The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #10 - Polynesia

[adcarrymaokai]

The question is, how do you even grow and build anything? Cargo ships and purchasing?

 

[stormtrooper412]

I haven't the foggiest, I remember having major gold shortages because I tried to grow with cargo ships, but it was that part of the game when you should road up your city connections and Harbors would be a fair bit away at that point. Didn't matter because they put me out of my misery soon afterwards

 

[nmp0098]

Well, everything was farmed and mined until about turn 260. I used food cargos to grow starting after Astronomy because there wasn't much food even with farms everywhere I could. That's why the game progressed so slowly. I couldn't buy jack, and had to watch several gold gift/gold multiplier bonus combo CS quests pass me by. With better dirt and fewer Moai you hit the Internet much faster, and getting less tourism going much faster is also viable. I had 4 trade routes going out to the 3 surviving civs with decent culture, and the rest kept me from starving (I sent hammers to the cap at the end, but everyone else had a food cargo). I grew maybe 1 or 2 pop in each city after I hit the Internet, but I didn't need growth at that point. I could only trade so much coal/oil, and nothing was going to help me win CV more than a Moai at that point. Also, I deleted my excess workers as soon as I could, but I had many more to get all those Moai built over mines/farms/luxes.

Tonga's tourism was the reason I reloaded. I had just finished NVC (ok, so maybe I did get the scratch together to rush an airport in this city), and I was very sad when I got rolled just as things were finally coming together. There was a long stretch of the game where I was in negative gpt (harbors finally got me in the black for a while) and doing silly things to keep my science ticking, bad food/hammers in the expos after the first 10 pop or so, my military was outdated, I had no spare happiness, barbs were ravaging my expo, etc. and I somehow survived all of that and got cocky and inward focused at the end.

I think a top player with good dirt could post an impressive culture victory finish time with Polynesia.

Spoiler :

There is an absolutely beautiful spot on the other continent, maybe 20 turns to swim there, but it had lots of fish, luxes, and nice 2-wide peninsulas. Might be worth it this game. I'm just not comfortable taking my starting settler and hoping to find better dirt on some far away landmass without knowing the map.

 

[Grendeldef]

I think a top player with good dirt could post an impressive culture victory finish time with Polynesia.
I'm just not comfortable taking my starting settler and hoping to find better dirt on some far away landmass without knowing the map.

Swimming to the another continent & effectively starting several turns later isn't as bad as it sounds - it won't be the fastest of victories but it might be one of the easiest. Settle on near 1st lux or good NW, steal a worker from a useless CS & get going. It isn't too hard to ally most of the 'local' CSs while keeping good relations to everyone in the main continent - only when they're all militaristic it sucks, big time. Surely one most likely will lacking money & perhaps other stuff, too but on the other the world is your oyster and there's ~100 turns to do whatever seems best and awol barbs are practically your friends and when astronomy kicks in everything sort falls into it's place.

 

[consentient]

Tonga was pumping a whopping 570 tourism with only a themed museum and no wonders.

Thanks for the screenshots. This is enough to make me reconsider my ranking for Moais on my Tier list.

I played this map once and I believe I got ripped apart by that wild bunch of warmongers, so it's likely that I'll up and leave the landmass and settle around the islands

Too bad. I am going to replay this one for the 5th or 6th time, inspired by nmp0098's recent win. I was hoping for some company

Swimming to the another continent & effectively starting several turns later isn't as bad as it sounds - it won't be the fastest of victories but it might be one of the easiest.

Yes, I'm going to try this stratagem again. I tried it before but picked Barb Island as my landing spot. I'll be more careful this time in choosing my location.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Not saying I won't try the map again. I was having large amount of fun just sailing around everywhere while everyone else headed back for the shores if the water was even ankle deep

 

[consentient]

Not saying I won't try the map again. I was having large amount of fun just sailing around everywhere while everyone else headed back for the shores if the water was even ankle deep

Perfectly understandable if the AIs were all Korean...oops - that's the other map!

 

[nickytootricky]

@nmp0098

Great work! And enjoyed reading your report.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

My first go I swam E and made landfall, right next to a camp! Miraculously the Archer didn't take my Settler, but it was not a great location for a cap (lots of jungle, I think.) On my 2nd try (swam S for cap) when I expo'd E I found a much better spot 1-2 tiles away from the 1st game's cap.

 

[nmp0098]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm willing to play this one again and see how much different my game goes if I swim the settler to the other continent. My strategy wouldn't be altered much if at all, just delayed to start. Probably no shot at Renaissance Wonders, but I didn't get any and you don't need them to win (obviously they help!). Plus, I could settle in such a way as to have my city connections up sooner, and ITRs at sailing. Heck, I might even get 1 duplicate luxury to sell.

