Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Gargantua on September 21, 2019, 04:55:21 pm
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Hello, I’m a relatively new player and only using the base set.
I’ve learned how to build an engine, which is way more fun than running big money. By late game I have multiple buys and plenty of coin.
I try to avoid victory points until very late game. I’ll even choose to buy action cards when I could otherwise have afforded a Province.
However, by the time my engine is chugging, other players have already been buying Provinces and it’s often too late for me to catch up.
How can I determine the right time to start buying Provinces?
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It's hard to have a general rule, but I would say a general rule if you have an engine is when you think you can reliably get 2 provinces a turn, and sometimes you may want to bridge the two phases with one turn of buying 1 province and building more. One big thing to think about is how many turns it takes your deck to go from reliably buying 1 province a turn to 2 provinces a turn. If it takes too many turns, then you don't want to go for 2 provinces a turn (I.e., if the number of provinces you give up by building more is greater than the number of provinces you will be able to get once you've built more, you might not want to build more). I recommend watching this video for some tips: https://youtu.be/kgX3nXeA2rM
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other players have already been buying Provinces and it’s often too late for me to catch up.
Depends on the number of players. Wizard_Amul covered the 2-player case but it sounds like you play multiplayer like I do. I've found that in 4-player, buying a province is always a reasonable option. Depending on the kingdom, if you know what you're doing it can be possible to keep building the first (and maybe second) time you hit 8. In 3-player, continuing to build is often the better plan since there are four provinces per player just like in 2-player. Though bear in mind that 3-player games are still rushed compared to 2-player, both due to a 3-pile ending being more likely, and because any given player has less control over when the game ends (no such thing as a Penultimate Province Rule in multiplayer).
The blog has some good articles on this:
When to start greening (2-player analysis) (https://dominionstrategy.com/2019/03/31/when-should-i-start-greening/)
Multiplayer analysis (general gameplay not just greening) (https://dominionstrategy.com/2018/06/21/multiplayer-series-part-4-gameplay-considerations/)
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Hello, I’m a relatively new player and only using the base set.
I’ve learned how to build an engine, which is way more fun than running big money. By late game I have multiple buys and plenty of coin.
I try to avoid victory points until very late game. I’ll even choose to buy action cards when I could otherwise have afforded a Province.
However, by the time my engine is chugging, other players have already been buying Provinces and it’s often too late for me to catch up.
How can I determine the right time to start buying Provinces?
It is simple: you overbuilt. Dominion is not multiplayer solitaire, when the other players start greening you have to think twice about building up further.
So next time simply start greening earlier. You can only rarely get more than 2 Provinces per turn so starting to green once your engine yields 2 Provinces/turn. That's a decent benchmark and you will soon learn the subtleties about tempo and greening.
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Do you have the first or second edition of the base set? (If you have Woodcutter, Chancellor, Spy, etc., it’s first. If you instead have Artisan, Vassal, Poacher, etc., it’s second.)