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[Featured] A More Detailed Strategy Guide
teasel:
Hello! A while ago I tried to write an article about basic strategy. Today I want to try to go a little deeper and talk about the cards you should look for. I divide the cards in ages and describe what to look out for in each age by separating each card by their uses.
Age 1
There are basically two ways to play age 1. The first is to start building up your board and/or hand with cards like Sailing, Domestication, The Wheel and Code of Laws. The other is to try to score as quick as possible. Scoring is achieved through Metalworking, Clothing and more rarely, Agriculture and Pottery. The tech up cards of age 1 include Writing and Tools. Writing just lets you draw a 2 which quickly becomes useless. Tools lets you skip 2 ages ahead to age 3 but requires 3 cards to spend to do so. Special mention goes to Masonry which let you achieve Monument with relative ease.
Scoring
Clothing - Playing against Clothing is best reason why you should build your board by playing as many colors as possible. A quite common newbie mistake is to not play more cards and instead to just keep drawing (usually because they want to search for cards like Masonry) letting the opponent score as many as 3 cards per Clothing dogma. This is huge, especially since it lets your opponent achieve Monument, thus making your Masonry pointless. So if you see Clothing try to build at least have 3 colors on board so your opponent can't achieve Monument.
If you are playing with Clothing, board building cards are your pal. Mysticism lets you find color you don't have (although you also risk covering Clothing) and Domestication gives you both free meld and drawing action which is awesome support. Sailing is also good, but you need to play it before Clothing because both are green.
Metalworking - There isn't a lot to say about Metalworking. You use it, pray you get cards with castles and also get a free draw action out of the deal. The best part of it is that it makes the role of the guy with Masonry harder as it drains the cards with castles from the draw pile. Metalworking is an action you don't want to share, since it’s got a reasonable chance of scoring very big for your opponent.
Pottery - Don't bother reading the text on pottery. Here's what the card effectively does "If all the pile below it are empty, score a card from your hand, and then draw a card from the same age". The other nice thing about Pottery is that it comes with 3 leaves which can be really useful to combo with Fermenting from age 2.
Agriculture - Agriculture is kinda lame at the beginning, but once you get to age 4 it lets you score a 5 point card for each card you return. 5 points is the difference in score between consecutive eras. So Agriculture can be pretty powerful if you tech up quickly. One little Agriculture trick, if you return an age 10 card, it will end the game.
Board
Sailing - Sailing is the first of many "Draw and meld" cards, these are all useful as they let you build your board quickly. Building your board gives you a symbol advantage and options. You can also share forced melds in an attempt to eliminate a particular annoying opponent card.
Domestication - This is sort of like sailing but more controlled, since you pick from your hand rather than whatever is on the top of the deck. But this can also be a disadvantage after the ages pass, since Sailing can meld from the piles, but Domestication will force you to get rid of all the lowest cards from your hand.
Mysticism - Sailing with an added condition that the drawn card matches the color of a card already on your board, but a free draw added on top of it.
Drawing
The Wheel - Draw 2 age 1 cards, there is not a lot to say.
Stealing/Board Screwing
Archery - Archery lets you take the highest card from your opponent’s hand, and in return, they draw a 1. Archery forces a teched up opponent to always have his hand empty so they don’t get their card stolen and their tech advantage negated. It's easy to use as teched up opponents usually don't have many castles, but otherwise it's a pretty dull card.
City States - The chances are you usually don't want whatever the opponent gives to you. But if you don't want to share Metalworking or the Wheel, it's a nice solution to decrease your opponent castles. If you are hit by City States, giving your opponent Mysticism is a nice way to shut up the card.
Oars - This is probably the worst card of all the game, most cards in innovation are situational. But the situation in which you want oars involve an opponent that teched up, has less castles than you, is keeping his coins card in hand, and you have no better way to score. There are way too many conditions to make Oars worthwhile most of the time.
Tech Up
Writing - Again, this quickly becomes useless.
