So I met jonts in person today; though we didn't play any Dominion. We did have one of the best games of Puerto Rico I've played though.
4 person game. Normally I'm a heavy builder type player. Get coins build, repeat. End the game before much else happens. But I decided to be different today... went all corn, all the time. Up until the last couple rounds, all I had were 5 corn plantations, a sugar plantation, a small sugar mill, and a small warehouse. Almost never got any money. Just chose craftsmen, then captain, then craftsmen, then captain. By the very end I managed to buy a Wharf, but it was too late to ever get it manned.
Jonts ended up winning with 46 points to my 45 (the other 2 players were in the 30s). What's sad is that there were a couple different things that I could have done on my last couple turns to get just 1 more point, but I chose not to because I didn't think 1 point would be likely to matter; instead I did craftsman on the off-chance that I'd be able to ship again for a bunch of more points (even though I knew it was very unlikely that I'd get any points out of it. Figured it was better to have a tiny chance at 6 more points than a guaranteed 1 more point). Had I gone the other way, I'd have won.
Still, before tonight I wouldn't have thought it was realistic to try to win with only a couple buildings; no bonus buildings. Definitely a strategy I'll want to try again sometime.
