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Mountain Pass Bidding Strategy

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jsmarvin:
There's been some discussion regarding bidding in the Empires Rulebook thread, but I thought I'd start a separate thread to discuss this topic. I'm not an expert Dominion player, and although I'm familiar with all the cards in Dominion, I don't know them well enough to come up with relevant combinations. So here are some questions regarding bidding that I'd like to see people discuss, some practical, some more of a challenge/theoretical (and possibly some may be the "wrong question", feel free to address what you think the "right question" should have been):

1) If the first Province is bought earlier in the game, what are the factors that will determine bidding strategy and what should that strategy be? 2 player vs. 3-4 player? Colony's available? Dominate available? Alt VP available? My definition of "earlier in the game" for this question would be at a time when the game end is not imminent, so a player would be less likely to bid 40 debt based solely on the fact that they don't think they'll get another turn, or they are willing to play the remainder of the game without buying anything, even though they don't have an alternate gain strategy. How does the fact that not only are you gaining 8 VP but you are denying those VP to your opponent affect your bid?

2) Although it might be difficult to keep accurate track of opponent VP currently, the new "When scoring" Landmarks can make it even more difficult. If both Mountain Pass and a "When scoring" Landmark is present in the game, how does that affect bidding if the first Province was bought late in the game? At what point does bidding 40 become the right thing to do?

3) When, if ever, should the other player pass (giving you 8 VP for 1 debt token) in a 2 player game?  If possible, give an example. Also, although possibly valid, I'm not looking for answers other than "When the other player is already assured of a win and doesn't need the 8VP", i.e. I'm looking for cases where winning the bid and taking any debt tokens will interfere with the players strategy (even if that strategy will deliver more than 8 VP next turn or will be a critical step in generating more VP in later turns, you also have to take into account that they would give 8 VP to you). Even if it has the chance to mess their turn up, should they still gamble and "bid up", i.e. bid something that they hope you'll outbid, but at least not just give the VP away for 1 debt token.

4) If the game has more than 2 players, does that affect the above question?

5) Is there a mid game strategy? What I mean is how might bidding strategy evolve between early and late game (when bidding 40 might be the right answer), or is there more of a knife point transition (e.g. the point where people start buying victory cards rather than treasures or actions) between what you might do prior to an impending game end and what you would do when the game end is imminent?

6) Am I overthinking this? :)

I'd certainly appreciate any real life examples from the play testers or people who have played with it using proxies based on the published Empires rules.

Orange:
Maybe I'm UNDERthinking this, but in a 2-player game, I'm going to simply ask myself 1) how much is my deck generating per turn, and 2) how many lost turns is 8 VP going to be worth to me, then bid accordingly.  I might even go a bit lower if I feel my opponent's deck is not generating much money.

ephesos:
I think 3 would be a very rare situation, in which you're running an explosive combo(King's Court Goons Masquerade pin, Goons Watchtower engine, KC Bridge, Villa near-infinite loop) that doesn't care how much VP your opponent has because you're going to beat it by an order of magnitude, if you get the combo rolling before the game ends.

faust:
1) I think a factor is how much money your deck can generate. If your deck is built to buy 1 Province/turn, you may have excess money. If you know how much money you generate each turn, I would usually bid at least (that amount)*2-8, so that you cannot buy anything the next turn, but can still buy a Province the turn after. Any alternate source of VP is of course going to affect this; like in a Goons engine, you don't care.

2) I don't know, depends on the Landmark. Bidding 40 is only correct if you can gain Provinces without buying or if you have some other way to score enough VP that you can ignore buying.

3) Mostly if you know you can draw your deck, and know you need that coin to shut your opponent down in whatever way. Or maybe you need to buy the last Colony to win (i.e. your oppoent has a 9VP lead, and you know the have a way to win the next turn).

4) Well, you can assume that other players will bid too, but still there will usually be a price greater than 0 debt that you'd be willing to pay.

5) Buying the first Province early will usually slow your opponent down (if they decide to go for the VP). In conjunction with Tournament, that can be pretty devastating I believe.

6) Yes.

Roadrunner7671:
If it's the last Province, bid <40>

Otherwise, analyze your opponent. Are they aggressive? Is it a slog and they know getting 9 VP and sacrificing 3-4 turns to pay it off is a good deal? 9 VP chips would probably cost around $10, so bidding <12> to <14> seems reasonable if you're greening.

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