Tools - Getting 3 cards is pretty easy, especially if you use The Wheel. Once you get to age 3 your best hope is to jump to age 4 (usually with Paper) and then get to Gunpowder which lets you blast your opponent’s castle cards and score big. Tools other power can be handy if the age 1 and age 2 draw piles have run out. You discard a 3 and then draw three 3s, thus netting you 2 cards a-la Calendar.
Splaying
Code of Laws - If the tucked card can help you make a demand or not share an effect you don't want to share, it can be a good idea to use Code of Laws. But most of the time it's better to just wait for the other splaying cards.
Special
Masonry - Masonry lets you meld multiple cards, but the cards you meld must all have castles on them. These cards quickly become useless once age 3 is over. The real power is that it hands you the Monument achievement without much pain. It's just a matter of drawing cards until you get to 4 castle cards in hand. The other thing to watch out is if you have to share Masonry, if your opponent has more than 4 card in hand chance are they can use the shared effect to gain Monument before you do.
teasel:
Age 2
The most notable cards include Mathematics (the best of all the tech up cards), Fermenting (which lets you draw huge number of cards), Philosophy (which enable you to splay any color to the left thus being a big enabler for Paper in age 3), Construction (another special achievement card) and Monotheism.
Scoring
Currency - Currency doesn't look like much, but actually it can let you score pretty big. For example, sif your hand consist of two 1s, two 2s and two 3s, it's actually possible to gain up to 16 points in a turn and gain Monument all in a single swoop. It's situational in that it requires you to wait for an age to run out or to use card that draws from certain ages (like Calendar which is a perfect combo) but in the right situation it scores you big points.
Mapmaking - Mapmaking lets you demand your opponent transfer a 1 from his score pile to yours, and if you manage that, to let you score a fresh 1 as well. More often than not the age 1 and age 2 piles will run out, thus making each application of Mapmaking give you a score of 4. One nice combo you can pull off with Mapmaking is with Optics or Medicine (both from age 3), use one of these and give a 1 to your opponent, and then steal it back with Mapmaking.
Tech Up
Mathematics - Math is simply the best age 2 card. You draw a 2, feed it to Math and meld a top decked 3. you draw a 3 feed it to math and draw and meld a 4, and so on until you get to 10, or meld a blue on top of Math itself. Most of the hand/board screwing cards can usually level with Math and as such when playing with Math you have to be pretty careful about what you leave on your board and/or in your hand. The other thing you have to worry about is usually covering up math with another blue tech. When that happens you still shouldn't despair much as certain cards in age 5/6/7 can remove cards from the top (not to mention blue cards usually are tech up cards themselves).
Calendar - this counts double as both drawing and teching up, getting a score card is easy enough with any of the cards mentioned in the score section.
Drawing
Fermenting - under the right situation Fermenting lets you draw up to 5 cards. When you consider each age is 9 cards, this is huge as you are basically drawing half the cards in age with each fermenting action. All those cards can then be used to feed stuff like Philosophy or other cards that come in higher ages Pottery is a nice pal to Fermenting as it is the earliest non-yellow card that comes with 3 leaves.
Board Screwing
Monotheism - Monotheism screws up your opponent boards by eliminating one color they have but that you don't. On top of that, it lets you score the card. This punishes an opponent who techs up quickly, and can occasionally remove Mathematics or Clothing. It also tucks an extra card on your board, but this can make it’s attack less applicable. It can also be used in a crutch against Gunpowder in age 4. You give away all of your red cards, letting you Monotheism away the Gunpowder.
Road Building - Road Building lets you build your board by letting you meld two cards at once. But the key effect comes from bottom part of the text, which lets you steal a green card. Most of the time that card will be a high tech card or Paper. There is not a lot else to say other than if you meld a red card (thus finding a use for Oars), then you don't have to give Road Building to your opponent, covering one of the most annoying weakness of the card.
Splaying
Philosophy - Philosophy lets you splay any color to your left, which makes for a nice way to prepare for Paper in age 3. It also lets you score a card from your hand. This lets you put to use some of the weaker cards drawn with The Wheel or Fermenting. It's a good all-around card.
