necroing this, I just played an interesting rebuild game with awaclus:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140820/log.510d7890e4b0ac7a7a0be611.1408553724148.txtImportant cards where feodum, rebuild, altar, and scavenger. There were shelters and no colonies. He got 5/2, I 4/3. He opened estate-rebuild trashing hovel, which I thought was an advantage over my scavenger/silver, but he made a good point that I had much better economy for hitting 5.
T3/4 I get feodum/altar, while he rebuilds OE-->feodum and gets silver/scavenger. Right now the only difference between our decks is that he has estate instead of OE and hovel, and I have altar instead of rebuild. I think altar was the right call there.
He continues the traditional rebuild path with a bit of feodum, while I focus more on feoda, because I think I am losing and this gives me the best chance to catch up. On turns 6 and 7 I buy an estate, I think this was probably a mistake on at least one of those turns because I still have OE and a feodum.
By the end of turn 11 both the duchy and feodum piles are empty, he won the duchy split 6-2, I won the feodum split 5-3, and have already trashed two of them. I am certainly losing, but I spike a province because of all my silvers, and I'm back in it. After turn 14 my feoda are worth 3 points, (exactly 9 silver), but I make the mistake of buying an estate, again. Before I bought that estate, there were 5 estates left in the supply, and I was down 3 points. I should have gotten a silver instead and tried to boost up my feoda again while hopefully rebuilding my last duchy into a province. Unfortunately now awaclus can pile out the estate in the span of two turns and I don't have the time to catch up. Had I gotten a silver instead then I think I still would have had a decent shot.
So, I think the main mistakes I made were the 3 estates I bought, I probably should have gotten just 1, if any. I was a bit surprised that my feodum strategy was competitive. I thought I was farther behind than I actually was when I committed more to feoda, so probably would have had a chance to get lucky if I had gone for duchies.
As it is, I'm still not sure whether you should go straight for provinces with rebuild, focus on provinces but pick up a few silvers with feodum early as awaclus did, or try to get a lot of points out of feoda like I did. Anyone else have thoughts?
I would have tried an engine thing if there was any sort of draw... but without draw I don't think it can compete with rebuild.
EDIT: we played another game:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140820/log.510d7890e4b0ac7a7a0be611.1408559400799.txt, this one was pretty boring though, just a pure mirror. I'm not sure either of us made any mistakes... I won the coinflip.