《Axes and Acres》20-40级指南

A guide for intermediate ranks 20-40 which will help new players get some feel for the game whilst also explaining concepts in more depth for addicts... er... advanced players. Basics New players may not understand that it's usually bad to leave out dice on the board. That's because for each die left on the board, you get 1 less die next round. If you instead don't use a die, it gets converted to 1 stored move. Since on the current round you can convert a die to give you 2 moves, 1 stored move is worth 1/2 a die. So by not using the die, you wasted 1/2 a die, but if you leave it out on the board, next round you waste a whole die, which is worse. I know you want to use the face now because you might not get it next round, but except in rare situations you shouldn't leave out dice on the board. That single move is still worth something, and probability favours you getting 1 of each face, although gatherers and reproduction + faces are rarer. When you only have 6 or 7 dice, reproduction is the top priority so you don't want to leave out any die face other than + on the board, because that significantly reduces your chance to reproduce next round. So get into the habit of thinking about rounds in terms of actions, not deployed dice. You want to activate all the dice you deploy, and store what's left when you can't activate. To state it baldly, if you leave out a die on most of your rounds, or ignore how much food you have left and get yourself to 0 food when it could be avoided, your chance to win the game will plummet to the region of 1 in 3, so you will have difficulty progressing to higher ranks. If you have 8 or more dice and only a few rounds left in phase 1, and the game is going well, then it can be worth leaving out a builder or gatherer to avoid a round with build card and 1 builder when you really need to build 3, or avoid a round with low food and no gatherer, where you can only deploy a small number of dice and have to waste most of the others as stored moves. At higher ranks this becomes less worthwhile as reproduction remains a high priority, but for new players it's worth considering, especially if you know the build card is definitely coming next round and it might be the last time in the phase you get it. Sometimes you can't reasonably avoid low food at the start of the game because you can't collect food with the dice and cards you get without forgoing a reproduction chance, which you should never do at the start, or using most of your dice for moves and only getting 2 actions on the round to collect food from a rabbit without the move card. If you survive this risk and are able to collect food the next round, it usually makes sense if you can't reproduce that round to safeguard your food supply by building a farm if you don't have one. Farms next to houses are a move-efficient way to collect food, although they are less effective each time they are used and you should try not to exhaust your farms if you can reasonably avoid it. An alternative is to build a house near to resources including a rabbit. If you can get a rabbit within 3 spaces, then you can collect food from it with an activated move card. Even better, if you can build a house next to the rabbit or at least closer than 3 spaces. When you can reproduce and have the move card, it's usually helpful if you don't have many dice to use the card for 3 moves rather than 6, unless you can kill a spawner or hunt a rabbit. There will always be exceptions, but you will be more likely not to waste 1/2 a die this way. One thing you should almost always avoid is not using 2 of the 3 cards in a round in phase 1. This usually makes it very difficult to play the next round as you don't have enough new cards. It can be a problem if the two cards that are difficult to use are gather and build, and you only have 1 builder. Often there's no sensible way to use the gather card if you don't have resources left out on the board on a previous round and you don't have enough moves left to kill a spawner or barbarian, or of course if you don't roll a gatherer and it's too wasteful of dice to create one with the work card. Although it's a high priority to use the build 3 activation with the build card for tall buildings (ones that can't be built with a single build action), you should at least consider using your single builder with the build card to avoid leaving 2 cards unused. Think about what you might do next round with what you know of the cards you will have. Try to make the best of a difficult situation by planning ahead. It's also bad to ignore the amount of food you have when playing a round, so you end the round with 0 food. Next round you will get 1 free food, but if you didn't already leave food out on the board and you can make enough moves to reach it, then you can only get 1 deployed die, short of activating reroll with +, and you have to store a lot of dice, which is very wasteful, and will usually lose you the game at higher ranks than 18. It's okay to start the round with 2 food, provided you have a food source and enough moves to reach it with both worker and gatherer faces -- but as mentioned, gatherer faces are rarer, so it is a risk you will want to avoid by stocking up on food when it is convenient to do without slowing down your plan. Later in the game, it may be possible to get food with a single die deployed, using a lumberyard card or activating a worker on the marketplace which costs you 1 stone, but at the start food collection requires 2 deployed dice. It's not good if you have to convert a lot of dice to moves. It's much better if you have a move card and a rabbit within 3 distance so you can reach it using only 1 die to get 6 moves, and of course, you also need only one die for 2 moves without the move card if you have a farm next to a house. Farms are very move-efficient when first used, but get less useful each time and it's better to use them sparingly when you can and avoid exhausting farms. However, if you have a farm objective, it can be worth exhausting a farm to recover the wood and a spot to build another for 1 movement. The main issue is whether you want to use build 3 for a second farm or wait for the resources for a builders hall, 1 wood and 2 stone. Once you have the builders hall, you can build more farms (or bridges) with a single build action without the build card. Don't ignore spawners in phase 1. It is very much more efficient to kill one with a crusader from the guardhouse using the move card if one is within 6 moves than to allow them to spawn barbarians. You might think that you can wait until the barbarian is next to a building (or a tree or pit or rabbit) before killing them, but you just gave up 1 Victory Point (VP) to do it, assuming neither spawners nor barbarians are objectives, which changes things a bit, of course. Also, when a spawner number reaches 0, in addition to the barbarian, another spawner with the same original number appears in a (fairly) random position. So don't store up trouble for later. it's unpredictable where the barbarians will move each round and they could interfere with a round when you don't have the move card but you have to kill them. You don't have to kill all the spawners, although it can help because you then don't have to worry about barbarians until the next phase. But it's generally good to kill 3 of them at least, including one with a low spawn number, so you only have 1 barbarian and 1 spawner left at the end of the phase. Each phase you get a new spawner, plus sometimes an extra one or a barbarian from an event. It's also frequently the case that one spawner with a low number is too distant, so you wait for it to become a barbarian and a new spawner to appear, which hopefully will be closer and so more convenient to kill. This way you can often kill 3 spawners, but still have 1 barbarian you have to kill at some point, and it's something you should try to achieve to keep your phase 2 clear of too many spawners and barbarians slowing you down. Strategy This game is hard beyond a certain level. Probability can be a friend and an enemy. Use it to make choices that increase your chance of winning. But don't dwell on dice rolls and situations that don't go how you'd like. For example, if you get a build card but you don't have 2 builders to make use of its powerful build 3 ability but you really need to build a tall building soon as part of your strategy, stay patient and don't use the card. You still have a majority chance of getting 2 builders next round. If you don't need to reroll dice for your main priority, it is okay to keep the reroll card for the next round if it would give good value then. If you're not sure reroll will help next round, but 3 other cards probably would, then you can use up the reroll without jeopardizing your planned variation. Only keep reroll at the start of the game when build and reroll are the most important cards. Don't do it when you have extra cards because you then want to cycle all the cards to use them most often. It's often better to use reroll if it could significantly help your round other than with reproduction to have different faces. Reroll is rather unreliable, so keeping it is a little inefficient unless there's a big payoff next round likely with reroll. Every game is different and strategy has to be improvised. This guide is primarily for playing at median ranks 20-35 using what I call the lumberyard card strategy, because you get 2 lumberyard cards in most games regardless of objectives, and also aim to collect 2 stone with them to set up building a builders hall. You plan to get 2 builders hall cards and 2 masons to help with collecting stone and making tall buildings -- those which take more than 1 build action. Notice that every builders hall reduces the number of build actions for tall buildings by 1. In particular, those buildings like farms and bridges that usually require 2 build actions can be built with 1 action once you have a builders hall, which is a big incentive to get one in phase 1 if those are build objectives. There's also the have 2 masons objective, which is worth 7 Victory Points (or VP, my only remaining abbreviation in the guide) and so also worth getting in phase 1. Depending on other objectives, with the lumberyard card strategy you don't always have to get the builders hall in phase 1 if you don't have tall building objectives, but you should plan to get at least 2 stone regardless. The other strategy which will be mentioned in this guide I call the marketplace card strategy. This involves getting 2 marketplace cards early in phase 1, and no lumberyard cards. This is more demanding since marketplace cards require activating a crusader, so I don't recommend it for new players unless have marketplace is an objective. The problem is, the extra effort required in phase 1 to get 2 marketplace cards early regardless of objectives makes phase 1 more difficult to pass, as you have less actions available to amass the VP needed if the marketplace is not an objective. Although I strongly recommend 2 MP cards in phase 1, once you have 2 builders hall cards and 2 masons, I recommend getting a 3rd MP card in phase 2 if you've had to use an MP card or two for moves instead of resources. That gets you the castle resources a little quicker, although a bad shuffle of BH cards could be an issue, so consider getting another BH card if you have the time and can get it when the draw pile is under 3 cards, so you have the best chance of it being dealt in time to matter. Just as with the lumberyard card strategy, you aim to get 2 stone and build a builders hall and 2 builders hall cards and 2 masons. It's just that the way you collect the stone is a little different, by activating marketplace cards with a die to instantly add 1 stone 1 wood and 1 food to your resource totals. I recommend always getting 2 stone even if you're not using either of these strategies -- for example, if build quarry is an objective you can collect stone from them without any special cards. Having the builders hall, at least in phase 2, is usually a big help, along with its 2 cards and 2 masons. The marketplace card strategy is undoubtedly better in the long term at higher ranks, and is described in Allan's excellent guide, so I refer you there for it. I'm not an expert at this strategy, but I will point out in this guide what I've learned about it when it's relevant. Unless you have enough experience to judge that you're going to need better than average luck to win, or you really know what you're doing, don't leave out dice on the board. At median levels, patience is definitely better strategy in most situations. There are always exceptions, there are no hard and fast rules because strategy must be improvised. For example, in the first phase on round 11 if you have a lot of building to do, but can't complete it this round, it can be worthwhile to leave out builders on the board to be in position to build and to exploit the fact that you have builders this round but not enough building power. With the usual proviso that there are no hard