Polynesia: some tips

[phillipwyllie]

I've just discovered Polynesia and their amazing UA(being able to embark over ocean is a huge early boost) I though I'd share and get some hints on playing with Polynesia.

You want to select archipelago as your map type.
You can make your first thing you build the monument and not your scout as the AI shouldn't be able to embark before you. You shnould not have arly gold issues as most CS you meet you'll be the first.
Beeline Astronomy affter Education so your embarked units can tgravel further quicker.
I found delaying building the Moai until you select refrigeration to research the best way as you can focus on growth and production. When you do select refrigeration to research then all workable tiles, and all tiles in ring 4 get converted to Moai on-mass. Rush buy hotels in all cities and beeline Radar using the Oxford Uni and the rationalism finisher to get you there quicker, rush buy Airports. Hit culture focus, watch as your tourism goes from nearly zero to ~400.
Your ideology should be Autocracy and pick the happiness tenets from defensive(walls etc) building and offensive(barracks etc) buildings. Prora is an absolute must as the majority of the AI will most likely go Order or Freedom(and pass either those as world ideology).
You ideally want the world fair passed after you have built all you Moai.

What you are left with is a nation that is defensible form almost all victory types(except science). In my last game after winning the world fair I bulbed 3 GW to give me 60k culture in my pot(that's more tourism than most AI cvis can generate in an entire game), which for a 3 city nation is pretty good.

 

[budweiser]

Best thing to do is go right to sailing and get yourself a trireme. Then you search in an ever widening circle like in their picture.

 

[joncnunn]

No, don't pick archipelago, instead pick either Large Islands or Tiny Islands depending upon how many land masses you want to be on.

No, don't waste turns hand building a Monument; just use standard Tall tradition tactic which give you a monument for free.

It looks your going going for a Cultural victory with Autocracy ??? Both the Order & Freedom bonuses for culture victory are much stronger.

 

[anthropophage]

A trireme? Why bother? If I'm Polynesia on a water map I build a half dozen scouts and then a couple of settlers to get to the best fishing spots quickly. I'll get sailing of course, but only because it's on the way to compass.

 

[budweiser]

A trireme? Why bother? If I'm Polynesia on a water map I build a half dozen scouts and then a couple of settlers to get to the best fishing spots quickly. I'll get sailing of course, but only because it's on the way to compass.

Its twice as fast.

 

[alexkhane]

You can build work boats for 2/3 the cost and scout almost as well as triremes. Just make sure to always end your turn in an ocean tile.

 

[phillipwyllie]

....It looks your going going for a Cultural victory with Autocracy ??? Both the Order & Freedom bonuses for culture victory are much stronger.

Any victory other than CV, using Polynesia you can totally neglect culture/tourism until Refrigeration and still be very happy even if another ideology is picked as world ideology(as long as you have Prora).

You can build work boats for 2/3 the cost and scout almost as well as triremes. Just make sure to always end your turn in an ocean tile.

Nice tip

 

[KmDubya]

No, don't pick archipelago, instead pick either Large Islands or Tiny Islands depending upon how many land masses you want to be on.

No, don't waste turns hand building a Monument; just use standard Tall tradition tactic which give you a monument for free.

It looks your going going for a Cultural victory with Autocracy ??? Both the Order & Freedom bonuses for culture victory are much stronger.

Autocracy gets a strong culture victory if you set it up right.

The keys are to have coal and fast factories letting you be first to an ideology.

Prior to ideology build all the guilds and staff them but do not pop any.

With your two free ideology picks take futurism and the double speed spy steal. The double speed spy steal will let you skip rationalism and keep up or slightly ahead of the rest of the world.

This early the amount of tourism that civs have is pretty low. Futurism gets you 250 tourism base modified by open borders, trade routes and religion with everyone. Within 20-30 turns you should be able to pop two of each type of GWAM. that gets you 6x250x 1.5(or 1.8 if you went aesthetics)-the 1.5 is the 25% from open borders and trade routes. This gets you 2250 or 2700 1500 tourism with everyone. No one has that much tourism that early. Follow this up with filling everything with archaeology digs and get to tier III cult of personality. With cult of personality you get an additional 50% boost to tourism per war. Two or three wars at once and you get 100 - 150% bonus tourism. No one gets a boost like that. An added boon is that your large chunk of tourism when you pop those first few GWAM with futurism might be enough to influence the world into going autocracy which helps with the war making. Also since you went Autocracy your military is better and you can burn down and loot the culture leaders better than anyone else.

What can Order or Freedom do to better get culture?

EDIT - Futurism is NOT affected by any modifiers, just a flat 250 tourism.

 

[phillipwyllie]

...What can Order or Freedom do to better get culture?

Indeed Autocracy is the bomb. In my last game I was at at 110 happiness(with Autocracy as world ideology), the one before that I was at 70 happiness(with Freedom passed as world ideology).

Forgot to add 2 more tips and that's wait until you win the World Fair before you turn every tile into a Moai. In my last game there I got beaten to the punch by Babylon(not by much). You want to build Chicken Itza so you GAs are longer(thus you generate more culture for longer).

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

No, don't pick archipelago, instead pick either Large Islands or Tiny Islands depending upon how many land masses you want to be on.

