Nazca is a very interesting Caelum derived flying nation with immense possibility that got completely overshadowed by a single unit, the Supaya, an ethereal flying sacred akin to the Scelerian Shadow Vestal that can be freespawned in large numbers. People went nuts, going all in, trashing scales to get double bless or more, using degenerate strategies such as mass suicide of Inca Kings to get more Supaya summoners early, etc. People played Nazca with less research than Ermor and either overrran everyone in a tide of supayas or died with a whimper when running up against the handful of nations that hardcountered them.

Then multiple nerfs hit the Supaya. Summoning rate got cut in half, item boosted summoning got cut back and made more expensive, and all the best pretenders for double blessing Supayas got themselves nerfed. Consider if anyone would ever recruit Jaguar Warriors, one of the best sacreds, if the price went to 52 from 26. And I sure as hell would never recruit Shadow Vestals now that they are 45g. People kept playing Nazca as "ghostbirds" but started calling it underpowered. Some are even serious, besides all the sandbagging players engage in. This is, I believe, wrong. While Supaya centric Nazca is still possible, and not necessarily weak, this guide is focused on playing Nazca without the Supaya.

What does Nazca offer without Supayas? High mobility flyers combined with more siege power than Agartha. Universal cold resistance. Good access to battlemagic which also fly. Flying teleport capable thug chassis that can also claim thrones. All mages survive dying once, albeit with increased upkeep as a nonflying mummy with reanimation options. Access to every path of magic except water and blood. On the other hand, it depends on Caelum type troops which absolutely can't hold a line, has no reliable access to any path above level 2, and has heavy need for research in multiple schools while not being terribly good at research. Things are also pretty expensive, though it's by no means the worst in the age.

I suggest a N9E4 bless. It allows better scales than the F/W/B/D blesses desired by Supayas since the Pretender revamp, and allows some neat tricks with Incas, Hurins, and Huacas. Nazca can choose between a dormant teleporting Monolith and the Great Mother as pretenders, Dom7 with +2 scales. The choice is basically personal between something mobile and a giant rock that can easily crush armies in the early game but ends up stuck until a lab can be built. Most suggestions still work with heavier scales instead. Indeed, mass lancers always works better with heavy scales. Some of the points saved by not going bless could also fix Nazca's shallow path access in air/death, etc, though you should definitely keep the E4 for the priest mages.

With regards to Scales: Sloth 3 and Cold 3 are gimmes. Nazca can benefit from as much of any other scales as it can afford.

I won't go over all Nazca units, since anyone has access to the Inspector. Instead I will just give highlights.

Recruitables:

1) Aurac Runa Lancer, excellent value for what you get. Which is a massable light lance strike for 10g, and better stats than EA/MA Caelum get for the price, but without magical weapons or stormflying. Which means they are less useful in the late game, but that's a decent enough trade. These are your basic troops and primary expander if not using sacreds as well as to supplement sacreds. Recruit them if you don't have some special idea needing another troop. As is typical for flying lancers, they tend to win big or lose big. At a certain critical mass, the first strike deals enough damage that the enemy can no longer fight back effectively. Aurac Runa have more staying power than naked bats in case this does not work out, but not a whole lot more. As such, lancer centric armies should avoid fighting stronger or equal strength enemies. This is true for everyone but especially true for Nazca, since it really has no excuse for doing so. Fortunately for Nazca, these guys are also the ultimate PD killers. Have plenty of commanders with your army, so the army can break up and take every province without an enemy army if you don't think you can win head on. Lancers absolutely are not viable blockers, they win or they die very quickly, keep this in mind.

2) Aurac Runa Archer, flying shortbow. Nazca can easily pull off flaming arrows and wind guide. Problem? The archer has an annoyingly high resource cost and Nazca probably takes sloth 3, and Nazca further completely lacks flying blockers worth a damn. Nazca can reanimate longdead, but losing out on mobility by using nonflyers is a big cost that's probably not worthwhile. And one should never overestimate flaming arrows by itself in Dom4 in the first place. There are a lot of armies that shrug it off. They come into their own as a supplement to Nazca skellispamming by providing bodies to siege and block turn one attacks on the mages, without getting in the way of skeletons as melee flyers would do.

