[GS] A Simple Man's Guide to Kupe (Maori)

[Azedenkae]

I originally posted this in the Civ6 subreddit, and was suggested to post here as well.

So here we are, complete with my final yields at the end of the last game I won as Maori on TSL Earth (Diplomatic Victory on turn 368).

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(21 gold from diplomatic thingies)

My Let's Play (Part 1)

Hey all, I tried out Kupe and fell in love with him (well, his playstyle in Civ6). So I decided to make a guide on how to play him, and here it is.

Why the title? Because I am a simple man. I enjoy strategy games, but can never be bothered to micro every single thing, or plan that far into the future for that matter lol. Also this is my first guide I've written, so apologies if there are errors/some things may not be well-written. So without further ado...

Basics of Kupe/Maori:

• Starts in the ocean.
  
  
• Embarked units +5 combat strength, +2 movement.
  
  
• 2 science/culture prior to founding first city.
  
  
• First city receives a builder, has +1 pop, +3 housing, and +1 amenity.
  
  
• Starts with Sailing and Shipbuilding.
  
  
• Unimproved woods have +1 production, turns into +2 when conservation researched.
  
  
• Fishing boats have +1 food, and trigger culture bombs.
  
  
• Resources cannot be harvested, great writers cannot be earned.
  
  
• Unique unit: toa, 40 combat strength, adjacent enemies -5 combat strength, can build a pa.
  
  
• Unique building: marae, replaces ampitheatre, +2 culture/faith to all city's tiles with passable feature, +2 tourism to all tiles with features.

That's already a lot of abilities, even when I kept the UU and UB to just two lines. Now, I just want to point out that in practice, these give so much more benefits than at a glance. Here's what they are:

• Massive historic moment points. Unless you play on a map larger than standard, you are almost guaranteed to be the first to circumnavigate the world. You are also most likely to be the first to discover a bunch of natural wonders, and grab many of the goody huts available. By the way, you get 2 historic moment point things from the very start, because you are the first to be in the classical era, due to having Shipbuilding researched.
  
  
• Important early game science/culture/faith/production/gold generation. When your cities are only generating things in their single digits, meeting city-states early and getting their 1-envoy bonuses can be a huge boon, especially in regards to faith generation. Given that you are likely to be the first to meet many of the city-states, you are more likely to get these bonuses from the getgo.
  
  
• High gold generation. Separate from the city-state clause: because you are likely to be taking advantage of sea resources, you are most likely to be producing a lot of gold (from your fishing boats). Note that since you get a builder the moment you settle your first city, and sailing is auto-researched, you are gonna be builsing fishing boats way before others and hence more gold production early on as well. So fishing boats are very useful for you since they generate a lot of food, gold, and very importantly: culture bombing tiles. Here's the important thing about culture bombs: assuming a good sea resource layout, you can build a fishing boat to get another sea resource within your borders, build a fishing boat on that, and repeat. Three fishing boats early on can generate a lot of gold (and food).
  
  
• More settlement options. You are the first to be able to sail the seas, and so you can really pick and choose where you want to settle early on. Not only that, your unreliance on non-sea resources means that pretty much any land tile with 4 sea resources nearby (specifically those that can be improved with fishing boats) are at least decent tiles to settle on. You might even be able to settle near a natural wonder, getting its awesome bonuses AND netting a bunch of historic moment point thingies. Given that your capital starts with a population at 2, and you already start with a builder, building a settler as the FIRST thing you ever build is an entirely viable option, and as such you can expand way before anyone else.
  
  
• You don't need to think too much about what to build. Essentially you only need two districts: harbors and theatre squares. Maybe also industrial zones. Everything else is optional. You also don't need to worry about improving rainforests and forests. Trust me, unless there is a very specific playstyle you are after, it is probably better to leave them alone - at least for a long while.
  
  
• Superior trade routes earlier on. Since you start with Shipbuilding, you can make sea trade routes from the getgo, netting you SO MUCH MORE GOLD than land trade routes.

So that's the gist of Kupe/Maori as a start. As you can see, you have A LOT of benefits, both published and inherent, that you can take advantage of. Now will be, how to take advantage of them.

Victories to go for: Culture or Diplomacy. Though Diplomacy is the better option imo.

Okay, actual strategy guide time.

Early Game

• When you start out, send your settler in one direction, your warrior in the other. Search for an ideal spot for the first 5-6 turns or so, it's not like there's anyone who's gonna take your settler now lol so it's safe to send your settler out on its own. And 5-6 turns is fine, you are not really losing out compared to other civs. But of course, the earlier the settlement, the better.
  
