by CarlG
Update #3:Played another game of CoB this time a 4 player game with 1 newbie, 1 person who had played once before, and my wife.
This was a weird game that I can't beleive I lost. I actually went over the scores at the end to figure out what happened...and then stayed awake until like 2 in the morning mulling it over....yeah there IS a down side to OCD apparently;)
Anyways here is the breakdown between my wife and I(we finished 1-2 as expected).
Kelsey 244 points
farms 33
knowledge tiles 46
shipping 44
towers 4
completion 18
subtotal: 145
Carl 242 points
farms 52
knowledge tiles 35
shipping 24
towers 20
completion 18
subtotal: 149
As you can see I barely edged out my wife in the subtotal and she beat me because she did a better job of chaining and completed one more section than I did. I ended up getting three mines by the 2nd phase and she avoid mines altogether. However, she got the tile that gives to silverlings when delivering goods and so she ended up producing the same amount(ish) of silverlings as I did as well.
The numbers that really jump out at me are her 46 knowledge tile points and the 44 shipping points. obviously I needed to do a better job at blocking, as well as I needed to compete better in the shipping category. I am realizing how powerful shipping is in a 4p game where each good is worth 4 points. I find it interesting how tile values differ depending on player count. for example I managed to get 5 towers in this game(due to the knowledge tile that lets you put same buildings in the same city) along with the knowledge tile for it which is normally quite powerful in a 2p game especially. However, she had 4 shipping houses and the knowledge tile for that. As I was thinking about it she was essentially getting 4 points like I was for each of those tiles as well as an additional 1/2 action because of the coin...adding to this her knowledge tile that gave her an additional silverling ofr shipping and she was set! Also, even though I acknowledged the importance of turn order in my last post, I played in last place for much of the game. Meanwhile she was often first and it fit nicely in with the rest of her shipping strategy.
After breaking things down it was interesting to see how well I was able to do with being lower in turn order. I think having two newbies had to do a lot with both my wife's success and my own....I feel I played well, but so did she, and she ultimately edged me out....I felt her strategy was better though as she had a bit more potential at the end of the game than I did.
So takeaways from this session:
1) shipping houses are fairly powerful especially in 4p game swhere shpping in general is a priority action.
2) When possible I need to chain actions when going after non-action giving tile(ie. if I want a farm tile, instead of just grabbing it, try to get the building that allows me to grab a farm tile...this will give me an action and net the same result). My wife routinely does better at chaining than we and I am shocked it took me this long to understand that it gains an action...If there is competion for a tile I will still grab it, but if there is not I will try to chain for these tiles.
3) Mines early are great to pick up despite my wifes dislike of them and her win % ;)
4) In a 4p game where all the animals will come out and there are 4 animal types it is less important to focus on farms as you will have good opportunityies there as others will likely try to focus on a different animal type...It is reasonably easy to get a good animal score with only half focus on pastures(ie. try to chain a couple 4and 3 of the same together but maybe not go for a whole field of the same animal).
5) keeping up in shipping is essential in a 4p game.
6) Some mathy stuff I have decided upon:
a) I am going to aim for 250 points each game
b) 150 points from pastures/shipping/towers/knowledge/completion
c) 100 points from finishing off areas
d) I am going to think of each action as worth 4 points(or rather needing to produce at least 4 points)50 dice x4 plus 12.5 actions through chanining or buying = 250 points. I am simply going to use this to try and evaluate the relative value of the various tiles for different play counts.
Thanks for reading and happy gaming!