This will be my first game on Deity and I've not really played this civ. I full expect to get crushed but I'm going to give it a shot. Am going to check out a couple YT games with them beforehand. That being said... any pearls of wisdom anyone would care to offer? Appreciate it!
The good news is: Archipelago is a very good map for a Deity game, since the AI can't overrun you in a very early war and you get time for yourself to build up your empire. (Unless you settle on an Island with another AI-player of course). The bad news is, Archipelago isn't the best map for a culture victory with Kupe, since you want to have a lot of land for his unique ability, but there just isn't much land.
Short version: Just build/research what helps your game plan and brings you closer to victory. Most Wonders are nice, but not worth the trade-off. A workshop gives you 3 production, but costs 195, so if you don't need the great person points and don't have city states to boost it takes 65 turns to get your investment back. Afterwards you get your worth, but in the meantime you could have built a
amphitheatre marae and gotten more culture and faith which would have brought you closer to victory...
Longer version: (and what follows is just my opinion. I play nearly all games on deity or higher, but I am never the fastest in competitions, so consider with a grain of salt):
You know the victory condition is gonna be culture, so think about what you will need for this victory: tourism. This is the most complicated mechanic, and I believe a lot of civ players don't really understand how it works. So here is my recommendation:
Generally there a 3 (4) main things you wanna do for a culture victory: get great works; use your faith to build national parks and later rock bands; establish open boarders and trade routes with all AI players.
With Kupe you also wanna make sure to get to research flight for his special ability.
So to achieve a victory:
1. Concentrate on key districts in your cities. Theatre Squares (for culture and Great works). Holy Sites (a religion is nice, but not a must have, you don't want to spend faith to spread your religion but to save it for national parks/ rock bands). Harbours (for trade routes, for production and to better your worked water tiles.) A few campuses if possible to get to flight (and steel). All other districts are very low priority. You might build a few if you can for eurekas, but they the other ones are more important.
2. Focus the main Civics and techs and prioritize them: (This is how I would probably play, there is no absolute truth)
Civics: Political philosophy (government) --> Drama and Poetry (Theatre Square) --> Feudalism (build charges) --> Mercantilism (for additional production)
--> Conservation (Easily the most important civic [and tech] in this game: more production, plant trees and build national parks. I would probably even skip a tier 2 government (at least till after conservation) to get to conservation earlier. Afterwards the order isn't as important anymore, you want to get Suffrage for tier 3 government and of course everything that boosts your tourism from the atomic era. But consider skipping some civics. I.e. Divine Right, Reformed church, Opera and Ballet are not needed to progress in the civic tree, unless you really want something from it. But I often only research them when I am through the entire civic tree.
Techs: The ancient ones depending on the start (settling) position --> Celestial Navigation (Harbours) --> Machinery (Kilwa) --> Mass Production (shipyards) --> Flight (tourism) --> Radio (Broadcast center and Seaside Resort) --> Flight (tourism boost) --> Steel (Eiffel tower)
3. Think now about which wonders will most likely be useful for you: probably Mausoleum (yields and bonus charges for great engineers - you dont need (m)any Industrial Zones, you can faith buy them), Kilwa (15% boosts across your empire!), Eiffel-tower (gives you +8 tourism per national park). Estadio do Maracana (gives +6 culture to each of your cities! - this isn't explained in the game) and Broadway aren't as useful for you (since they come very late), but they boost your culture output, so you don't want to give them to the AI. Colosseum is very good in most games, but probably not on an archipelago map, where your cities are spread out.
4. Go wide. Civ 6 favours going wide over going tall, so settle, settle, settle.
5. Trade. Buy luxuries where you can to get your cities ecstatic. Sell diplo favour as soon as AI values it. . Sell your strategics, preferrably to your friends, so they don't use them against you. Normally instant gold is better then gold per turn.
Consider that I am playing this game peacefully and rarely ever go to war if I don't have to. But if you are good at war you can take a lot of prebuilt citys with few units and be faster then building everything yourself. So for a war game you might prefer other civics/techs. Just remember that you want to keep your opponents alive so you can still get tourists from them.
Good luck and have fun