3) Hatun Runa, cheap flying slave. Don't expect these guys to fight worth a damn. Against better enemies, they will flail wildly, die and run, then route your army with them. Use them to soak lances and evocations if you can't arrange for longdead to do the job instead. They can be useful to swarm skellispammers, their maces are effective against longdead and in sufficient numbers they will finish off the first wave and get to the mages before the next wave. They also provide very cheap patrolling, sieging, and siege defense.

4) Condor Warrior and Sun Guard, these are your sacreds, and sadly mutually exclusive in your capitol. Condor Warriors are slightly better versions of your basic lancer but for twice the cost and stormflying. You recruit them anyway if you don't need Sun Guard because stormflying is simply useful to have. Sun Guard are slower than all your other flyers at map move 2, which is incredibly annoying to work around. They are slightly tougher than Condors and indeed the best armored guy in Nazca's lineup, but don't expect them to hold a line. Instead they are murderously effective specialists against elite undead and demons. They will one shot devils and storm demons assuming they aren't grounded by a storm and shot to pieces at range. They will annihilate undead thugs. Of course they will also one shot longdead, but you can't outpace skellispamming killing them one at a time. The magical maces also solve other problems needing magical weapons. Decide which sacred to recruit based on your neighbors and estimates of what they will field. If you see someone likely to field lots of demons, recruit Sun Guard and never stop.

5) Humans. Undisciplined but quite cheap and decent fighters for their price. The best one is the one with javelins, but curiously wearing mere reinforced cloth reduces them to map move 1. Recruitable from all mountains, so quite useful during initial expansion. Another nation might build strategies around them, but with Nazca which has plentiful flying chaff, the loss of mobility means they aren't useful post expansion.


Summons:

1) Supaya. Again, roughly a flying Shadow Vestal, but even less able to kill things with a single 13 damage MR negating spear attack. You get 2 per turn with any undead H3 priest, 3 with the national Huaca headdress item at Construction 4. I recommend killing off your starting prophet after expansion, then prophetize a moundking/bane/basic Mallqui to have a cheap way to get a few. You could delay prophetizing to turn 2 for a basic Mallqui to start getting Supayas earlier, but I prefer the smoother expansion that a turn 1 prophet allows. You can also summon them with death gems, do not do this, Nazca is critically short of D gems. Without F/B/D blesses they really can't kill anything, but are pretty tanky against many enemies given protection buffs. I use them mainly to fight underwater. Supayas can actually fly underwater, which is less useful than it sounds given the lack of evocations or archery, but it might surprise someone once.

2) Huacas. Solid summons with a Huaca headdress, which gives 7 for 15 astral pearls. Stormflyers with magic weapons and pretty tanky with E4N9 with awe and resists to fire/cold/shock. Conjuration 5 is not an early research target, but they are very useful in the lategame.

3) Condors. Mobile siege platforms. One cast for 9 gems gives 74 humans worth of siege power with zero upkeep. Most nations would kill for this. Of course, just 37 slaves equals that for Nazca. Nonetheless, these things are still useful for stacking up the siege power to get that critical 1 turn cracking.

Commanders:

1) Runancha, Kuraka, Apu, Apuquispay; scout and basic commanders. Nazca will recruit all of them, including building one or more labless forts specifically to churn out the fort requiring ones. Flying scouts are simply useful for ferrying items and gems, and you need flying commanders for your armies and hordes of slaves. Human commanders are dirt cheap for ferrying troops around inside your own borders. Apu can be suicided to get a basic mummy which can capture slaves for slightly cheaper than recruitment, paying in population and commander upkeep instead of gold up front. Use Apuquispays to actually command troops since the extra point of morale from 80 commander is well worth the slightly higher price per unit commanded. There are human mages too, but they are only good for the a/n crosspath and providing nature access if there are no better indies around. They offer disease healer though, which while an useless cost increase 90% of the time in this nation without old age, can occassionally be a lifesaver.

