Let's talk about Indonesia!

People give Indonesia a lot of grief, but their uniques are honestly pretty good, and I frankly wish there were more civs like them in uniqueness.

The UA needs to be treated carefully. Don't settle anything you otherwise wouldn't - I think this is a fairly common mistake where people rush and stretch their build/tech order all out of whack to try and get the UA working. It can easily wait until mid-Renaissance. Obviously, some map types aren't going to be great for Indonesia's UA, but just avoid playing them on those maps.

I admit the UU is quite hit-or-miss. If you get a couple with Invulnerability, they'll be your front line through the ages. There's 8 promotions and only 1 is really bad. Build a few extras and see what turns up.

The UB is incredible once you get it working. Indonesia has crazy faith generation from the Candi alone. There's 2 base on the building alone, you'll get 2 more from your own religion, and get 2 from any neighbour's religion for 6 fpt total without breaking a sweat. With a little juggling of trade routes or captured missionaries the Candi can pump 8+ faith per turn out of every city, and let you make use of a normally mediocre belief: Peace Gardens.

Does a swordsman that did not fight a single battle keep the Mystic Blade ability, and get the unique promotion on it's first battle as a longsword or musket?

It does, on upgrade, it does..

OP here. Thanks for all the feedback!

I think a good game plan would be Go Indonesia and play Tradition for 4 cities and growth. Once the Renaissance hits - go wide with Exploration.

Play Speed Epic so some warriors and swordsman can be made - use them to fight barbs to see what promotions they can get. Then gift to CS strategically the bad ones.

Ideology wise I'm always a sucker for freedom BUT with exploration and wide play Order would be good? Get the candi's up and faith buy great people!

Ideally it seems BEST would be:

Liberty, Piety, Exploration, Order. At least 10-15 cities and make Indonesia a faith and science powerhouse once Factories and the Order Tenet come about. Then the candi can be built anywhere so with Hero of the People and the candy faith - you should be good to go.

Victory Types - Not sure if Indonesia has a leaning?
Is the style of play I listed make sense?

With order maybe you could go for a domination victory since order has good production and domination uses. If you're using liberty, you could support a lot more units since there are larger amounts of cities in your empires. What else was i going to talk about? Im trying to remember.
The order social policy called iron curtain can also be useful when making puppets because you get to have free courthouses. With social order you can also have enough happiness for a large empire.

Going tradition and trying to expand mid game is a reasonable lower risk, lower reward strategy. The benefits of extra cities aren't as big if you set them up later, but if you've already got 4 tall cities up and running, not finding good islands to expand to isn't as big as setback as it would be if you invested heavily on naval exploration in the early game. Committing yourself to a specific strategy before starting the game does mean that you'll miss out on a lot of the flexibility that makes Indonesia unique, but if this is what you're most comfortable doing, Tradition is the safest choice.
As for victory conditions, I'd have a slight preference towards Science or Culture, since these make the best use of faith buying great people. In general, though, Indonesia's abilities don't push you towards any specific victory condition but instead help you build a strong empire that you can take in any direction as the circumstances and your personal preferences dictate.

GKShaman said:

I think a good game plan would be Go Indonesia and play Tradition for 4 cities and growth. Once the Renaissance hits - go wide with Exploration.
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Ideology wise I'm always a sucker for freedom BUT with exploration and wide play Order would be good? Liberty, Piety, Exploration, Order. At least 10-15 cities and make Indonesia a faith and science powerhouse once Factories and the Order Tenet come about.
.
Is the style of play I listed make sense?

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Is this at Deity? I ask because that many cities never works out for me (on the rare map where it is even possible).

My most satisfying Indonesia maps have be Tradition 3 city to NC on mainland then 3 off-continent expos. Other civs when I play Tradition, I almost never put down a fifth city, but with Indonesia I have to get those six extra lux.

With Liberty I go 3-4 cities on mainland then 3 off-continent expos. If some of the off-continent locations have mores space and luxes then maybe two cities in those locations. So for Liberty I am still looking about 8 cities, which is not any wider than my usual Liberty play style.

