I'm thinking I'll play as the Māori and trace the timeline of Polynesian migration, playing the Māori less like just the Māori and more like the Polynesian blob that existed in Civ V.
For the map, I might go with the official Huge TSL Earth map, but first I'll look thru the Steam Workshop to see if there's a better map for what I'm trying for. My concern isn't with having viable cities - for any of them to have much land to work without the islands being wildly misproportioned, the map would have to be absolutely massive. Instead I'm mostly concerned about having lots of islands to settle, as this will be where I'm going to get most of my points - settling the right islands in the right order at the right times with the right names. I'll try to see if I can find an Oceania map too, though I'd prefer if it included South America for
historical reasons.
I might want to manually change the start location for the Māori in the World Builder so that they start near Fiji - unless they do already. Fiji is in Melanesia rather than Polynesia, but I'm still considering if I should settle there first, or if I should make do with having either Samoa colonize Tonga or Tonga colonize Samoa. Still need to do more research on this.
I'm going to exclude Rapa Nui and Auckland from the city state list so that I can found their territories myself - otherwise, I don't think any other city state will matter to my strategy.
I'll turn on Heroes & Legends mode just to get Maui, and try to consider where & when he should be claimed. I'll probably also be relying on his ability to create resources and the God of the Sea pantheon to get most of my production. Though with that mode on, I'd be torn on whether or not to try to take Sinbad to prevent the AI from getting it, or or not try since it would be ahistorical. I'd just hope I don't end up getting met by another civ it wouldn't make sense for me to have met.
not much else to my strategy that i can think of right now.
To be fair, considering how what I'm planning to do is very safe and relies very little on interacting with other civs, I don't see it getting much in the way of score. But it sounds like a fun way to approach the challenge, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. ^_^