by pschoel
I Eat Tables wrote:
I'm a little confused how you're referring to starting wealth tiles, and why you think they're that good. In my experience, your starting wealth should aim to be synergistic, and tiles are largely balanced. Probably the only ones I feel are weaker (on their own) are the extra farm and extra worker tiles, but then again I haven't played them often, so I might be wrong (especially on the extra farm one).
A key point of the strategy I am suggesting is that you must upgrade to level 3 of the appropriate technology track as quickly as possible. In the games I play there is typically a lot of competition early for T0, T1, Y0. Getting 1 or 2 of the appropriate technology tiles allows you to start at level2 of the main technology you will be using, and I think is quite synergistic.
I Eat Tables wrote:
Ignoring that, I think you over-emphasise farms and under-emphasise Palenque, especially if one isn't pursuing a building strategy. An age I (basic) farm costs you 1 wood AND the opportunity cost of using the 2nd action on a gear. The overall benefit, depending on when it's built, is 6-8 corn given slowly over the game. Now for comparison, if you instead went for Palenque 2 instead of Tikal 2* you'd end up with 4 corn and 1 wood instead of that 6-8 slow burn corn, which I'd say is a pretty even trade off at worst without any tech bonuses, and you can potentially go higher on the gear for more corn, if/when conditions allow. Age II farms are a similar comparison - they provide around 6-12 slow burn corn but at a much bigger cost of 4 wood. The age I multi-feed farm is much more complex - it's very dependent on your population, but otherwise compares in a similar way to the age II farm - it's 4 wood for somewhere from 9-24 corn, but also makes other farms (except the second multi-feed farm) half as effective, which makes it much more dependent on strategy.
*I realise this isn't a perfect comparison, but it's close, and who knows which would be easier to actually get to at a given point?
*I realise this isn't a perfect comparison, but it's close, and who knows which would be easier to actually get to at a given point?
You are absolutely right, I should have qualified all my statements by saying that I use a building strategy on 80% of my games and I have never played a big corn strategy. I'll have to try it sometimes when I get the right starting conditions. With RT1 , wood is relatively cheap for me and in many games I never even play on Palenque. My focus is completely on generating points mainly by getting sufficient resources to play T2 and T4 as often as possible so 90% of my placement is on the Y and T wheels and I take first player fairly often.
To make this work I don't want to have to feed my4-5 workers corn each quarter. I prefer getting 1-2 1farms in the first quarter and a 3farm in the third.
If you are playing big corn, the farms are much less important and especially if you do not have RT1 may not be worth it.
I Eat Tables wrote:
I'm not really convinced there's much synergy between corn strategies and climbing pyramids, but otherwise, most of your points look good.
Since I've never played a successfrul corn strategy, you may be right, the main reason I say that is the ability to use T1 to tap on CT4 to move up a level in the pyramid. Along with U1, this provides 2 extra , levell 1 corn actions to move up a pyramid.