Reform religion as aztecs?

[KEKMaster3000]

Do you really have to conquer 5 nations 5 times to reform? I don't really understand this. It feels quite boring and exhausting.

[RCMidas]

Welcome to why they were wiped out more by their neighbours than by the Spanish.

[Marquoz]

It's hard, even for a player. It's supposed to be hard. I've never seen the Aztecs successfully reform under AI control, and that's good. It should be a very rare event, if it ever happens at all. For a player to overcome the tide of history and take any New World tribe into the modern era should require major effort--so major that playing them is for variety and challenge, not for a casual campaign.

[RCMidas]

Serious question. Does the Nahuatl AI even know how to reform itself? The Mayans and Inti both need to be highly successful with their expansion, which typically means the Iberians/colonial players have already arrived to cut them off; but the Nahuatl have it even worse.

[Marquoz]

I've never seen the Nahuatl AI reform--but that's not enough by itself to determine whether or not the AI knows how. Knowledge != capability.

[RCMidas]

I kinda wanna play as an colonial power now, whose goal is to preserve the Mesoamericans until they can get their crap together and reform...

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

I'm sure it'll be made a lot easier and way more powerful when they eventually come out with the South America flavor pack. Not exactly the right continent, I know, but close enough considering how sparsely populated the continent is.

[RCMidas]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

I kinda wanna play as an colonial power now, whose goal is to preserve the Mesoamericans until they can get their crap together and reform...

So, at the moment I don't think they CAN reform their religion, in the strictest sense.

I had them all surrounded, calm with me, fully to update with Institutions etc for a good century. The Inti and Mayans seem basically able to advance their progress, though the former have a tendency to suffer setbacks with the Pretender rebellions; and latter are almost incapable of expanding enough to get the minimum 20 cored provinces required (five times over).

The Nahuatl nations keep interrupting each other before five vassals can be acquired, or in some cases just keep fully annexing or even integrating them with no apparent progress in combating the oncoming Doom.

More to the point, when I got tired of looking at this mess around 1600, I started handing the AI everything they needed. Again, both the Mayans and the Inti responded well (with the Nahuatl only cooperating after ludicrous quantities of commands and tag-switches), but then I left them bordering me for about five years with the option to click a button and Reform Religion.

No bueno.

I tag-switched over just to double-check that everything was ready for them to do so, and still nada.

So even if by some obscene miracle one of the three primitive religions manages to pass all five of its reforms and border a more advanced nation...I simply don't believe the AI knows it can press that button.

Basically what I'm saying is "Conquistador Time!"

[LiS_Johnny Sullivan]

From a player perspective I actually kind of like playing as a nahuatl nation. It feels like a fun minigame in the early campaign, with its own challenges. But its definitly achieveable to reform your religion, even for less experienced players. Maybe not on the first try, but you will be successful sooner or later. The boring part begins when you have to wait for the europeans to arrive. And even than the campaign gets pretty boring. I never really played much after reforming my religion.

Also nahuatl is way more fun to play than inti or mayan in my opinion.