Special
Canal Building - Canal Building is the first of the many "cards from your score go to..." and frankly it doesn't have much use. If you have drawn a lot of cards from a single age (like your hand consists of five age 2 cards) then it can be a nice way to kickstart your score pile. Occasionally it can also help you tech up when combined with cards that score cards from ages higher than they are (like Optics or Democracy) by rescuing the cards they score from your score pile to your hand. But otherwise it's pretty meh.
Construction - Aside from Clothing, this is reason number 2 to build as many colors as possible. If you gain Monument through Masonry, then you can use Construction with your full board to gain Empire. This is one of the most powerful openings in the game. The demand effect is nice (especially against teched up opponents) but not really worth it most of the time.
teasel:
Age 3
Age 3 is host to a big number of screwing up/stealing cards, making for a pretty weird age. Good cards from age 3 include Machinery (which lets you steal all your opponent’s cards), Education (which lets you make big jump in tech), Optics (like Sailing but with added chance for scoring) and Paper, another card that lets you draw huge numbers of cards.
Scoring
Engineering - The problem with Engineering is simple. It’s a castle based attack against castles. So Engineering is better as your opponent gets more castles, but the more castle cards he has, the harder it is to successfully use Engineering. As such I personally don't like the card that much. It also lets you splay red cards left as an added bonus which you should consider.
Tech Up
Alchemy - Alchemy is the first "risk for a reward" tech up cards. Luckily that risk isn't that big, as out of the ten age 4 cards only two of them are red. The fact that it also draws and melds is pretty big too as it spares you an action and it also lets you score from your hand. So all in all you have a pretty neat package in a single card, although it risks blowing up in your face. Of course, you can use it offensively by intentionally sharing it with an opponent who has lots of cards hoping they’ll hit a red and have to return their entire hand. Further, if you have 2 or fewer castles, it safely lets you meld and score from hand in one action, which can be useful in a pinch.
Education - Education lets you return your highest card from your score pile, and then draw a card two higher than the remaining card in your score pile. It can be as powerful as Math. But Math does all his job alone, quickly and efficiently. On the other hand, Education needs some support, and so it can be pretty hard to use. If you are using Agriculture you can do jump as big as 3 ages with each cycle of Agriculture/Education. Optics puts a 4 in your score pile without you doing much work, which makes it another good card for Education. And if you use Democracy (an age 6 card) you can jump from 6 to 10 in a single swoop which is huge.
Board
Optics - Optics is like sailing but it draws and melds age 3 cards instead of age 1. If that cards comes with coins you score a 4, which is awesome. Iif that card doesn't come with a coin you give an opponent (who has less than you) a card from your score pile. This might sound bad but if you lose just 1 point it's not the end of the world. If you combine it with Mapmaking you can even score with 100% chance. All in all, Optics is an awesome card.
Drawing
Paper - If there is a reason to splay your colors left, it is this card. Just like Fermenting, drawing 5 cards per turn is huuuuuuuuuuuge. Unlike Fermenting, splaying all 5 colors is a lot easier than gathering 10 leaves on your board. Also unlike Fermenting, it lets you draw age 4 cards rather than age 2 cards. Even if you don’t manage to splay all your cards, it lets you tech up. Best of all, Invention from age 4 is great combo with Paper and makes for an incredible 1-2 punch.
Stealing/Board Screwing
Compass - Most of cards that screw with your opponent’s board give something to your opponent as compensation. Of all these kinds of cards, Compass has the best compensation. If ever card on your has leaves, that compensation can nothing at all. Sometimes you can leave a bad card, non-leaf card on your board and is it to cover a useful opponent top card. That said with the exception of Fermenting, there aren’t leaf cards in the early ages that are bothersome enough to be worth stealing with Compass. But as tech gets higher, the cards that Compass can steal become much better. It can steal cards like Canning, Lighting, or the myriad of yellow cards that tampers with the opponent’s score.
Feudalism - By age 3, finding an opponent with a castle card in hand is a quite hard task. But on the other hand, it can steal both Machinery and Alchemy, so it's not as bad as oars. The important part of the card is that it lets you splay both purple and yellow cards left, which helps you set up big draws with Paper.
