by leles
I can get it for you, cause I'm going to Essen,...but...I live in Italy ;) tell me if I can help you↧
Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Test
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Test
by leles
Fantastic !↧
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: Painting the wheels / the hidden clown!!!
by reitoei
LOL +1 for the clown. well done.↧
Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: Replacement Crystal Skulls
by sybar
leles wrote:
I can get it for you, cause I'm going to Essen,...but...I live in Italy ;) tell me if I can help you
Many thanks for the kind offer, but the very nice folk at CGE have been in touch and I have a new set on the way.
Thanks again to everyone and CGE for all the help they have offered and given.
The gaming community always restore my faith in everyday goodness of folk.
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File: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: concise reference sheet by hecose
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: New print
by egamar
Answering my own question:Amazon's Customer Service "confirm" their current stock is 2012
BUT
Three folks on here confirm (not quote marks!) it is toe 2013 reprint.
I've ordered it.
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: Replacement Crystal Skulls
by Ketaros
Simon,Take a look over EBAY, there are couple guys that works selling game parts, a very profitable business btw, my self, with kids and cats at home had bought couple times specific pieces. Worths...
Best regards and good luck.
\
Ket
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: New print
What are the differences between the 2012 & 2013 versions?
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: New print
by egamar
Bleeding Blue wrote:
What are the differences between the 2012 & 2013 versions?
See the third post in this very thread
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Thread: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Strategy:: A Guide to the Main Strategies Available in Tzolk'in
by qqzm
I thought it would be useful for myself to analyse and compare the various strategies one can pursue in a game of Tzolk'in. Seeing as I'd gone to the time and effort to go through them, I thought I mise well post it here for you guys...I'm going to categorise the main strategies by their primary tech track - i.e. the one they generally max out on first (even if they plan to max out more later). I'm going to deal with them in a seemingly random order, but there's method in my madness - I want to compare the later ones to things I've said about the earlier ones. Let's get to it!
Theology Track Strategy
(aka "Chicken Pizza", "Chichen Itza" or "Skull Strategy")
General Description: Plans to collect as many crystal skulls as possible and deliver them to the gods at Chicken Pizza. The way I play it is to put 2 workers onto CI, 1 onto either Y or T (to hit Y4/T3 for skulls), then place/pickup/place/pickup the other 1 on either Y (to get 2 wood) or T (to turn W into Sk) whilst the other 3 ride up. I can see that having a third riding CI at the same time might be helpful, but means breaking the rhythm more often to visit palenque for food.
A Good* Score in a 4 player game (Uninhibited): 110-120
Main Sources of Points: Chichen Itza placement points, Temples
Optimal number of workers: 4
Ideal Placement Rhythm: Place 2, place 2, pickup 1, place 1, pickup 2, place 2, pickup 4
Setup Speed: Medium
Setup Plan: Max out the theology tech track. Get the 1st step on the resource track. Get a fourth worker.
Plan for Second Quarter: Let some guys ride-up to the lower spots of CI whilst hitting Y4, T1, T3 for skulls and Y1/Palenque for wood supplies.
Plan for Second Half: Start grabbing those higher-up spots of CI whilst continuing to hoard skulls.
Feeding/Placing Corn Plan: Occasional trips to palenque, possibly grabbing wood+corn immediately yourself, possibly with agri 2. Taking start player.
Best Opening: Start with both wealth tiles that give +theology (which also come with 3 resources). Use your 3 starting resources to get the third theology bump (possibly getting another resource and using double bump to also get resource or a skull). Hit CI spots that give ^Br and ^Gr, paying a resource both times to give ^^Ye so you get 3 resources in the first temple reward.
Most Commonly Used Spaces: Y4, T1, T3
Best Monuments: High Temple, Rescore Temples, Placed Skulls (although not always as good as it first appears)
Best Starting Wealth: Theology bumps, High corn+resource count
Competition Rating: Poor - another player using this strategy as well is bad for you
Difficulty Rating: Medium - some tight corn management required
Vulnerability to Double-Spin: Medium - there are times when you have no guys on the wheels, but these are not that common
Better in 2p,3p,4p?: 2 player
Preferred Place in the Turn Order: 1st/2nd
Example Game Replay: kennycccs
Architecture (Building) Track Strategy
(aka "Building Strategy", I'm going to refer to it as "Classic Building Strategy" as it's the one most people know as the building strategy, and the most obvious building based strategy. However, I'd like to distinguish it from the other building strategy, which I call "Big Resources" - I'll get to that one later :) )
General Description: Builds buildings at a constant rate throughout the game. Tries to maximse the building and resource tracks, but generally does so slowly relying on the bumps from buildings for many of them. Typically sticks to 4 workers and relies on farms, building track bonus corn, yaxchitlan corn and taking start player to feed.
