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Author Topic: Empires: looking for the VP  (Read 1565 times)

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Aleimon Thimble

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Empires: looking for the VP
« on: May 23, 2016, 08:29:01 am »
+2

Dominion, so far, has mostly been a question of 'which deck are you going to build'. Do you want to go for the engine, or is the engine too weak so you go Big Money, or is there some kind of exotic rush/slog/combo on the board?

Empires, however, more than doubles the amount of ways to get VP. I think this will cause a dramatic shift in the way people will analyze the kingdoms. I think that, instead of first looking which deck would be best here, you should first look: how am I going to score points this game? Which ways of gaining VP are there, and which way is most efficient, or do I need to combine several ways?

Of course, sometimes you will see no alt-VP, no VP token cards and no Landmarks on the board. In that case, you will of course just win by winning the Province split (with maybe some Duchy dancing in the endgame), and the usual 'engine/Big Money/other' conundrum will return. Nevertheless, the extra opportunities that arise with the release of Empires will, in my opinion, change the first question players will need to ask themselves at the start of every game to 'How do I get VP?'

What do you think?
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Awaclus

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Re: Empires: looking for the VP
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2016, 08:41:51 am »
+1

The question that you still ultimately need to answer is which strategy you're going for. Alt-VP merely affects that choice.
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schadd

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Re: Empires: looking for the VP
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2016, 09:37:27 am »
0

empires is gonna add a lot of ways to get vp but you'll only get one or two of them per kingdom in most cases. even so, you don't have to change your mindset, really, it is just an extension of the typical evaluation of strategies. okay let's do money then provinces. oh that's only better if you buy a couple action cards. oh and also villages and jesters should be better than silver and gold. oh, and fairgrounds is better than province in this case. oh but one of the strategies from earlier is better because mountebank & no trashing, dang.

similarly, i think landmarks and vp tokens only make other things better and worse. e.g., in this kingdom i would go for trashing with trade route even though it sucks, oh except the copper landmark is there so it's not worth it. oh but there's also the trashing one so it's fine. oh and also the one card gives you money and vp if your cards are expensive and trashing is good for that. et cetera.

the reason that we have qvist rankings is because we already evaluate how good cards are compared to each other. should i try to get money by buying a bunch of merchant guilds or harvests? well, merchant guild is just generally better at its job than harvest is. similarly, should i try to buy out the provinces with bridge or should i try to scum the trashing landmark with foragers? well, eventually we'll know which of those is better but for now i'll say that bridge is generally more important as a vp source than tomb, so i'll just go for that.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: Empires: looking for the VP
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2016, 02:47:01 pm »
0

I think in general, strategy will not change much, but we will have to be aware of alt-vp. So, if the copper Landmark is in play, you should likely still build an engine if its viable, but at some point, you're going to need to pick up three coppers. I guess it's also possible, you might decide to forego early trashing if that landmark is on the board unless something like goons is there making buying back coppers more easy.

I think some Landmarks will reward us for doing things we are already doing like the trashing landmark.

Battlefield might make some decks green earlier, but is two extra VP really worth an early junk card in your deck. Most likely, the answer will be no in most cases.

Still though, I do think Landmarks existence on a board will change how we approach a given board. And, it seems Empires has a lot of Kingdom cards and Events that make VP as well. So, we will have to take those cards into account, but we already do that when Bishop, Monument, or Goons appear.
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