and fast rules, a reasonable rule of thumb is to try to complete the round with at most one die unused and all 3 cards used. Storing moves for future rounds with unused dice is inefficient. Move cards and the guardhouse ability with a + face activated are more efficient ways to get moves on the current round or on a future round. Although, saving 5 moves by activating + on the guardhouse costs 2 dice 1 food and 1 movement, so is less efficient if the moves are being used on the current round than sacrificing 2 dice for 4 moves. Also, you need to consider if a single + is better used this way, or if the situation warrants leaving the + on a house to take a risk for reproduction. In such cases there's a lot to consider, such as the current food and the draw pile and the variations possible for this round and the next, before you can decide if you can realistically save a die next round or not. Trying to be efficient this way is not going to be effective unless you understand the relationship between food and the number of dice you have -- cards are also a big factor, of course. Also, you have to understand the exceptions where it's not useful to use all 3 cards, such as already mentioned with build but without 2 builders. You usually have to stock up on food when possible and food is low, to avoid having multiple unused dice on future rounds when you fail to get gatherers. As your number of dice increases with reproduction, so the stockpile of food needs to be higher to get as many dice used as you can. Double gather Nearby trees give you a chance to double gather, where you chop a tree, build on it and only then activate a gatherer on the building, getting 2 actions in one. Farms that use up also let you double gather a new farm on the spot if you work it first. The guardhouse and marketplace are also suitable for double gather since they have activations for the gatherer face. It's even possible to double gather on the church, if unlikely. A useful extension of the double gather method applies to quarries. If you activate a worker on the stone pit, then build the quarry, you have the chance to gain 4 stone by using a gatherer with the gather card. Thanks to scippie and Allan for this tip. This combines double gather with gather+1. If you don't have 2 gatherers, you'd only be able to double gather 2 stone with a single gatherer. Road and movement theory Ignoring move cards, each move is worth 1/2 a die since a full die can be used to give 2 moves on the current round, and you can minimise the number of dice you use for movement by making most of your buildings road adjacent to a house and each other. You'll have to find a balance since there isn't time to connect all your buildings with roads. If roads are an objective, you can plan a more extensive network to design your buildings so that most of the critical actions are only 1 movement apart. There will always be some that are 2 apart at least temporarily, but you can minimise the movement used for actions if you use your plan of getting to 18 VP whilst getting the marketplace or lumberyard cards or quarries you'll need for stone and the builders hall, and then think how that can best work spatially, given your current round dice. Roads are worthwhile even without an objective in phase 1, but you want to make the minimum number to connect up your buildings, so you need to plan this from the first round. 0 VP roads will likely cost 2 1/2 dice and 1 action, not using the build card, since that will be used for more critical buildings that require build 3. In any game, you will need to chop trees to be able to afford more than the guardhouse and marketplace; a farm will also be needed for more move-efficient food production. It will also be necessary to kill some spawners and barbarians; at least 2 and possibly 3-4 depending on objectives. Unless you have a really terrible split map, with most of those things across the river -- in which case you'll likely need a bridge -- you can bring many of these closer with your first road next to a house. The exact positions of trees will be important since you may be able to double gather the nearest ones, especially with the road. Add up how many of these tasks will benefit from the road. 40% of them will happen on rounds without the move card. 3 tasks on a round will then require at least 2 dice for movement. With trees more than 1 tile distant, the road benefit will occur twice for the worker and the gatherer, saving one dice. That is potentially 1/2 an action. Even with the move card, you could see benefit with crusader actions for very distant spawners or barbarians, especially since you might get the benefit to all 3 actions, and occasionally this will allow a 4th action, food permitting. Hopefully this will convince you that building at least 1 0 VP road could pay off sometimes, and you can estimate how big the payoff is. Of course, I can't predict every scenario or what dice you'll roll, but using probability, or just experience, can help you make a decision about this issue which is likely to pay off. It complicates your gameplay, but that's the price of improving your results. A concrete example of when 0 VP roads are helpful is with the action objectives chop tree, kill spawner and kill barbarian. These objectives require a lot of moves if you have no roads. Depending on your 18 VP plan, you might need to chop 4 trees or kill 3 spawners or 3 barbarians. If you build 2 roads out from a house, then build the guardhouse at the end, this is an efficient way to get closer to spawners, although you must also consider if building another house first might be best, especially if your starting houses are at the edge of the map. Often you can combine this with getting closer to trees as you'd need to with 4 trees to chop for that objective. Perhaps it's easier to appreciate the value of 0 VP roads here where they're directly helping with objectives that do get VP. If you can get VP for the roads too, that's a big bonus. The build road and have 5 roads objectives are usually very helpful. Food sources Farms are important as nearby food supply whilst you gain stone for builders hall and castle. Once the castle is started, you can switch to stone for food at the MP for efficient food when you have MP, but farms can still sometimes help if you don't have stone on a round. I don't recommend rabbits for food except on the first round with move card if you don't have a farm and can't build it. Move cards are important for killing the 2 spawners with crusades that are usually essential in phase 1, so you don't usually want to use up more than one of them on rabbits. With the 2 lumberyard card strategy, it's often not necessary to have marketplace at all provided you can chop and gather enough trees to keep building farms and use the lumberyard wood if necessary. Having marketplace in phase 3 makes things smoother but at median ranks phase 3 is generally easy if you got the phase 2 castle and survived phase 2. You might think that having hunters hut or hunters or rabbits as a phase 1 objective could make rabbit hunting more viable. Whilst this is true during phase 1 if you get a hunters hut card for more rabbits or movement, remember that in phase 2 you will likely need a castle. This generally requires you to have produced the 2 stone needed for the builders hall by round 12. If you have a phase 1 objective which requires a building other than builders hall needing substantial stone like the church then it's going to be very difficult to get all the required building done, especially if you have hunters -- no builder face. In this case consider if you can get the 18 VP without the church from 1 or 2 VP rabbits for example. You don't always have to build a church or fountain when it's a phase 1 objective. If the phase 1 objectives outside of builders hall don't require stone, then the hunters hut card can be viable, although phase 2 could be a struggle to get the castle built in time if your builders hall gets delayed. You also will then not have an optimal deck for the castle since the hunters hut card slows your access to the lumberyard and builders hall cards that help collect the 6 wood and 6 stone for the castle, and the builders hall cards that help build it quickly. You could consider 1 hunters hut card, 1 lumberyard card and 2 builders hall cards to keep within the 9 card deck needed to build the castle in 3 rounds, although collecting the resources might take longer. Placing roads and houses With the marketplace card strategy, it's advisable to start with a farm, despite this usually costing a build 3 activation and preventing you from building the marketplace until you have chopped and gathered a tree. Rabbits tend to cost too much movement -- they're a trap. So roads getting you closer to trees are very advisable with this strategy in most situations, especially as you might need a second farm if the marketplace cards aren't built quickly enough to save you from exhausting the first farm, and it's always a good idea to plan on building a third house, both for any positional movement advantage it could give and to be prepared for reproduction to 9 dice if the opportunity arises. With the lumberyard card strategy, it's also necessary to chop and gather a few trees, so this discussion also applies. The big issue is when you get the cards. Unlike the marketplace strategy, where you only stop for a farm and the guardhouse and maybe a house and some roads, and get the cards as quickly as possible, with lumberyard cards you would prefer to get some tall buildings made first whilst you have the build card coming round quickly in a 5 card deck. Once you have the lumberyard cards, you can collect resources more efficiently but you're less able to build tall buildings until you make a builders hall and get 2 of its cards. So it's not recommended to immediately build the lumberyard and get its cards, both because you still want a farm for move-efficient food and you don't want to be at low food and too reliant on distant rabbits, which are not move-efficient. So getting closer to trees is an important factor with the lumberyard strategy also -- probably with any strategy because wood is used for a lot of buildings. However, if the phase 1 objectives don't require tall buildings, then once you have a farm and chopped and gathered a tree you can immediately get the lumberyard and its cards since you only need single builders for other buildings. That requires a second tree to be available to allow the lumberyard to be built near it. If the second tree is distant, then you have to decide whether to get a house or roads to make it closer or to take the risk of getting the lumberyard and its cards without a farm. The latter will depend on there being at least one rabbit close by without building a house, farm or bridge that uses wood. The closest rabbits seem to get without a bridge or house is 3 tiles from a starting house, but they can be 4 or 5 tiles away, and that's usually too far. If the phase 1 objectives require stone, and you can't reasonably avoid them getting the VP another way, then you need to think about whether to use quarries or marketplace cards for the stone instead of lumberyard cards and stone pits. Decide what you think is best and work with that strategy from the outset. If you're using lumberyard cards or a quarry, the location and distance of stone pits is going to be crucial. If you have a split map with both pits over the river, or you have build quarry objective and you need both quarries and they're not both on your side of the river, then you'll need a bridge. This makes things more difficult, especially because the spawners or barbarians could also be split between either side of the river and that tends to make them more distant if ones over the river are required for your VP plan. If you don't need spawners or barbarians over the river, then the marketplace card strategy could be a good choice because you can then get stone without a bridge or significant movement costs. If you still need a bridge whatever strategy you use, it's going to be difficult. Reproduction New players may not see the value in reproduction, since the game starts off pretty easy and you don't need to reproduce much if at all to win. As you reach higher ranks, reproduction becomes more important and it's increasingly important to reproduce in at least the first 2 phases -- and eventually all 3. It may seem that reproduction is slow to pay for itself since it requires 2 food and 2 + faces and 2 more dice to complete. But at higher ranks reaching 8 or 9 dice in phase 1 is commonly good strategy. Reproduction has hidden benefits in terms of probability. Rounds can be difficult to play as you'd like if you don't get a gatherer die or at least one + die when you want it. These two are the most scarce die faces on the starting peasant dice. Each occurs on only one face of 6, whereas builder and worker faces appear twice. With only 6 dice, the probability of getting no gatherers or equivalently no + faces is .335, around 1 third. That's a substantial minority