Machinery - If there is one card that you should be scared off when doing massive draws, it's this one. Stealing all the cards in the opponent hand is huuuuuuuuuuge. Most of the time, giving one of your 3 for 5 or 6 1s is an awesome tradeoff. To top it all, it lets you score a card with a castle from your hand. It also lets you trade an empty hand for anything your opponent has, which is incredibly annoying to your opponents.
Medicine - Medicine lets you screw with your opponent score and eh, it's okay. For optimal use it requires a situation where you scored a lot of small cards and your opponent has scored a lot of big cards. That doesn't happen often. The best part of Medicine, after you give your opponent a sucky card, you can then get it back by Mapmaking/Navigation. Note that if you have no score at all, it will let you steal a card for free. This combos with cards that require you to return a card from your score pile to activate.
Special
Translation - Translation lets you meld card from your score pile. If you have any of the big cards in your score pile (like Math for example) it might be worthwhile to sack all your score for your board. But most of the time it's not worth it. Most of the stuff said for Canal Building applies for Translation too. The other cool thing about Translation, it nets you the World achievement if all your top cards have a coin. Occasionally, you can use the first effect if you to get the achievement. If you are in a situation where one of the cards in your score pile has a coin on it in a color that your board is missing, activating Translation can get you the coin coverage needed. This is quite situational and only easy to achieve when you have a small numbers of piles, or better yet, have only Translation on your board. But that puts you in a bad position against Clothing, so it's hard to get this off easily unless you pull it off with Tools.
teasel:
Age 4
two important things happen in Age 4... the first is that castle card stop appearing,one reason why you shouldn't bother too much with castle icons is that simply enough they become useless after age 3,instead you get industry icon,unlike castle,industry icons are used for the whole game so collecting them is always worthwhile... the other thing that happens,card that let you splay right instead of left begin to appear,splaying right gives you 2 icons instead of 1 when it comes to certain cards (like sailing) and usualy let you trade icons you don't want (like castles) for icons you might want (like leaves and coins) notable age 4 card include gunpowder,perspective,reformation and experimentation
Scoring
Gunpowder - by this point your opponent castle cards are useless and/or covered by other cards so this won't do much board damage (although it kills fermenting) but each application will still score you between 3 and 6 points which is a decent amount of points so it's still a worthwhile card
Perspective - this is the big paper enabler,with 8 lightbulbs,this let you score 4 cards out of a 5 cards hand,making it almost as good as stem cells (an age 10 cards) this card can rack you huuuuuuuuuuge amount of points and depending on the age it's not uncommon to score up to 16-36 points with each paper/perspective application
Board
Colonialism - if you are lacking in color,tucking has the same effect of melding and that can help under the right condition,if you are splaying and lacking in icons that's also another reason for why you want to tuck,lastly if you tuck 6 cards you get monument altough in case of this card that requires A LOT of luck,that said there are roughly 4-5 coins card in ages close to colonialism so that gives you more or less a 50% chance of the effect repeating at least once,it's not bad but there are better way to build your board like...