A Good* Score in a 4 player game (Uninhibited): 90-110
Main Sources of Points: Monuments, Architecture Track bonuses (2VP for building and the 3VP fourth-space-bump), Building bonuses (VPs on epoch 2 buildings), Temples
Optimal number of workers: 4
Ideal Placement Rhythm: Place 2, Place 2, Pickup 2, Place 2, Pickup 4.
Setup Speed: Very Quick
Setup Plan: Preferably, but not necessarily get the building track up to at least the second square. Get a fourth worker and start running out buildings, especially buildings that give architecture and resource track bumps and probably at least 1 of the 1 worker farms.
Plan for Second Quarter: Continue running-out buildings.
Plan for Second Half: Run out some more buildings, especially aiming for the ones that give temple bumps or where the associated monument is available.
Feeding/Placing Corn Plan: Farms, building track bonus, yaxchitlan, start player.
Best Opening: 2 starting tiles that give architecture track bumps, place on tikal and use T4 to build a building that gives the last building bump followed by the building that gives a free build (with bonus), followed by a random third building (with bonus).
Most Commonly Used Spaces: T2,T4
Best Monuments: Maxed tech tracks, Tech Track Advances, Green/Blue/Brown buildings/monument.
Best Starting Wealth: The pair that give architecture tech track bumps.
Competition Rating: Okay - you are somewhat vulnerable to competition for buildings/relevant monuments. You are also vulnerable to tikal being filled as you don't have the corn to jump over people.
Difficulty Rating: Medium - some tight corn management required
Vulnerability to Double-Spin: Medium
Better in 2p,3p,4p?: 2 player
Preferred Place in the Turn Order: 1st/2nd
Example Game Replay: I haven't seen one on bga, so any examples of 90 or 100 plus games would be greatly appreciated!
Both of the aforementioned strategies are powerful enough in their own right, and have their own strengths and advantages, but they both share one disadvantage: lack of liquid corn supply. This doesn't make them unplayable - far from it - but does mean you miss out on powerful opportunities that players with plenty of corn on hand can take advantage of, especially in 4 player games. Jumping ahead on wheels enables you to get to the best action spaces without waiting, but costs you corn. If on your turn the wheel you need is half full and you have plenty of corn, it's a golden opportunity to turn corn into powerful actions. If you're playing theology or classic building and managing your corn tightly you're not going to be able to take advantage of these situations when they come-up, and worse - you might be denied access to the wheels you need to use.
So now I come to the strategies that are not corn poor. The ones that work hard to fill entire wheels up themselves just to get those coveted high action spaces, so when someone else fills them first it's a massive help rather than a hindrance...
Agriculture Track Strategy
(aka "Big Corn")
General Description: Step 1: collect corn. Step 2: ???. Step 3: Profit!
A Good* Score in a 4 player game (Uninhibited): 100-120
Main Sources of Points: Temples, Temple Bonuses, Monument.
Optimal number of workers: 5-6
Ideal Placement Rhythm: Place 5, pickup 5. With 6 workers, place ABCDE - pickup BCDEF - place BCDEF - pick up ABCDE - place ABCDE - pick up ACDEF - etc. It's not cost-effective to send out all 6 every time (the 6th worker barely nets any corn once you've paid the 5 just to send it out), but placing like this allows you to avoid ever having to pick-up from P1, which is a very inefficient spot to use.
Setup Speed: Quick
Setup Plan: Get agriculture to the top. Pickup P5 for 12 corn. Get a fourth (and fifth) worker.
Plan for Second Quarter: Ramp up your supply of corn by piling all your guys onto Palenque reapeatedly. When you have plenty, hit U1 (usually by placing 2 or more and stepping down to get multiple use in a turn), T1, T3 and U4 (for temple buildings) to bump all the temples and make sure you're top of as many as possible by the halfway point.
Plan for Second Half: Continue to collect massive amounts of corn and spend it to get those temple bumps. Stick a guy onto CI to use the skull you'll get from the green temple reward (2 if you're really quick). Use U2 to get the resources you need to build 1 or 2 monuments in the final quarter (or earlier if you think you'll have competition for them).