chance which you will face several times if you spend many rounds without reproducing. Lack of gatherers is particularly unfortunate if you start the round with 1 or 2 food, perhaps with worked food on the board you wanted to gather. One way to avoid this is to stockpile food when you have gatherers to collect it, so you avoid being low on food when you get the round without gatherers. You can also sometimes use the card to convert a die to a gatherer, or the reroll card. In using reroll, be aware that a rerolled die will always give a different face. If you're trying to produce gatherers or + faces with reroll, you have more chance if you're rerolling a builder or worker with each of the 2 rerolls. But in this best case it's still a minority chance of .438 of getting that rarer face. Although it's not related to reproduction, it's worth mentioning that reroll can be very powerful late in phase 1 for rerolling workers to try to get builders, as you often need to get a lot of building done in the final few rounds. You have a 1/2 chance each reroll, so the chance that you don't get a single builder from 2 rerolls of workers is only 1/4 -- finally a majority chance for reroll to actually help! So beware if you're in the habit of using up reroll purely to cycle all your cards and try to draw other cards like the move card or build card -- there are times, such as round 11, when you should instead leave reroll unused to help getting builders on the last round, provided you're not removing the possibility of drawing a needed build card for a tall building. So reroll isn't useless -- it can be a very powerful card, just it's not reliable. It's still usually better to use reroll to try get a second + face and be patient if it fails than to leave out a + face on the board for next round, but the next section covers how to decide if such a risk is worth taking. Leaving out gatherers at 1 or 0 food I leave to your judgement. Obviously, it could save you from a catastrophe next round if you don't roll gatherers. But being patient may be more accurate play if you still have a reasonable chance of winning, but haven't reproduced many times and the game could come down to a single die or extra action in phase 1. The advice is to only leave out a gatherer if you feel you've been so efficient that the only way to lose is not rolling a gatherer next round. With 7 dice, the chance of getting no gatherer (or equivalently no +) is already down to .279, a little more than 1 in 4, whereas the chance of getting 2 +s is already up to .330, about 1 in 3. So reproduction quickly snowballs and makes further reproduction ever more likely and smooths the distribution of dice in a favourable way. With huge numbers of dice, this would be regression to the mean. Since the numbers of dice are always pretty small in distribution terms, it's just that the probabilities keep getting a little more favourable, but you can still be extremely unlucky. I recommend getting to 8 dice in the first phase, unless have 9 dice is an objective, which would require a 3rd house which you need to build in time. Once you have a marketplace or a guardhouse, you will get value from +s that are not being used for reproduction. Unfortunately, there's no precise rule for how much reproduction you need, it depends on objectives and also how efficiently the game is going for you, and inevitably the amount of reproduction needed goes up with rank. I recommend getting to 10 dice in the second phase, but at lower ranks you can stick with 9 if you feel that you're being efficient, and can get a lot of crucial tasks done on a round instead of reproducing. If a timely opportunity to reproduce to 9 dice in phase 1 happens, and you either have 3 houses or can build one without preventing reproduction or being unable to use 2 cards, I strongly recommend it even without the have 9 dice objective. This can require some calculation of how many rounds are left and how many actions you expect to achieve and whether you can hit 18 VP if you reproduce, but it's a valuable calculation to be able to make with some reliability. The benefits of starting phase 2 with 9 dice (or more) are very great. Only one reproduction more and you have 10 dice, which is a good number to be able to get 15 buildings for a phase 2 castle. Just as 11 dice is a good number to be able to get 20 buildings. With 9 dice reproduction is now a majority .557 chance without the reroll card -- an important milestone. Regarding reproduction to 9 dice in phase 1, you can play it safe by not reproducing if it's less than 4 rounds since you got 8 dice. Generally, you need to get a lot of actions done when you reach 8 dice to justify giving up the 8 dice for 2 reproductions. In 4 rounds you've made up 8 dice compared to staying on 6 dice. You can of course get to 15 buildings with 9 or less dice, but it's much less of a guarantee that you can do it fast enough to survive the phase with a castle and enough nobles if rolls haven't gone particularly well for you in the 2nd phase or the first phase. Another benefit of reproduction is that it gets easier to cycle all the cards in a useful way, even if you have no move card, since you have enough dice to sacrifice for movement for multiple actions, and because of probability you're more likely to have all the faces you need. Although I recommend getting to 8 dice in phase 1, at ranks 20-35 that doesn't mean you have to reproduce on 7 dice whenever you get 2+s and can finish the round with enough food or food on the ground, although this is recommended at higher ranks. With a guardhouse, activating + there will save 5 moves which can be useful if next round doesn't have the move card. You have to judge whether there are time-critical actions you need to get done on this round instead of reproducing. For example, getting a lumberyard card is generally better the earlier you get it in terms of gaining stone, food or saving moves, although it does make the build card come around a little slower. If it's a choice between reproduction on 7+ dice and build 3 on a priority tall building, it's sometimes better to use the build 3 and wait for a better moment to reproduce, sometimes better to reproduce and keep the build card, depending on how many rounds are left and how much you need to get done to get 18 VP and set up phase 2. Using the build 3 and leaving out 2+s when you can't do both is also an option, but you should consider what's the best and worst you could manage next round and remember that you've sacrificed an extra 2 dice. With rounds where you have the move card and the ability to kill a spawner, it might be better to do that and not reproduce if you can cycle all the cards, and reproduction means leaving 2 cards unused. But these are situational decisions that need careful consideration in particular game circumstances. In some ways, the decision can be easier at higher ranks -- if in doubt, reproduce. Reproduction risks If you have a guardhouse and enough food for the next round (usually 4 or 5 food) so that you only need a gatherer on one of the next 2 rounds, it's often a good risk to leave out + on a house next to the guardhouse. If you don't get another +, you can save 5 moves and play on. Within those 2 rounds you should be able to get the work card to be able to create a gatherer if you don't roll one. At median ranks it doesn't matter too much if you waste a die on a stored move doing this, the reproduction is worthwhile in the first 6 or 7 rounds of phase 1. It's actually beneficial for new players to take this kind of calculated risk because not reproducing enough is a common strategic error. Just don't do it if you're low on food. To be extra safe, you can avoid this risk unless you know you will have reroll next round (because you've used at least as many cards as there are in the draw pile and reroll is one of them). That increases your chance of reproducing next round into the 70%+ region, provided you have enough food to do it safely. The exact calculation depends on how many dice you have and it's difficult to be precise because it also depends on which particular faces you reroll, which depends also on a lot of factors. My rule of thumb is to expect to reroll 1 builder or worker and 1 gatherer in estimating chances conservatively. Allan has communicated to me that at his rank (well over 100) he only leaves out a single + when reroll is coming next round, and not always then, and that he's more likely to leave out other faces than +s. In my own games, I have found that never leaving out single + leaves me without enough reproduction on average, but leaving out +s too often just because I have less than 9 dice makes my early game a bit too inefficient at rank 80+, because phase 2 is so much less forgiving of inefficiencies in phase 1. So my advice would be to limit how much you do this with whatever criteria make sense to you at your rank. One other criterion I have used recently is to only leave out single + when I've used build 3 on a priority tall building this round. The idea is to keep the chances of using build 3 every 2 rounds before you have extra cards as high as possible. Of course, if you rely on the work card to make a gatherer next round when at low food and leave out +, it works best if you can work a food source and leave out food on the board as well as the +. That way, you only need 1 worker next round with the work card to gather the food, not too bad a risk even with 1 less die. It's a bad risk if you have no food on the board and low food, because you would need 2 workers to guarantee working and gathering food, and this could use up a lot of dice so you still might not have enough dice to reproduce after collecting the food. So you need to do some calculating to work out if collecting food and reproducing is even possible, and how many cards you can use and actions besides reproducing. If you're too near the end of a phase, you might doubt if you can survive the phase even with the reproduction if you're sacrificing too many cards and actions without enough rounds to recoup them. So get into the habit of calculating variations for both this round and next when considering if you should take such a risk. Maybe you'll be a lot closer to 18 VP in phase 1 if instead you don't try to reproduce and just get some important actions done this round and next gaining VP and setting up phase 2. Take the risks that make sense to you based on this analysis. If, like me, you have trouble accurately calculating all the different options on this round and next, you can write them down in a suitable shorthand and use this data to calculate the number of dice and moves and cards used. Phase 1 Always think about your objectives and events and the board layout in the first phase at the start of the game as this will affect your planning and priorities. If drought is the phase 1 event, you will either want a fountain (3 VP without objective) or to have built all the houses and farms you'll ever need. Your top priority is the first reproduction, which is worth almost any amount of sacrificed card cycling and actions lost short of leaving dice out on the board. Even if you have build card and 2 builders without move card, you should reproduce and not use the build card. If you're lucky enough to have the move card as well, then you can use it for build 3 as well as reproduce, but this is a rare situation. That's how important the first reproduction is in my opinion. Sometimes, you can leave out 2 +s and still use the build 3, but the usual provisos about having enough food not to need a gatherer next round apply, otherwise the chance of getting a gatherer and + without cards to help is only .518 at 6 dice. The 4 dice you've sacrificed can make further reproduction advisable quickly to make up a couple of lost actions in the last few rounds of phase 1. I would not advise taking this risk unless either the phase 1 objectives are very difficult, or the game has not gone well so you're behind schedule, and in both cases you feel that more reproduction is going to be needed to at least finish the phase with a lot of efficient rounds cycling all the cards. At ranks 20-35 patience is often better strategy since the chance of winning a game with good play is relatively high and you don't want to squander winning chances on bad risks. In this situation I would usually prefer to leave out just 1 of the +s. This gives a majority chance of reproducing next round, rather than a certainty, but it is much more dice and action efficient. After that, you have to consider how far ahead or behind you are in your plans for 18 VP and for the guardhouse, lumberyard with 2 cards (or 2 marketplace cards or a quarry, or whatever your strategic plan to set up phase 2 is) and builders hall. Sometimes it's better to get a lot of useful actions done on a round that puts you more on track with your plans than reproducing when it hurts your card cycling, especially if you have 2 builders, build card and the resources to use build 3 on a priority building and you can't reproduce, build 3 and cycle all cards. But