A Philippines Guide: Candidate #1 for a New UHV

[HighFunctioningAlcoholic]

Note:
This is not part of the original DoC, but Merijn's additional civ mod. It's essentially the same thing, just with more civilizations.
Download here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/merijn-new-civs-and-other-projects.627045/

Intro:
To be honest, (and not to take away from how amazing DoC and Merijn's additions are) this is by far the UHV most in need of change, IMO. #1 is almost 100% luck and absolutely requires S/L unless you plan on gifting excessive amounts of gold every single turn, and #2 and #3 are basically just clicking next turn. Assuming you get UHV #1 and don’t care about score, this can be knocked out in 30 minutes if your computer loads quickly. Despite my b.itching, I will again contribute very little to helping out, and therefore should probably not complain.

With all that being said, I just finished it and am sort of bored right now, so here is a short summary/strategy. There is a lot of leeway in terms of what you have to do, but the main takeaways are that you will need some luck for UHV #1 (in that you will need 8 civilizations in SE Asia and the Indian subcontinent), research (outside of Guilds for Regulated Trade and Feudalism for Tributaries) does not matter for anything but score, and you will need at least one Great Merchant to send to Kyoto (and preferably 2 if you care about score). The last part not an issue with the 2 Merchant slots generated from the Market.


Research / Build / Other Stuff Summary:
Starting civics: Despotism, Citizenship, Manorialism, and Redistribution. Switch to Caste System after 2nd worker and Regulated Trade / Tributaries when appropriate.

Research order: Guilds -> Feudalism -> whatever people do not have / 0% for Gold.

Build order: Worker -> Worker -> Granary (whipped) -> Aqueduct (whipped) -> Port -> Market (whipped) -> Library -> Buddhist Sangha -> Forge -> Mix of 3 Settlers / Lighthouse / Buddhist Bhikku.

Improvement order (on home island): Banana -> Copper -> Gold -> Sugar -> Silk -> Cottage -> improvements to secondary cities.

Cities: Tondo, Ternate (New Guinea, on top of western Spices / 1N of Dye), Makassar (Sulawesi, 1W of Spices), Vijayapura (Borneo, 1N of Gems).

(Side-note: Vijayapura should probably be renamed at some point, possibly to Po-Ni, as the entity that probably was known as Vijayapura had pretty much disappeared by around the 10th century.)

 

[HighFunctioningAlcoholic]

900 AD:
Found Tondo on the spot. Switch to Despotism, Citizenship, Manorialism, and Redistribution. Set building to 2 Workers. (Do NOT whip these.) Research Guilds then Feudalism (for Tributaries); after these, techs do not matter, so for the entirety of the game just check the foreign advisor to see what others do not have for trading purposes. I beelined Compass so I could send a ship around the Cape of Good Hope, thinking I could open some embassies in Europe; unfortunately, the religion difference is too much of a deal breaker. Have your two workers build a Road and Plantation on the Banana. Open borders with Indonesia (and Japan when they see you).

960 AD:
The Swahili spawn and generate a Balangay for you in East Africa. It could be a glitch, but I believe this is pre-programmed to motivate you to reach West Africa and Europe. If the Balangay spawns on the Crab or Islands/Coast, send it back to the Philippines. Usually, however, it spawns 1S of the crab; if this is the case, send it to Europe for shits and giggles, as the founding of Kilwa will block you from returning to Asia, and the Swahili will never Open Borders. (Frequently, the game will glitch, allowing a lone Impi to eliminate the Swahili on their first turn. If this is the case, you can send the Balangay back; I use the World Builder to delete this Impi, as it is not in the spirit of the game – they have plenty of units and should be able to defend against the attack).

980 AD:
Road and Plantation are completed, first Worker is built. Have all three workers go to the Copper and build a Road and a Mine.

1110 AD:
2nd worker is built. Switch to Caste System. Improvement order after the Copper is Gold -> Sugar -> Silk -> Cottage 1SE of Tondo. Build order is Granary (whipped) -> Aqueduct (whipped) -> Port -> Market (whipped) -> Library -> Buddhist Sangha -> Forge. Open Borders, gift Gold to reach “Pleased” status, and build embassies with your Balangay, when possible. I ignore Korea, as they usually collapse. If you wait one turn after meeting a Civ, the gold required to get to Pleased often drops.

After this, the game is pretty open. Make sure to get an Embassy with China before the Mongols conquer their last coastal city; even if the city where the embassy is built is conquered, the embassy remains with the Civ so long as you maintain Pleased status. Along those lines, check every turn to make sure your relationship status does not dropped from Pleased with any Civ you build an embassy in (except for Nigeria – once religion becomes important to them they will not return to Pleased status); if your relationship is downgraded, go back a turn and gift the offending Civ 20 gold.

By 1500, you will need to have founded 3 cities and improved at least one resource, depending on the tile you found said cities. Whip the Settlers when appropriate to maximize the use of your Workers. At some point, switch to Regulated Trade and Tributaries. Force Merchants to make sure you generate at least 1 Great Merchant by the end of the game.

By 1400 AD:
The Civs you will want embassies in are Japan, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Tamil. If one of these collapses, you will need an embassy with the Mughals in Kolkata. Do NOT gift them anything until 1400, as doing so will certainly diminish your relationship with several other Civs. You may need to build another ship to accomplish this if you are behind; it takes 6 turns to sail from Tondo to reach and found an embassy in Kolkata and 8 turns in Chennai (Tamils). If 2 of these 8 Civs have collapsed, you are SOL and need to go back several turns; reason #1 why these UHVs need to be changed.

By 1500 AD:
You will need cities that cover the Gems on Borneo (SW of Philippines), the Dye on Sulawesi (S of Philippines), and the 2 Spices and 1 Dye on New Guinea (SE of Philippines). Ideally, you settle next to them and the resources and improve them, but if you are lazy you can just found them on top of them. With the Sugar, Gold, and Silk in the Philippines, this gives you 6 Happiness Resources. Using 2 of your 3 Spices and some Gold per Turn, you need to trade for Cotton and Pearls from the Tamils and Tea from Vietnam, giving you 8. The only other alternative is the Silver in SE Australia. After this, focus on Great Merchants, which you will send to Kyoto.

1600 AD:
Complete your trade missions in Kyoto. Each Great Merchant should generate 1100-1300 Gold depending on Kyoto’s population, so keep that in mind if you need to cut your Research.

 

[HighFunctioningAlcoholic]

Overall, pretty boring UHV that I will complain about despite contributing nothing to DoC’s development.

Normalized score of 6426 earning me a Louis XVI rating. Not sure how you can do much better outside of possibly bulbing research and trading techs as opposed to researching them.

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

You're playing Merijn's mod, not base DoC. The Philippines aren't in DoC.

 

[HighFunctioningAlcoholic]

You're playing Merijn's mod, not base DoC. The Philippines aren't in DoC.

For purposes of guides, it's essentially the same thing.