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The capital should be Honolulu. The ruler should be King Kamehameha I (the Great) or Queen Liliuokalani (the last Hawaiian monarch whose govt was overthrown by American businessmen). The UU should be the Voyaging Canoe (double-hulled or outrigger). It should replace the galley and be able to traverse ocean squares without danger of sinking. The civ should be religious, expansionist, or commercial.
While it is true that the Polynesians were not one of the "great" civilizations of history, navigating and populating the PACIFIC while other civs were having trouble straying too far from land in the MEDITERRANEAN counts as no small achievement. The kingdom of Hawaii (before it's overthrow in the 1890s) was one of the more modern non-European nations of the world, and the Polynesian civ has as much if not more right to be included as the Zulu or Iroquois. And like the Zulu and Iroquois they would be a good choice to "fill in" their respective geographical range (the large number of islands in the Pacific).
They would also make for a pretty unique play style since alot of their cities (on an earth map) would be on small islands (and unconquerable until the advent of marines). They'd also be really nice for archipelago maps with small landmass, getting the jump on everyone else in expansion, and even on continent maps they would have a headstart populating any unpopulated islands/continents. A similar thing might be done with a Viking-type civilization (with a similar galley UU) but the Vikings would most probably be a great deal more militaristic.
Maybe an (official) expansion pack might add "Maritime" as a CSA and add the Polynesians/Vikings/Dutch/Spanish/Inuit as potential new civs. Maritime civs could start with the ability to build "rafts" (sort of like scouts) - sea units with 0,0,3[1] and the ability to traverse coasts (like galleys) - and they would get cheap harbors, offshore platforms, etc. In order to make these types of civs competetive though, I think new sea-based luxuries/strategic resources should be added to make up for their probable lack of other land-based resources. Maybe make oil spawnable in sea or coastal squares for example. I think that would add a nice new twist.
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