  
• Ideal location: 3-4 fishing-boatable sea resources, reefs (if possible), rainforest/forests, at least 2 but preferably 3-4 tiles WITHOUT RESOURCES BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU CAN'T BUILD YOUR LAND DISTRICTS.
  
  
• With four movement points, your settler can disembark and settle on the same turn. So don't worry too much about dying to barbarians haha. Just like, don't end your settler's movement next to a barbarian unit on land and you are fine.
  
  
• Target sea resources with your builder as priority, for two reasons. One, you get uber growth (and moniez). Two, you are culture bombing tiles asap, so you won't be wasting natural border expansion on tiles that you will be getting anyways. Instead your border expansion will target other things, like inland tiles. For some of my cities, the spread of sea resources around the city was so good that after building my fishing boats, I almost had all of the tiles within the three-tile workable radius within the city's borders. Note that cultural bombing via fishing boats cannot expand your city border beyond the three-tile workable radius, but it does steal other civ's tiles. If you take a fishing boat from someone else that way, you can remove the fishing boat improvement and rebuild it, to culture bomb again. Doing so might help you steal more of the other civ's tiles.
  
  
• Build a settler first. With a builder immediately appearing, and your warrior traveling at the speed of light, honestly you don't need a scout. Also you don't need a monument yet.
  
  
• Try not to have your warrior travel on land too much, it is a waste of time. Instead, have your warrior just try to circumnavigate the world asap. It's also more important that your warrior picks up goody huts both for historic moment points and heaps of boons to your civ. If you see a weakened barbarian unit over their encampment, don't be afraid to attack from the sea. Your units have +5 combat strength when embarked, so they don't fare that badly when attacking from the sea.
  
  
• Make sure to pick up the policy that generates faith asap. Hope your warrior finds a faith-based city-state. You need the faith to get a pantheon early enough that no one has picked God of the Seas yet. Pick up God of the Seas ASAP.
  
  
• Initial research: Astrology, then Celestial Navigation. With your exploration, you should hopefully find a natural wonder early on to boost Astrology. By building your fishing boats, you would have boosted Celestial Navigation, so it doesn't take that long to build.
  
  
• Build order for cities: monument --> harbor --> light house --> theatre squares --> marae --> harbor and theatre square buildings. Build walls if necessary, and of course archers/warriors to defend if need be. Generally your settlers don't need to be protected as you sail the seas. Who's gonna contest your mastery over the oceans this early on anyways?
  
  
• Maraes add both faith and culture to your tiles with passable features, including reefs. Crazy eh.
  
  
• You should be churning out decent gold. When you settle your second city, use the gold to buy a builder, and then immediately build fishing boats.
  
  
• With a combination of ever increasing gold generation from fishing boats and trade routes, plus production from the God of the Seas pantheon, and increased food generation from fishing boats, your cities should be growing quickly, you should be able to build things pretty fast, and whenever possible just buy builders/settlers, and repeat the cycle. You should soon enough have a bunch of cities all over the map.
  
  
• In regards to governors: Put Reyna in your city with the highest gold output via harbors (and commercial hubs). Get Liang as a rotational governor to build fisheries everywhere (though this is a lower priority thing, as you only get the production bonus if Liang is in that city), my suggestion is once you are good with fisheries, place Liang in a city you really want to bolster their buildings construction. Put Pingala where you are generating the most culture. Victor is situational, but good to have on hand, in case a city of yours is targeted by... someone? Amani is not as important to you, but getting suzereinship asap is always good I guess. Magnus is kinda not that useful for you. You may not even be able to build Industrial Zones in some of your cities (because they are lower on the priority list), you can't harvest resources, your growth for all your cities should be super high anyways, who cares if your pop is reduced by 1 when you build a settler, you'd probably get it back in a few turns anyways. Moksha is unimportant too.
  
  
• Build a few galleys/quadriremes if you like. Tbh warriors are just as good or I dare say even better, given that THEY MOVE EVEN FASTER THAN THE SHIPS, AND CAN DISEMBARK HAHA.

Tldr; your whole civ relies on fishing boats and capitalizing upon them. Your cities aren't the best at production, but the growth and gold generation far makes up for it. But that's why God of the Seas is so important, it helps make fishing boats provide the production necessary for early game stuff.

• You can ignore the entire bottom of the tech tree (for now), since you don't need iron or iron working or any of that. Just go for construction once you are in the classical era (oh wait, you already are, from the start!).
  
