Polynesia

[CrabHelmet]

Start up Civ and play Standard Continents. Restart 5 times. I would be *highly* surprised if not even one Polynesia start was non-coastal.

As for how they work together... dunno. What happens when there are two Venice players in the same game? Surely it doesn't work any different to that?

As it is, I just feel Polynesia is way too much of a roll of the dice. Your starting location breaks you or makes you, more than any other Civ in the game. If Polynesia isn't by the coast, you're doomed. If Polynesia is by the coast, but has a land-based monopoly resource, you're alright. If Polynesia is by the coast amd has a sea-based monopoly resource, you just won the game (especially if it was Coral).

I've been playing them a lot lately because I like the concept but think it needs tweaking, and I want to figure out how.

 

[randomnub]

Start up Civ and play Standard Continents. Restart 5 times.

10/10

Spoiler :

On Continents Standard I noticed the starting settler spawning inland about 10-20% of time for civs that haven't a coastal bias (Poly does have it), while a coastal start is pretty much guaranteed. Even if not spawning by the coast, it's usually easy to guess where the sea is by the weaves noise when you move the camera over the fog of war, in doubt send the scout in one direction and the settler in the other one, usually coast is 1-2 turns away only.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I must be having some severe bad luck then! I've just tried now, and from 10, I went 3 non-coastal, albeit one was 3 steps (not tiles) away.

 

[Mad Madigan]

Wow, that 2nd Pearls/Whales start looks like it would be insanely OP for the combination of luxury resources and Moai placement.

Polynesia is one of my favorite Civs too, and I've never had a non-coastal start with them when playing on Continents or Communitas, although I've certainly gotten the occasional in-land sea start.

 

[void_genesis]

I think I have moved away from thinking of Polynesia as being a tradition compatible civ. Unless you have exceptionally good food tiles you won't have enough population to work both moai and specialists. Progress makes more sense where you spread along the coast (settling on coastal land luxury tiles, prioritising fishing boats and atolls, and city placement to create moai triangles or higher, including sometimes settling one tile inland to maintain moai chains). The early scouting gives extra ruins, CS rewards and AI trading partners so settling a monopoly rapidly is more rewarding. With authority you can discover and conquer isolated city states to train a strong navy and acquire good cities, usually with the best moai territory of the map (and ally the ones that have bad territory).

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Having played another game with Polynesia where I started with a sea resource monopoly, I echo the calls to change the "melee naval units can build work boats" aspect of the UA. It comes too late to be truly valuable in connecting up the sea resources (you want to connect them ASAP), especially since Sailing is far ahead in the tech tree in the early game when you need to work on other basic techs first and where you're usually better off first going for Writing, Iron Working and other 3rd column techs. Later on in the game, this part of the UA is irrelevant, as work boats are very cheap to buy & produce. So unless it's moved to become an earlier option, I'd vote for removing it completely and adding another small bonus to Polynesia.

 

[void_genesis]

Im sorry to disagree but when Polynesia goes wide all those free work boats are a nice bonus. Putting the instant improvement too early would make boat heavy starts for Polynesia way too unbalanced, especially combined with god of the sea.

 

[Stalker0]

That part of the UA isn't the greatest, but its not terrible. If nothing else it saves you several hundred gold in work boat costs. You really don't want to build work boats later in the game, they are so cheap that you actually can lose hammers due to overflow (I believe a city can only overflow up to the units cost, extra is wasted).

If you choose not to get sailing, then you have chosen to ignore part of the UA. Its like Morocco or Portugal not bee lining for trade and feeling their UA is crappy.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

There's a big difference in how beelining for Trade (2nd column tech) and beelining for Sailing (3 column tech) affect your ability to defend yourself (without spearmen and horsemen), to get science (the wheel) etc. Not to mention that beelining for Sailing greatly delays getting Moais (Construction).

As for saving several hundred gold during the course of the game, that makes it really perhaps the most negligible UA element out of all UA elements.

 

[chicorbeef]

Im sorry to disagree but when Polynesia goes wide all those free work boats are a nice bonus. Putting the instant improvement too early would make boat heavy starts for Polynesia way too unbalanced, especially combined with god of the sea.

When I played Polynesia for the first time I had an average of 1-2 work boats for every city, some of them had 3. But I completely forgot about the work boat trireme ability because I had all my boats before Sailing. I simply took God of the Sea and gold-purchased all my boats, they were really cheap.

Polynesia is powerful on God of the Sea/fishing monopoly starts because of the +2 food on boats and their natural bias to the sea, not because of this ability.

 

[CrazyG]

I probably build them in my capital and on my early luxuries, but in later cities you can a trireme to build a few boats.

I'm not a huge fan of the extra food on work boats design wise. It just seems like it creates so much variance.

 

[Stalker0]

Just tried Polynesia in a game to see if I've put my money where my mouth is.

