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[rrenaud]

So, I am definitely still an innovation noob, so I can't really write this post, but I want to read it.  Ergo, I'll take a first stab at it and then hope someone actually does a good job.

What does the skill curve look like for innovation?

Understanding the rules.
Knowing some of the important cards.
Learning some combos.
Paying attention to symbol counts.
A little understanding of game flow, having a feel for when to score vs when to tech.
Knowing all the win conditions.
Knowing how to counter important cards.
Knowing all the cards.
Ability to see plausible long term shots at a win.
Ability to see opponent's shots at at winning, and knowing how to prevent them.

[Drab Emordnilap]

I feel like paying attention to symbol counts is like, #2. You can't get hardly anywhere not knowing what your cards are going to do when you use them, and whether or not your demand will actually affect anyone.

Unless you mean more generally, as opposed to "how many symbols does each player have right now".

[rrenaud]

With paying attention to symbol counts, I mean something like:

Oh, my opp just threw down some nasty attack in leaves, and I am 2 behind them in leaves.  I should meld this pottery card just for the leaves to protect me from the attack.

[marco2012]

In my view, your skill curves is quite good already. I would like to add parts (underline) to your learning curves so that :

Base card part

Knowing the rules
Knowing some of the cards (gunpowder, for example)
Learn some "scoring" combo
Pay attention to 'symbol count'
Knowing the flow of the game
Knowing all winning conditions, and the requirement to claim normal achievement and special achievement
Knowing how to counter some important
Knowing that age 9+ is 'age of lost control' (lol)
Learn some "Tech ahead" combo
Learn when to share dogma and when not to
Learn "Disruptive" combo
Knowing all the cards and how to use them well
Learn how to counter scoring combo and tech ahead combo
Learn when to use 'I demand' dogma
Ability to see estimate what opponent will do in their next turn

[rrenaud]

A new thing I learned or thought about yesterday.

Some cards that are bad when they come out during the their age are sometimes way better when played "in the future", after the age stacks are more depleted.  Scoring a "2" can actually end up scoring a 7.

[theory]

Yes.  There are certain cards in particular that are extremely strong later on -- Archery is a fantastic counter to Mathematics, and Fermenting is crazy crazy strong if all the piles are depleted and you have a lot of leaves.

Other early cards are normally weak later for reasons other than piles, but can be good given unusual circumstances.  Monotheism is a good example.

[qwertymartin]

I've played getting on for 50 times and I still couldn't tell you which individual cards are in which Age deck. I think there are some broad principles that are much more important than that:

- know that if you're taking lots of plain Draw and Meld actions, you need to change something, because inefficiency will kill you

- know the broad classes of things that you need to be doing, and make sure you are doing at least one of them efficiently. These are scoring, building symbol count, and teching ahead

- understand that shared dogmas can be a powerful weapon

- know the rough phases of the game e.g. Castles are only in the first 3 Ages and Gunpowder and Engineering can kill them, Factory dominance can be huge in the mid-game.

[qwertymartin]

I don't think this is a 'learn combos' game at all, it's so much more fluid and contextual than that.

[qwertymartin]

Oh, another one:

- understand that no card is 'unstoppable'

A classic sign of a newbie player are that they identify specific cards as being broken/unstoppable. This is never the case.

Related to this is that newer players often complain of runaway leaders. I went through a phase of being worried about this, with lots of 6-0 and 6-1 achievement wins. My regular opponent and I broke through that and now we almost always have close games.

[Drab Emordnilap]

- know the rough phases of the game e.g. Castles are only in the first 4 Ages

First three ages.

[qwertymartin]

Yep, thanks.

[qwertymartin]

Oh hey, look! Tom Shields already wrote this post and posted it an obscure corner of BoardGameGeek: http://boardgamegeek.com/article/6817486#6817486

I quote at length:

While familiarity with the deck accrues like Matt says, this is not the same of studying the deck or seeking & repeating combos. It's more developing a good sense of what icon leads represent over the course of a game; bulbs with tech'ing, leaves & crowns as attack, so on. When to fight for them & when to let go. How to adjust your game should you be out of the race for, say, crowns. That said, I don't think this game rewards trying to repeat pins or certain combos. Essentially because it is very rare for conditions to repeat. This isn't like drawing for the Ents in War of the Ring & positioning Gandalf. You've seen this I'm sure 30 games in - they don't repeat.

Every card is a lever, that's the mantra, in a given situation. And the situation never repeats. What I'm saying is, if you go looking for something, or recreate something from the last game, well, you're in trouble.

And that's what keeps this game alive & fresh after 90 plays.

I remember a feeling of climbing a ladder with Innovation that went something like this:

 - My first realization - every time you blind draw you loose tempo. I remember when this struck me after about 10 games and I'd squirm like mad trying not to draw, I'd do anything, blind melds & shares & whatever, not giving a damn if I win or lose. I remember an early mantra as people were first learning the game and were giving advice on threads: if you don't know what to do, draw. Which made me crazy. As if that was progress. Even if you do get something you can use, it takes another whole turn to get it down and dogma it, and by then the tableaus have shifted. So I favored (early on) doing whatever I could with what I had & drawing as a last resort. When I started doing this, things started happening & I watched that. A sense for tempo. To this day, if I need to simply draw a card, both Mike & Scott will tell you I lock up and then moan. I'm finally learning to draw sometimes without hanging my head, but as a first realization it really served to shake up the game & I started winning.
 
