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Tips rollforthegalaxy

2020-09-12T02:13:38Z

Blasphemy: /* Economy */

== Economy ==

If you are low on money, make sure you have several dice(best 5 or more) you will get next turn. Or if you use all your dice, make sure you have some income.

It's frequently hard to start up again if you have little money.

It is better to save money then build a costly building than build a costly building then try to recover more dice.

There are two ways to get income:

1. select explore and then choose to stock (usually $2)

2. If you have goods on your worlds: select ship and then trade (usually 4-6 depending on colour).

Method 2 is a more productive way if you have green or yellow worlds, method one is more productive if you only have a blue or brown world (though there are many ways to measure it...)

How many turns it takes to get income (produce + ship = 2, explore = 1), How much money is profit per die (explore costs 1 die and produces 2 = 1 profit, produce+ship costs 2 die produces 4-6 = 1 or 2 profit per die)

Other factors may come in to play - 'acting like there is an extra die' in a phase helps bolster the income, being able to do the action more than just once (e.g. three produce and ship can yield credits $6 and 6VPs which can be sustainable every two turns)

1. Your dice need to be constantly cycling. If your dice are being used, going to the citizenry and being bought back every single turn, you're usually winning the game.

2. If you don't intend to use a die that's on top of a planet or development within the next turn, recall it. You are losing potential actions every turn you leave it on top of something.

3. In the same vein, try and exactly finish what you're attempting to Develop/Settle. Assign exactly however much you need to complete the tile and keep the dice cycling.

4. Shipping is generally an unreliable way to generate money and opens you up to being leeched from because it's inherently telegraphed. Shipping strategies in general don't work with less than 4 players and even then it's not advisable.

5. Always try and set yourself up to be able to buy back all of your dice from citizenry. You either want situations where you have enough money to immediately buy back all your dice, or where everyone is equally poor (usually because no one activated Explore).

6. Assign your dice based on what it seems like your opponent wants to activate rather than what you want to see activated. Assess whether you would get the better end of different situations. For example, you are assigning dice to both develop and explore. Before choosing which one you activate, you should assess who gets the better end of the bargain should one or both activate.

7. You want to have at least 9 dice total. This is because 4 Explorers can stock you exactly to 9, so you're generally most efficient if you're using, then buying 9 dice back from citizenry every turn. Building a couple 1 and 2 cost planets early on is the best way to quickly get to this point. Red and Brown planets are particularly good because they have great distributions for developing and are relatively cheap. Blue dice are usually only worthwhile if it's a one cost planet.

8. You want to have the ability to reassign 2-3 dice. This will make it drastically easier to finish a 6 cost development in a single turn. You generally want 2 out of your first 3 developments to be reassign powers. Note: Nanotechnology is generally too expensive.

9. The 6 cost developments are game winning. Once you found enough quality reassign powers and have your 9 dice, it's not unusual to abandon everything and dig specifically for the big 3 developments: Galactic Federation (1pt/3 Dev Cost), Galactic Bankers (1 pt/Dev), & System Diversification (1pt/2 Reassign Cost).

10. Abandon aggressively for the things you need at each specific stage of the game. Don't be precious about your tiles and cycle out mediocre tiles. The more tiles you are drawing, the more picky you can be. IE, if you know you're drawing enough tiles that you're likely to find a 2 cost world, it's ok to abandon an otherwise good 2 cost world in order to increase your odds of finding a 1 cost world.

**Bonus Tips**

* Investment Credits is a very powerful development that's on par or better than the Big 3 Devs. As soon as you complete it, you're often looking to build up a stack of 2 cost developments in order to rush the end of the game with a flood of points.

* Mining League is the best Settle based strategy, but you have to read the signals. You still want a bit of reassign. You also generally need either Replicant Robots or Terraforming Robots for extra tempo. Mining League is typically one of the last things you build, but you need to make sure you aggressively dig and find it before dedicating to the strategy.

* If you have a starting race that gets money from producing, you can produce + recall in order to generate mone in a way your opponent can't leech off of.

== Bugs ==

Selecting dice to Scout/Stock 'currently' has a bug -- For example, for Alien Archaeology ALWAYS use your yellow die first, regardless of which die you select to explore with. (not sure when author meant - pre 04 May 2020)

Tips teotihuacan

2020-09-12T01:59:12Z

Blasphemy:

1. For Starting Tiles Selection: 1st Gold > Cocoa > 2nd/3rd Gold > Wood > Avenue of the Dead > Rest.

2. Don't neglect early movements on the Avenue of the Dead. An Temple action during Eclipse 1 can translate to to 8+ points for just two wood in the long run.

3. Plan your turns around your next desired resource gathering move that involves 3x dice and work backward getting the cocoa and levels required to make it happens.