  
• Toas are super powerful. They COST NO MAINTENANCE, so you can build as many of them as you like. Note that Toas are actually far superior to Swordsmen, not only because of the higher combat strength, but also the fact that they reduce adjacent unit's combat strength by 5. A single toa can solo a barbarian encampment even when there are 3-4 barbarian units. In fact, once you get like the first promotion, they are basically indestructible vs. barbarians.
  
  
• Choose your great person purchases as you like. I generally try to go for great artists and great musicians asap, but also sometimes pick great admirals, great engineers, and great merchants for various bonuses they offer. If you have decent faith generation, you might be able to take advantage of that to purchase great persons as well.
  
  
• Try to be as friendly as possible with other civs. You can quite happily trade away your strategic resources, it's not like you need to worry about horsemen and swordsmen coming your way, your toa are far more powerful than either anyways. Also you may have plenty of luxury sea resources, so trade them away too. Even on deity difficulty, you should be fine because you largely will not be infringing on their agenda. Except for maybe Gitarja. She'll hate you. Otherwise, since you will have huge borders, massive culture output, massive gold output, large cities, that'll satisfy a lot of civ agendas, so they'll be more likely to like you.

Mid Game

• If you don't know what else to research, I just clicked on the 'Computers' tech on the tech tree and let it auto-research. You'd want to build flood barriers asap to protect your few land tiles from flooding when the sea levels invariably rise (it always does). Otherwise... actually yeah, I don't really suggest any direction other than that. Your toa is powerful enough to last into the industrial era (defensively anyways, offensively not quite).
  
  
• Civics-wise, essentially just target the next level of government once you are done with the last, making sure to pick civics that provide theatre square buildings no the way. Do research Colonialism asap though, the Colonial Tax and Colonial Offices economic policies can be very powerful for you, since your cities are likely to be mostly not on the same continent as your capital. It also leads to Natural History, which you'd want if you decide to go down the Archaeological Museums route instead of the Art Museum route. Personally, I generate so much money that I basically buy all of the Great Artists and Great Musicians before anyone else can even come close to getting them, so there's never a fear of not being able to fill out all of your Art Museums.
  
  
• If you do get Great Admirals, that's a good way to buff your ships, and control the seas (and deter people from attacking you). Funny thing: I got an ironclad super duper early on via one of the great admirals, just because researching the top of the tech tree put me far in front ship-building-wise. I was the first, and also top, polluter for a good hundred or so turns.
  
  
• Policy-wise, decide whether you want to boost your gold or culture generation (or both if possible). Just check what may be more lacking, and/or what you can increase more of and go down that route.
  
  
• When the world congress comes around, the best things to vote for are 1) 100% increase in production/faith costs for units, 2) have trade routes coming your way be buffed, 3) increased loyalty in exchange for lower growth rates, and 4) double amenity output from a luxury sea resource you have a lot of (pearls for example). You can just save up your diplomatic points though, all of the stuff I listed can be good, but if it does not pass, eh. The Maori is relatively unaffected by anything, even if the other civs decide to nerf your border growth via culture. You can always just culture bomb via fishing boats, or buy tiles outright.
  
  
• Keep expanding. Keep adding cities to your empire whenever possible. Deserts, tundra, even single-tile islands are fine for you, so long as there are sea resources around. You should be able to easily buy settlers and builders easily now.
  
  
• Keep doing the harbor --> lighthouse --> theatre square --> marae --> harbor/theatre square buildings route. Note that once you have your lighthouse, you should purchase a trade route asap and get it going. Re: what buildings to build next after the lighthouse/marae, I tend to go for the shipyard first. You get a heap of production from it (the production is equal to your harbor adjacency bonus, which is doubled with the Naval Infrastructure policy card). You can quite easily get like 8 or 10 production from a shipyard, depending on the placement of sea resources. XD
  
  
• Keep an eye on city-state requests, there could always be something you can easily satisfy by buying something. Great people, units, whatever. Sending trade routes is fine as well, really even if you have to lose out on like 20 gold trade routes to get one to a city-state, it shouldn't really make a dent to your gold generation.
  
  
• Make alliances asap. Use the cultural alliance to prevent some of your more far-flung cities from succumbing to massive loyalty losses.
  
  
• Build a few coastal raiders and go around pillaging things. There's not really much else for you to do anyways.

Tldr; mid-game is all about expansion and trying to stay alive. Also about building towards Computers, to prevent your lands from dying.