If you get the pantheon that gives u +1 production on fishing boats, you can make marginal little one tile cities MUCH better. It all depends on your internal trade routes and your capital. If your capital isn't productive, you're screwed, but if you have a hammer heavy start then building marginal island cities for the luxes right off the bat isnt such a bad idea. Had one of my best games doing that, and my fleet was so good i conquered most of the world (continents) with it before winning a culture vic (emperor tho, immortal a lot harder).

The +1 production per work boat only works for coasts that have any sort of resource though. If there arent any sea resources workable with work boats then the pantheon wont have an effect.

If you found one of those 3 unique luxury cities on an existing resource,
that resource is gone and is replaced by nutmeg, pepper or gloves.

I would do that if I had extra resources of the same resources.

I have never given them much thought, started a couple of games but quit them quite early since I was on the wrong kind of map.

But considering their UA I think I will try a game with them on a island/small continents.

Strategy. Build up the capital with a tradition start. Get lux tech + optics then rush to theology and get a religion. Choose Peace gardens to beef up the Candi with 2 happiness.

Building up one city first is never a problem since you dont hamper early growth with building settlers and you dont have to deal with happiness issues. Can get a couple of early wonders that way and quicker fill up the social tree. A strong capital spits out 3 settlers as quickly as it would have take to build one early game.
And with the UA of getting 2 copies of a lux + the lux(s) at the place you settle at and if you also can get Peace gardens you can expand very fast during the medieval era since happiness should not be an issue and you should have 4 strong cities with good infrastructure once you reach the renaissance. Focus the trade routes to send food to the new cities so they grow quickly. When they are up and running send one cargo ship with food to the capital and start making money with the rest and try to get a diplo win so hit the renaissance getting the forbidden palace (or astronomy if some of the islands you want to settle require it).

Update: Strategy works like a charm so far
Had to start building settlers a bit earlier then I originally planned for but found some good spots that I had to beat the AI to. And it is very nice to be able to settle a city and dont get the -4 in happiness but you can get 240 gold or 4 happiness instead when you trade you unique lux. Missed out on the middle of the tech tree wonders but grabbed The great lighthouse and Colossus and Haga Sophia, so happy with that. Formed a religion, with a bit of luck since I never build a shrine but found a ruin that gave me a phanteon and since I had 2 pearls I picked the tears of the god one so I started getting faith that way. But I was late to the party I thought I would miss out on forming a religion but then I found another ruin giving me 60 faith and not long after I founded Islam and also managed to grab Peace gardens, the AI never picks that one anyway.

I settled 3 cities rather quickly after initially building up the capital first but never dipped under 10 in happiness so they could keep on growing. There is a really nice synergy with the tradition tree (free monuments and especially free aqueducts +extra growth) and their UA. Took Exploration as well and got the happiness from harbours, lighthouses etc + the extra production from coastal cities. Going 4 city tall seem to be the melody for them since they can do that with a smile on their face.

Tatran said:

IMHO, to get all 3 unique happy resources (gloves, pepper + nutmeg), those 3 cities have to be on a different (new) landmass/island.
And you will only get 2 copies of each unique luxury.

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Semantics... nothing about this post was your humble opinion. You mentioned facts.

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Really nice civ to play with the right kind of map. Their UB can if you manage your trade routes correctly give you 8-10 faith per turn. Their UB allows you to settle 3 cities in quick session with out suffering in terms of happiness (so no dips in growth or production) so you dont have to spend gold on happiness buildings. If you found a religion (something you should with this civ) get the peace garden and get even more happiness from you UB.

Their UU is meh, never really build sword men early on but rather want spearman and range units early on but with the right promotions you could get some really good units.

But their main strength is their ability to settle cities with out suffering happiness penalties but rather get extra happiness for the new cities. Might not sound like a terrific UA but it really is since early on every extra happiness is vital since you dont want that red face to impact your growth or production.