I will agree that you aren't going to use the ability on your first several cities. That said, cities beyond that I found it useful, and to pick up a few lagard spots in my early cities that had far away resources.

However my favorite part of the ability was in war. I could pillage the enemy fishing boats freely, and then once the city was retaken immediately rebuild all of the boats. Worry Free Pillaging is very nice!

Again its not the most powerful ability around but it has its uses, and the rest of the UA is plenty strong.

 

[Legen]

These abilities regarding trirreme building boats and extra yields were originally on Japan's UA, which used it well when conquering cities. You'd prioritize cities with sea resources and building any boats that you pillaged or that were neglected by the former owner. Japan also had the "stronger when damaged" part of the unique promotion on the UA applying to naval units, making a combined army+navy attack common and effective.

That all was moved to Polynesia, as Japan's uniques were changed to reduce variance on its starts; Polynesia looked better equipped to use it in its starts due to the early embarkation, and high variance was thought to be more acceptable on a less warmongering civ. You aren't expected to get much from the trirreme ability if you aren't expanding with the help of a navy, this UA expects you to be always looking for more coast to exapnd.

 

[void_genesis]

I am finding Polynesia is an excellent war monger even though their UU and UI seem more defensive on the surface. As stated you can quickly restore pillaged boat tiles, can locate lots of potential targets quickly, and constructing moai in all your puppets makes them potentially culture and production positive as the game progresses. Progress works as well but only when you get lots of good territory (and manage to scout it quickly enough to make that decision in time).

 

[CrabHelmet]

Personally I think Polynesia is too variable. If someone suggested a Civ that was +4 Production on Bananas, everyone would say "no, that's a silly idea, it just reduces the Civ to a good map roll". Well, Polynesia is only a few shades off that. If you have an Ocean Monopoly, then you go straight to Sailing and are in a great position. If you don't, your UA has a fairly trivial impact - woohoo, there's two Fish near your capital that get +2, when Fish already have lots of anyway... that was useful, not. Plus Triremes come too late.

The other problem is that Polynesia only lives up to about 50% of its flavour. The 'spirit' of Polynesia is that early-game freedom - you can up and settle anywhere. A flavourful Polynesia will just settle all the tiny little islands in Continents, mimicking IRL Polynesia. There's a few reasons that VP doesn't live up to this flavour:

• The key one is your local monopoly. If your local monopoly is not a coastal one, then you get forced to settle inland to pick it up.
• The next one is defensive reasons. You want to settle secondary cities around your capital for defense in depth.
• The third one is Moai. This actually disincentives settling tiny islands because then you can't place Moai, and you want lots of adjacent Moai.
• The fourth one is that... there's just not enough for this to be worthwhile.

My thoughts are that:

• the +2 on Fishing Boats needs to be removed. If it applies to Fish and Atolls only, it is far less random, since most coastal areas will produce the roughly the same amount of Fish, but can be widely variable in terms of the other coastal resources.
• instead of being , it should probably be related, since both Fish and Atolls give lots of anyway, and Polynesia wants to take God of the Sea anyway, so is even more redundant.
• Polynesia should be able to generate some other neat % bonus from Fish, such that Fish becomes a 'quasi-luxury' for Polynesia and means that you might genuinely prefer to go island-hunting rather than move inland to finish off your land monopoly.
• Moai should benefit from adjacent sea tiles, not adjacent Moai.

A rough draft looks like this:

Wayfarer
+1 on Fish and Atolls, +1 +2 on improved Fish. No Unhappiness from Isolation. All land units start with Embarkation, and can create Fishing Boats from Fishing."

Moai
+1 +1. +1 +1 per two adjacent Coast tiles. Improves with technology.

Just throwing it out there, I guess.

 

[tu_79]

Well, if you want to mimick real life, then Polynesia should be in the middle ages in 1850.

I always thought badly about food bonuses until I realized that a tile that had plenty of food just allowed your city to work on less food tiles, therefore, you have more citizens available for other, more productive tiles. Or specialist slots. This is not the case for tiny islands.

Currently you don't settle on tiny islands until you can work some specialists, or it will starve for production, no matter how many fishes you have.

Before doing a rework on Polynesia, what's exactly wrong with current uniques?
Trirremes building like work boats is something you use with secondary cities, or rebuilding after an attack, or settling in tiny islands when you are ready.
The toolkit is too focused on maritime things, so it is extremely dependent on map. But playing in a balanced map this should not be an issue.
The moais require settling in the coast, or at least one tile from the coast. With current bonuses, they benefit more from peninsula like formations (moai triangle), while with your proposal they will benefit more from 1 tile wide long islands. It's not that I dislike it. I find it more broadly useful actually, but current bonus is not really bad (just luck dependent on your map).
The extra food on fish is not bad if you have other interesting tiles to work on. This means that, instead of working 2 food 1 production tiles, you can be working on 1 fish 2 production tiles.
Your proposal will make viable to settle on some 1 tile islands surrounded by 4 fishes. That's 12 production doable in Ancient, enough to make a start. But do we really want Polynesia settling on tiny islands in Ancient?

