It might help explain knowing that you only had 4 festivals.
You do have some mehish shuffle luck. With that said, I think it is also important to know that smithies is the better opening. See at the start, you're going to probably get festival than torturers. It just makes intuitive sense (unless you opened silver/silver which i don't agree). Now you have all these festivals/torturers to connect, conspirator doesn't help that at all, it only helps with the END result which is to gather money.
Smithy doesn't help with generating money as much, but it helps with connecting +actions with +cards. So the order of getting $4 cards is a little backwards. Smithy first, when you feel comfortable to get conspirators, then get one remodel (to change estates and battle curses) and move on over to conspirators. You also don't need that money early on. Really the extra dollars aren't helpful unless you have $10 (to buy two engine pieces).