No, don't waste turns hand building a Monument; just use standard Tall tradition tactic which give you a monument for free.

It looks your going going for a Cultural victory with Autocracy ??? Both the Order & Freedom bonuses for culture victory are much stronger.

I agree about ditching the early monument - my first builds are warrior/scout/scout/scout -- but I prefer the Archipelago map by far. Tiny islands are too tiny, and Large islands are ... too large! with Archipelago you're going to get some 2-tile-wide island strips that are ideal for moais, as you'll get 4+ culture per spot.

 

[anthropophage]

Its twice as fast.

Sure, but six scouts are already built by the time you get one trireme out, and the scouts can get huts.

 

[budweiser]

Sure, but six scouts are already built by the time you get one trireme out, and the scouts can get huts.

OK if you like paying unit maintenance and building nothing but scouts for 30 turns. I send my scout out after the ships to pick up all the revealed ruins. Dont worry, those huts are still gonna be there 20 turns later.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I will say, as someone who has played a lot of Polynesia (love the heads!) that I agree that triremes = awesome. I still build a wave of scouts first for early culture bumps, faith ruins <turn 30, etc., but having at least one trireme is worth it because it moves twice as fast as scouts and can tell your scouts where to go.

Fact is, even on a standard map (I have played a few games with large/huge), 4-5 warriors/scouts are not going to be able to explore everything. A trireme or two wandering around can help a lot.

BUT -- you need sailing before you can build it, and you need all those men-on-the-ground eventually anyway, so I still think building that first wave of explorers makes sense. You're probably not getting your first trireme before turn 35.

Edit: And if you wait until turn 40-60 before your scouts hit a place, the huts may not be there if you're playing on Deity.

 

[anthropophage]

OK if you like paying unit maintenance and building nothing but scouts for 30 turns. I send my scout out after the ships to pick up all the revealed ruins. Dont worry, those huts are still gonna be there 20 turns later.

Try it. Finding so many citystates and hitting so many ruins through the first 50 turns makes for a very powerful opening.

 

[kb27787]

blah archipelago makes cargo food ships really dumb (you grow only to work coast tiles for a mere 2 food); they do much better on small/large islands.

You do need triremes (if anything else to spot for camps and make sure your cargo ships run safely) but scouts are also needed to pick up ruins.
You can afford to expand when you want, which is an awesome thing about UA. Makes life so much easier.

 

[Haig]

What's the best use for Moai? I think it's the trickiest part, the first poster doesn't even build them until the cities have grown a lot.. interesting strategy.
It's hard to choose how many of them to build..

Does the tourism bonus make them a lot more useful than in vanilla?

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

blah archipelago makes cargo food ships really dumb (you grow only to work coast tiles for a mere 2 food); they do much better on small/large islands.

Not true in my experience. The typical archipelago capital has plenty of tiles, and the typical settlements have 8-10 tiles to work. That, plus university, etc. slots, means that you can have a nice 15-person city, which is good enough, if it's also a culture mill.

My general rule re moia is to hold off on doing too much with them (unless I went Liberty/Tradition) until later in the game. More likely to put them on hills (no slower growth), though, especially if I can still get 3+ culture per tile.

For 4+ culture/tile, I will probably be willing to moia it up and just get a cargo ship running out there.

 

[Calouste]

What's the best use for Moai? I think it's the trickiest part, the first poster doesn't even build them until the cities have grown a lot.. interesting strategy.
It's hard to choose how many of them to build..

Does the tourism bonus make them a lot more useful than in vanilla?

What makes Moai's more useful in BNW is that it is a lot harder to get any decent amount of culture and border expansion in your satellite cities. Before BNW a Monument and an Amphitheater with a specialist would get you 8 culture. In BNW, that gets you 3.

I'd build as many Maoi as possible. Keep in mind that you don't have to work a specific Maoi, but it will still give a benefit if you work the one next to it. Although you want to focus on getting a nice cluster up first, 3-4 culture for a tile beats 1 food or hammer.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

What's the best use for Moai? I think it's the trickiest part, the first poster doesn't even build them until the cities have grown a lot.. interesting strategy.
It's hard to choose how many of them to build..

Does the tourism bonus make them a lot more useful than in vanilla?

I used to do the moia-early-and-often strat but it slows down growth too much. I go three tiers:

1) Moia on some hills if I can get 3+ culture, maybe grassland if 4+ culture
2) (Starting ~ a little after hotels, certainly by airports): Start plowing, do moia everywhere you can get 3+ culture, mow over the occasional duplicate lux if you can afford to
3) (Internet complete, going for final Tourism splurge): Moia EVERWHERE where you get 2+ culture, including plowing over pastures (even if you have stables) and luxes, even unique luxes. You should theoretically be okay happiness-wise given ideology. Also, you're getting $$ now for moia (ever since Flight).

After 3) I find I can get to 900-1000 tourism (not including any International Games bonus) assuming my cap is good/I've got great works in all museums/hopefully have Christo Redeemer. Louvre/Sistene/etc. would be nice, but are not necessary. All without conquest, of course.

 

[isau]

Best map I've found for Polynesia is Small Continents Plus in the Scrambled Maps pack. The landmasses provide lots of water tiles but also reasonable landmass and rivers to support empires and land armies.