5085
« on: March 14, 2013, 02:52:58 pm »
Well, Hideyoshi agrees with you, and he's a better player, so you're probably on the right side of history HME.
There's a reason I feel the way that I do though:
Oars vs. Masonry: If you meld Oars, you are losing a castle card. To meld two cards off of Masonry, the expected number of times you'll need to apply the dogma of Oars is 2ish, since 7/13 remaining 1's have a castle.
If you meld Masonry, the expected number of times you'll need to use your standard draw action to meld two cards off of Masonry is more like 1.5. You have a coin flip chance of being able to do it right away, as opposed to Oars' 7/13*6/12=2/26=~= 8% chanced of being able to double Masonry off only one action.
If your plan is triple or quadruple Masonry, I am here to discourage you. Monumental Masonry is not that good without Wheel or other strong enablers. I do not think Oars is a good enough enabler. You need to, on average, share Oars 4 times to enable Monumental Masonry, meaning you're going to spend the first four actions doing something that's hardly better than your standard draw action. The only strategies that won't be thrilled that you're giving them the extra cards are Wheel and Metalworking, which are cards you definitely want to be blocking with Masonry anyway (I'm assuming here that your argument for Oars is based on the opposing openers with less than 3 castles).
By the time you are done with Monumental Masonry, you are likely to have already lost Prehistory to your opponent, which defeats the purpose of having Monument anyway. Special achievements are offensive, they are the achievements the aggressive players want to get all the way to six. Standard achievements are defensive and offensive, getting them denies your opponent the opportunity to get them, and allows you to deny the next age too more easily (While claiming Monument blocks them from claiming and Industrial Monument, but fails to help at all with blocking Wonder. While blocking Prehistory helps you block Medieval when you already have some score. )
So if you let your opponent achieve 1, you are more or less trading material from behind (chess concept). Monument is an offensive mechanism that helps the player who quickly achieved 1-5 shut the game down so that his opponent can't get Vaccination going or win by Empricism or what have you.
Opening Masonry is better for getting a double Masonry off, which is a nice, reasonable 2 for 1. Blocking more dogmas is a plus that puts it over the edge.
I probably disagree with Hideyoshi the strongest about this one.
Archery versus Tools/Code/City: I don't feel as strongly about this one. Archery is good against Writing, fwiw, you don't get ABSOLUTELY nothing.
You should note that Domestication isn't the only thing you are blocking with Archery/Tools. Archery lets you block The Wheel, at least temporarily, if you meld it instead of Tools. (it depends somewhat on the other card they drew with Wheel)
Same goes for Metalworking.
City States can be useful, but is quite often more powerful as a surprise. Your opponent is more likely to play around it if it's already on the board. I could certainly be wrong about City States, but I prefer it in hand.
Code of Laws has a pretty miserable dogma early on, and since that dogma's only purpose is icon control, surely you would want to play Archery instead for superior icon control..
