You can go about this particular game two ways. Aim for $5 cards right away (because they are quite strong here, mainly margrave's attack and +buy combined). The +buy is sooooooooooo important here to buy vineyards without slowing yourself down. To aim for the $5 cards, you'd probably need to start silver/FV.
The other way would be to get remodel/FV. It's probably super important to grab a remodel at some point, estates aren't important here. The $4 and even $3 cards here are strong. (caravan, fishing village, workshop).
So two things to consider, don't open potion for vineyards. One it's detrimental to your deck obviously, for the early potion and early vineyards. That's quite obvious. The benefit of going vineyards is that you get to load up on actions, allow yourself to do that. The second thing is that it may hide the fact you are going vineyards (which is subtly important). The better the player though, the less likely it'll be though.
Focus on getting cantrips. Which you do really well in the first game, not so fond of the talisman/nobles briggand stuff. Especially in an ambassador setting. Since cantrips are so vital to both ambassador and vineyards, i'm sure the key was to win the ambassador war, then go off on to stockpiling actions. Talismans can come into play AFTER all that.
