Best antiquity Civ to set up Rizal culture run?
Post ToT I am enjoying experimenting with more diverse victory types and leaders in my games.
One of my new favorite plays is pursuing Culture wins with Rizal and Hawaii in exploration. I just love the synergies and how it all seems to work together. I usually do Fractal Continents so there’s some water tiles especially when I go for small islands in distant lands, consistent rural expansion giving lots of culture works really well.
Rizal’s fast celebrations give policy slots which I can make effective use of by moving quickly through the Culture tree. And I take the bonus relic every time, usually I even struggle to buy enough temples in settlements to slot all of them but I end up with 20+ relics also contributing to more culture and happiness, it’s great.
In antiquity I usually try to pick up Oracle to maximize the special event mini-bonuses, and I usually take the altar perk for +2 diplomacy to try to suze a few city states and get their unique improvements in every settlement.
My big thing right now is I am not sure what antiquity Civ is best. Hawaii non-apex in antiquity is underwhelming. I sometimes go Egypt for wonder bonus production, have experimented with Maya but tempo culture is less appealing than tempo science. On my culture runs I try not to be war-heavy unless I need to do a small Modern war to stop an AI winning.
Usually play on immortal but have started to bump up to deity my last few games.
But am wondering if I am missing something. What civ would you go for in antiquity and why? Anything else I should really be going hard for in exploration?
P.S. . I only have some of the bonus leaders and civs like pirates, both napoleons, Alexander…not all the DLC. Might pick it up in future but saving money for now while I’m enjoying as-is. But I’ll take any answer haha