Feeding/Placing Corn Plan: Ha
Best Opening: Uxmal gambit**
Most Commonly Used Spaces: Palenque, U1
Best Monuments: Rescore Temples, High Temple, Corn Tiles
Best Starting Wealth: Worker, Lots of corn&resource cubes, agriculture bumps
Competition Rating: Very good - you actively want somebody else to be in this strategy as you can jump over them to get the high spots of Palenque. Of course, the opposite is also true :P
Difficulty Rating: Easy - when you have loads of corn to throw around, managing it becomes less of an issue. And you don't care much for other resources other than towards the end of the game when you make 1 trip to the market to build your monuments.
Vulnerability to Double-Spin: High - you have zero guys on the board half the time. Of course the other half you have 5 some sometimes you get really lucky.
Better in 2p,3p,4p?: 4 player
Preferred Place in the Turn Order: 1st during setup, 3rd/4th after that
Example Game Replay: qqzm (or see my big corn walkthrough)
Last but by no means least, the big one! I'd played an awful lot of Tzolk'in without ever seeing this done or thinking of it let alone trying it. Although I'd had all the pieces of the puzzle for some time: I'd tried maxing resource track and stockpiling resource cubes from yaxchitlan and palenque (by which I mean all spots of Y and *using* palenque for wood - something I'd never do in this strategy now beyond the initial setup phase). I'd had a discussion in my playgroup where someone commented they thought agriculture 2 was overpowered and I suggested an alternate feeding strategy might be to get resource cubes and use U2 to convert them to corn, although nobody thought I was really serious. We'd also been considering the fact that all our best strategies didn't want to get a 6th worker and I'd pondered about what strategy *might* like one. But none of this came together as a whole until a couple of weeks ago. I've now played it a bunch of times and it's absolutely the most powerful thing you can do in Tzolk'in. However, I've not yet had a game where someone else has been doing the same thing, so how it'll stand-up once everyone is doing it I'm not absolutely sure...
Resource Track Strategy
(aka "Big Resources", "Resource Building Strategy", some people call this one "Building Strategy", just to be confusing)
General Description: Gets to 6 workers and maxes out the resource track. The picks up Y5 a lot, uses U2 (or the building that lets you do the same thing) to sell excess gold and stone (all of it at the beginning) and buys enough corn and wood to last until the next market trip, or the end of the game, whichever comes first. You want to pretty much ignore epoch 1 buildings )save for the odd right coloured one if the relevant monuments are available) and just stockpile those resources ready for epoch 2. In epoch 2 you go nuts and use those piles of corn to pile all your guys onto tikal, building as many buildings and monuments as possible. I've hit as high as 15 builsings and 4 monuments but I'm sure more is possible. As a comparison with the corn income of big corn, ignoring the fact you have to make the occasional market trip: with agriculture 3, big corn gets 4/7/8/10/12 from palenque 1/2/3/4/5. With resource 3, big resources effectively gets 4/7/10/9/16 corn from yaxchitlan, and also 6/12 from T1/T3...
A Good* Score in a 4 player game (Uninhibited): 120-150
Main Sources of Points: Monuments, Building bonuses (VPs on epoch 2 buildings), Architecture Track bonuses (2VP for building, less so the 3VP extra bump as you'll usually bump resources for GG instead).
Optimal number of workers: 6
Ideal Placement Rhythm: Place 2-4, Pickup 2-4.
Setup Speed: Slow
Setup Plan: Get 6 workers, max out the resource track, max out the architecture track, get a pile of resources from Y5&resource track 4 and convert it at U2 (possible repeatedly) to setup a big pile of corn and resources ready for epoch 2.
Plan for Second Quarter: Continue setting up! I said it was a slow setup, you're often not ready to roll until the end of the second quarter, but that's okay :)
Plan for Second Half: Build everything. I mean everything. 6 buildings or 3 monuments in a turn is perfectly possible.
Feeding/Placing Corn Plan: U2
Best Opening: Uxmal gambit**
Most Commonly Used Spaces: Y5, T4, U5 (U5 is really nice in this strategy as the flexibility of choosing Y5 or T4 is very helpful)
Best Monuments: 2VPs per building/monument, Brown/Green/Blue buildings/monuments, Maxed Tech Track, Tech Track Advances, Workers.
Best Starting Wealth: Worker, Lots of corn and resources. The "4 Corn, 1 Wood, > Resource" is good but the other resource track bump one isn't.
