help needed with new Paradise Found scenario

nokmirt

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I am not sure who is playing this right now but on king level I am falling drastically behind in culture. My guess is I need to build a larger empire, right now mine has 5 cities producing around 85-90 culture per turn.

Some of my shortcomings may be because...

1.)During this particular game I was late in finding the large island to the southwest. This island is very important because it seems to be the only real land mass in Water World.

2.)I tried to go to war with a neighbor and was defeated (I needed one more Maoi warrior and I would have taken their capital, by the time I finished building a new army the game is close to ending, so it will make no difference.). War probably was not the right answer to hinder my opponents because, they all seem to develop at the same rate and I would have to conquer all of them.

3.)I should have built more cities and did everything in my power to develop statues and temples as quick as possible. When I finally began to do this it was too late.

I think I will stick to working on expansion, science, and culture in my next game.

If anyone has any views or tips on this scenario. Please let me know what you have learned, or what you know.
 
Ignore science, there is a 30 turn gap between when the first civ researches pre-cook techs and when cook appears. Getting there first just means you lose 30 turns of tech.

The policy cost increase per city is completely removed in this scenario, so spamming many small cities is a very strong strat, especially since many policies give per city culture.

The cultural city states can amass a HUGE amount of culture for you and should be top priority. When they are giving you culture, they are NOT giving the AI culture too.

The AI gets a policy cost discount, so you will always be behind early on no matter what you do. It's up to you to develop a powerful empire that can overcome that early AI advantage.

Late game war is worth ridiculous culture with the triple culture per kill policy. Get some Frigates and patrol the seas for barbarians to help you pickup the last 1-2 policies.

Good luck, it's very fun!
 
The key is rapid expansion. At first I tried a strategy of building moai statues everywhere, this is not a good idea. Build your main cities large and build lots of cities. Per city culture bonuses add up quite a bit and I ended up being 5 policies ahead this game compared to being neck and neck or losing in previous. A late game war is ok with the triple culture like the other poster said, but is only necessary if you are very closely losing.

Once you get ahead you should be able to stay ahead, so the key is to get a lead early on.

Its quite a fun scenario.
 
Thanks for the help. My game keeps crashing on turn 159 everytime. Has anyone else had any crash issues? I am going to try a new game and follow your advice.
 
I've only seen one or two people with crashes. Please post the save here and I'll try to reproduce it. If I can't I'll upload the next turn for you, if I can I'll send it to 2k.
 
I've only seen one or two people with crashes. Please post the save here and I'll try to reproduce it. If I can't I'll upload the next turn for you, if I can I'll send it to 2k.

I have the crash save on my laptop. I am playing a second game as Samoa, right now I am on turn 156 so we'll see if it crashes again. I was playing as Tahiti when my first game crashed. If this game crashes I will send you both saves so if you can't continue to the next turn, 2K can look into it.
 
Yep, quickly build many small cities. Build a Monument and a Temple as soon as you can.
Build Scouts and send them out exploring, there are lots of ruins, and you'll get some free culture. :)
 
I was defeated on king, fairly close deal there. In the end, I had 2 policies left and the AI had 1. Marked improvement from my first game when I was behind around 4 policies.

One thing I want to do next time is invest in a cultured city state, and spam a few more cities earlier. I think that will make the difference. I even had Rapa Nui settled, I did not find Hawaii but had New Zealand settled. Two cities on a northern island and one on the southern island. The more cities the better next game. I had a lot of cities but they were spread out and too far in between, that led to my defeat.
 
I was defeated on king, fairly close deal there. In the end, I had 2 policies left and the AI had 1. Marked improvement from my first game when I was behind around 4 policies.

One thing I want to do next time is invest in a cultured city state, and spam a few more cities earlier. I think that will make the difference. I even had Rapa Nui settled, I did not find Hawaii but had New Zealand settled. Two cities on a northern island and one on the southern island. The more cities the better next game. I had a lot of cities but they were spread out and too far in between, that led to my defeat.