2) Aclla, basic researcher, F1A1. It's not the cheapest researcher around, nor is it the most useful, but it's still better than average in both metrics. With minimal research, it can raise a few phantasms in emergencies. With a gem/firepot, it can spam fireball. Suiciding one gets you a priestess mummy, the most cost effective way for Nazca to raise longdead. I really wouldn't intentionally do this as a strategy though, since you're maybe 1/4 as effective as Sceleria, and sacrifice mobility trying to use longdead. However, while suicide may not be a viable tactic by itself, near suicide surely is. Once you hit Evo 6, give an Aclla a fire gem and some expendable bodyguards. Script Phoenix Power, attack 1 turn, Flame Eruption x 3. Chances of death are high, but what a way to go. Works well with a high alpha army of lancers. The lance charge hopefully disrupts the enemy enough for your flame eruptions to go off. Some or many of your own lancers may get caught in the fire, but their bolt would be mostly shot anyway by turn 3.

3) Hurin Priest, primary combat mage, D2 + E2/E1A1/E1S1. Very expensive, but still one of the best battlemages in this game. All can skelespam, shadowblast, or summon Lammashtas. All 3 randoms offer useful specialty battlemagic. E2s give earth battle magic, and are also the best skelespammers with some gear. An N9 bless with the astral randoms would allow pocket communions running off just 2 slaves, since you sure as hell can't afford a larger communion without finding lizard shamans, which would in any case sacrifice mobility. Air gives Wailing Winds and Rain of Stones later, but he is the least useful en mass.

4) Inca, the king, cap only flying thug chassis and general with A2F2H3. He is sufficiently cheap to lead flying expansion parties with bless and smite. It's really amazing how useful he is after playing any nation without flying, cloud trapeze capable H3s to claim thrones and lead armies, and it's kind of crazy people used to suicide him for nothing en mass to raise Supayas. Still, he will die in any game, at which point he will kill the first queen he finds and become a super mummy, which you'll still use to raise supayas for the rest of time. Like the Aclla, he can pull a near suicide attack with some bodyguards. Except he gets shockwave, so he can do this much earlier, and it's even more suicidal since the first shockwave will obliterate your own bodyguards, being range 1 instead of 5. Later, he can pull this while hardly being suicidal at all, since Incas are valuable enough to warrant a bodyguard of Huacas, which will survive shockwave and flame eruption, and tank a lot of attacks.

5) Coya, the queen, cap only forger, E2S2D2. The queen is in theory Nazca's best combat mage, but don't try using her as one, since Hurins can do most of the work. Recruit 2-3 to site search and forge and summon Huacas later. Don't plan on hitting any of the randoms. As soon as possible, twice born (enchant 4) and suicide them in dominion to turn into wight mages. This is what the first Queen did, according to the Immortal Coya Pretender description, and I figure she knew what she was about. If all your Queens are wights, then your Kings won't bother killing them when they die.

6) Royal Mallqui, ridiculously expensive mummy. Normally used for summoning Supayas. Not going for supayas, you're still probably going to recruit at least 1, if you didn't get an Inca/Coya couple killed before you could twiceborn the Coyas, for the otherwise impossible to achieve crosspaths; F/D, F/E, F/S. It's also the only way you're going to mount a teleporting Rain of Stones attack in the lategame. When not doing those tasks, it will also raise supayas. In theory, a full Mallqui offers useful battlemagic, especially if communion slaves are found, but I wouldn't try too hard to do it. Triple the cost for double the casting, and only 1 script? No thanks. Plus the loss of mobility is really a killer.

Nazca's big advantages are high mobility, very high siege power combined with easy fort storming/throne claiming, and ability to field 2 diametrically opposite types of armies supplemented by thugs.

First is the Win Now army, that tries to crush the enemy with a wave of lances, and win the battle in the first charge. This is ideal against enemies that want the time to buff up, or fire arrows, or spam evocations. It needs no research to start with, but becomes more powerful once you can supplement it with ironbane and a wave of shadowblasts turn 1, and even earthquake and suicidal Acllas/Incas. Slow acting spells don't really help here. Great at storming forts, since it minimizes exposure to tower fire, and doesn't give a mass of research mages the time to really pull any tricks. Storm hits this hard, despite the availability of a few stormflyers, since they can't get the mass needed.

