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Author Topic: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy  (Read 9327 times)

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popsofctown

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Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« on: February 23, 2015, 01:56:41 pm »
+1

I played Race for the Galaxy last week at board game night and liked it.  Now I want to misuse the internet to become powerful at it so that I can feel superior to other sentient beings in a way I construe to be deeply meaningful.

What's the best way to practice? I downloaded this thing that lets me play bots, and took my time and destroyed the bot with triple its score.  Before that I played online and it took me 5 times as long to take my turn as my opponent did and I felt kinda bad about that.  So I'm not sure how to go about this
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Kirian

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2015, 03:42:52 pm »
0

I played Race for the Galaxy last week at board game night and liked it.  Now I want to misuse the internet to become powerful at it so that I can feel superior to other sentient beings in a way I construe to be deeply meaningful.

What's the best way to practice? I downloaded this thing that lets me play bots, and took my time and destroyed the bot with triple its score.  Before that I played online and it took me 5 times as long to take my turn as my opponent did and I felt kinda bad about that.  So I'm not sure how to go about this

Play it at BoardGameArena?

Though from my general play of it, a lot of getting good is drawing the right card combos without spending too much time getting them.  Also known as pure dumb luck.
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rrenaud

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2015, 06:09:41 pm »
+2

Getting good is orthogonal to getting lucky.

Good players win a lot in the long run.  Lucky players don't really exist in the long run.

Once you become decent (say, better than the AI), I'll happily play a bunch of Keldon against you.  Send me and gmail message/email when you want to play, rrenaud@gmail.com
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Hyphen-ated

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2015, 10:16:12 pm »
+1

Here is a strategy article that I found to be pretty helpful: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/295249/rftg-general-strategy-guide
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Kirian

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2015, 10:26:21 pm »
0

Getting good is orthogonal to getting lucky.

While I agree, and of course this is also true in Dominion, I think the luck factor in RFTG is an order of magnitude more significant than the luck factor in Dominion, just because of the incredibly high variance of the RFTG deck.  This is even more true when playing multiplayer rather than 2P.
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rrenaud

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2015, 02:16:23 am »
+5

I think both race and dominion have a moderate amount of luck involved and both have a ton of depth/return for experience.  If you have some reasonable empirical definition of luck (computable from the outcomes of game logs), I might be tempted to crunch the numbers.  I've won 6 of the 8 face to face race tournaments I've entered, and they've all been multiplayer.  One of those tournaments only had 30 players, every other had more than 70.
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2015, 12:06:42 pm »
0

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2015, 12:44:46 pm »
0

Is disabling goals a popular variant? I noticed there's an option for it in Keldon, and I noticed the person who taught the six of us excluded them, and I noticed that I think they're silly but those are in descending order of importance.
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theory

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2015, 12:50:42 pm »
0

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)
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theory

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2015, 12:53:03 pm »
+1

I think both race and dominion are have a moderate amount of luck involved and both have a ton of depth/return for experience.  If you have some reasonable empirical definition of luck (computable from the outcomes of game logs), I might be tempted to crunch the numbers.  I've won 6 of the 8 face to face race tournaments I've entered, and they've all been multiplayer.  One of those tournaments only had 30 players, every other had more than 70.

To add to this, there's a lot of making your own luck in Race.  A bad player, for example, will open New Sparta, never draw military, and then blame luck.  A good player is positioned well for when he gets lucky and takes advantage of it, and can recover better from bad luck.  He will either figure out ways to find that military, or more commonly adapt his plan on the fly and put together a tableau out of what he's got.
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Ozle

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2015, 01:59:41 pm »
0

Hey, if you like RTTG you will probably LOVE this other game I have just found out about

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion
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Ozle

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2015, 02:00:00 pm »
0

I think both race and dominion are have a moderate amount of luck involved and both have a ton of depth/return for experience.  If you have some reasonable empirical definition of luck (computable from the outcomes of game logs), I might be tempted to crunch the numbers.  I've won 6 of the 8 face to face race tournaments I've entered, and they've all been multiplayer.  One of those tournaments only had 30 players, every other had more than 70.

To add to this, there's a lot of making your own luck in Race.  A bad player, for example, will open New Sparta, never draw military, and then blame luck.  A good player is positioned well for when he gets lucky and takes advantage of it, and can recover better from bad luck.  He will either figure out ways to find that military, or more commonly adapt his plan on the fly and put together a tableau out of what he's got.

So basically like real life then?
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2015, 06:32:29 pm »
0

Apparently my first game was a fluke, or the AI is much stronger if it's in 1v1 mode.  I usually lose to the bot.  My only win so far was a military mode thing.
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2015, 01:35:34 pm »
0

It seems so hard to predict what my opponent is going to do when I can't see his hand.  Like at the opening of one game against the AI he started off with some weird military world thingy that likes Rebels, that doesn't produce, so I picked consume trade and sell since military is about settling, and I had an alien good to sell, and i was the only one who could produce.  But then he picked develop/develop and i only had worlds prepared in hand, not developments, so I didn't benefit at all, cause I didn't explore. 