I've managed to win as each of the great Polynesian kings at the king level:king:, but it wasn't easy as Tahiti for some reason -- was defeated twice with one policy to go.:mad:

Anyway, my winning strategy:

1. Build settlers like crazy; the more cities you have the better. Start out settling the islands (even one-tile islands) nearby the capitol, and then spread out as you discover more of the map. Unlike a normal game where it is important to develop every tile, the main thing here is just to have the cities -- I should say, little rinky-dink towns.

2. Choose mining & then masonry as your first two techs; with masonry you can build the monument. Once researched, stop whatever production is happening and build monuments. The third tech can be whatever, but calendar is nice because you will probably have some plantation luxuries in your capitol (of course, sell all your duplicate luxuries ASAP).

3. The worker isn't terribly important very early on, but after you have your 2nd or 3rd city (about the time the advice lady starts nagging you about it) you should build a worker to work the plantation luxuries. Game wide, you shouldn't need more than 5 or 6 workers.

4. Work boats should be built for pearls & whales, but are less important for fish. Population becomes your enemy in this game, because you get positive benefits from small cities (assuming you choose the right policies): 7 culture + 1 happiness each. Whereas every pop increase costs you 1 happiness.

5. In your 2nd most productive city, build scouts like crazy. If a few get chewed up by barbarians it isn't a big huge loss. Discover the map as soon as you can, not only to find luxury tiles, but to meet all the (usually three) cultural CS and ally with them quickly (8+ culture per turn from each one, plus whatever luxuries they provide). Ally with the maritime & militaristic CS when you can afford it, mainly for the luxuries they provide, which makes your people happy, which lets you build more cities.

6. Since you need lots of money to make this strategy work, you should choose the economic tech as soon as you can, and then build markets in all your cities. My normal build is monument (which I buy for 200g if I can afford it at the time), and then market. After that I just build settlers and a few work boats.

7. I normally don't build temples early on, because settlers are almost twice as cheap and each new city with monument gives more culture than a temple. A little later, when I've maxed out my cities (as verified by a -10 happiness & they won't let me build any more cities), then I build or buy temples everywhere.

8. Some of the policies are totally worthless (like doubling the science from libraries & observatories, and double culture from statues), so save these to absolutely last. One of the best policies is at the bottom of the honor(?) tree: Culture at triple the value of the strengh of every enemy unit killed. You don't have to go to war for this -- there are enough barbarians around waiting to be killed, and you can do fine with a couple of archers and then caravels/frigates.

9. The culture statues are sort of worthless, since most of your cities won't grow big enough to work these tiles anyway. For what to build on the spare tiles: Anything which increaes production, like mines & sawmills, and even the statue if it increases production. Otherwise build trading posts for the gold.

10. Don't build granaries, except in the capitol; you don't need or want the increased pop. Don't waste your time & money on science buildings. You get all the science you need without any particular effort -- i.e., you're researching "future tech" long before you've reached the last policy.
 
I've done a few attempts on Emperor, my first attempt I lost with 2 turns which ofc I was a bit annoyed with, what I did wrong was to spam to few cities, only 7 in this game I believe but if I'd been a bit more agressive (I did no warring) I'd won it.

Some things worth considering.

- Many small cities as everyone says is a good idea, spam away with the settlers.

- Placement less important but grabbing many luxuries is good because happiness can be a problem in this scenario.

- Moai statues can be really good so I don't agree with other here on this one. Placed individually they'll not net you much but if placed in masses they'll gain you alot of culture. I had a six or seven tile grassland island with one city and the land covered with moai statues, each statue that's in a tile beside another statue will net more culture, so if I recall correctly I had +3,+3,+4,+4,+5,+5 culture or something on these 6 moai statues, all worked by the city.

- Temples are important to get early, apart from the tempe bonus on culture they'll gain you great artist points, and each specialist artist nets 3 culture each turn which isn't bad. And when you get a great artist, use him on a landmark, 6 culture bonus on one tile is alot, sure, golden ages can be good but doesn't really help culture along unless it speeds up your temples/monuments. So for a change, in this scenario the landmark is useful.
 
I was defeated on king, fairly close deal there. In the end, I had 2 policies left and the AI had 1. Marked improvement from my first game when I was behind around 4 policies.