Reformation - Reformation is another card that reward you for having a lot of leaves on board and it rewards you for having a huge hands,reformation make for an awesome combo with fermenting enabling you to draw 5 cards and then tucking 5 of them for massive board advantage thus emulating a better version of industrialization where you decide what to keep on your hand instead,to top it all reformation also splay two colors right,yellow and purple
Tech Up
Experimentation - it's sailing,but now it melds age 5 cards instead of age 1,everything previously said applies to this card with the added bonus it let you skip an age ahead
Printing Press - Printing press can be annoying to use because to truly make it work,you need a high purple card but by the time you found the high purple card,the current age has ended and now it let you skip only 1 age ahead as opposed to 2,that said... when it works,it works,it's awesome to draw reformation,use it to jump to age 6,draw an age 6 purple card and jump to age 8 in 2 turns,as an added bonus it splay blue card right
Stealing/Board Screwing
Anatomy - Anatomy attacks both your opponent score pile and your opponent board which is pretty powerfull,unfortunately it only works if your opponent has scored a bunch of big cards (like with optics) and is mostly useless against a string of 1 for example,it's very powerfull but also quite situational
Enterprise - Enterprise steal coins card,of all the stealing card is my least favourite one,as the compensation is that your opponent gets to draw and meld another card which basicaly puts his board position on the same spot he started,that said enterprise can steal math and forcing your opponent to meld a random card translate into the chance of eliminating 2 annoying threats for the price of one,to top it all it also splay your green card right
Navigation - eh,the amount of score you steal is a pitiful amount but it still can delay your opponent into achieving an age and occasionaly it still can slowly steal all of your opponent score which in consequence makes it easier to target him with anatomy and the like so once again it's that sort of card that shines depending on how thing goes
Special
Invention - Invention let you splay a pile from left to right and although it can be helpfull frankly that's not a huge improvement most of the time... so it comes with added scoring in the package,the other nice thing about the card,if you splayed all your color,it scores you wonder well before than you should be able to do so
teasel:
Age 5
Age 5 is a scoring one featuring tons of card that let you trade board presence for score,notable card include coal,steam engine,astronomy,measurement and the pirate code
Scoring
Chemistry - well you trade a 1 and you get a 6 and you increase your score by a total of 5 points,frankly i don't like it much as it's a little slow to use,but it can also puts your card out of pirate code range so there is that,also comes with free blue right splaying
Coal - Coal tucks a 5,splay your red cards right and then let you trade board for score... is the trade worth? well if you have an unsplayed pile you really aren't losing anything by eating cards from that pile,and if you tucked a usefull 5 coal let you dig at it but the best use of this card is if you have built your board by abusing free tucking/melding action,if after abusing experimentation you got a board full of 5 then by all means go and score them all with coal
Steam Engine - Steam Engine is like coal in that it tucks you card and then eats from your board,unlike coal the number of card it tucks it's bigger than the one it eats so
Tech Up
Astronomy - Astronomy is like writing in that it draws you a card from the next age,unlike drawing it also occassionaly gives you free meld's and to put the cherry on the cake,handles you the universe achievement when the condition are right,Astronomy is awesome
Physics - Physics is like Alchemy in sort that it let you tech up and that it blows up in your face,unlike alchemy the chance of blowing it up in your face are higher so it's a card you might want to share more often,another important thing to pay attention with physics,if you use it,it fails and you run through the whole 6 deck count the number of 6 card that are out and then subtract it from 9... if the number of cards in the 6 deck is divisible by 3 then no matter how many times you use physics,it will always blow up in your face
Stealing/Board Screwing
Banking - Banking aims at industry cards,most of the industry cards are either scoring cards or board building cards,stealing one can be helpfull but not really necessary so let's talk about the compensation... the compensation in this case is letting your opponent score a 5 for free,that can be bad if your opponent is close to achieve an age and is just missing a few points but it's not so bad if your opponent has a low score and actualy makes a perfect 1-2 punch when combined with anatomy... also let you splay your green card right if you still haven't done so
Societies - it steals lightbulb cards,that means it can steal math and it also steal a bunch of other tech up cards,the compensation is a free age 5 card which is not compass good but it's not enterprise bad either
Statistic - it's anatomy,it doesn't have the multiple score card weakness but it also doesn't ruin your opponent board,frankly the tradeoff isn't really worth it making this card useless most of the time,at least it splays your yellow card right
The Pirate Code - of all the stealing card this is probably the biggest one,letting you steal up to 8 point and then scoring an extra 4 in optimal situation,this card can let you score big while reducing your opponent score to nothing,all it needs as many coins card to feed it
Splaying
Measurement - Measurement is a weird card in that it both splays AND tech you up,the splaying part is more important as it let you splay any color thus making it one of the card that can easily achieve wonder all alone,the tech up part is pretty nice too,if you have a green pile of 9 (pretty rare but can happen) this can jump you instantly in the color that features collaboration
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