4. Taking the extra die on your first ascension is great if you can immediately use it to activate another solid 3 dice action, especially if it it’s all level 4+ dice.

5. Your strategy should involve heavily using one of the three tiles clockwise from the Palace (where dice ascend to), and chaining that with another tile within 3 tiles of that tile. Usually just this is enough to ascend a couple dice and repeat it until the end of the game.

6. In general, your strategy should be predominantly Decorations/Gold based or Pyramid based. Get upgrades and plan movements accordingly.

7. The technology that allows you to gather an extra cocoa and VP is the best upgrade. It's worth getting even if you're the 4th person to do so. The second best technology is the one that gives you an extra resource, but that one is optional if you're going a heavy decorations strategy.

8. The best pyramid building technology is the one that gives you an extra die and resource discount. You can just park a die on the pyramid and get a double level up every time you use it. Double pyramid upgrades can be pretty good if you can get them early.

9. The Gold/Decoration strategy has the highest scoring potential, but a lot of the points require the game to go a bit longer so that you can reach the end of two tracks. The pyramid strategy usually ends the game several turns early though, especially if multiple people are doing it.

10. The green track is usually the first track you go up. It combos naturally with the extra cocoa required for the double track move when you ascend and just makes everything a bit easier.

11. In order for masks to be worthwhile, you generally need the bonus tile that doubles mask scoring to be at the top of the green track (because you always go up the green track) AND there must be a good distribution of masks available to pick up. Otherwise, don't bother.

12. Worshiping generally isn't something you want to do too often. Sometimes you may want to do it just to reposition your workers, or pick up a bonus, but in the long run, normal actions and ascensions should be better.

Previous tips for a second opinion:

For starting titles, I like to make sure I get at least 2 to gold and a worker in range of the tech tree set up. The best time to have a tech is before you need to use it, and the sooner you get the tech the more likely others buying after you will give you a few points (while the points are not too much overall, they can edge out a win in a close game).

The technology tiles are very powerful, are getting a few of them on turn one and/or turn two is rather important.

If the level 1 tech that gives one more resource per resource tile is in game, it is almost always a good buy.

Resources are very important, but only up to the amount you need to buy stuff before the end of the game. Ending the game with a ton of extra resources normally means a game lost. I have won many games where I barely got my last "buy" in with other players sitting on 15 resources and just not in position to get to the buy point titles (pyramid, Nobel house, steps) . The temptation to do the 1 then 2 then 3 die on a resource is very strong, but if you do not have the time to spend them, all you have done is waste 3 turns. A lot of the time it is better to get a few resources and spend them right away than try to horde a lot and try to get them all spent. This is of course also based on how many turns are left in the game.

The game will go much faster than expected, and always keep an eye out for other players with the “extra aging” tech or just lots of 4 and 5 dice sitting on the board. With one or two well placed moves they can cut 2 to 3 turns off the eclipse (per player) in one turn. I have seen an eclipse last only 4 turns because of all of the deaths.
Never count on having the number of turns shown before scoring. I always assume it will be at least 2 shorter for the first eclipse, and sometimes as many as 4 less for the next two.
The “pay all coco free” titles are very powerful and can be used to pay for workers. This lets you have level 4 and 5 workers and pay them all for free (from 3 to 8 coco).

You always (most fo the time) want to kill your 4 and 5 workers before the end of the eclipse for cheaper workers and nice bonuses.

I personally think trying to get masks is a trap. Even with the temple bonus of scoring masks again, I have yet to see anyone win with this strategy. You just do not have the control over which masks you can get with the random factor, and even at max masks, they just are not THAT many points.

The pyramid is worth more on the first eclipse by a rather large amount (4 extra points per buy). If you can get 4 of them on year one, that is 4 * (1 + [0-4]+4) which is an average of 28 points as well as a possible few temple bumps for more resources, coco, or points. I personally feel it is worth at least 40 points with all of the bonuses you get. If you get the tech that gives free temple bumps on pyramid buys, that is a hard tactic to counter (other than doing it better).

By careful of the allure of getting the 4th dice. If you are planning on locking a lot of dice or have need of some really easy to get 3 dice resources, or builds, then it can be worth it. I personally have almost never found a good use for it unless I am locking dice (something I am more likely to do with the expansions, which are not on this site as yet).

I hope these hints have been helpful. They are by no means all of the hints, but for a beginner, I think they are all solid until you get a few games under your belt and can adapt some of the more complex other paths to victory.

Another small hint. It is best to level up your "1" dice on the thing like building (steps, tech, ext), as the number on the dice do not matter. A "1" really hurts any combo of dice on resources, so always try to use "2-5" for those as the rewards are so much better.