[Brian,
Monday March 3, 2008 at 11:24pm]
Master Solvers #3
Two robots, two soldiers, and two goods specialists walk into a bar...
You are Old Earth in a four player game (no Epsilon Eridani). You get:
- Mining Robots
- Terraforming Robots
- Expedition Force
- New Military Tactics
- Free Trade Association
- Pan Galactic League
Related Posts (on one page):
Mining Robots is too speculative at the moment with a hand of Developments, as is FTA. FTA is great for giving you novelty consume powers, but Old Earth already can consume two goods. Expedition Force and NMT is enough to get any military world into play up to defence 4, which is a nice start on the Pan Galactic League. Terraforming Robots might work well with a settle rush if more military is obtained.
If develop was picked, then hopefully you'll see a decent cost 3 or less military world. A cheap brown is in second place.
If settle is picked with no develop, then just take the best world you can play from your 7 cards and forget your starting hand.
If neither, then keep the same card as if develop were picked, and develop next turn.
Then choose Develop and build the Expedition Force. If I haven't come up with anything useful after that round, either Develop the Tactics (2/3) and hope for an Explore and a military world, or Explore+5 (1/3) next round.
Of course, my first round develop is subject to change to Tactics IF: A) someone else's Explore nets me a military green or yellow windfall, B) someone chose Settle, and C) Alpha Centauri had a momentary lapse of sanity and didn't Trade.
I think you pick Explore +1/+1 and hope for some kind of world so you can Settle when someone else calls it. Developing any of those cards in your hand won't necessarily help you at all; you've got to find at least some world before you know if you need even Expedition Force.
I'd discard Mining Robots and Terraforming Robots because they both suck except in certain circumstances, of which I dont have the cards here (no brown worlds, for example).
I now have two military cards plus Pan-Galactic League, and FTA which tends to go well with old earth. So thats pieces of two possible strategies.
We badly need to explore, as we have no worlds!
I could see either explore +1 or +5 as both reasonable, but I'm going to say Explore +5 is better here. We cant afford to not get a windfall or production world. A big explore gives us a strong chance of finding some good 2-3 defense military windfall world, which we can then build wit hthe tactics.
A 1 defense military world or a non-military world (windfall or production) is the backup plan.
The explore +1 plan would give better options on affording a normal world, but I think going for the chance of a military windfall is best, so explore +5.
You dont have to get it out turn 1 for it to be good (AC is trading probably anyway), so your goal is to get it turn 2 when there isnt a trade. There is a good chance that either turn 1 develop will happen (build tactics if explore works for you), or that if you explore turn 2, someone would settle.
If on turn 1 people played a settle but no develop, then in your explore+5 you could pick a good non-military world that was there and build it.
I toss Mining Robots and FTA, and explore +1/+1, _particularly_ if I'm in a group that's likely to call develop. (There's a group of folks I play with at work with whom I'd call develop, because I _know_ none of them will.) But what I'm going to do is completely up in the air; I'm hoping my explore gives me a path, and I want the extra card for flexibility on the path. I'd like to be going down a military/genes path, I suppose, but none of these cards is safe from being used for cash...
Of course, if your opponents call Dev/Set/C:T, you are going to be way behind, trapped by the 1VP consume. In that case I may go for an investment credits, or better an interstellar bank, and just figure I'll call explore for the next turn or two hunting for military while dribbling down my one cost developments for free.
Well, I don't need help playing hands like "New Sparta with Alien Robot Sentry, Alien Rosetta Stone World, Aquatic Uplift World, Consumer Markets, Alien Tech Institute and Mining Robots." I pretty much get those type right at the table...
Its interestng to do a discussion about a sucky hand. (And sucky hands lead to more chance of exploring generally, while a good hand would be more inclined to do something.
Mining Robots aren't looking helpful with this hand at all. I really, really, really dislike holding onto the PGL early, especially if I don't have Contact Specialist, something Upliftish, or a the makings of a stable military to start out, but, I think I'm keeping that over the T-bots on the off-chance that the Explore points me a little more in that direction. It's a tough call, though, because T-Bots support military as well.
Expedition Force / Military Tactics: inexpensive and generally useful
FTA: I'm willing to keep open the possibility for Big Blue, at least for a few seconds.
Explore +1/+1: tough call over the +5, but I do not want to give up the extra cash. Sure, I'd love to find some pirates to take over for $6/trade or something of the like, but for this hand I think I want the added flexibility of the $1 over the view of 4 additional cards. There's a decent amount of the deck that I won't hate to have, and the cherries won't make my ice cream sweet enough to spend money hunting for them.
There are plenty of 6s in the game; holding onto 6s that doesn't work with anything else you have is the same as saying "Hey, I don't plan to play any cards today."
The complete lack of any worlds or development with development powers is highly annoying (and the reason for the curse). On the plus side, it does mean that I can probably change course to handle any world I find on the explore (that I'm hypothesizing will happen from some other player).
I could still get bupkis on the explore, but it's unlikely enough that I'm having a hard time thinking of a good example. Maybe Galactic Renaissance plus Alien Tech Institute?
Why not play Explore myself? Because if there's a Settle and the Explore turns up a military world of defense 3 or less, I'll be kicking myself. So no, Develop has to be chosen in defense, even though I don't have any great developments either.
If there's no Explore, I might very well choose a card at random and develop that. They're all about equal.
I think Explore +5 is the wrong thing to do with a bad hand. Explore +5 is there to reduce variance. You want more variance when you are behind, and this hand is very likely to start in a bit of a hole.
If you get more crap with the three explore cards, just grab cards until you have something worth building.