that's only if you don't think you need more reproduction to survive the phase. At higher ranks, the second reproduction starts to compete more since you will probably need 8 dice to complete phase 1 with enough setup to have a chance in phase 2. A 3rd reproduction, requiring a 3rd house first, is only a priority if having 9 dice is an objective, or you're at high rank, so don't worry about it otherwise at ranks 20-35. That's not to say you should turn down the 9 dice reproduction if it's offered before round 9. You can get a lot done in 4 rounds with 9 dice, sometimes even in just 3 rounds, and this can be a way to salvage games that are going poorly or have very difficult objectives. Just don't feel you have to leave out a single + to get the 9 dice reproduction unless that's the only way you can see to win the game. The next thing you need to keep an eye on is food at the start of the round. At median ranks you don't want to take risks with low food at the end of a round if you can reasonably avoid it. I strongly recommend building a farm next to a house at some point, although the guardhouse and farm can compete for the first build 3 action. It's okay to use a move card once for a rabbit if you have no farm. But I recommend getting a farm before you collect food from any more rabbits. With the hunt animal action objective, it's better to get the hunters hall before hunting the 2nd and 3rd rabbits, so you get 2 VP for each. Generally I budget 5 VP for hunt animal, but it does depend on the location of rabbits and whether you can bring them closer with houses or roads. You may not have any choice with the first rabbit, but for any others you should try to bring them within 3 movement so you can hunt and gather in one round with activated move card. I strongly recommend building a farm next to a house early, before the guardhouse. Although there could be cases with kill spawner objective where you might take the risk of guardhouse first, you're risking low food or inefficient movement in food collection. Getting 2 cards is high priority if you're using either the lumberyard card or the marketplace card strategy, but you often have to kill at least one spawner before you have both so make sure that you use a move card to kill a spawner if you have enough food. You generally should kill 2 spawners for the 2 VP and to avoid being overrun -- make sure that you get the spawners with the lowest numbers if they're not too far away. If there's a phase 1 drought you will have no water protection from spawners in phase 2, you may need a fountain and should consider carefully where to build the guardhouse and around it (such as a road) so that you can get to many spawners efficiently in phase 2. But you don't have to kill them all in phase 1 unless they're an objective and the 18 VP plan is tight. If you have to choose between reproduction and killing a spawner, you should probably reproduce and hope you have enough dice to deal with extra barbarians if the reproduction variation is reasonably efficient. Calculate the different options for the given round and try to find a maximally efficient option that helps most with your plans. That can be difficult with the reroll card. I recommend finding the best fallback variation where reroll isn't used, then work out which dice you can reroll without jeopardising the fallback, and then finally look for good variations depending on the different reroll outcomes. Always remember you might want to leave out a + and keep the reroll, but you need to weigh the efficiency of other options first to make an informed decision. At higher ranks connecting important buildings by roads is more important for move-efficiency so you should try to plan at least guardhouse and castle adjacent or connected by roads (although this may not be possible depending on dice rolls and how difficult it is to achieve the objectives) and maybe a road out from the guardhouse (or to the guardhouse) towards likely spawn directions. It can be a headache to connect your lumberyard, farm and builders hall as well, but if you do then you can use a lumberyard card for double duty to gain a card at lumberyard or builders hall and then move-efficiently gather from farm or lumberyard. However, it's often good enough to build a road or two in phase 1 with the first road adjacent to a house to at least be sure that in phase 2 you can build more roads with minimal movement cost. Spawner numbers and split maps If you have kill spawners as objective, it's probably okay to spend a few dice on movement if the last one is far away if you manage to kill all 3 spawners for 9 VP before a barbarian appears, as you'll then have no more until the next phase. With kill barbarian objective, first kill the spawner with the higher number. That will make the 2 spawners with the lowest numbers turn to barbarians at the same time, and you have 2 barbarians to kill. At the same time, another spawner will appear and its number will be low enough that you can kill its barbarian in phase 1. That won't be the case if you kill both of the low number spawners before they spawn. I don't recommend leaving all the spawners to spawn barbarians, because you will probably be overrun in phase 2. So with kill barbarian, I budget 3 barbarian kills and 2 spawner kills in phase 1. However, if you need more than 90 VP in phase 2, extra spawners and barbarians in phase 2 could slow you down, so you may need to take a lower scoring option with kill barbarian, such as 2 spawner kills and 2 barbarian kills for 6 VP where you kill the highest spawner and one of the other initial spawners. You'll still have 1 spawner extra but no more barbarians this way. The safest option for phase 2 is to kill only 1 barbarian so you have no more spawners or barbarians until phase 2, but that's only worth 5 VP. You also need to consider if the phase 1 event adds an extra spawner or barbarian. This generally means you will need to use a marketplace card for 7 moves, which could slow your castle unless you make up the resources at the marketplace. Figure out your best plan at the start depending on other objectives and how much wood or stone resources they will use. Note that if you use up a farm, it leaves a spot for another farm, house or road, and returns the 1 wood cost, so this can be useful with farm objectives to avoid using up too much wood or movement, although you will have less food as you use up the farm. If you have a split map with kill barbarian, you will be protected from barbarians which appear over the river (unless there's a drought). So it can make sense not to kill any spawners so you can guarantee killing any barbarians that appear on your side. Just be aware that if a low number spawner counts to 0 and a new spawner appears on your side, you have time to kill its barbarian in phase 1, but not when it's the high number spawner, so you can use this information to decide if you need a bridge or not. Similar considerations apply to the kill spawner objective with split maps. It's a bit easier because your plan involves killing 3 spawners. If you're lucky with spawners on the other side counting down and new spawners appearing on your side, so you have 3 to kill on your side, you won't need a bridge. But you should think about where you'd make a bridge if you did need it. If you don't have either of the kill objectives, a split map can be a problem. You need to work out whether you can get 18 VP without building a bridge, using the same calculations I've just explained. It could be very move-inefficient to make a 0 VP bridge and kill spawners over the river, so an alternative like converting stone to VP at the marketplace is worth considering if you only have to do this once. Theft events Sometimes there will be a theft event at the end of a phase. This mean that when the phase ends because you've reached the VP total, the resource indicated in the event is removed from your resource total. This theft only applies to one indicated resource, not any of the others, and it doesn't apply to resources left out on the board of that type. For example, food theft sets your food total to 0, so you won't be able to deploy more dice on the board after the event. This gives you a way around the problem. For example, with food theft, on the round when you can reach the VP total to end the phase, deploy a worker to work a farm or rabbit -- or do this in a previous round without gathering the food so it doesn't add to the total -- it's not been collected and taken to the cellar. Then deploy a gatherer and move him onto the space with food on the ground. This has used up some food. Make sure you have just enough food and moves to deploy and activate dice to gain the VP total to end the phase, preferably with your food total at 0 so you don't lose any food, and make sure you also have either the gather card unused or one die left unused when the phase ends. At this point, you have no food to deploy more dice, but the round continues. Activate your gatherer on the food source with your spare die or gather card. This regains food so that you can continue the round if you have more dice to deploy. It also means you have food available for next round and you don't have to waste this round converting all but one of your dice to stored moves as would happen if the previous round ended on 0 food total. The stone and wood thefts work in a similar way -- except that you don't have to worry about food and instead leave out the resource on the board that would be stolen if gathered. This makes stone theft the most annoying if you're using the marketplace card strategy. When you activate a marketplace card, all the resources go straight to your total without gathering needed. Ordinarily this is great, but here it means the stone can be stolen if you don't use it. Building the builders hall is a way to get rid of 2 stone, and if the objectives require other stone buildings like the church you can at least begin construction so the stone cost is removed from your total. But otherwise you'll probably have to convert stone to food at the marketplace with an activated worker. This could avoid the theft, but leave you without stone in the next phase. Builders Hall and phase 2 castle I recommend winning with castle nobles, and the builders hall has a useful card which helps in building the castle. Getting 2 masons is important, especially if having masons is an objective, but also to ensure having enough builders to finish the castle quickly once you start it. Note that you need to make a crusader with a peasant, or at least non-noble, die and activate it on the castle to make a new noble. However, if an existing noble rolls to a crusader, you can deploy it on the guardhouse and activate it on the castle to reroll that noble, without getting a new noble. This can be useful to make up the necessary VP, although new nobles are better if you have a few rounds left. At ranks 20-35, I recommend 2 lumberyard cards in phase 1 to speed collection of resources with less food used and collect 2 stone from the nearest pit, perhaps building roads, a bridge or a house to bring it closer. At higher ranks 2 marketplace cards early enough in phase 1 can provide the necessary 2 stone and 1 wood to afford the builders hall. Although this can take more actions than using the lumberyard, hence have a lower chance of surviving phase 1, it may be essential to be able to survive phase 2 when the phase 2 VP total gets sufficiently high, but that's beyond the scope of this guide and covered by Allan's excellent guide. If having hunters is an objective, then it's essential to have masons to balance them, as hunters have no builder faces. Whether you have time to get builders hall and a mason as well as hunters in phase 1 is a question you have to decide and then live with. For example, if you have to build a fountain or some such building requiring build 3 and stone then there may not be time unless build quarry is an objective. Whilst the basic setup of guardhouse, 2 lumberyard cards (or 2 marketplace cards), 2 builders hall cards, and castle nobles is the general plan to get enough VPs for phase 3, obviously you have to get through the first 2 phases first, so you always have to balance two plans at once -- the castle requirements, and the VPs from the objectives in the first 2 phases. It would be a lot simpler if you just had to build the castle! It's no accident that the extra cards get you to exactly 9 cards. That means you can cycle all the cards in 3 rounds if you have enough dice to be able to cycle all 3 cards short of bad luck with rolls. Note that with 2 masons, without hunters, you could fail to roll a gatherer and you will miss this perfect schedule, as you might if you reproduce and don't use all the cards. In my experience it's not worth getting more than these 9 cards with the lumberyard card strategy. With the marketplace card strategy, I also don't get more, but I'm not an expert at higher ranks so I refer you to Allan's guide for whether to get a 3rd marketplace card. Since the objectives vary so much, it's difficult