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[Titandrake]

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130612/log.51435d5be4b0f496b6dd5b83.1371097358703.txt

I don't think there's much particularly remarkable in the engine. The main key is that with Cartographer out, the engine is much more resilient to greening that it would otherwise be.

The turns I want to focus on in particular are:

T14: I have $17, and buy Province + Duchy + Silk Road. This feels wrong to me: I should either be doing Province + Province or Province + Silk Road + Silk Road, not this weird compromise buy.

T16: I have $17 again. This time, I buy double Province. This is just a completely bad call. At this point, there are 3 Provinces in the supply. In order to get this hand, I had to play KC-Council Room, meaning my opponent is almost sure to have a big hand. My tiebreaks are that I have 1 extra Duchy and 1 extra Silk road. Me going double Province is me basically saying, I'm going to hope my opponent doesn't have a good enough hand. But I gave a 8-card starting hand! The issue is that I didn't think it through enough, and got lazy.

Although I'm not sure of it, I'm more and more convinced that the right buy on T16 was 4 Silk Roads. This both stalls out the game a bit more (it's not a close 3-pile), and gives me a lot of inevitability in my VP, and actually gives me more +VP that turn than double Province does. Each Silk Road is worth 3VP, and the 2 SR I have get boosted by 1 each.

I'm interested in getting a second opinion on this, because by that logic it would have been better for me to get 4 Silk Roads on turn 14 as well, for the inevitability. But picking up four victory cards that early feels risky.

[dondon151]

I would get 4 SRs on turn 16 and 2 Provinces on turn 14. Think about it like, I don't know, using your timeouts in football at the end of the game or purposely fouling in basketball to stall.

[-Stef-]

Hi Titandrake,


I agree with your point that this engine can take a lot more green due to the Cartographers. However, I don't think that implies you should actually take that green. KC has such a ridiculous explosive power once you get to a certain density of KC/KC-able actions, that I'd just keep investing in those.

I realize you ask for T14 and T16, but reading through the log I first stumble on your T11.
You have $16 and 3 buys, and get a province. This is too soon; no 3 pile is in sight yet.
I think I'd get KC-Festival-Hamlet, although KC-Festival-Spy is also an option, or KC-KC-hamlet.

1) One of you is going to get a huge turn at some point, and then these 6 points of the province won't matter that much.
Getting the huge turn first will matter a lot more. There is no way you can buy enough green to lock the game down by having more then half the available points.

2) Having enough KC to threaten 'if I get the huge turn I have enough buys to 3-pile' is also very important, this might force your opponent to buy green.
Only if both players are threatening to 3-pile, actually having more points then your opponent is important.

---

That said, you took a different route, and asked for how to green on T14/T16. I think the main point here is to make a choice here, and then make all your actions consistent with that choice. Either you're hoping to get another huge turn, and then you should buy two provinces on T14. Or you want to turn this into a slog, and then get 4 Silk Roads on T14.
Both are in fact very playable plans. 4 green cards opposed to 2 isn't that big a deal in your deck. You're not trashing and playing with cartographers anyway.

T16 I'd go for 4 silk roads. Having just played 3 council rooms, it's too likely that leaving only 1 province is the losing option now.
And you're still in reasonable enough shape not to do something this risky.

[DG]

In any game where you're using council rooms you've got to expect the province pile to run out quickly, particularly when using king's court on council rooms. You've got the option to drive a winning position home using provinces so you should take it. On turn 14 you get the chance to be up 3-2 on provinces with 3 left in the supply and a shuffled deck (deck that can produce double province turns). That's a very strong position and might have forced your opponent towards silk roads when there would never be enough victory cards in the deck. In fact that's the strong position your opponent was in on turn 16, where yes you should have taken silk roads.

[WanderingWinder]

Listen to Stef here.

Basically, if you are building an engine like this, you just don't want to green very early at all - it is much better to overbuild first, because A) it makes you more consistent AND B) it lets you go bigger when you do green, which compensates for the time lost. So greening early is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make, probably because they feel they are behind.
Of course, you need to green eventually. Usually this is either to get yourself on the favorable side of three-pile endings, or because if you green now, and your opponent either follows or builds a little more, or even a lot more, before greening, they can't possibly catch up - you have enough firepower to just blitz through most of the VP quickly. Here, with the SR giving lots of potential total VP out there, this means you should be able to get all the provinces in like 3 turns when you turn to green, or you are reacting to your opponent, or there is a 3-pile threat. Of course, the biggest thing is that you need to follow the actual game - these are only rules of thumb, and in a specific situation, they might be broken.

[Davio]

The main problem with an engine greening early is not that those green cards are going to clog your deck, but that you aren't getting even more engine components to land decisive blows on the last few turns.

[Rabid]

I think I prefer both Festival and council room to cartographer on this board.
Cartographer does nothing if you manage to draw the whole deck.
And Festival gives you +coin and + buy to use with KC when trying to 3 pile.

[Titandrake]

My main worry was I don't want to KC-Council Room that much if possible, and that if I can get a good turn without having to do that, there's a better chance of my opponent not having a good turn. So, I choose to primarily do KC-Cartographer. On the other hand, I never end up drawing my whole deck, so it's not like I'm playing CR for zero benefit.