Competition Rating: Medium - I haven't had to compete on this strategy directly (though I have competed with classic builders). Like big corn, you have plenty of corn to throw around to jump over people so competition on the wheels can help you. However, there are only a limited number of buildings and monuments, so the ones you need might be snaffled before you get them.
Difficulty Rating: Hard - the turns when you use the market require a lot of forward planning. Deciding how much corn and wood to get is a fine balance. You want to run out of everything at about the time of your next convenient trip. You don't want to leave yourself with no corn to place workers, you don't want to make too many market trips, and having spare of one particular resource is inefficient.
Vulnerability to Double-Spin: Low - you have 6 workers and very rarely take all of them off at once.
Better in 2p,3p,4p?: 3 player
Preferred Place in the Turn Order: 1st during setup, 3rd/4th after that
Example Game Replay: max005
Other Strategies
Doubtless there are other strategies available that I haven't mentioned. I've seen someone do well by ramping all the tech tracks, although it feels to me you're spreading yourself too thin doing that.
I've also tried a skull rush strategy - kind of an offshoot of the Theology track strategy. The plan is to get *all* the skulls ASAP, thus making sure you get CI to yourself and denying others their temple reward skulls. Didn't work too well, but it's an interesting idea.
Maybe you've got a killer strategy that ignores the tech tracks completely - if so I'd love to hear about it! Or indeed any other strategy I haven't thought of yet...
Any other comments/suggestions/questions would of course be very welcome!
qqzm
Notes
* What is A "Good" Score
When I say a good score, I mean the sort of score should you be aiming to hit every game. Obviously there are going to be exceptional games where everything falls into place nicely and goes just your way and you exceed this, but that doesn't happen every single time. Also, I've specified a 4 player game for comparison - in general better scores can be achieved with lower numbers of players as dummy workers don't grab your buildings/Chicken Pizza slots before you, and it's possible to be the top player on a temple with lower investment. By "uninhibited" I mean where no other players are directly blocking you/playing the same strategy as you.
** The Uxmal Gambit
A strong opening move originally suggested by David Goldfarb. That thread goes back-and-forth somewhat, but the basic idea can be best illustrated with an example start. Here is how it might play-out if you're going first and are playing big corn:
You must start with at least 6 corn, ideally 9+ to avoid having to beg on turn 2 or 3 (but begging for 3 isn't so bad). Ideally you'll also have a couple of resources or a bump on the resource track.
1) Place U0,U1,U2 for 6.
2) Pickup U3 for a worker.
3) Place P0,T0 for 1.
4) Pickup U3 for a worker.
5) Place Y0,T0 for 1.
6) Pickup P3 for WW, Y1 for W (or WWW,WW if have resource tech bump). Pickup T3 and T1 to bump agriculture 3 times. Pickup U5-as-P5 paying 1 corn to pickup 12.
7) Spend that 12 corn sending as many guys as you can onto palenque.
8) Pickup a load of food ready for the food day and to send your guys back-out afterwards.
Responding to the Uxmal Gambit
If you're playing second and the player before you starts with the Uxmal gambit, get on that bandwagon! Place U3,U4 and maybe even U5 and get yourself an extra worker and a wildcard action on turn 2. If you're player 3 or 4, you can either make the player2 response if they don't, or place 1 guy on U5 (or U5/U6 if you're really flush with corn), or just take the opportunity of all the wheels being empty to cheaply place on three zeroes and go for a theology strategy...
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: Tzolkin will be on Board Game Arena!
by Teiwaz
bumpneed more ppl playing there :)
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Strategy:: Re: A Guide to the Main Strategies Available in Tzolk'in
by Horrid Beast
qqzm wrote:
Notes
* What is A "Good" Score
When I say a good score, I mean the sort of score should you be aiming to hit every game. Obviously there are going to be exceptional games where everything falls into place nicely and goes just your way and you exceed this, but that doesn't happen every single time. Also, I've specified a 4 player game for comparison - in general better scores can be achieved with lower numbers of players as dummy workers don't grab your buildings/Chicken Pizza slots before you, and it's possible to be the top player on a temple with lower investment. By "uninhibited" I mean where no other players are directly blocking you/playing the same strategy as you.
* What is A "Good" Score
When I say a good score, I mean the sort of score should you be aiming to hit every game. Obviously there are going to be exceptional games where everything falls into place nicely and goes just your way and you exceed this, but that doesn't happen every single time. Also, I've specified a 4 player game for comparison - in general better scores can be achieved with lower numbers of players as dummy workers don't grab your buildings/Chicken Pizza slots before you, and it's possible to be the top player on a temple with lower investment. By "uninhibited" I mean where no other players are directly blocking you/playing the same strategy as you.