to give general advice. When some of the objectives give you VPs for parts of the general castle plan, those games are easier since you're less dependent on the wildly varying objectives than usual, but to advance to high ranks you need to give the games with unhelpful objectives or adverse events your best efforts, and try to win a few of them. This is a big part of the enduring appeal of the game. Since you only need to win a little more than 1/3 of your games to progress, don't be discouraged by losses. They are training for later wins! You need to work and gather a tree to be able to afford both lumberyard -- which only needs 1 build action -- and a farm, so make your choice of which of these and guardhouse to build in what order based on objectives and the locations of nearby trees. Remember that a barbarian near a house can be killed with 2 attacks from dice without making a crusader. The 2 marketplace card strategy still requires a little more building and actions in phase 1, since you don't have lumberyard cards to speed up collection of food and wood. At median ranks I recommend 2 lumberyard cards even if you have to build a 1 VP bridge, because you can build your phase 2 castle in time on average if you have the 20-35 rank phase 2 VP totals. If you have 2 marketplace cards, and you're at all delayed in collecting castle resources, perhaps because you used one or two of those cards for movement, perhaps because you didn't get the builders hall built in phase 1, I suggest getting a 3rd marketplace card. But no more cards of any kind than this, other than 1 builders hall card, which you might get late if you didn't get the builders hall in phase 1. At higher ranks it doesn't seem worth having more than 2 marketplace cards in my experience up to rank 83, even if you have a church objective. Reproducing so as to be able to cycle cards and get more actions is most effective. With 2 marketplace cards, and no other cards, cycling can be very fast. Which is why I suggest, even though you should get the builders hall as soon as you can without losing the phase, and masons, you should delay getting any builders hall cards until you have 3 wood and 3 stone in phase 2. That gives the best timing for the castle resources of 6 wood and 6 stone from activated marketplace cards to arrive just before one of the builders hall cards and the build card cycle. That should let you build 6/9 of the castle, and you can then decide if you need to get more roads, or to finish the castle with single build actions, depending on the situation. I recommend getting at least one of your two marketplace cards on or before round 8. Get the second one as soon as you can. That should give you enough rounds to pull in a lot of resources from activating these cards. Any later than this and a phase 2 castle will likely be too slow to build, even if you get a 3rd card, and you may not even get the 2 stone you need for the builders hall or a stone objective like a church or fountain. There are situations where you don't use the last build 3 chance in phase 1 to make a builders hall, because you have to build something else to get 18 VP and survive. As well as getting a 3rd marketplace card, you then have a choice between starting the castle at 10 build actions without the builders hall, or getting the builders hall first. If you have 11 dice, or you have the castle resources when the build card arrives, I recommend skipping the builders hall and just building the castle with mostly single build actions if you are late. If you're low on dice this can be a difficult decision, and you may need the masons and builders hall cards to get to 15 buildings. That's why I recommend getting to at least 10 dice in phase 2 so you have enough actions to get the castle, 15 buildings and a few 3 VP nobles in time. I find that it's easily possible to get to 80 VP in phase 2 with 3 VP nobles with a castle and 15 buildings built by round 18 or 19. Beyond rank 70, it becomes necessary to make 20 buildings to achieve phase 2 VP beyond 90. I recommend building the castle as fast as you can with build card and builders hall card, and start making nobles when you hit 15 buildings (or near it) but keep building 1 road or so per round. It's important to have a critical mass of nobles, but the last round or two you want them to be 4 VP to get beyond 90 VP. Obviously, it also becomes more important to take your time over choosing variations to optimise your play as much as you can, since you'll need a little more luck to get to 20 buildings and enough castle nobles in time. A few well-chosen variations early on can snowball into greater efficiency as you reproduce, and it becomes more important to avoid any mistakes since your win chance continues to reduce with rank. Schedule for two marketplace card strategy Summary: Build farm, guardhouse and marketplace and get 2 marketplace cards. Use them to gain resources rather than moves where possible. Get the builders hall as soon as you can if you have time in phase 1. Masons and builders hall cards let you collect stone very fast, even faster than marketplace cards. So long as you can chop trees or get wood from another source to keep wood even with stone, this is the fastest route to the 6 stone and 6 wood needed for a castle. Round 4. Kill a spawner with a low number. Round 6. Build a farm and collect wood from a tree to have enough to build the marketplace. Reproduce to 8 dice. Kill a second spawner. Round 8. Have 2 marketplace cards. Reproduce to 9 dice, which requires a 3rd house. Round 12. Kill a 3rd spawner. Collect 2 stone from marketplace cards. If you have time, make the builders hall. More precisely, if you don't have the builders hall, you want 11 or 12 dice to be able to make up stone and wood from another source than marketplace cards. If you have the builders hall, 2 masons and 2 builders hall cards are a priority if you have time. This could hit your reproduction and gathering since masons don't have those faces, but they're essential for quickly collecting the 6 stone for the castle. Round 13. This is 5 rounds since you had 2 marketplace cards. If you didn't make a builders hall, church or fountain you should have 4 stone collected, otherwise 2 -- but if you have masons and builders hall cards, you will likely have more stone from them depending on how long you've had them. If you only have 2 stone and no builders hall, you will have to make up 2 stone from another source than marketplace cards, such as converting wood to stone at the marketplace with +s you can't use for reproduction. Be aware that stone collection will be much slower without the builders hall, masons and cards. Round 15. You should have 6 stone and 6 wood for the castle. If you don't have the builders hall still, you want high reproduction (to a maximum of 14 dice), requiring a 4th house to build the castle without builders hall cards or masons. If you have the builders hall, you should have 2 masons and 1 or 2 builders hall cards. If the second card could not be drawn in the next 3 rounds, don't get it and make up with 3 separate build actions. Once you start the castle you need to build it as fast as possible. If you don't have enough builders hall cards and build card in the top of the shuffle to complete it in build 3 actions in time you should use single builds. Otherwise, you can just build roads (or bridges or whatever is convenient) when you're not using build 3. Round 18. Castle built. If you get your castle earlier than this, congratulations! It makes things a lot easier. Round 20. If you have 15 buildings you should have 5 nobles and 11 dice. If you have 20 you should have 2 nobles and 14 dice. Note that the cutoff point where 15 buildings and 3 VP nobles is not enough occurs between ranks 70 and 80, at least in my experience. Round 22. You should have 11 nobles if you have only 15 buildings, and 8 nobles if you have 20 buildings. Phase 3 is just for fun. I recommend reproducing to 16 dice and stocking up on stone to convert to food. Then get as many nobles as you can without running out of food. You can get 25 buildings if you wish but it shouldn't be necessary unless you need more than 400 VP. As a footnote, the schedule suggests 2 marketplace cards by round 8. This seems to me to be the most consistently achievable timing that gives reasonable chances of getting a round 18 castle. If you can do better consistently, then do that! If you get delayed, don't be surprised if your castle is late. However, even at rank 85, I've had a game where I had no marketplace cards on round 8, and 2 on round 9, yet I got an early castle at round 17. The key here is getting a lucky shuffle of the deck with the build card appearing at the earliest moment when you have the resources for the builders hall, perhaps using the marketplace to convert resources. It's better to have a builders hall card than an extra marketplace card if you don't have the builders hall, because the marketplace card delays the cycling of the build card. Also, with masons you pull in stone even faster than with cards. The only issues here are that having masons can detract from reproduction, as they have no + faces, or gathering, as they have no gather faces. I recommend having 10 dice at least if you have 2 masons to avoid reproduction stalling. Getting the builders hall cards as early as possible gives you some security about completing the castle, but when they're used for stone they're a little less efficient than marketplace cards, which give you food and wood also. Having masons and builders hall cards early also means that your stone total will get above your wood total, so an extra inefficiency here is the need to collect wood to balance the totals. Since you need a gatherer for this, and the masons don't have gather faces, that can occasionally be an issue if you don't prepare in advance. Although I recommend 2 marketplace cards and 2 builders hall cards, there will be games when you don't get the builders hall in phase 1, because of objectives or not having the resources at the right time, or not having the time to do it without losing. If you get the build card and can make the builders hall early enough in phase 2 that you will still be on schedule for the round 18 castle, that's fine, and you can get the 2 masons and 2 builders hall cards. But with 7 cards because of 2 marketplace cards, the build card may not be dealt in time. So you may end up trying to build the castle without the builders hall. In this case, I recommend getting to 12 dice as you start the castle on round 15, and 14 maximum as you finish it on round 18. That's because you will not have builders hall cards, so much of the castle building will be with single build actions, so you will need a lot of builders, and you will also have to get to 15 buildings, so you're going to need a lot of dice to get there in time. If you decide to go for the castle without builders hall early enough, because you have good reproduction and a couple of farms, you can get a 3rd marketplace card since you no longer care about when the build card cycles, and that speeds up gathering resources for the castle. Be aware that you'll mainly have to get food from farms, and a lot of it because you have a lot of dice to deploy. Even once the castle builds, most of the marketplace cards need to be used for movement, so you will still need farms. Therefore, this strategy works best when you have phase 1 farm objectives. An alternative to getting 2 marketplace cards by round 8, is to get 1 marketplace card and activate a + on the marketplace to convert wood to stone by round 8. This means that as soon as you activate 1 marketplace card, you have the resources for the builders hall. Getting this in phase 1 with a mason will most likely make up for not having both marketplace cards by round 8. But you do have to get the 2nd marketplace card on round 9 to contribute to castle resources in phase 2, and for the move 7 option after the castle is built. Note that it's best to get extra cards when you'll have a shuffle at the end of the round, so you have a chance of seeing those cards next round. This can affect the timing. At higher ranks, say rank 70+, I changed the emphasis in my strategy from trying to get the builders hall in phase 1 to getting 3 marketplace cards, no builders hall, and a second farm in phase 1, provided I didn't have the masons objective. This strategy relies on getting a lot of reproduction, but that is anyway usually necessary at higher ranks. The extra dice are needed to build the castle by round 17 with mostly single build actions and get 15 buildings, usually enough. 