Second is the Slow Grind army that relies on waves of skeletons, supplemented by archers and fireballs and battlefield spells like Rigor Mortis, Curse of Stones, Wailing Winds, Grip of Winter(if you find water mages), and also Ironbane. This takes a lot more research to bring on line, since it needs Enchantment on top of Conjuration/Alteration/Evocation, but is great against forces that would crush your lancers head on. An army of Ulmish blackplates for instance, would laugh at your lances, then chop your guys to bits. Only after building up fatigue do critical hits start getting through that armor.

Rarely is it a good idea to combine the two, since archers will shoot your lancers in the back, who will block skeletons from getting to the front, etc.

By using both types of forces and matching them against appropriate enemies using your superior mobility, you can get around most counters. Sometimes though you just won't have the research yet to field the desired tactic, leaving you no choice but to resort to guerilla warfare, which thankfully Nazca is excellent at. Slaves will hold up your forts while 2 dozen lancers will punch out any reasonable PD. Groups of flyers can easily recombine on lightly guarded forts and rapidly crack the walls. This is useful regardless of course, simply to deny the enemy resources.

Incas will be your senior generals, blessers, casters of flaming arrows and wind guide or alternatively mist to degrade enemies with superior firepower. Some more will join the suicidal assault corps, while a few will get gear and be thugs. Geared Inca thugs, serve 2 very important roles. Simply punching out PD is beneath them, when Nazca can so easily do that with troops. First they serve by using cloud trapeze to clear provinces in front of your armies so you get the defensive advantage, or taking a province in the path of the enemy army to stop enemy movement. With considerably more tailored equipment and the thug bless, they can also, thanks to their wide array of built in resistances, destroy mage supported armies with a cloud trapeze attack as long as the enemy are scripted to fight your armies and not the Inca. Thug is something of a misnomer here, since PD is really not their job, though SC often implies something which may be impossible in Dom4, fighting an enemy army with mages scripted to face you.

Of course, it's true for all nations that one should ideally never fight the enemy army head on, but instead trap them into battlefield spells while your main forces do other things elsewhere. Most other nations though have the excuse that they lack the mobility to avoid head on collisions. Nazca combines mobility with a large number of options for trapping armies. An E2 with boots can cast Earthquake turn 2. The utility combined with an all flying force should be obvious. An Air Priest with earthboots can cast Rain of Stones. An Inca with a bodyguard of Huacas can cast Firestorm with nationally forgeable boosters. The Huacas can then hold the line while Firestorm does its work. Some work with communions can even get you Storm/Wrathful Skies which Huacas are again immune to. Stacking these spells can defeat enemy counters. Mass protection and Fog Warriors against RoS get countered by Firestorm while even endgame Army of Gold might no sell Firestorm and RoS but only increases vulnerability to Wrathful Skies.

Against enemies trying traps against you, Nazca's main option is always fighting defensively, by using Incas to provinces with a teleport attack before your army moves, plus a turn 1 flying charge to ensure those spells that need time to work don't and hopefully nail casters. Getting up to big battlefield buffs turn 1 is hard with Nazca's shallow paths, and most situations requiring them is probably better dealt with using a specifically geared Inca thug.

To win the game rather than mere battles, Nazca should exploit its ability to rapidly claim thrones; being able to fly in a force, crack the fort in 1 turn, then storm and claim. Its endgame is very much avoiding direct contact unless absolutely necessary and cracking throne forts quickly. Intelligence is critical, to identify moments when rivals, thanks to ongoing wars or troop movements, simply cannot react fast enough to your throne rush, which Nazca can pull off earlier and faster than most. Obviously, this does work better in games that don't set extremely high throne requirements.

Longdead, and Supayas without a bless to let them kill things, are sidelines to solve niche problems rather than a mainline. The largest niche is fighting underwater. Also, a small number of N9 Supayas with iron warriors buffed can tank nonmagical attacks as well as Agarthan statues. The question of course becomes how that ability fits into Nazcan needs, and it really doesn't.

