Alright, easier definition (suggested by SirPeebles): Among kingdoms with an upper bound on available VP, what is the highest attainable score?
Old theme, but new cards!
Kingdom:
Platinum/Colony, no Shelters
Ferry
Inheritance
Travelling Fair
Capitalism
Lost Arts
(The last three Events are not a necessity, but they speed things up considerably.)
Young Witch
Native Village (bane)
Goons
Band Of Misfits
Overlord
Page/Travellers
Peasant/Travellers
Scrying Pool
Count
Cultist/Ruins
Rats
Steps:
Buy Ferry for Goons. Goons now has a price of 4 and can be selected by Band Of Misfits, Overlord, and Inheritance.
Buy a Goons.
Buy a Native Village.
Use Native Village to transfer cards to the mat until they can be pulled in for a 7 coin buy. Buy Inheritance for Goons. Our 3 starting Estates are now Goons.
Buy Capitalism. Goons and Estates can now be played without actions in the buy phase.
Buy a Page.
We will cycle the Page to a Champion. Only play Treasure Hunter and exchange to Warrior after a turn which did not gain a card; we don't want to gain any Silver. When playing Hero, we are forced to gain a treasure; pick Potion. We will only obtain 1 Champion. That Potion, along with the Goons set aside for Inheritance will be the only two cards in the entire kingdom that we will not purchase. When we get around to buying the other travellers, we will do the maximum exchanges on the other Pages, up to Hero. Since Pages get returned to the supply, buying the last Page will be the 26th purchase. We will also do the maximum number of exchanges on Peasants. That pile therefore represents 30 purchases. I will mention that it is possible to play an Overlord (or BoM or Inherited Estate) as a Page. And when it is exchanged, the Overlord is returned to the Overlord supply pile, not the Page pile. This does not allow any unbounded purchasing, as the number of possible exchanges is still bounded by a small fixed number. It is disadvantageous to do this.
While cycling for our Champion, buy Estates (but don't empty the pile), buy a Count, buy Lost Arts for Count.
Start moving all Copper to the Native Village mat one at a time by using Count to topdeck, followed by Native Village.
After the Potion is gained, buy 2 Scrying Pools, then move the Potion to the Native Village mat.
After the Champion is in place, play proceeds as follows:
Play Scrying Pool, draw entire deck.
Play Count, topdeck a Scrying Pool (for next turn).
Play all Goons, Estates (Goons), Band of Misfits as Goons, Overlords as Goons.
Buy more actions.
Repeat.
After buying all but one Estate, buy all but one Goons. (One must remain for enabling BoM and Overlord). Then you can empty the Band of Misfits and Overloard piles. You should not empty any more piles until the last turn.
Next, buy 4 more Counts and 3 more Native Villages.
Now we continue to buy all the actions we can, but also start buying non-action cards. We will be limited to buying four per turn. First buy Travelling Fair, then we can topdeck the non-action cards, draw them into our hand for the next turn, use Counts and Native Villages to transfer them to the mat.
Priority on non-action cards should be 7 more Potions, then the Platinum, Gold, Silver.
Priority on action cards should be Page and Peasant to start the long exchange cycles.
When we gain Teachers, we might as well benefit: +1 coin to Band of Misfits, +1 buy to Overlords.
There is no need to buy any Colonies, Provinces, Duchies, or Copper by using this relatively slow method.
After all but one Platinum, Gold, Silver remain, and only one card in each of the kingdom piles remain (excepting the 8 Scrying Pools), we can jump right to the last turn.
Play Scrying Pool, draw deck.
Play all 9 Counts, topdecking actions and gaining +3 coins each.
Play the second Scrying Pool to redraw the topdecked actions.
(We may not need those actions, but Scrying Pool is an attack card.)
Play all 38 Goons variants as usual.
Play all 9 Groundskeepers.
Play all 9 Peasants for +buys, +coins.
Play all 5 Warriors. Does nothing, but they are attack cards.
Play Abandoned Mines.
Play all 5 Soldiers (this generates 245 coins!)
Play a Native Village, pull in all of the cards from the mat.
Play all of the Patinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, and Potions you have.
You have enough coin to buy all of the Duchies, Provinces, Colonies, Copper, and all other remaining cards.
You have only 57 buys and there are 92 cards left, but there is sufficent money to buy Travelling Fair as needed for the extra buys.
Scoring analysis:
8 Colony - 80 VP
8 Province - 48 VP
8 Duchy - 24 VP
11 Estates - 11 VP
10 Curses - -10 VP
80 + 48 + 24 + 11 - 10 = 153 VP
9 Groundskeepers * 25 victory cards gained (only 1 Estate is counted) = 225 VP
Number of each card (out of total in kingdom) purchased with 38 effective Goons in play.
Copper - 46 of 53
Silver - 40
Gold - 30
Platinum - 12
Potion - 15 of 16
Colony - 8
Province - 8
Duchy - 8
Estate - 1 of 11
Curses - 10
Peasant/Travellers - 30
Page/Travellers - 25 of 26
Cultist/Ruins - 20
Rats - 20
Young Witch - 10
Goons - 1 of 10
Band of Misfits - 0 of 10
Overlord - 0 of 10
Native Village - 9 of 10
Scrying Pool - 8 of 10
Count - 9 of 10
463 cards * 76 VP each = 35,188 VP
Ignoring the not insubstantial VP earned while buying the cards for the engine (over a thousand), we end up with a total of 35,188 + 225 + 153 = 35,566 VP
Any of the following Landmarks would add some VP, noted in parentheses:
Tower (281)
Palace (90)
Museum (76)
Orchard (76)
Keep (75)
Obelisk (40)
Triumphal Arch (30)
Defiled Shrine (22)
Aqueduct (16)
Fountain (15)
Arena (12)
Basilica (12)
Baths (12)
Battlefield (12)
Colonnade (12)
Labyrinth (12)
Mountain Pass (eight)
Final note: I expected Vineyards to be one of the final kingdom piles. With Groundskeepers being played and all of the action cards gained, I expected 8 Vineyards to beat out a pile of 10 action cards. And it does. But it does not beat out a pile with 20 cards, hence Rats wins.
An obvious way to increase the score would be to add a Black Market deck, but I'll leave that to someone else.