3 marketplace card, no builders hall strategy Around rank 70-80 I noticed I was losing more in phase 2 with the 2 marketplace card and early builders hall strategy of the previous section. Reproduction was becoming much more important. I switched to a 3 marketplace card strategy with no builders hall more and more frequently, provided I didn't have the masons objective. This does require building the castle with 10 build actions, most of which will be single builds, so a lot of dice and movement will be required, which also requires a lot of food to deploy the dice. But it does make a lot of the choices in phase 1 a bit easier. For example, once I have the marketplace I can use the next build card to make a second farm, without having to worry about whether I need to keep it to make the builders hall, which can be very inefficient. It's also less critical to make 2 marketplace cards by round 8, or 1 by round 7, provided you make the 3rd card as soon as you reasonably can in phase 1. Reproduction and food collection are king. Killing spawners and barbarians is also less of a priority, because with many dice it's easier to kill them later. However, I will try to kill at least one nearby spawner in most games. There is much less of a definite schedule round by round here, it's more of a build order and trying to be efficient and avoid mistakes. The build order is farm, guardhouse, house, chop and gather tree, marketplace, 3 cards, 2nd farm. But I often start with building a house with the move card to get near to a rabbit and/or a tree. Obviously, I build the guardhouse mainly when I get the build card after the farm is built rather than in an exact build order, although sometimes I use 2 build actions to get it if it's late. As soon as I have the farm, I will try to chop a nearby tree if possible, since I will need to have gathered more wood before I can get the marketplace. I keep 1 wood for the second farm rather than make a 4th house, to make the marketplace cards in good time. Only when I have the second farm and marketplace cards have provided more wood will I consider a 4th house. Often I don't get a 4th house in phase 1 unless it's an objective, even if there's a drought, because 12 dice is often enough, until you get to rank 80-90. But at higher rank this 4th house could well be important enough to get in phase 1, provided you can do this without losing. The main reason why this strategy works, provided you get enough dice, is that marketplace cards are the best cards. With 3 of them and 8 cards total, you have 4 cards in 8 with the move card which can provide moves. This means it's routine to have 6-7 moves every round once you start the castle, and you will sometimes have 2 cards and be able to use one for resources provided next round has another card you can use for moves. This means, with 2 farms and converting stone to food, food collection is very strong and efficient and you usually don't use up a farm. It's true that with masons and builders hall cards, you'll easily be able to make stone to convert to food, but making moves is the problem. I often think about getting a 3rd marketplace card if I have the builders hall, since that gives 4 cards in 10 that can be used for moves. You can see that 4 cards in 10 is nowhere near as good as 4 cards in 8 for movement, and of course it's more difficult to cycle a deck of 9 or 10 cards than one of 8, so food collection and movement are always going to be easier with no builders hall. With this strategy, I will be aiming for a round 17 castle, then 15 buildings, then non-stop nobles except for reproduction if I have time. It's necessary to be very efficient in phase 1 to make this possible, as it is with 2 marketplace cards and builders hall. The downside is that without masons you may not roll enough builders to get the castle done this fast, or you may not have enough dice to get enough nobles for your rank. But I find that it works often enough to be my main strategy. In fact, it works more often than building a builders hall does, at least at my current rank in the 90s, so I win more games with it than when I have masons objective and I'm forced to get the builders hall. Another perk of the strategy is that food production through phase 1 being so strong, and you not having masons, helps you reproduce more when you have the chance. Your chance to double reproduce, especially on round 13, is also much better than it can be with any masons. I would recommend having 13+ dice in phase 2 at rank 90+ to make building 3 or 4 nobles a round routine. At least at 90s rank, I don't have to get more than 15 buildings provided I get the round 17 castle, and that usually happens if I don't make mistakes and I'm not too unlucky, which is as much as I can hope for. An issue for this strategy is the have hunters objective. This makes it very difficult to have enough builders to make the castle, so in this case 2 marketplace cards and early builders hall is probably more winning, as you can balance the hunters with masons. Schedule for reproduction Round 3 7 dice. Build a house if you haven't already. Round 5 8 dice Round 7 9 dice Later rounds in phase 1 reproduce if doing so doesn't make you lose. In phase 2, reproduce to 10 dice as soon as you can. Keep reproducing when you can if you haven't reached round 17, provided you don't miss using build 3 on the castle if you're building one in phase 2. Beyond that, only reproduce if doing so doesn't make you lose. What does this schedule really mean, since you can't predict when you'll get a chance to reproduce? It means don't leave out a single + on the board unless you have fallen behind in this schedule, and even then don't do so unless you know you will have the reroll card next round. The reason for this is that you don't want to have an inefficient next round when you leave out a +. If you have the reroll card next round, you have a high chance of getting another + either directly or using reroll. Also, you can always use the reroll card if you want, so your chance of reproducing and using 2 cards is improved. But don't leave out the + if you can't reproduce and use 2 cards next round. Thanks to Allan for this advice on reproduction, which has measurably improved my own game. At 9+ peasant dice, don't leave out a single + unless you can only survive by reproducing next round for VP. Note that hunters roughly work like having 2 peasant dice as far as reproduction chances go. To help you reproduce, use the reroll card when you have a single + die. If you have the reroll card but no +s, and you can't make marketplace cards this round, and only have 5 cards in the deck, consider leaving reroll for the next round, since the chance of rerolling 2+s is remote, so you would expect to have a better chance next round, provided you have enough food for reproduction then. But don't do this if you're not using the other two cards. You should prefer to reroll peasant workers or builders (or hunters) because this gives a higher chance to get + than a gatherer, but don't lose your fallback -- you will have to reroll gatherers sometimes. Every round needs to be as efficient as you can make it. You need to calculate how much food you will have at the end of the round, and not leave yourself at 0 food without food on the ground when reproducing, in phase 1, unless you want to gamble on rolling a + and using reroll for food next round, which I would avoid unless you need to reproduce for VP next round to survive. If you have a marketplace card next round, you can leave yourself at 0 food. In phase 2, if you have started building the castle and you have 1 stone, you can leave yourself at 0 food and convert stone to food next round. 15 buildings If you're intending a phase 2 castle with the strategy in this guide, it makes sense to have 15 buildings so that nobles are worth 3 VP each. The vast majority of these will be roads. If they're 0 VP roads, it still makes sense to build 1 or 2 in phase 1, if only so that you save a little movement for other actions and have a place to build more roads without using more than 1 movement, since you're expecting to build a lot of roads in phase 2 to get 15 buildings. The expected building tally for phase 1 when you intend phase 2 castle is lumberyard, 2 farms, guardhouse, 3rd house and 2 roads. That's 7 buildings, or 6 if you use up a farm. Of course, depending on objectives and split map you might have a bridge or a builders hall, which makes it a little harder to get 6 buildings. Let's say that at least you intend to get 2 stone in phase 1. There are plenty of games where you build a farm and use it up, however little you intended to do so, depending on how the dice roll and how distant the rabbits are. More general advice is to build a house or roads to make a couple of rabbits nearer, and use 2 rabbits for food to save on the diminishing returns of farms, but only if you can get both rabbits within 3 moves away. When build farm or have 2 farms are objectives, it makes more sense to have 2 farms. With 6 buildings in phase 1, you want to build the builders hall (or another road if you already had it) and 7 roads in phase 2, and finish with a castle. It would definitely help to reproduce to 9 or 10 dice. The choice to stick at 9 or not will be very situational, depending on how much you've got done and how many rounds left on a round where reproducing to 10 dice is a possibility, and it also depends on rank. If the reproduction to 10 dice opportunity is early enough, I advise taking it. At ranks 20-35 you will usually be okay with 9 dice to get the 15 buildings in time and just a few nobles to make the VP total. But if you're still at 7 or 8 dice it will be tight and you should at least consider reproduction possibilities. Sometimes it can be an option to reach 10+ dice in phase 1 if you're in good shape with little to do to get the VP total, and I would strongly recommend that to be much more secure in phase 2. In 3 rounds with 2 lumberyard cards and 2 builders hall cards and 2 masons, you expect to collect 4 stone from the builders hall cards and masons, and another 2 stone from the pit or quarry with the lumberyard cards. Hopefully you can gather 3 wood from the lumberyard and another 3 from a tree in this time for 6 wood. Then you expect to build the castle in another 3 turns using the build card and the 2 builders hall cards for 9 build actions. However, at ranks 20-35 you "only" need the castle and 15 buildings by round 19, so you have 2 rounds in hand. At least one of those rounds should probably go to reproducing. If not, with 8 dice you can spend 2 rounds getting a mason and builders hall card and getting food from a farm. Another 2 rounds building 4 roads per round to 14 buildings, but the castle only built in round 21. Not a good schedule. If you reproduce to 9 dice, you can get an extra die per round and this should more than make up for the 4 dice lost to reproduction over the 8 rounds to round 19. You can cram an extra action into half of the rounds which is another 4 roads built, saving a round. If you were already at 9 dice and reproduce to 10, you can save another round. You can see that it pays to get the 2 stone and the builders hall in phase 1 if you can squeeze it in, otherwise there could be a delay in the schedule which relies on you having the builders hall. You can build roads and reproduce in this delay, as well as collect stone and gather wood, so you help keep to the schedule, but the 6 stone will take longer to produce without builders hall cards (or marketplace cards or lumberyard cards or a quarry). If you manage to overshoot to 8 wood instead of 6, getting the marketplace could pay off since you can then activate + there to convert wood to stone and with the builders hall cards you may have extra stone to convert to food more efficiently than working and gathering a farm, and you don't risk using up a farm. Also, you can still use a lumberyard card for food generation if you are getting more stone elsewhere. Note that the schedule for building the castle is not quite as tight as portrayed here because in those 8 rounds you have up to 24 cards used which will often be worth a dice or more each, so depending on the efficiency of card cycling you manage, you might have the equivalent of 8-12 extra actions to play with, which might be worth an extra 2 or 3 rounds. If you have 2 marketplace cards instead of 2 lumberyard cards, it should go smoother because you're using less moves, dice and food for the stone, and you can also make stone by activating spare +s on the marketplace in exchange for wood provided you're not going to miss the 6 wood target. With early enough marketplace cards activated, you can stock up food, and you may even be able to activate a gatherer on the marketplace for 2 wood for 2 food to speed up the collection of 6 wood. No farm strategy I recommend getting a farm for move-efficient food and being able to use move cards to kill spawners as the basics of any good strategy. However, there are always situations which turn your usual strategy on its head. Situations where you might consider not making a farm: 1. You can bring 2 rabbits within 3 spaces each by building a house. Without this, you can't survive long without a farm. 2. You have a helpful split map with a greater area over the river and most of the distant spawners on that side AND you can get 18 VP reasonably without killing more than 1 or 2 spawners or barbarians AND you do not have to build buildings across the river. You should not skip a farm if you have kill spawner or kill barbarian as objectives for the most part (unless you have build quarry with stone pits your side or build fountain so you can make 10 VP from them). If you have the phase 1 drought event, phase 2 could be very dicey if you have a lot of barbarians. 