Nazca is well suited to Lammashtas, albeit not as well as LA Ulm. Summon and retreat. If the Hurin Priest (use air ones since they are less useful en mass) dies, he'll just go home and raise longdead. It's a relatively low research way to chew up mageless armies when you don't have enough troops, or they are better used elsewhere.

Ice Armor is really dangerous in your and their cold dominion. It turns Caelians into Ulmish but without their crap mobility. And ice weapons laugh at Supayas if you field any, and Lammashtas too. Enough skeletons and slaves to soak their thunderstrikes and fatigue out ice armor works well enough, but again, lots of research, at which Caelum is better, and Caelum can always drop a mass of air elementals and wreck the skellis. Caelum is just straight up stronger than Nazca in their matchup, so little choice except to play better.

An N9 bless lets Nazca pull off mini-communions with 2 slaves and 5 masters, including an N mage plugged in by crystal to buff regen. They are hardly a match to the kind fielded by Pythium, but Pythium's can't fly. With Alteration 6, this becomes legit communion power, when you can propagate soul vortex to the comslaves, and surround the slaves with a pack of condors. The condors both regenerate and helpfully have low MR to help in their own lifedraining. 10 masters is easily doable on 2 slaves. An Inca with a master crystal and some gear can sit up front and spam shockwave and flame eruption on anyone that gets close, while other Hurin Priests spam skeletons and drop Gifts from Heaven. Needless to say, this is pretty vulnerable to magic duel against strong astral nations.

Without N9, communions are still possible. There are a few caveats though, as regeneration powered "turbo communions" are generally limited by number of masters only, while conventional communions have to actually calculate fatigue. First, the minimal communion size is roughly 4 slaves and 6 masters, assuming E4 bless. 2 slave communions do not work without N9, and you must have one master cast Power of the Spheres each battle to boost slave paths, which roughly halves fatigue. Second, you cannot plug in non-hurins into the Communion with master crystals unless you know exactly what you are doing, as any master casting using paths not possessed by the slaves will generate 4x fatigue.

An E2 Hurin Priest with a skull staff, girdle of might, and boots of the messenger, plus E4 bless and earthpower, can skelespam indefinitely, twice every 3 turns even after fatiguing out. Use these guys instead of astral against astral nations.

Shallow path access is painful, so always keep Nazca's options for boosting paths in mind, through "bootstrapping", communions, or forged boosters. A notable booster that is often forgotten is the Crystal Shield, an expensive and kind of terrible item that only works in battles, but can nonetheless boost all paths by 1 in battle. Forgeable by Coyas, it is Nazca's easiest access to Firestorm, and turn 1 Earthquake.

Research path starts out easy, but gets much more complicated later. Evo 3 and Conjuration 4 are the initial targets. That gets Phoenix Power, Earth Power, Lammashtas, Strength of Gaia, Shockwave, Fireball, and Sleep Cloud (for the pretender). A good initial set of spells. At this point, Alteration/Construction/Enchantment all offer abilities that you can't research at once, so you have to pick depending on enemies and what would be most effective against them. Each additional step in any path gives more immediately useful magic out to 6 for everything but blood and thaumaturgy. This may be Nazca's great weakness, since its large array of options is split between a large number of schools, and it's no Bogarus at research.

Teleporters dropping on top of your forces and to a lesser extent remote attacks are a serious problem. A big part of Nazca's schtick is to use its mobility to ensure the right force fights the right enemy, but teleporters and remotes turn that around since the enemy gets to design the attack and know what it's going up against. There is no easy solution that I know of. You certainly should spend some effort wiping out enemy scout networks with slave patrollers to limit enemy intelligence on how to hit your forces.

Nazca's national advantages peak around when it hits Evo7, and 6s elsewhere. While it certainly still gains power with greater research like anyone else, its relative power starts falling once anyone can get mobile armies, teleporting thugs, 1 turn fort cracking, ability to resist battlefield spells, etc. This is exacerbated by Nazca's path access, only partially ameliorated by boosters, once more high path magic starts popping out. You should seriously consider turning everyone out of the lab at this point and going for the win.