Late Game

• BUILD FLOOD BARRIERS WHEREVER THEY ARE AVAILABLE. They are important. Note: they can only be built in cities with a floodable tile in the city's border. It might be pertinent to flip a tile or two from one of your other cities to your city without a floodable tile, so that the option becomes available (assuming you expect your borders to grow to encompass floodable tiles soon, and you want those tiles).
  
  
• You should now be snowballing with your culture. Get all the civics you can, and then start on the last civic over and over again. That last one nets you a governor promotion each time, and 50 diplomatic points. What does that mean? That means every time a world congress comes by, you are likely to be able to spend more diplomatic points on victory points far more than any other civ. You don't need to go far ahead of the others, because they will not band together to vote for one person. They'll vote for themselves. Note that you need to make sure to put in more diplomatic points than the second highest bidder. The last time I tied with someone else, they got the 2 VP, instead of me. I don't know how the mechanics work.
  
  
• When you have 8 VP, PUT ALL YOUR POINTS INTO WINNING AT THE FINAL WORLD CONGRESS. Because when you have 8 VP, the other civs WILL BAND TOGETHER AND VOTE YOU DOWN. Where do you get all those diplomatic points? From suzereinship over city-states with envoys you bought with your TEN MILLION GOLD. Also from the Future Civic civic that I mentioned, which gives you a lot of diplomatic points.
  
  
• On that note, you should have finished the civic tree long ago lol, because even with 600 culture generation you are finishing a civic every few turns at most. Towards the end of my last game, I had 16 cities (though two were very late game), and had 1,300 or so culture production. I was completing the Future Civic civic every three turns, effectively netting me 500 diplomatic points between every world congress just from that alone.
  
  
• Use all your great artists and great musicians. You can try to go for a culture victory by pumping tourism everywhere, but I find a diplomacy victory far easier. Nonetheless, you need all that culture.
  
  
• Put spies on your theatre squares, to prevent anyone from stealing your great works.
  
  
• Research-wise, er... just catch up on stuff you skipped when you were beelining before I guess. Given the coastal nature of your cities, a bunch of battleships and stuff are enough to defend your nation.
  
  
• Build Water Parks wherever you can, they help with... things. Also you should have plenty of coastal tiles, so giving one up for a Water Park doesn't really slow anything down.
  
  
• Neighbourhoods help your civ grow even further, and also generate tourism. And food.

Tldr; Diplomacy victory really is the way to go. Use just enough diplomatic points to one-up the second highest civ to net you 2 VPs each world congress. Save the rest for your final push. Defend your cities with naval units, until your research catches up. Tbh I just beeline GDR after I get Computers, and defend with them.

That's essentially the gist of playing Kupe, from my experience. In summary, Kupe does really well if you fully embrace the marine nature of the civ, and focus all of your efforts on taking advantage of marine resources. Specifically harbors and fishing boats. You have an early advantage to controlling the seas, so why not make use of it. You might notice that my guide is geared far more towards the early game, that's because if you really set yourself up well then, then mid and late game is all just a waiting game until you win.

Specific Standard-size TSL Earth Strategies
The reason why I include this section specifically for Kupe/the Maori, is because Kupe starts out at sea, and so unlike other civs that mainly should just settle where they are, Kupe gets to choose. Spawning in the Pacific Ocean, he has quite a few choices. Now I've looked at a few potential spots, but have yet to try full games with them. Ironically actual New Zealand on this map is a terrible start location for Kupe. I'll update this section as I keep trying new spots. Here's the first I tried though:

• The Galapagos Start. If you travel directly east with your settler, you'll reach the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of South America. Move around it, and you'll see a marsh tile that you should settle on. Why? It has access to all the sea resources around, and is within range of some of the tiles adjacent to the Galapagos Islands. There are also (rain)forests to the north and south, making it a prime culture generation location. Pingala is a good governor for this city. Settle there, get a builder, immediately build a fishing boat improvement on the sea resource to the left of the city, then wait until your city engulfs one of the two next sea resources either north or south of the borders. Or just buy the tile. That should net you most of the tiles to the west of the city, which means your city will then naturally expand east, which could give you a very nice position east of the Andes where you can put down a Campus district. If you happen to have the Incan in your game, THEY WILL DECLARE WAR ON YOU IMMEDIATELY. Because 1) you settled near their cities, and 2) you settled near a bunch of mountains. So aside from the abundance of resources and features that is helpful for Kupe/the Maori, this is also a good start because you are unlikely to settle any other city (or at least few other cities) on South America, and so with all (or most of) your other cities on other continents, hence why the Colonial Tax and Colonial Offices policy cards are so powerful for you.