3. You get the build card without 2 builders twice in a row. This forces your hand and I won a game in this situation without an early farm at rank 72 without situation 2, so it can be done. What you should know is that this is still quite risky, because in any game the highest priority on 6 or 7 dice is to reproduce. So you not only have to collect food twice from rabbits with move cards (or waste dice on movement for distant rabbits) but you also have to reproduce whilst that's going on, which will likely put you at low food a few times, when if you built the farm you are likely to be at low food less often because of the move-efficiency not requiring move cards to collect food. I advise still getting the farm if you can build 3 before the second rabbit is collected for food for this reason. You can take the chance if you want to get early marketplace cards or lumberyard cards, but make sure you can reasonably get 18 VP without more than 1 or 2 spawners killed since you'll likely be using 2 move cards on rabbits. If you have a split map, and there are resources you need over the river, the strategy becomes much less likely to work unless bridges are an objective, since you'll need to build a bridge and make sure you collect the resources before barbarians destroy them. But any strategy is less likely to win in this situation, so you have to weigh up if no farm is your best option. The marketplace cards are vastly superior to lumberyard cards which require more rabbits and movement until you finally have to build a farm, whereas with say 3 marketplace cards you can get a lot of food by activating them or converting stone to food with a worker activation on the marketplace and you may well never need a farm. Very early marketplace cards are worth a lot of resources, plus you can use some of them for 7 movement if you have enough food, which could be very helpful for spawners, barbarians or collecting wood from trees, or just getting a lot of actions done as you approach round 12. That's the payoff with this strategy when it works out, it makes building a phase 2 castle a lot quicker. Phase 2 marketplace It's a tricky question whether or not you should get a marketplace in early phase 2 with lumberyard cards. If you're not going for phase 2 castle, I would recommend it, and even a card from it for movement. If you're going for phase 2 castle, it's a more difficult choice. If you don't go for the marketplace, you will likely be building a new farm to secure food supply for a few rounds, which only takes 1 build action with builders hall. This is fine provided you have a not too distant tree not under threat by barbarians, so you can chop and gather it and gather the lumberyard to get 6 wood for the castle. If you do go for the marketplace, you will likely need to chop and gather a tree and build the marketplace with build card or builders hall card. If you still have 1 wood, and a not too distant tree not under threat by barbarians, you still have the option to build a farm and chop and gather the tree and gather the lumberyard for 6 wood for the castle. Otherwise, don't risk it. Having the marketplace is insurance in case your masons don't roll to stone whilst you're gathering the 6 stone for the castle -- you can convert wood to stone at the marketplace and even food to wood if you have to, although this is not recommended if it puts you in too much trouble with low food. If you do convert wood to stone, you're going to need another tree. If you had 2 wood just after you built the marketplace you can build a second lumberyard to secure both the 6 wood for the castle and wood for later farms. What makes the decision on getting a marketplace tricky is the random dice rolls and having multiple conflicting priorities. For example, you have to decide whether to reproduce on an early round in phase 2, which often helps, but it depends on how much you sacrifice in time-limited actions on the round. You have to get a couple of builders hall cards and 2 masons. Once you have them, you then have to collect stone and wood for the castle and build roads to get to 14 buildings, but you may at any time have to deal with spawners or barbarians, so the decisions are not exactly clear-cut. Unless you're actually early on the schedule for building the castle, I don't recommend getting a marketplace card if you already have 2 lumberyard cards. If you only had one, and no other cards besides the builders hall 2, then it's fine to do, as you still have only 9 cards total, which you can cycle in 3 rounds if you use all the cards. It gets complicated to calculate possibilities if you have more than 9 cards. But, for example, having 10 cards with 3 lumberyard cards will definitely slow down the phase 2 castle. Having 10 cards with 2 lumberyard and 1 marketplace card is unclear to me compared to the standard (for this guide) 9 cards with 2 lumberyard and 2 builders hall. If the marketplace card is drawn in the next 3 rounds, it would probably be helpful in getting the castle resources and securing food and wood also for another farm if needed. But the 2 builders hall cards and the build card would not be guaranteed to be dealt in the following 3 rounds. Although, in all likelihood the final 3 build actions for the castle could be secured with separate build actions, and the marketplace card would also help for movement if it was dealt at the right time. Probably this decision on a marketplace card is going to depend on the round timing and resource and barbarian/spawner situation and what dice faces and actions you would be giving up in getting the marketplace card, but I can't see a way to decide it beforehand-- it seems like a difficult situational decision. Phase 3 castle There will be times, even if you're aiming for the phase 2 castle, that it looks like you'll be delayed and you might fall short in phase 2 VP. For example, the phase 1 objectives could be more difficult than usual, or you got too many unfavourable dice rolls. Even if you finish phase 1 in good shape for the phase 2 castle, an adverse event could set you behind, such as heart attack or disrepair. The drought event can make things difficult regarding food, so you may either have to get a fountain or two or invest in a marketplace. Also, at the lower end of the rank 20-35 range, there can be significant chances to get through the first 2 phases without a castle, since you may only need 20 or 30 extra VP in phase 2. And let's face it, the game is more fun if you have a wider variety of buildings to construct, and you can enjoy experimenting with the church and theatre. A good example of this kind of situation is if have 2 masons is a phase 1 objective and build farm is a phase 2 objective. Masons can be quite a tough phase 1 objective, although they get you 7 VP, because the builders hall is a tall building requiring build 3 and 2 stone, although you can occasionally get it with 3 separate build actions. As a result, or because of adverse dice rolls, you might end up skimping on phase 1 roads if they're 0 VP ones. That makes it harder to get to 15 buildings in phase 2 so the castle nobles get you 3 VP, although at lower ranks you need to consider if even 2 VP nobles might be enough. But if you survive phase 1 with 2 masons and the builders hall, and phase 2 objectives include build farm, then you can build farms with a single build action, and with builders hall cards and masons and lumberyard cards helping you get stone and build 3, you can also build a few fountains at 3 VP each, which lets you build an unlimited number of farms, perhaps 8 or 10 of them, getting 20 or 30 VP with the fountains. Another situation when you might want to delay a castle to phase 3 is if build quarry is a phase 1 objective, so you're more likely to get the builders hall fast from quarry stone, or if build builders hall is a phase 2 objective. After you get 2 builders halls, you can build more with a single build action, so again it's not impossible to get 20-30 VP from multiple builders halls. This could also make it relatively quick to make a castle in phase 3 since it could end up taking very few build actions. Build house in phase 2 could provide a lot of VP in the same manner as the farm objective, with a few fountains to spread houses around the map, but food could be a little more of an issue here so you might need more farms or a marketplace. Build fountain as phase 2 objective is 5 VP each, so is also quite viable for getting 20-30 VP, although it doesn't help with your phase 3 castle like the builders halls do. Build town hall is a more tricky phase 2 objective. It gets you 8 VP but requires 7 build actions with 1 builders hall and requires 4 wood in addition to the usual 2 stone. However, if you prepare it with a second builders hall and either a 2nd lumberyard or a marketplace, it's not impossible to build 3 of them for 24 VP, perhaps with a few more builders hall cards, even if you don't invest in cards for the town hall or marketplace, which could also help roll in VP if you're able to stock up resources. Kill barbarian as a phase 2 objective is interesting in combination with a church and cards from it, which give you a VP and spawn a barbarian. You will definitely want some way to generate extra moves, whether from lumberyard cards or marketplace cards, but just as with the farms and houses you could get 20-30 VP this way. Perhaps you can come up with your own alternate strategies based on particular objective combinations in phase 1 and phase 2. This can make the game a lot of fun at the lower end of the rank 20-35 range. In any of these cases when you're delaying the castle to phase 3, as soon as you have a builders hall I recommend getting a marketplace and its card for movement. Movement is going to be crucial. It's probably better to decide at the start of the game if you're going to delay the castle to phase 3, because of the cases where you have to build several fountains in phase 2. That lets you plan where the first fountain can best go, as well as lumberyards which let you deploy builders, so that you can be move-efficient in the first 2 phases. Dealing with adverse dice rolls Probably the biggest challenge in the game at median ranks is phase 1 adverse dice rolls, and dealing with them in an optimal way. With the castle-based general strategy, it's obviously going to be easier to survive phase 1 if you get 2 builders whenever you get the build card the first 2 times, and you also get to reproduce a couple of times. That will let you build a farm, guardhouse and lumberyard pretty quickly provided you chop and gather a tree, and use the farm for food, which is initially more move-efficient than hunting rabbits. You should be able to be reasonably efficient with your actions on 8 dice, and the super-efficiency achieved in building farm, guardhouse and lumberyard cards lets you get stone to build the builders hall quicker. More in line with expectation would be if you got 2 builders on 2 out of 3 occasions with build card. If you don't use the build card when you don't have 2 builders, there is a .649 probability of you getting the 2 builders next round if you're still on 6 dice. This rises to .736 probability with 7 dice. We can assume that most games where you fail to get 2 builders with the build card twice in a row will be lost, unless perhaps you avoided a farm and had a good source of nearby rabbits. So you still have a decent chance of your general building strategy to be on track with a chance to get the BH or stone for some other building for objectives before round 12. With reproduction, it's difficult to give a reasonable estimate. On a round with 6 dice, the chance of getting 2 +s without using reroll is only .263. That's about 1 in 4. However, if you also had reroll the chance would be .439 in the best case scenario where you rerolled only builder or worker faces. Getting reroll on a particular round is not independent of previous rounds because of the way dealing a shuffled deck works. But in 4 rounds each card in the deck has appeared twice unless you failed to use all cards more than twice. So we can guess that on half these 4 rounds you had reroll and you only had .315 chance of not reproducing on either of those rounds. We can guess that you only had .543 chance of not reproducing on either of the other rounds if they both gave you a single + in line with expectation. None of this is accurate probability. It leads to a guessed chance of .171 that you didn't reproduce on any of these rounds which is likely an underestimate since you can only safely reproduce if you have enough food and multiple other reasons. The situation regarding your ability to use build 3 and reproducing is not independent since you could have both options on a single round. But it's unlikely that you can do both unless you have the move