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[Zem]

I recently had a 4 player match with ambassador and masquerade.

I opened ambassador, went double ambassador and ended up distributing all curses and a lot of coppers, but the speedup of masquerade+silver still prevailed.

The board had native village and caravan, which I thought would support ambassador well.
Caravan because you can open caravan/ambassador, and native village because you are almost guaranted to be able to buy one while playing your ambassador, and both because they can increase handsize when it matters.

The full board was native village, ambassador, masquerade, coppersmith, mining village, conspirator, caravan, merchant ship, tactican, harem.
(apparently one of the sets selected for GenCon by Donald X)

What would be your choice for this board?
ambassador or masquerade?

I opened ambassador, caravan, bought a second ambassador, a native village and a mining village and proceeded to distribute all curses, two each round for 5 rounds, but that prooved to be far too slow
(and very unpopular ).
With a conspirator and some money i then bought a couple greens but still ended last.
Noone else used ambassador, and not everyone used masquerade

Perhaps I should have gone for 2 tacticans and a few conspirators in addition? But that would be even slower to start, and I was already very vulnerable to a lucky masquerade.
Or perhaps i should not have started with the curses, and instead concentrated on buying after my deck was small? But since the first provinces were gone very early, I estimated that it was already too late at that point to win without slowing and cursing the others.

My guess is that without masquerade, ambassador would be a must-buy on that board, but with masquerade the balance shifts.

How would this change in a colony game?
With colonies, would the slow buildup be fast enough, and would distributing coppers be good enough not to bother with buying a curse?

[kn1tt3r]

Masquerade/Money ist just insanely strong, and games with 4 players are also scenarios where Ambassador is not that dominant because of the slow start (with 4 players there are only 3 provinces per player). So I'm not surprised.

In 2 player games I'm not so sure what's better. Depends very much on the setup itself (the more BMesque it is, the better should Masquerade be), but that's also more a feeling than real knowledge.

[DG]

This was specifically designed to be a very balanced kingdom and I suspect there isn't one best way to play it. You need to follow the pace of the game that is set by the other players and their strategies. In that respect buying two ambassadors probably set you back while the other players accelerated away. If lots of players had bought ambassadors then perhaps you would have needed two and anyone without would have lost quickly. We'll never know.

[DsnowMan]

Ambassador is almost a trap card in 4p. The game will often end on piles, with you having no points and amazed at how many points estates can give your opponents. In 4p, I like masquerade a lot more.

[chwhite]

I wonder if Tactician/Coppersmith might actually the right answer on that board.  Especially in 4p, where there are so few provinces per player.

[HiveMindEmulator]

On boards without +buy or hand-size-reduction attacks, masq+money will beat most strats which use an ambassador opening (even in 2-player, especially in 4+-player). Ambassador is just too slow, and masquerade deals with minor attacks reasonably well.

[Geronimoo]

I did a few simulations and Coppersmith/Tactician would be the best strategy by far if everyone else goes for Masquerade. But if all the other players go for Ambassador it's probably not such a good idea because the deck is very fragile.

The average game length in the 3 Masquerade vs Coppersmith case is a mere 13 turns