Polynesia strategy?

[pixel_rice_bowl]

I played a nice game with some friends last night (civ selection was all random) and landed Polynesia. What are typical opening strategies and social policy and tech goals for Polynesia? I assume it's a good idea to build an extra scout early on so you can visit distant city states and take ocean/island ruins early on, given the early embarkment bonus. Is it best to go Liberty and then push for a military victory?

Thanks for any advice!

[Damsteri]

Polynesia is a cultural civilization, best option is the culture victory. Polynesia's Moais yield so much culture if they are placed correctly and once you get a couple of moai cities up your culture output is just huge. On island maps Polynesia is also good for early naval warmongering. You have to use your unique ability, because when others hit the reneissance you lost your advantage. So you should build much more than just one extra scout. I normally spam scouts and maori warriors in the early game on island maps. There are couple of things which affects your gameplay:

- Are you playing vanilla, G&K or BNW game?
- What is the map type?

For culture oriented game your first phase is to scout the whole map and find perfect island for moai cities. Those islands are optimally 2 tiles wide, grassland and long enough. You should learn how to place your moais so you get maximum culture from them (and turism after the hotel is researched in BNW). On island maps you found many ruins and in G&K or BNW you can easily found a religion early just by finding 2-3 faith ruins after you have founded a pantheon. So definately don't forget religion. You can also grab the natural wonders from the other island with no problems. The second phase is building those moais and the third phase is to target utopia project in vanilla/G&K or hotels for turism victory in BNW.

If you want war then you have to be fast. Polynesia don't have any good military advantage except that ocean embarkation. Their unique unit has only minor bonus and unless you build many maori warriors and keep them alive that bonus is lost. But you can kill any navy in classical and medieval ERA, because you can attack from the ocean tile to coastal tile where other civilization's ships are. They can't attack you and they have hard time to even escape your ships, but you can escape any time you want to ocean tiles. You can try early naval warfare if you are on island map, but for ex. continents/pangae warmongering is not a good idea because you have only one quite bad land unit. Almost every other civilizations are better in land warfare.

Look for more about moai placement etc. from this nice guide
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166561870#122849

[pixel_rice_bowl]

I am playing with BNW. It was a small two continents map.

Interesting, I actually had tried for a four-city piety/asethetics cultural victory, but I got crushed by one of my neighbors (Britain) in the cultural race. I only got to second in the scoring by doing a late game sneak attack against another civ and eliminating them. I must have played it wrong!

I'll take a look at the guide. Thanks for the input!

[Damsteri]

Polynesia can get +100 culture from a singly city with moais if you find a nice little island for it. You will lag behind in culture until you get those moais up, but after that... You could have problems becaus of a maptype. Polynesia is great only on archipelago and good in small continents, but I think they fall below average on continents and are terrible on pangaea. It's very likely that there is no good islands for moais. Maybe some tunda islands in north/south? But they are not that good as grassland island because moai cities must grow fast because they need many citizens for moais. It's best to manage citizens manually or set moai city focus to culture.

With continents map you can settle for both continents and trade with all cilivilizations. If you tech wisely you will also found world congress most likely. Also you are the only who's tourism will affect all civilizations, when other culture civilizations are limited to their own continent, unless there is a path trough coastal tiles between the continents. You need to get some tourism output very fast and meet everybody as soon as possible. You have only minor advantages for tourism on continents map (with no coastal connection) and you easily lose them if you don't act fast.

[friend robocat]

the big thing about Polynesia is their ability to hit the ocean tiles from Turn 0 onwards. On Continents, Terra and Frontier Continent maps, this means your scouts can potentially pick up a ton of goodie huts if you build more than 2 of them and send them off to other landmasses. I say potentially since you'd still have to watch out for barbs (plenty of them on Terra and Frontier); an investment or two in Honor might be worthwhile (and fun) here

[Ancientciv]

In BNW the wayfinding UA is a great aid in meeting all civs first and, therefore, becoming the first host of the world congress.

[Twelvefield]

If you play the Polynesian Scenario (I forget what it is called), you will learn loads of Polynesian tactics.

