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[HiveMindEmulator]

Agree with most, except...

Banking! This card is IMO very well designed... because without the D&S, it is probably OP.

This is the card I use the most among the board robbing cards. Splaying green gives you lots of crowns, and robbing factories, well, give you factories. The problem you see is probably that when it appears there are not that many worthy factory cards to rob. But even in age 5 there is Coal, and it usefulness gets better and better later in game.

I guess what I was talking about with Banking not being good for stealing factories is that it's not great for stopping a scoring machine since you're giving them score, which is what they wanted in the first place. So if you're losing factories and your opponent is using them to score and get up the mid-age achievements, this is not the greatest way of stopping it. It is good for for something though, and that's solidifying crown and factory leads, which you're definitely right about. For instance, if you are the one with the good factory scoring card, but you want to avoid sharing, you can steal a factory to let you use it while also getting a good splay, which is definitely a productive use of the card.

[piahoo]

i dont like this card, basically using it, is giving my opponent free achievement in 9/10 games, and giving achievements for free its not best way to win a game

[Awaclus]

i dont like this card, basically using it, is giving my opponent free achievement in 9/10 games, and giving achievements for free its not best way to win a game

Would you rather give them one achievement or let them keep one card they can use to achieve all six?

[Hideyoshi]

Banking can help you to steal some key cards to the game. I may say, key cards with factories are more than non-key cards with factories.

Key cards with factories: coal, machine tools, combustion, mobility...
Non-key cards with factories: colonialism, physics, steam engine ...

If you are leading, that's not really matter to give your opponents 5 score
If you are lagging, just depends on cases by cases. If you can catch up and become leader after banking, you may do so.

[HiveMindEmulator]

i dont like this card, basically using it, is giving my opponent free achievement in 9/10 games, and giving achievements for free its not best way to win a game

Would you rather give them one achievement or let them keep one card they can use to achieve all six?

I think this is where I felt Banking was weak. It's not good at stealing that card. If they have it set up so they can score all the achievements with that one dogma, Banking is not going to save you. They just give you another card with a Factory, take the free achievement, and share to get the next achievement and so on.

However, while Banking isn't good at stealing a key card, as timchen pointed out, it is good for just stealing icons to set up your own (unshared) factory-based scoring.

[theory]

Enterprise is the most powerful one of them all, I think.

1) It only further cements the crown lead;
2) It is the only one whose "compensation" is often negative for the victim;
3) It lets you splay your green cards right.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Enterprise is the most powerful one of them all, I think.

1) It only further cements the crown lead;
2) It is the only one whose "compensation" is often negative for the victim;
3) It lets you splay your green cards right.

By "them all", you mean the crown-based stealers?
I agree. Skyscrapers is awesome, but doesn't come up as much. Compass is third, then the other 3 (City States, Societies, and Banking) are all much more situational.

Though I just had a game where I applied the dogma of Societies 4 turns in a row to steal Invention, Colonialism, Chemistry, and Statistics. The first 3 were really for the factories, making it act like a better version of Banking.

[timchen]

I think Hideyoshi has a point here. To elaborate, I think one important observation is that there are not likely to be as many factory cards as crowns on the board, in the middle ages. Coupling with the fact that factory cards in middle ages are often useful, this makes banking works more often than not. But true, the card is largely nullified if that 5 points can cost you an achievement when you are not in lead.

Enterprise is also very strong but early on it suffers from that there are too many crown cards. In age 8-10 I feel there are less useful crown cards as well (skyscraper, and?)

[theory]

I typically like to use such crown stealers multiple times, especially since you often don't get what you want the first time.  Banking is really terrible at that because even if they couldn't claim at first, they probably can do something with 10-15 points.

[brokoli]

I'm still a beginner but here are my impressions after ≈25 games.

Age 1
Best : Metalworking... it's simply so fast. I really like clothing, but I find it really hard to score more than 2 cards in a single action.
Worst : Archery or Oars. Both can be good later in the game though.

Age 2
Best : Mathematics.
Worst : Currency or monotheism.

Age 3
Best : Paper (machinery being 2nd)
Worst : Feudalism

Age 4
Best : Perspective. Maybe it's just me and my playing style, but I've used it so many times for big scoring.
Worst : Enterprise. I don't get it, but reading this thread it seems like many other players disagree...

Age 5
Best : Coal. Not easy to use but so great sometimes, when by scoring you get a new great top card.
Worst : Societies

Age 6
Best : Industrialization obviously. Then... Athomic theory, Democracy and Classification I would say. There are very good cards in age 6. Democracy is great when you have a bulb lead, and you can share it in the right moment when your opponent doesn't have any card in hand. Classification is good with big hands. Athomic theory is a solid tech up card...
Worst : Encyclopedia (although it can be fantastic sometimes)

Age 7
I haven't played the age 7+ cards as much as the others, because often someone from this age the game gets faster and faster... or someone already won by achievements.
Best : Evolution or electricity
Worst : Refregiration

Age 8
Best : Quantum theory. It seems almost broken to me : three clocks (which often means free empire), draw 10 and score a 10 ? Ok you have to return two cards, but often you have useless lower-age cards in hand anyway. It was a game-decinding card more than once for me...
Worst : I don't know. Probably socialism, but I don't even remember if I already activated it once...

Age 9
Best : Satelites
Worst : ?

Age 10
Best : Internet
Worst : ?