So what is a good score? Seriously? You typed all that and said I should be aiming for...nothing; just a bunch of actions?
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Strategy:: Re: A Guide to the Main Strategies Available in Tzolk'in
by qqzm
Horrid Beast wrote:
So what is a good score? Seriously? You typed all that and said I should be aiming for...nothing; just a bunch of actions?
The "good scores" themselves are all in the relevant strategy sections, one for each strategy - e.g. (from the Theology section):
qqzm wrote:
"A Good* Score in a 4 player game (Uninhibited): 110-120"
The section you quoted is just the bottom-of-page asterisk elaboration of what the title "good score" means.
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Strategy:: Re: A Guide to the Main Strategies Available in Tzolk'in
by cwhitpan
Great Write up. I have played through several of these, and found similar results. I think your starting wealth can really help dictate which ne to start with.Had least success with skulls, wheel is so slow.
Most success with buildings & temple mix as you point out.
Never tried the agriculture! I will have to try that and the resource one is superior to the versions I have done.
Great work!
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: New print
by JeffyJeff
egamar wrote:
Bleeding Blue wrote:
What are the differences between the 2012 & 2013 versions?
note though that while i thought you could tell from the back of the box which one you have... ie. if it says 4 piece board you've got 1st one... and if it says 6 then you've got 2nd one... one I got in trade says 4 on back of box... but inside i've got yellow cubes and 6 piece board
maybe there was a transitional period where boxes hadn't been updated yet?
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: General:: Re: New print
by cwhitpan
I might actually buy a game twice.I switched out my gold for some yellow Risk pieces I had laying around in my collection. Much better especially since my crowd is 40+ and the colors are tough for them.
Plus side, I usually go first when the youngest is start payer :)
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Thread: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Variants:: Balance Issues - suggestions
This has quickly become my favourite game.
I love it!!!
However... now that I'm probably close to 50 games in I think there are some slight balance issues with the different strategies. Ultra build is too powerful and the Chichenitza track isn't really competitive.
I wondered how people would respond to a suggestion to increase all of Chichenitzas scoring markers by 1 and to swap the last two actions on the Tikal wheel?
In my mind this would completely balance the game
I love it!!!
However... now that I'm probably close to 50 games in I think there are some slight balance issues with the different strategies. Ultra build is too powerful and the Chichenitza track isn't really competitive.
I wondered how people would respond to a suggestion to increase all of Chichenitzas scoring markers by 1 and to swap the last two actions on the Tikal wheel?
In my mind this would completely balance the game
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Variants:: Re: Balance Issues - suggestions
by PaulGrogan
Glad you are enjoying the game. Certainly one of the top games from last year (unbiased opinion whether people believe me or not :) )Best way to test your theory is to just make an adjustment in your games and see what happens. I'm not saying scribble on the board, the Chichen Itza track is an easy one, just tell everyone +1 VP. As for swapping Tikal 4&5, thats a bit tricker to do, but grab an image from the web, print it out and just temporarily place it on the board whilst playing. Let us know how it goes.
I do know that the game was very heavily playtested, and the results analysed a lot to see what points can be gained from the different strategies. But no amount of playtesting could come close to the number of games that are now being played worldwide :)
As long as you have other players in your group who will help you test it. Like they play Ultra build whilst you focus on skulls for example.
It's my opinion that skulls alone will not win you the game, you do need to do something else aswell.
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Strategy:: Re: A Guide to the Main Strategies Available in Tzolk'in
by sfox
I find the comment that you haven't had to compete when using the building strategy very strange. In almost every 3 or 4 player game I've played with experienced players, at least 2 of the players pursue the resource track + building strategy. I also don't see why you call the resource strategy hard, except maybe in comparison to the agriculture strategy which is very simple to do.I find the skull strategy much harder than the resource strategy, which I'd rate as medium. The skull strategy is so vulnerable to interference (both on purpose and by pure accident) that I rarely play it except just to change the game up a bit every now and then.
Anyway, the point being, that as long as you have two players going for buildings/resources the game ends up being pretty balanced. The 3rd/4th players can both go for agriculture, or one of them can go for skulls. The player(s) that are going heavy agriculture need to interfere with the builders by clogging up the Tikal gear at certain points of the game, otherwise the resource heavy player will win every time. If only one player in a 3/4 player game goes for the resource track the score can get very ugly if the right (wrong) monuments are in play.