[BauerHaus]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

If you play the Polynesian Scenario (I forget what it is called), you will learn loads of Polynesian tactics.

This is how I learned Polynesia, very helpful scenario.

[Damsteri]

I played that Polynesia scenario until I was able to beat that scenario in deity. Well.. I'm boneheaded when I'm targetted to do something. That took about one to two weeks until I finally beat it at deity, but I learnt how to use moais and learnt to see potential of some islands which were perfect for Polynesia but totally useless for any other civilization.


One trick I often use with Polynesia:

I just love scout-archers, scouts which are upgraded to archers in ruins. They are so powerful and can be gamechangers. In normal games you can get one or two, but with Polynesia... I often make a scout-archer boot camp when playing with Polynesia on an island map. First I need barbarian camp near to my capital which I use to get 10 exp for the scouts until I get barracks built. I choose scouting I promotion to get sight bonus, so all my scouts have sight of 3 when they are searching ruins. It's more than just a sight bonus... With Polynesia you will find many ruins and the rule is that same ruin benefit can be repeated after you have got two other benefits in between (same rule applies to Shoshone too). So, if you get archer upgrade for your scout in the 1. ruins, then it can be appear again next time in the 4. ruins.

Then after I have got the archer upgrade that sight bonus is still retained and I have an archer with extra sight. In the next phase I need a city state (preferably hostile = useless) which I have declared war very early on (to steal worker). I use that city state to get beyond two promotions and if I'm not at war with anybody I send my scout-archers to bound that city state. My target is to get three barrage promotions (scout-archers are best on rough terrain, so barrage benefits more than accuracy). It will open logistics and range promotions. Later on I have multiple scout-archers which can see 3 tiles away, can shoot up to 3 tiles far... twice and move like a scout. Two of those and a scout (with all 3 scouting promotions) can conquer a city alone without even taking a hit. Only civilization which has easier access to those super scout-archers has the America, because you don't have to get that scouting I promotion because of America's extra sight. When playing with the Polynesia or the America I usually spam scouts early just hoping to get many scout-archers as possible. This tactic is of course more viable in longer game lengths.

[pixel_rice_bowl]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

If you play the Polynesian Scenario (I forget what it is called), you will learn loads of Polynesian tactics.

Is this located in the game or in the Workshop?

Are there training scenarios like these for other civs too? I love playing random civ, but I feel like there are so many half the time I get one I've never played. (This is fine in single player, but I don't have the luxury of looking up strats in multiplayer games.)

[Damsteri]

Scenarios can be found when you click single player from the main menu and then scenario. Don't forget to choose your civilization. All scenarios has own civilizations, they usually differs from the normal random map civilizations expect the main civilization of the scenario.

DLCs released between the original game and the Gods&Kings expansion were civilization + scenario packs. There were usually a new civilization and also a new scenario. Polynesian civilization was bundled with a Paradise Found scenario designed for the Polynesian civilization. Denmark civilization was bundled with the 1066: Year of Viking Destiny scenario, Korean civilization was bundled with the Samurai Invasion of Korea scenario, Mongolian civilization was bundled with the Rise of the Mongols scenario and Inca & Spain were double civilization pack bundled with the Conquest of the New World scenario. Then there is also Wonders of the Ancient World scenario which was released as it's own DLC, only scenario no new civilizations for random map games.

Gold edition of the Civ V includes all the DLCs, so it will include scenarios too, not just civiliations. But you have to remember one thing though... Those scenerios are quite old and they are not updated, so some of them use game mechanisms from the vanilla game of from the G&K and for that reason the game playing might be little diffenrent from the normal random map BNW game. There are also some bugs, for example the Conquest of the New World scenario will not end when the first civilization gets 1000 points as instructed. It's broken and the game will always lasts 100 turns, though it's still playable.

[BauerHaus]

In the game, Single Player -> Scenarios -> Paradise Found is the polynesian one.

They're aren't for training specifically but some act that way.

1066 and Samurai Invasion both act like total war scenarios.

Conquest of the New World i've only done as the Iroquois but it felt like a regular game more than anything.