Indonesia The bonus resources are nice, but they are not a big deal. Any other civilization with a happiness building will easily be able to exceed that bonus. The Candi has a very situational bonus and is unilkely to give you a lot of additional faith, you are very dependent on the religious performance of your neighbors, therefore the bonus you receive from it is minimal.
Yeah I've done fairly well with them. Don't get me wrong, they're not top tier, but I don't think they're bottom any more. It's mainly about not going ott on cities or moai. Bear in mind that you don't need to work all your moai, and that going wide you can spend a few rubbish tiles which you wouldn't work anyway to get one or two good ones. You don't need to moai every single tile, and should still improve the lux''s and farm the wheat etc. ICS is dead for everyone from science, but wide is not; the science penalty is not that strong if you stay reasonable, and culture policies get a much bigger boost from Polynesia (relative to other wide civs) than they used to. When I've played, I've taken liberty (sometimes with tradition opener for borders), then mixed aesthetics with rationalism (which Polynesia does need).
Tbh, I haven't really found the need to get landmarks, as moai do a good job anyway, so the few that I did get out really benefitted from being super fast as they were being snapped up, so I focused on depriving the culture leader from what they had yet to get. You are right that they don't get there super early, but tech stealing and a little intelligence over where to steal is a great leveller .
Lastly, you don't need to crazy on the moai super early; I spammed them near the end when I had lots of pop and was getting tourism, but for the majority of the game they were just in the prime spots.
PS. Not about their strength really as it's situational and a little role playey, but I found it really fun when warring to take workers with me to quickly get moai up on the edge of new puppets to attack the next city. I also found planning city placement very interesting and fun.
edit: Oh yeah, of the 4 games I played w Polyneisa I had 1 diplo win, 2 culture wins, and one loss. 75% for me feels about par for a middle tier civ on deity. There was 1 pangea, 1 continents (the loss), 1 continents plus and one small continents. All standard size and pace, all else standard except quick movement and fighting.
Can anyone explain to me why Egypt are so highly rated? As far as I am aware, the UU is not brilliant? Ok it doesn't require horses and it's an archer with far more move speed but is it that good? Burial Tombs as well seem to be a double edged sword, they make you a very tempting target but does the AI realise that? I don't know whether it's sophisticated enough.
Finally their UA, I can appreciate the importance of this UA but I've often found that on higher difficulty levels that you're just not going to get some of the earlier wonders and when it comes to late game wonders, if you've played the science game well enough, you just have no competition at all. The best use of this UA I can think of is for the mid game wonders; Chichen Itza, Notre Dame etc since this tends to be where you catch up to the AI tech wise and you may need to compete with them.
Anyway, I'll stop blathering and let others explain, why are Egypt so good?
There aren't a lot of really out-of-reach Wonders, even in Deity. I believe only Great Library is impossible, and some of the early "achievable" ones have far-reaching effects, like ToA. You also can't really get a Religion without a Wonder (barring extreme luck), so being able to get Stonehenge or Hagia Sofia is good.
You also get the bonus on National Wonders, something that you want on EVERY game.
To finish, free early Happiness is extremely powerful, giving you flexibility to either expand hard or go very tall earlier than your opponents.
I never attacked anybody with a Chariot Archer so I'm not sure about it. =p
Can anyone explain to me why Egypt are so highly rated? As far as I am aware, the UU is not brilliant? Ok it doesn't require horses and it's an archer with far more move speed but is it that good? Burial Tombs as well seem to be a double edged sword, they make you a very tempting target but does the AI realise that? I don't know whether it's sophisticated enough.
Finally their UA, I can appreciate the importance of this UA but I've often found that on higher difficulty levels that you're just not going to get some of the earlier wonders and when it comes to late game wonders, if you've played the science game well enough, you just have no competition at all. The best use of this UA I can think of is for the mid game wonders; Chichen Itza, Notre Dame etc since this tends to be where you catch up to the AI tech wise and you may need to compete with them.
Anyway, I'll stop blathering and let others explain, why are Egypt so good?
I find pre renaissance wonders to be very rough to get and often rng more than anything. I have to agree on GL. It feels even harder to get now than it was in GnK for some reason...Similar to how Oracle is typically easy but if Mayans are on the map, they build it 35 turns earlier than my usual build time o.o
I have never come even remotely close to building Notre Dame but that may be more of a tech order issue.
Quick pre-Renaissance Wonder shortlist, divided by how hard they are to get on Deity from my experience:
-Medium: ToA, Mausoleum, Hagia Sofia, Pyramids, Macchu Picchu, Oracle, Lighthouse*
-Hard: Stonehenge, Borobodur, Petra, Colossus*
-Very Hard: Hanging Gardens, Terracotta Army, Chichen Itza, Parthenon
-Impossible: Great Library, Alhambra, Notre Dame
Those on "medium" you will get if you go straight to it close to 100% of the time. On "hard" you will get them more often than not, "very hard" you usually will lose them but might get there. *s are impossible on water maps.
Is it the bonus against Civs with more cities that makes Ethiopia a top tier Deity choice? I'm not a deity player so I'm curious as to why it's rated in high
Would the list look similar for g&k? (of course minus the civs that are only BNW) or did the reworking to some of the UAs such as arabia and trade caravans bump them up a tier?
Top-shelf UB. 8 free per turn in a four-city Tradition game is hot. The Stele is either the #2 or #3 UB. It's clearly behind the Pyramid, but I tend to think it's better than the Bazaar unless you're playing OCC.
Your intuition is spot-on, though; Ethiopia's clearly the weakest of the civs listed in the top tier. Arabia is just all-around solid with an excellent UB, UA and UU, and the other four are the civs. With Poland that's non-obvious, but the extra policies ultimately translate into growing faster than other civs and ripping through Rationalism.