that does mean you're lacking a bit of rating potential once gold runs out
and still give them a B minus and the stats seem to suggest that Inc is actually above average in
1v1 games lasting an hour longer when pooled starts to run out villagers being especially
hard to raid can also be a very nice bonus in those particularly long games so to give some
closing thoughts as we've seen repeatedly Incas are a very goal dependent but extremely flexible
civilization in the early game given your lack of Cavalry you can really be played as infantry or
archers or sometimes as a combination of the two both are common and either way you have a couple
of bonuses helping you out against aggressive civs on open Maps while it's definitely less popular
these days a tower Rush can also be a reasonable Choice given your Tower discount and remember any
forward villagers you have when you hit Castle age will instantly benefit from the extra armor
you might have picked up for infantry generally in the mid game though they're most commonly played
as a crossbow civilization though mixing in a few counter units like skirmishers or Eagles
against Archer civs or Slingers against infantry always feels very natural as for the Imperial age
the most popular units tend to be our blasters Eagles Slingers and kamayuk largely depending on
your opponent's strategy keep in mind that's also when your food discount really starts to shine
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so hopefully this was a helpful look at the Incas and gives you a few new ideas
for the next time you try them thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time