- My second realization - the icon battle is important. If the early opportunities drive you into bulbs, it's worth a little tempo loss & struggle to get some leaves or crowns (especially leaves in my case) going. Dropping a card just for icons is not a bad move. Dropping two can be excellent, though I rarely do it if it sets up a draw(!). Even if the dogmas don't seem to fit at the moment.

 - My third realization - letting go of early scoring to focus on splay & tableau development. There is an ongoing meme/joke expressed by first time players that goes: Agriculture is broken; shorthand for someone scoring early & often. When in fact, Agriculture sucks early on. Because you get your tableau developed while they score a few points or the first achievements and then watch you take the game away - this game does not get lost if someone leads. Scoring looses tempo. Besides the obvious response (if it bothers you they keep Agg-ing, or whatever) to drop some leaves, or share something that changes their board. This game isn't about being passive, or creating a safe combo-sled to ride. It's not about security - everything is insecure - it's about change & rapid adaption. It seems like this hit me hard sometime around 10-15 plays.

 - My fourth realization - shaking the tree. Somewhere I learned, when boxed in (which happens every damn game), to shake the tree. If you're pinned, if you hit a dead end with your tableau, don't sit there & draw & draw. Do anything to change the tableau. Risky shared melds, tuck engines, any lever you can grab. Because the tableau will change. And in the new look opportunities show up. And yes it will backfire once in a while, but less often then you'd think. I think the reason is, even if you feed the other a good card, you've changed their plan & maybe to something they either don't know how or don't want to bring home.

- My fifth realization - sharing is often good, even helping the other. That extra card can be everything.

 - My fifth & 1/2 realization- when teching up, try to cover your ass with leaves or you'll get way up there & the other will calmly say thank you & steal your high card.

 - My sixth sense - I can see dead people If you have someone pinned, repeat. I've seen someone who has me pinned & desperate and, come their turn, they don't continue the beating and wander off drawing a card or something. If you are trashing someone's tableau or score pile, keep trashing it. Don't wander away looking for truffles. Make them use their precious actions squirming away. Plus it asserts confidence & this game is so psychological.

 - My seventh realization - forced shares. Mike owns this baby, he's the king. The most excellent weapon of all. Cover their good cards & get an extra draw. Disruption. Shift the ground. Yummiest move of all.

 - My eight realization - if you start churnning & because nothing seems strong, go with your first thought & stop churnning. Usually, you're right the first time. I don't always practice this but I should so that's the realization I'm working on now. Besides, it keeps things fun & builds a nice metagame of not always needing to be in control.

[BitTorrent]

- My fourth realization - shaking the tree.

Oh come on don't shake me up   

Well to be honest I play Innovation like a frame of snooker...Yea there are 'typical' situations say sometimes the target red ball is close to the hole(just like a typical score and achieve situation) or setting a snooker(doing things to interrupt your opponent). For me, understand the situation is the large part of it, while executing the maneuver is the lesser part. Believe me, most of the time you don't have much options or choices in terms of execution(Say usually you only have 2-3 hands, a card with a draw and meld effect, a scorer and some useless top cards). Yes of course you may pull off more advanced tricks if you know the cards and know the game very well, but most of the time a correct understanding is more important. Say if someone starts scoring consistently while you don't, you have to move quickly to do something, maybe to stop him, maybe to catch up, maybe taking the tech lead, etc.

With my expertise I usually reacts so quick that you don't even actually meld that key card to your board(say sometimes I just know the next card you are going to meld by your set-up, usually about icons). Getting to there need so much experience though, you should start from understand how to win the game. Yes, set it up yourself, control the game and win it, but not by some random effects or random tech-up. If you don't know how to win you can't even judge what to do correctly, and due to the nature of this game, the unknown will blurs you and overwhelm you.

For the 'no draw please' style...I love it. Really, there are at least some 30 - 40% of games I won which I didn't even draw a card directly as an action for once. Sharing to get cards, Activate dogmas to get cards, even being demanded can give you cards, too. Though this is not a must-do thing there are great players both in F14 or elsewhere who use the draw action a lot while keeping a good winning percentage (I used to be a .660 player in F14 but didn't play there for so long...).

Well, learn how to win first, others should wait. When I teach others to play I actually open my hands so they don't feel scared, and I score slowly to let them feel that I am going to climb the achievement ladder to win the game. That is how I do this.

[theory]

What is F14?

[BitTorrent]

What is F14?

Yet another internet multiplayer java-based board game platform from China. They don't have much game but they do have innovation way earlier before isotropic...say an year ago.

Only a handful of people still plays innovation regularly on there but most of them are war-hardened beasts. I step on them 

[dan11295]

Regarding keeping your opponents pinned. I remember my first game I got lucky in a 4-player game where I used Combustion repeatedly to steal others cards and then score them. I had other key cards down (such as Navigation) which kept any other player from blocking my demand. I realized after the fact that in reality i was lucky no one had any cards in hand or down able to disrupt my scoring engine.

In my secong game i fell too much in love with construction and ultimately kept on getting my opponents junk cards with nothing available to make use of the huge hands I now had.  Can be a bit of a trap to repeat a demand action like that it if doesnt lead to scoring or synergize with what you have available to you.