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[rinkworks]

You've just cashed in your Treasure Maps.  That means you're lucky, but nobody is ever, ever, ever so lucky that your next hand will consist of four Golds and something with a +Buy.

So you've got 12+ coins to spend on any one card.  What do you buy?

I've never quite figured out what the best purchase here is.  Of course it depends on the stage of the game.  If the VP race is already on, it's easy:  buy a Colony if available, Province otherwise.  But what if it's somewhere between Turns 5-9 or so?  I'm reasonably confident that in a Colony game, you want to buy a Platinum, but I don't know.  And in a Province game, do you take an early Province and just accept the hit to your engine, which probably isn't fully charged yet?  Or do you take another Gold, to shore up your booming economy just a little bit more?  Or do you grossly overpay for some sort of action card?

[Thisisnotasmile]

If it's a Colony game, I'll be going for Platinums so I won't have played Treasure Maps in the first place. In a Province game, I'll either buy an engine card if I've got something in mind, or a Province if the VP race has already started (in which case I activated my maps too late and have probably lost anyway) or if there is no decent engine available and I'm just going for maps -> big money. I won't buy a Gold when I already have 4 Golds in my deck.

[DStu]

I'm not the expert in Treasure Maps, but I would guess there a two cases:

a) You're up to some Village-Smithy-type draw engine: In this case you hopefully can play your TM while you can still redraw some cards, so the question is not really relevant. Hopefully you can or have played some card with +buy. Otherwise it depends, but more money is probably not helpfull, you now have $12 in Gold, so the chance is high that you can reach $16 which would be Double-Province. If you really have trashed everything else and and don't have any cards that gives money, buy a fifth gold and afterwards something that pushes you above the 16. Building up to more is often not nescessary. So either you need more Enginecards, than buy them, otherwhise a Province might be something you want to take, depends on when you reshuffle and how many are left.
But probably as I said it's optimal if you can still in this turn get some of the gold, or all if you have played some +Buy.
In Colony, I'm not sure I want TreasureMaps.

b) If you're more up to some BigMoney strategy, than I would take the Province. You have 4 Gold, that should be enough.

[Glooble]

There was one game where I spent five on an herbalist specifically because of this - I had cashed my treasure maps and had a Royal seal... probably not the smartest move, but it was fun.

[guided]

Simplest rule of thumb might be Platinum > Colony for Colony games. For Province games it's hard to imagine a situation where you wouldn't buy a Province.

[IamOBESE]

One province isn't going to severely hurt your engine since you just added 4 golds to it

[msuroo]

For Province games it's hard to imagine a situation where you wouldn't buy a Province.

I rarely go for treasure maps in the first place, but basically agree with this.

[mypetrock]

It depends on where in the game you are. If you get an early Treasure Map activation, then you want to buy an engine card. In the middle of the game, I can see taking the TM activation and buying gold/platinum - especially if you don't have a lot of high coin cards in your deck. After you have enough engine cards, a late TM should go to a province/colony.

[guided]

It depends on where in the game you are. If you get an early Treasure Map activation, then you want to buy an engine card.

No, I'm pretty sure you want a Province no matter how early it is. You have four Golds in your deck! Just power through to the end of the game.

[msuroo]

If you get an early Treasure Map activation, then you want to buy an engine card.

What kind of engine are you building that would rely on TM for money though?  At that point, what would be faster than just buying provinces?

[randomdragoon]

The normal big money buy rules say get a province with $8 when you have at least 1 gold in your deck, and you have four! Get that province.

I'm not sure what you'd do if you were building a +cards/+actions engine involving treasure maps, I've never tried this myself. Is this even a good idea?

EDIT: Also, I don't think I've ever gotten treasure map in a colony game either, so no idea about this one.

[DStu]

I'm not sure what you'd do if you were building a +cards/+actions engine involving treasure maps, I've never tried this myself. Is this even a good idea?

I have not really done it, but I think there are situations where you might want to do it. Say you have a reliable Card/Action-engine and managed to trash most of your money, so that say there is ~$6 left in your deck (e.g. by Fishing Villages). You have +Buy. To get it completely extreme say you have a Talisman. As you reliably draw your whole deck, TM is a perfectly secure and fast way to get your deck over $16, so that you can now double-province each turn. Just spend $4 for 2 TM, draw them next turn with your engine (hopefully you don't need it completly), draw the 4 gold the same turn and start buying 2 provinces.
Even without Talisman that might be a good idea to spend your first $8 on 2 TM, so that you can buy 2 provinces starting from the next turn. Spending you can't get 4 Gold cheaper than for $8 (Bridge, ok ... ) and with TM you don't really need to care much about buying much money when you construct your engine.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I have bought them on the fly with a remake or upgrades after I had drawn all of my cards, and still had the actions to draw them.

[DG]

wharf