Easter Island

GHalfrunt

Just zis guy, you know?
Joined
Dec 14, 2010
Messages
183
Location
Upstate NY
Hey there, guys. Better late than never, I guess. I said when I joined five months ago or whatever it was that I would do a story. Well, I finally have one. Sort of.

I made my own edits to the Earth 18 Civs map originally because I tried playing as the Inca and disliked that I couldn't get out of the Andes by land, so I added a couple of passes, and then I noticed Easter Island off the coast. "Nice," I thought to myself, "it has a village on it." So I added a source of stone just to complete the feel, and forgot about it. Then I read that Polynesia had been added to Civ 5, apparently because they felt the "Native America" civ in 4 wasn't oversimplifying enough (but that's another rant for another thread...). That gave me an idea.

I looked some stuff up about the history of Easter Island (meaning, I read the Wikipedia article), and decided that Isabella would be a decent fill-in for their traditional leadership (and picking her would get her out of her horrible default starting location in Spain). So, back to the World Editor to move her starting units there, and...

Spoiler :

The civilization of the Rapa Nui is born.


I had this great idea for a strategy: build the Great Lighthouse as soon as possible, then get Code of Laws (both to found a religion, which is usually useful, and to get Caste System) as soon as possible after that. That way, I thought, I could just keep producing Great Merchants and Great Prophets and build a huge population and maybe even colonize somewhere other than my lonely little starting location. Sounded good in my head.

Spoiler :


What I hadn't counted on was that it would take so bleeping long, which I guess should've been obvious, but I did it this morning and hadn't had any coffee yet. Lack of coffee is bad for strategy. I thought building the Moai would delay the GL too long... So my population grew, I assigned one to be a Citizen, and hit "Enter" to end the turn about 80 zillion times.

Spoiler :

I also overlooked that maybe I should've assigned that Citizen at city size 2 instead of 3. But whatever. The point is, I suck at Easter Island.


I founded Confucianism. "Awesome," I thought, "except that I can't afford to assign anyone to a specialty that doesn't make hammers yet."

Spoiler :

COOL, BUT NOT USEFUL.


On the other hand, maybe it was a good idea to wait until city size 3 to assign that Citizen, because I also failed at a random event and accidentally killed some test subjects. And by "some" I mean "a third of everyone on the island".

Spoiler :


So finally, after centuries of stacking rocks on top of each other to build a new lighthouse that was cooler than the one they already had?

Spoiler :

Someone else finished it two turns before I was going to. FAIL.


So I quit and decided to come here and ask for advice. Is this Easter Island game playable? I'm pretty sure it's impossible to win in this starting situation, but is it possible to, say, build a non-laughable colonial empire across the Pacific or something? I'm going to try again later, probably by just building the Moai ASAP. Any other suggestions, though? Have any of you done any similar exercises in futility?
 
Seeing as you are surrounded by ocean (i.e. you need optics, astronomy to get off the island) with only 2 units and only one resource (which city is your on) at 200BC i would say that you should give up now. why not try starting in New Zealand and expand from there to Polynesia and such?
 
or add some coast so you can reach Peru :D
and add some incan gold there and astec gold over here...maybe a nice economy may be possible, even with a bad start like that one.
 
Yeah, I just kind of wanted to see if it was possible... I think the only non-insane strategy is to expand the island and build the Moai ASAP... I like the idea of more resources on other islands, too. I always thought that there should be a higher density of resources, especially food and stone. I'll do some more research on the local geography (by which I again mean "read Wikipedia articles") and update some time later this weekend with Easter Island, Take 2.
 
if you do stay on Easter island make sure your not surrounded by ocean with no way to reach any other islands.
 
Add a little seafood (to support specialists) and you're golden. Get Engineers ASAP, so Metal Casting for a Forge (while building MS).
 
Maybe move Izzy back into Spain and use Huayna instead...? Or Roosy? They might at least manage getting the GLH with a bit of luck.
 
make a multiple tile island with seafood reasources
and link up to south america or polynesia(instead of a OCC till astronomy)
 
Blah. Between getting sick and suddenly having lots of homework dumped on me, this is on hold... I will hopefully get to do Easter Island, Take 2 sometime this week.
 