Also I find the so called "Uxmal gambit" to be optimal for every strategy including the skull strategy, assuming that you start off the game with enough food. It is such a strong opening move that I try to avoid it because it is so obvious and it just makes the game too easy. I don't know why anyone would even call this a "gambit" anyway, what sacrifice are you making?
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Reply: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar:: Strategy:: Re: A Guide to the Main Strategies Available in Tzolk'in
All of your strategies include the tech track. I think this is a significant disadvantage to the flexibility of some of the strategies as going for max tech first means you're missing out on opportunities early in the game - mainly temple scoring and resources.
For example, focusing on tech usually means you'll miss out on some of the farm buildings which are usually rushed to be built right away. Farm buildings can be a net savings of corn of anywhere between 8 and 48 corn if built in the first quarter - much more than the net corn gain of even the most frantic ag tech user.
Another example is with the theology or "crystal" tech. pumping it to level 3 and continuing to pump it for the bonus can be great (and a skull strat is also good for climbing the temple track) however jacking up the green temple early to level 4 will usually mean at least 15 points in the game as well as 4 wood and 2 free skulls throughout the game. You can get it to level 4 in the first quarter but probably not if you focus on tech.
Obviously if you are going to get tech at all, the beginning of the game is the time to do it however many of these strategies can work fine with lite-tech/no tech.
Especially for Big Corn, I feel like you really missed the essence of what this strategy is trying to accomplish - Getting ag is helpful but max ag is definitely not needed. Ideally, pick the two top corn tiles you're dealt and hit the corn wheel early and heavy. If you get an Ag tech tile, it's not a bad idea to take it then.
Use and maintain a healthy balance of corn and usually this means taking advantage of several of the Uxmal wheel options since after the race for extra workers dies down there's often little competition here. The big thing however for Big Corn that I see as a major advantage is using your extra corn and a late turn order to slingshot you past everyone else in line to the higher up resources. Since, do to their popularity, you can do this pretty easily on Pal and the resource/corn spaces on Yax, usually there isn't too much of a net loss of corn and sometimes it means a gain (paying 3 on Pal would get you 7, balanced with how many other workers you choose to slingshot) while at the same time saving time on the wheel per worker.
I am not a 100% Big Corn player by all means, some people use it throughout the game. Instead I like the flexibility it gives you for the duration you use it, maybe 1 1/2 quarters of the game and through at least 1 if not 2 feeding phases but then using the momentum it gives you to slingshot into other areas, like resources and building monuments.
For example, focusing on tech usually means you'll miss out on some of the farm buildings which are usually rushed to be built right away. Farm buildings can be a net savings of corn of anywhere between 8 and 48 corn if built in the first quarter - much more than the net corn gain of even the most frantic ag tech user.
Another example is with the theology or "crystal" tech. pumping it to level 3 and continuing to pump it for the bonus can be great (and a skull strat is also good for climbing the temple track) however jacking up the green temple early to level 4 will usually mean at least 15 points in the game as well as 4 wood and 2 free skulls throughout the game. You can get it to level 4 in the first quarter but probably not if you focus on tech.
Obviously if you are going to get tech at all, the beginning of the game is the time to do it however many of these strategies can work fine with lite-tech/no tech.
Especially for Big Corn, I feel like you really missed the essence of what this strategy is trying to accomplish - Getting ag is helpful but max ag is definitely not needed. Ideally, pick the two top corn tiles you're dealt and hit the corn wheel early and heavy. If you get an Ag tech tile, it's not a bad idea to take it then.
Use and maintain a healthy balance of corn and usually this means taking advantage of several of the Uxmal wheel options since after the race for extra workers dies down there's often little competition here. The big thing however for Big Corn that I see as a major advantage is using your extra corn and a late turn order to slingshot you past everyone else in line to the higher up resources. Since, do to their popularity, you can do this pretty easily on Pal and the resource/corn spaces on Yax, usually there isn't too much of a net loss of corn and sometimes it means a gain (paying 3 on Pal would get you 7, balanced with how many other workers you choose to slingshot) while at the same time saving time on the wheel per worker.
I am not a 100% Big Corn player by all means, some people use it throughout the game. Instead I like the flexibility it gives you for the duration you use it, maybe 1 1/2 quarters of the game and through at least 1 if not 2 feeding phases but then using the momentum it gives you to slingshot into other areas, like resources and building monuments.
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