The only problem I see with Polynesia is that it is very luck dependent. You have to find nice empty lands for you to abuse, with tons of fish and sea luxuries and irregular coast lines, or you are screwed.
If you want to remove a bit of that hazard, then I think one of the following can be useful:
a) +1 yield (production?) to all water (not ocean) tiles, instead of bonuses on resources. This way, even if you have 0 fishes and 0 sea luxuries, you can still work some sea tiles. Even if you happen to start next to an inland sea or a big lake, you can work it. There are some maps (Communitas, I'm looking at you) that are pretty low on fish. This will also make golden ages very valuable to Polynesia (sea tiles with a Lighthouse will yield both gold and production).

b) Moai base 1 production 1 culture. Moai gets +1 production for every 2 adjacent sea tiles and 1 culture for every adjacent moai, plus tech scalers. This way, if you place a moai on a tiny island, it gets 4 production 1 culture, moais in a straight coast gets 2 production 2 culture, while placing a cluster in a peninsula (quite rare) gives 2 production 4 culture each moai. So it becomes a bit less map dependent in that you benefit both from peninsulas and very coastal exposed tiles.

Now the only irkness is that Polynesia has 0 incentive for working on specialists, at least from her uniques, but we know that coastal cities end up working lots of specialists because their territory is somewhat limited.

 

[pineappledan]

What about this then?

Polynesia - Wayfarers
Can enter deep ocean immediately. +1 and +1 for every 3 coastal or ocean tiles worked by Cities. No Isolation

People seem awfully pissy for reasons I can't understand re: the workboat thing. So remove it. Instead, give Polynesia the yields per terrain feature of the Caravansary, but as a Trait. Give production, to make up for the loss of the production-saving fishing boat thing, and give food, to replace the bonus to atolls/boats.

And as a bonus, it's more compact

 

[tu_79]

What about this then?

Polynesia - Wayfarers
Can enter deep ocean immediately. +1 and +1 for every 3 coastal or ocean tiles worked by Cities. No Isolation

People seem awfully pissy for reasons I can't understand re: the workboat thing. So remove it. Instead, give Polynesia the yields per terrain feature of the Caravansary, but as a Trait. Give production, to make up for the loss of the production-saving fishing boat thing, and give food, to replace the bonus to atolls/boats.

And as a bonus, it's more compact

Every 3 coastal or ocean is very little. You need your city to have 3 pop before it gets the benefit, then 6, but probably 7 if you start working a specialist, then 10 or 11, since you will be working 1 or 2 specialist. And have those 9 tiles be worthy to work on the first place. Coastal with moai will be worthy (3 to 6 tiles) but the same cannot be said about ocean.
+1 production on all water tiles is easy to understand, more ubiquitous, not op (plain sea becomes as useful as unimproved forests) and balances Polynesia uniques when there's little room for moais (compared to coastal tiles with moais, plain sea tiles are crap).

About removing the fishing ability, I'm indifferent. It's something of some use in the third settling wave or after a naval war, but if removing it allows for another stronger ability, then I'm OK.

 

[CrabHelmet]

The reason I think it needs to go on Fish not Ocean generically is because it needs to give Polynesia a positive reason to go actively searching for an accumulating a coastal sort of tile, rather than having the ocean be passively good. I think Fish really needs to feel like a luxury tile for Polynesia, where your main early game goal is to settle onto Fish and improve it, rather than feeling you have go inland because that's where your "true" monopoly is. A generic ocean bonus doesn't really do that.

Golden Ages on Fish is cool for Polynesia because, as @tu_79 points out, an island-focused Polynesia will be a struggling on Production. If it gets Production and Golden Age Points on Fish, you have a fun mini-game of working around Golden Ages to get sudden bursts of activity as Polynesia you want to leverage for great effect, and then weaker periods of defense.

I don't think the Fishing ability should be removed. For Polynesia, it's a massive kick in the teeth, since Polynesia will struggle with Production anyway and then making them produce endless Fishing boats hardly helps matters.

I do think Polynesia needs changing because it's far too variant at the moment. With a bad map roll, it is the weakest Civ in the game by an easy margin. However, I love the way it plays and the broad flavour Gazebo has given it, so I'm trying to work with that basic idea of "Polynesia settles the islands early".

 

[tu_79]

Golden Ages on Fish is cool for Polynesia because, as @tu_79 points out, an island-focused Polynesia will be a struggling on Production. If it gets Production and Golden Age Points on Fish, you have a fun mini-game of working around Golden Ages to get sudden bursts of activity as Polynesia you want to leverage for great effect, and then weaker periods of defense.

Remember that currently fishing boats give +1 production already.