That's it for my guide! If there's any mistakes, let me know. In fact, please post all questions, comments, and suggestions below! I'll answer them and/or update the guide accordingly.

 

[i_imperator]

Awesome guide, very informative and the video was enjoyable to watch too! I'm going to try this myself on the TSL Map!

 

[Victoria]

You push the key point of using sea resources well.
Also glad you appreciate the Toa sea strength is scary, their ability to land and pillage in the same turn is also strong.
There is more than 1 way to play them and using the CS strengths really helps. They are a very powerful naval Dom player as well as land Dom. Their ability to choose early location and be dominant can make them great for science also and they can really spam faith and get places fast so a super fast RV is possible (not tried)
Their pillage abilities are much greater than other civs due to their water movement.

 

[m_mus]

Nice to see someone else capitalizing on the 'God of the Sea' pantheon. I tend to do exactly the same, as it opens me settlement spots, the AI or fellow humans in MP-games would never consider. If even Auckland is in the game, having for example turtles or whale upon a reef, gets insane, when combined with marae. I really love the Maori, and I hope this stays the same after the incoming nerf.
Several questions though:
(1) which religious beliefs do you usually pick?
(2) Do you chime out your settlers from the capital, or from the 'newest' settlement you colonized just before? Up until now, I actually got Magnus first, promoted him to the city in question (my capital) not wasting population, ended up popping out all settlers from there. How do you handle it? This + God of the Sea Pantheon allows my a high output of settlers while growing my capital city quite quickly.
(3) When and where in your strategy appears the government plaza? I take it you'll build ancestral hall? But in order for that to make sense you'd have to build it early, right?
(4) How is your campus ratio to cities settled?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Azedenkae]

Awesome guide, very informative and the video was enjoyable to watch too! I'm going to try this myself on the TSL Map!

Thanks!

You push the key point of using sea resources well.
Also glad you appreciate the Toa sea strength is scary, their ability to land and pillage in the same turn is also strong.
There is more than 1 way to play them and using the CS strengths really helps. They are a very powerful naval Dom player as well as land Dom. Their ability to choose early location and be dominant can make them great for science also and they can really spam faith and get places fast so a super fast RV is possible (not tried)
Their pillage abilities are much greater than other civs due to their water movement.

Yeah there is quite a number of ways to play the Maori, I kinda want to try every way. In one game I was DOWed on and decided to just buy an entire navy and wiped out a whole other civ. XD The flexibility with Maori is truly crazy.

Nice to see someone else capitalizing on the 'God of the Sea' pantheon. I tend to do exactly the same, as it opens me settlement spots, the AI or fellow humans in MP-games would never consider. If even Auckland is in the game, having for example turtles or whale upon a reef, gets insane, when combined with marae. I really love the Maori, and I hope this stays the same after the incoming nerf.
Several questions though:
(1) which religious beliefs do you usually pick?
(2) Do you chime out your settlers from the capital, or from the 'newest' settlement you colonized just before? Up until now, I actually got Magnus first, promoted him to the city in question (my capital) not wasting population, ended up popping out all settlers from there. How do you handle it? This + God of the Sea Pantheon allows my a high output of settlers while growing my capital city quite quickly.
(3) When and where in your strategy appears the government plaza? I take it you'll build ancestral hall? But in order for that to make sense you'd have to build it early, right?
(4) How is your campus ratio to cities settled?
Thanks in advance!

Yeah with Auckland it's super crazy. My playstyle kinda don't rely that much on the marae bonuses anyways, so it should be fine even with the nerf. Anyways, onto questions.
1.) None, I don't really get the chance to form a religion, nor care enough to try. XD
2.) Because of the food bonus to sea resources, and how fast you can get fishing boats up and running, it generally is not an issue if a city loses a pop since cities grow super quickly anyways, which is why I do not bother with Magnus. Since my gold generation is really high, I basically just buy settlers from the city nearest to where I want to settle next. The capital's production I tend to try to reserve for building wonders, like the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus.
3.) If I can't really think of anything else to build, then yeah I'll build the government plaza and ancestral hall, but that's very low on the priority list. I mean the free builders are good, but gold isn't really a problem anyways, so like eh. I just buy builders rather than having to wait to get the ancestral hall up and running.
4.) I rarely build campuses. Maybe there'll be one or two for my entire nation (mostly just to activate Great Scientists if I get any).

So yeah, basically my strat boils down to make a lot of gold, use that to buy everything, care a bit about culture, everything else is absolutely optional. XD