So my concern is getting my settler ninja'd by a barb if I send it alone, but losing out on the science discount and worker recruitment opportunities available by keeping my warrior back on the mainland is also on my mind. Does anyone who's experienced with swimming their settler have advice on the starting warrior?

I think I settled Tonga on Barb Island, and I landed a warrior and archer on the same turn. I landed the warrior on a ruin and got a scary spearman, and without that upgrade I might have been routed and lost the settler. At best settling would have been seriously delayed while I got my archer in position to protect the settler.

 

[nmp0098]

I should add I'm learning a ton by comparing my games to others, and the Brazil game in particular opened my eyes to the difference between settling an OK spot on turn 2 and a good/great spot on turn 10. I've had games where the turn 2 location was better than what I could find on turn 10, so I'm still trying to figure out the art of determining when a long walk is worth it.

 

[consentient]

I think the best single determiner is # of farmable tiles and # of mineable hills, really. Everything else is secondary to that. Over the course of the game, they add up to a lot.

 

[nmp0098]

Have you tried playing this map again? I started, but I didn't have enough production in my capital to really launch my empire so I may let well enough alone.

I guess what I'm getting at is, say you settle on turn 2 with wheat, 2 stone, river, and luxes. Then you find salty heaven another 4 turns away. Ouch. But what if you walk past that same turn 2 spot and find a barren desert, then turn towards an equally barren tundra. That's when I just quite usually. Most of my experience walking my settler around for extended periods comes from trying to find a NW with Spain. It seems like a total dice roll as to whether things get better beyond optimizing in your general vicinity. Now if things look abysmal where I start, there's no doubt things can only get better. I know players are successful moving 10 turns, I've just not really had much luck beyond 3-4 turns.

 

[consentient]

I moved my settler for a huge number of turns and settled it on the hills between

Spoiler :

Carthage

and

Spoiler :

the Inca

.

I built units for defence then once I hit 3 pop I then built settlers to go to the other islands. So far everyone has left me alone, which is a change compared with my other 3/4 playthroughs. In fact, they've not even been at war with each other. I'm sure that has to change sometime, but it's really weird how different each play through can be.

 

[Grendeldef]

Oh, this game - I have lots of warm memories with it and I also have small urge to replay it without extra rules apart from settling the 2nd continent first I'm just sure if I've forgotten the map suficiently; or whether it actually makes much of a difference. I just don't have time for another 300+ turn game.

 

[consentient]

T243 CV

Disclaimer: This was like my 5th or 6th play through, so I knew the map pretty well. If you think that discounts my victory, I'll let you have your opinion, but I'm keeping my victory cuz this map was hard and on the previous playthroughs I suffered greatly.

Spoiler :

On this one, I marched and swam my settler to a decent location. I figured that I could use a few units to keep Carthage at bay, and I'm on their trade routes to other places. Natural Great Wall plus river plus a ton of hills made for a good capital. Once it was established, I made a settler, grew my first expo and then used it to pump settlers like crazy.

In the end, the hardest challenge was staying happy and keeping GPT afloat, since I was using a lot of GPT to buy the necessary luxes until I got some policies that really helped things out.

As usual, CS were a big part of my strategy, but the surprise for this game was how much I had underestimated Moai. I will of course be updating the tier list accordingly. I used them to plow through the policy trees so that I had the Freedom finisher, the Aesthetics finisher, Scholasticism (to get to Internet faster) all a long time before I'd normally have had them.

I think that there is room here for a really fast CV if someone wanted to pick a spot and settle on it. But of course most of the difficulty of this map is that the start location is atrocious. Once a good spot has been found, though, this is a great map for CV.

One musician bomb was all it took in the end. The psychos were so busy warring over the continent that not much culture was produced.

If I get another terrible start location with Polynesia, I feel confident that there is a spot somewhere that can be really great. It's just about finding it, since in the first 3 playthroughs I landed in trouble.

The other thing about this map is stopping Oda from conquering everyone and amassing all their combined cultures. Luckily, I set him on a SV course and he chilled out a lot.

 

[nmp0098]

Impressive finish time, even with some foreknowledge! Moai's were really strong on this map, but are pretty strong on a lot of maps.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

That's a great cap spot! I see you got a bunch of great city spots across the pond as well.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Overall how long did it take you to settle/expand? You couldn't have settled your cap before turn 15 surely

 

[consentient]

I think it was between 15 and 20 turns to settle cap. I knew exactly where I was going, so I just waltzed across Zulu lands and swam the estuary. Can't remember exactly. Meanwhile, the warrior went in the opposite direction, to the continent where I would eventually build the main part of my empire, so as to meet all the CS there and amass a ton of gold.