Ooh, goody! :clap:
 
Hey, sorry for the extremely long absence. Between graduating and going home (where I don't have BTS) and then moving in with the girlfriend (who does have BTS), I have not been able to do anything with this. I did play through again, using some suggestions from this thread and a topographical map of the Pacific Ocean... I may or may not get around to putting up the screenshots I took tomorrow, but either way, to let those of you who were wondering know, I was actually able to build the Moai and GL without too much difficulty and establish a colony or two in South America. The files are on the GF's computer, so I'll go find them...

I also tried again with my Vanilla and did barely passably... I sat there at a depressingly low level of technology with little contact with the outside world (and therefore little trade, but at least no high-tech enemies) before eventually getting conquered by some colonial power (I don't remember who) in the 1500s.
 
Great to see this back! I remember being really excited about his, back in the days when I had about 200 postcount and spent a tenth of the time on here I do now :D
 
Hmm... You need more food resources at least. I'd put in all four possible seafoods, with at least one extra fish. Easter Island is quite fertile, apparently, but you can't model that here, so will have to improvise.

The Great Lighthouse is not your main priority, IMO. The Moai is. You NEED those extra production. Every shield counts. The first shield other than from your city tile will increase your production by some 1/3. The next shield will increase by a further 25%.

Also, it may be cheating, but I would look at playing Portuguese or Dutch as the Easter Island civ. First for carracks (and feitoria isn't that bad if you start on a lonely island), the second for dykes.
 
Why would you build the GLH...
if you have no cities to trade with?
Moai is perfectly right, of course. But if I was you, I would add a chain of 1-tile islands, a kind of archipelago, and settle on them too. It would still be the same in a way (1 tile island cities), but you would have a better chance of getting into the medieval era before 2050 :lol:
 
Easter Island: the Crossroads of the South Seas

So, first of all, using Wikipedia and Google Maps as references, I added some coast tiles as suggested to reflect the shallower and therefore hopefully more galley-friendly parts of the Pacific, as well as a Fish resource on the west coast of the island to represent the rich fish and seabird sources that were there before IRL Easter Islanders hunted them close to extinction.

It's still not a great starting location, but what'd you expect? It's a one-tile island!

Spoiler :

This time, instead of a map, the villagers I placed my starting units on top of gave me a scout. Marginally more useful in this location... Or it will be once I have a ship to put it on...


By the way, I'm still standing by my choice of Isabella for Hotu Matu'a because:
(1) The AI is evidently too stupid to move units out of Spain even to make those random Siberian colonies the European powers all seem to like so much, so I don't want to be stuck with her usual role of being a paranoid city-state armed to the teeth.
(2) Spi/Exp is a good combination of traits for a civ that historically depended extensively on sea resources and treated their monarchs as gods-on-earth.
(3) Spain starts with Fishing!!!

Anyway, so...

The first order of business was to build a Fishing Boat, of course.

Spoiler :


Second, to get that Stone I settled on so I can get the Moai and Great Lighthouse, then move on to Metal Casting ASAP for a Forge and maybe the Colossus to make the best of my resource-poor start.

Spoiler :


Among the native plants, our village elders again claimed to have found medicines... Luckily, they found them much earlier this time than in their previous incarnation, so it wouldn't do that much damage to the population. I gave it a try...
Spoiler :

And got a much better result!

...and then nothing of note happened for a couple millennia. So the god-chief had his subjects carve some of those rocks into the shapes of members of the ruling dynasty. This somehow enabled them to better exploit the resources of the ocean. (I don't get the rationale for the Moais' effect. Better navigation in the area by putting up huge, obvious landmarks?)

Spoiler :


I have some useful things I have to go do (housework and job-hunting), but Take 2, Part II will arrive tonight...
 
This story is extremely old.

You're win.

And you're back.

This story is win.
 
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