Getting 2 or 3 villages tells me that he wasn't playing big money at all - that's really an engine. What is the difference between your deck and his? My guess is the ironworks. Which mean this boils down to a question about whether Irownworks is worth it or not here, and my guess is not - you don't really need very many villages to support wharves, and it's much more important to make sure you get as many wharves as possible as fast as possible.
Maybe the 3-player-ness of this changes it some, but in general I think that would make you want Ironworks less rather than more, as there are fewer villages to scoop up with it, and 3 pile endings could come faster. The only way I see that not being the case is if the piles aren't going to run somehow AND the third player does something terrible. Well, okay, about the third guy, lookout seems to be too slow to be worth it here, and woodcutter seems absolutely awful - the only thing it does is get you some free peddlers, but those will be gone pretty quick, especially with the spare buys you expect off of wharf, and in the meanwhile, you have an extra terminal to support AND it makes bank worth less (compared to what it would be if Woodcutter had been Silver).
Wharf/Bank BM is, in general, not too bad either.