Should I just like always explore or is that just bad beats
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Watno

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2015, 01:40:16 pm »
0

Once you become decent (say, better than the AI), I'll happily play a bunch of Keldon against you.  Send me and gmail message/email when you want to play, rrenaud@gmail.com
I wasn't aware Keldon's implementation even had multiplayer, good to know.
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Kirian

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2015, 04:00:40 pm »
0

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)

What goals are we talking about? Some sort of variant?
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Voltaire

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2015, 05:23:36 pm »
0

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)

What goals are we talking about? Some sort of variant?

Goals are an official mechanic of RftG introduced in the first expansion (Gathering Storm).
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #18 on: February 25, 2015, 10:08:37 pm »
0

The prestige system is really crazy.  You get ahead by one point on prestige and that draws you 1 card and 1 vp every turn in perpetuity. 
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pacovf

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #19 on: February 26, 2015, 03:20:26 am »
0

The prestige system is really crazy.  You get ahead by one point on prestige and that draws you 1 card and 1 vp every turn in perpetuity.
Nope, you need to keep getting at least one prestige every turn to get the bonus. Not always convenient nor possible. Sometimes it's a trap because not all sources of prestige actually accelerate you towards endgame "exponential" point gain.
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #20 on: February 26, 2015, 02:08:19 pm »
+1

The prestige system is really crazy.  You get ahead by one point on prestige and that draws you 1 card and 1 vp every turn in perpetuity.
Nope, you need to keep getting at least one prestige every turn to get the bonus. Not always convenient nor possible. Sometimes it's a trap because not all sources of prestige actually accelerate you towards endgame "exponential" point gain.
oh, ok, thank you.  I didn't realize that.
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Kirian

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #21 on: February 26, 2015, 02:26:42 pm »
0

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)

What goals are we talking about? Some sort of variant?

Goals are an official mechanic of RftG introduced in the first expansion (Gathering Storm).

Does this variant reduce luck and/or is used in tournaments?  I'm interested to know if our luck vs skill discuss is encountering this crosstalk; I've only played the base game.
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amalloy

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #22 on: February 26, 2015, 05:27:33 pm »
+2

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)

What goals are we talking about? Some sort of variant?

Goals are an official mechanic of RftG introduced in the first expansion (Gathering Storm).

Does this variant reduce luck and/or is used in tournaments?  I'm interested to know if our luck vs skill discuss is encountering this crosstalk; I've only played the base game.

Most card games are a lot more skill-based than they appear to a new player. A new player doesn't really know what to do, but he does stuff that seems good to him, and sometimes he gets good cards and wins. But usually he loses, and since he can't see what his opponents are doing that is better, he concludes that it's just bad luck when he loses. You see this in poker, you see it in Dominion, it's really everywhere: beginners blame luck when they lose, and then Mic Qsenoch or Stef stop in to say "actually here are ten errors you made that all led to your loss". I'm no RftG expert, but I'm quite confident that someone who regularly wins 70-player tournaments can exercise a lot more skill than I can even in just the base game, without any of the goals.

Edit: That is, I'm arguing that you think Dominion is more skill-based and less luck-based than Race because you understand Dominion better. Someone who's studied Race as much as you've studied Dominion will surely disagree. Probably there is some difference, and one game has a larger luck factor than the other, but I doubt it's really that large.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2015, 05:30:24 pm by amalloy »
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DG

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #23 on: February 26, 2015, 07:23:31 pm »
0

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)

What goals are we talking about? Some sort of variant?

Goals are an official mechanic of RftG introduced in the first expansion (Gathering Storm).

Does this variant reduce luck and/or is used in tournaments?  I'm interested to know if our luck vs skill discuss is encountering this crosstalk; I've only played the base game.

I try to play without goals with my friends and I don't know anything tournaments. My impression would be that they increase skill in competitive games but they increase the number of luck driven games. There are already some deals that are 'slam dunks' for the lucky player and if someone gets that sort of draw plus matching goals then you practically need to outplay them twice over to win.
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popsofctown

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Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy
« Reply #24 on: February 27, 2015, 11:16:36 am »
+1

The thing is if you get dealt new sparta as a start world and then you get dealt, I don't know, Old Earth, that doesn't really go with your strategy.  But it's still Old Earth, and you can still discard it for other stuff, or you can still play it for its effect and switch strategies to something using Old Earth (Old Earth is probably a terrible example since it's probably not one of the most exciting reasons to switch over to a consumex2 strategy but bear with it).  Or you could play Old Earth for just a minor involvement in the alternate strategy it offers.

With the goals if it flips "First to get one production world of every color", if you are dealt the wrong cards for that goal the goal just does nothing for you.  You don't get any benefit for doing something other than the goal, like you do when you discard a card that doesn't fit your strategy.  You quite possibly don't even get the option of switching over so you can achieve that goal, you can quite easily not draw the right cards for it at all. 

So it just seems more luckish than the game is without them to me.
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