One thing I want to do next time is invest in a cultured city state, and spam a few more cities earlier. I think that will make the difference. I even had Rapa Nui settled, I did not find Hawaii but had New Zealand settled. Two cities on a northern island and one on the southern island. The more cities the better next game. I had a lot of cities but they were spread out and too far in between, that led to my defeat.

you'll have to be satisfied with city spots you wouldn't even think about in a normal game (meaning 1 tile islands with fish or perls are sufficient) as your main goal is to just have a spot to put a monument and a temple in. workers are also much less needed, as you won't find much land anyways (normally), so build them late (about when you can build Maori statues is early enough, if you don't experience hapiness probs before).
So your build order is 'unit - settler' in each newly founded city and make sure to take the arts SP-tree first (what else? :)).
I btw. built science buildings to tech towards temples, but it surely is a waste afterwards. Probably those buildings should be sold after reaching temples to rush buy more cities.
In the middle/late game, when you have fully built up your capital, you can spam new cities guarded with Rifles from there like mad and immediately rush buy monuments and temples (if affordable) in them.
That method was sufficient for Prince (don't know whether it's enough for King).

PS.: Maori-statues are even good in a normal game (yesterday achieved a culture victory with 6 cities on a Large Peninsula), not to speak from the scenario where their culture is doubled. REX-ing with them is a bit more work, but I think they are the best civ to early REX on peninsula cards (as they can square oceans from the beginning).
So next try will be a normal REX-victory on a large peninsula game with them.

PS2.: I don't like the change that culture now gets doubled by an SP in all cities (before the patch you needed a wonder in it). I think that's quite trivializing cultural victories as a whole.
 
In the middle/late game, when you have fully built up your capital, you can spam new cities guarded with Rifles from there like mad and immediately rush buy monuments and temples (if affordable) in them.
That method was sufficient for Prince (don't know whether it's enough for King).

You can spam cities as much as you possibly can with regard to happiness, it'll work on Emperor as well. Guarding all with rifles is really not necessary, late game it's enough to have frigates patrolling the sea and you should be able to defend from the AI easily, as it's a "small island with alot of water" map the AI is not able to handle any invasion effectively.
 
On my second try as Tahiti on Deity I managed to win on turn 149. Last time I was defeated well before that, I think on turn 136 was it. This time getting culture CS' fast and declaring war on all AIs blocked them out of cheap culture.
I started with quick settler spam to three cities and after that built some infrastructure (boats, worker, more scouts). And back to settler in the capital. Research was focused on the monuments, then obtaining luxuries and lastly on the temple.
On the policies side I chose 10% discount and little bit of happiness and after that took the triple-kill culture.
I built only a single warrior, everything else was archers and cannons. AI had huge navy and took 4 of my cities down to single HP. But they didn’t bring any land units to support  There was a single case, when a rifleman appeared along with the navy. That city was also very close to AI’s border.
 
This scenario is way too easy, even on emperor. Just building 3/4 scouts (to find the city states) and settler spamming (until you're maxed out on unhappyness) will get you the win on everything up to emperor (haven't tried deity or immortal yet).
 
Won as Samoa on Deity. This time I managed to nerf Tonga at start of the game :) Took his second settler with my free warrior and he never built a city again!? Build order was monument->settler all the way. Starting policy was arts for additional culture for the monuments and cities.
 
I would just like to point out that you can win via domination. Not necessarily the best idea, but one nonetheless.
 
Major necro there...But I experienced pretty much the same thing when I played this like ~2 days ago on emperor. I got the "Indian" civ, so I only settled a total of 4 cities, which in retrospect is probably the reason I was lagging behind, but in the end I could just win it quite easily trough domination. With a barracks in every city, which was easy with so few, you can build the wonder that, in this scenario, provides the amphibious promotion for free, so in combination with the military opening policy and the new tech I was cranking out amphibious riflemen with 2 starting promotions from my capital while my second highest production city built a cannon (there's rarely enough space to get more then 1 in range anyway) and then focused on frigates to help softening up the defenses.
That wonder really is the key though, without it you will be forced to attack with a 50% penalty, or only get a very small number of units attacking the city on the second turn after landing, so on a map like this it really isn't optional.
 
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