card as well as the build card, and the stars align with 2 builders and 2 +s. In my experience, if you fail to get 2 builders with build card the 1st time, and either the 2nd or 3rd time, then you're likely to lose the game. Estimated chance .351. But you can and should still win a minority of these games. For the sake of our guess, we'll pretend they're independent. That would lead to a guessed chance of .110 that you failed to reproduce on the first 4 rounds and failed to get 2 builders twice as above. This seems wildly optimistic! Not a very accurate guess, probably. If you didn't reproduce in the first 4 rounds, you will probably lose if you don't get 2 out of 2 build 3s, but it's sometimes possible to make up the deficit if you then get reproduction going and somehow managed to be reasonably efficient in the first 4 rounds, getting farm and guardhouse built. You'll probably run low on food and wood and have trouble killing 2 spawners so there's lots of ways to lose if your luck with dice rolls and cards doesn't improve greatly. Another factor which considerably influences your winning chances, this time independently, is the objectives and events, most importantly those of phase 1. You can do little about this, beyond making a reasonable plan for 18 VP and altering your priorities a little for the more difficult objectives. A third factor independently influencing your winning chances is the board. Split maps requiring a bridge are more difficult for the lumberyard card strategy, and favour the marketplace card strategy if you can avoid making the bridge, because your early stone comes from the marketplace and its cards. A chance to double gather a farm or guardhouse is very favourable for any strategy -- that's when you build where there's 3 wood on the ground and a later gather activation can achieve 2 actions. Just remember you have to work the farm first before you can gather. Having stone pits that can be brought close by building a house in the right place is very important for the lumberyard card strategy, and lacking these would suggest the marketplace instead. Also, the lumberyard card strategy can put more pressure on farms early on because its cards are usually reserved for collecting stone, so not being able to bring 2 rabbits significantly closer with houses or VP roads is unfavourable. Marketplace cards make you less dependent on rabbits and even trees since you have extra food and wood for low cost, although you will certainly have to chop and gather at least one tree to afford a farm and marketplace. Building a marketplace early is very dependent on having 2 builders with your build cards, whereas the lumberyard strategy is less so, so that can factor into your choice of strategy. It should be possible to estimate average winning chances with different phase 1 objectives (and events, although events play a relatively minor role). It's certainly possible to write down 18 VP plans for all these hundreds of phase 1 objective triples. Lumberyard efficiency Getting a lumberyard costs you at least 2 1/2 dice and 1 food and 2 wood. If it's not adjacent or connected by roads to a house, it will cost more movement. If you use it with a gatherer to collect 3 wood (the maximum, it's usually not recommended to get less) that cost you 2 1/2 dice and 1 food and gained 3 wood. Compare that to chop and gather a tree, which is 5 dice and 2 food for 3 wood. You've gained back 2 1/2 dice and 1 food. Use it a second time and you have more than replenished the 2 wood cost and you've saved 1 food and 2 1/2 dice. You can argue that the work and gather cards mean you have less of a saving with dice, but the food saving is always there. If you get a card from the lumberyard, that costs 2 1/2 dice and 1 food. Let's compare working and gathering with either the work or gather card, but not both, to doing so with the lumberyard card. The first costs 2 food and 4 dice. With lumberyard card, it's just 1 food and 2 1/2 dice. Where it can really shine is when the resource is not adjacent or connected by roads to a house, as is usually the case with a rabbit or stone pit. The lumberyard card saves you half the movement cost. You can reasonably argue that getting a lumberyard card gets in the way of playing other useful cards like build and move since you will see these less often. And it's true that towards the end of phase 1 you will probably be desperate for builders and the build card, and the lumberyard card is not what you want. It's no good if you want to make a crusader. However, it can have good value if you use it on a builders hall to both gain a card and create a deployed gatherer, so it's far from useless. If you are fortunate enough to be able to use gather+1 on a stone pit with the lumberyard card, you gained 2 stone with a cost of 2 dice, 1 food and the single trip movement cost, which is pretty amazing unless you compare it to the marketplace card, which is much more expensive to make as it requires crusader activation. Consider especially food gathering with lumberyard cards. Each saved food potentially goes towards one action instead of storing a move with an unused die. Fine-tuning for phase 1 objectives The lumberyard card, builders hall cards, phase 2 castle and noble strategy can be approached a little differently according to the phase 1 objectives. If the phase 1 build and have objectives only require wood, then you don't have to build the builders hall in phase 1. You have to get the lumberyard and get a card there and build a house or bridge to bring the nearest stone pit as close as you can and ideally collect 2 stone. Sometimes you get a split map which requires you to build a bridge to reach objectives. For example, with kill spawner, if there's a spawner or 2 over the river then a bridge lets you kill all 3 for 9 VP and you have no barbarians to worry about, so you could prioritise the bridge and guardhouse. Or, both stone pits could be across the river and build quarry is an objective. Ordinarily, a 1 VP bridge (when not an objective) is a problem, but since you don't have to build the builders hall, it's fine to have 3 buildings which require more than 1 build action each: farm, guardhouse, bridge. But unless the bridge is bringing a lot of resources much nearer, don't build it unless you have to. More often, at least one of the stone pits can be brought much closer by building a house in just the right place, and quite often you can combine this with getting a shorter route to a rabbit or tree. The lumberyard card can be very useful to collect stone from a stone pit since you only need a worker to make the trip, and a gatherer gets created on the spot. But remember that to collect 2 stone, either you use gather+1 or, more often, you make 2 trips with workers to put 2 stone on the ground and then one gatherer collects it all in one trip. That's why you want to bring the pit closer to make the 2 worker trips possible in one round. If you find you can get the 2 stone quickly with the first lumberyard card, you don't need to make another unless gain card is an objective, but it can still help to get more stone or save 5 moves. Once you've completed the first phase, build the builders hall as quickly as possible and you're set for phase 2. If the build or have objectives require stone, such as have 2 masons, have church, build fountain, then you first have to work out if you can get the 18 VP without using the objective requiring stone. With build fountain and have church, sometimes you don't need to get those objectives to get the 18 VP, so you're still in the situation where your phase one 18 VP plan doesn't require a stone building. This is an easier situation to be in. But usually you do have to get the stone building, so the 2 stone you collect goes to that. This will delay your building the BH in phase 2, so I recommend getting 2 lumberyard cards to help with resource collection. With have 2 masons, you really have to build the builders hall so you have to fit that into your phase one plan and prioritise the collection of 2 stone a little more so you have time to make the masons for 7 VP. This makes phase one tougher since you have one more tall building to fit in, so there's a greater chance that bad rolls without 2 builders with the build card will cost you the game. You can't win them all, but at least the masons objective provides a lot of VP. Note that if you're in a split map situation with stone building objectives you can't avoid, these are bad objectives for this guide's method, and probably any method. Don't be too concerned if you don't win many of these. In the long run you need only win more than 1/3 of your games to progress. If you have access to a close stone pit or quarry, so you don't need to waste a lot of moves reaching it, it could well be more efficient to use the 2 lumberyard cards to collect stone. With the marketplace card strategy, stone building objectives other than have 2 masons are more difficult. In fact, you usually want to build the builders hall in phase 1 to help prepare for the phase 2 castle which is essential at higher ranks than 35. However, if you can't avoid a stone building other than the builders hall for phase 1 18 VP, it's still best to stick with 2 marketplace cards and just build the stone building, whether church or fountain, not the builders hall. You have a higher chance of surviving phase 1 this way. As mentioned in the section on phase 2 castle, you can get a 3rd marketplace card in phase 2 to help with the resources for the castle, once you have the builders hall. Unless you're at extremely high rank, it's probably better to survive phase 1 and try to accelerate the castle building in phase 2. Phase 1 objectives analysis In general, you're looking for 5 VP from each of your 3 objectives, with another 3 VP from killing spawners. So you can roughly assess your objectives from the VP you reasonably expect to get from them. The build objectives are: House=2 Road=1 Farm=2 Lumberyard=2 Quarry=5 Bridge=1 (total 2) Fountain=2 (total 5) That's in order from best to worst. Build house is the best as it could be worth more than 5 VP, indeed usually a minimum of 6 VP. The furthest you have to move to make a house is 2 spaces, and if you make several they can mostly be next to each other. They each require only 1 build action, so you don't need to use the build 3 option on them. It's true that the houses cost some wood, but whatever you've spent can be recouped by chopping and gathering a tree or 2, so it's usually well worth it. Build road is pretty good. It's worth at least 5 VP, and only 1 movement each if you connect your roads -- such as by building one before you place the guardhouse. Again, the builds require a single action. It's quite a lot of actions for one objective, so you will want good reproduction to build a lot of roads towards the end of the phase. Best of all, no resource cost! Build farm is pretty good. Although each requires 2 build actions, if you get the builders hall they will only need 1. It's worth 4 to 6 VP generally, but can be worth more with the builders hall and good reproduction. Build lumberyard is decent. You have to do some thinking about placement and which trees you will have to fell, but once you have 1 you can surround one tree with them because you can deploy builders, so the others are at 1 movement cost. They do cost some wood, but they also produce it so you can regain more than you spent in phase 2. The only difficulty is where the trees are located on the board. Each costs 1 build action. You might be surprised that build quarry isn't at the top of the list. That's because each usually requires the move card and the build card at the same time. It's okay if you only need 1 quarry, but 2 can be a problem with all the other tall buildings you need, and you may have to waste 3 dice if you don't have the move card when you get the build card with 2 wood. Another issue is that you have to keep chopping trees for 0 VP to make sure you can build them, which can be inconvenient, and you will need even more trees to replace the wood you lost in phase 2. So, despite being worth 5 or 10 VP, this isn't one of the best objectives, at least at higher ranks. There's also the possibility of split maps with the stone pits over the river and perhaps requiring a 1 VP bridge, which also needs build 3 until you get the builders hall. Build bridge is pretty bad. Each one costs 1 wood and 2 build actions, unless you get the builders hall. As usual, you want good reproduction and the builders hall to be able to build multiple bridges towards the end of phase 1. Again, you'll be scrambling to chop enough trees. It's much better when it goes with have 2 masons, but it usually won't. Since you need the builders hall to build more than 1 or 2 bridges, it doesn't have great VP value (2 to 4 without builders hall). Build fountain is the worst. Each requires 1 wood, 2 stone and 3 build actions, so you're not likely to build more than 1 and survive phase 2. Even building 1 is likely to mean you don't get the builders hall. And the 2 stone is going to be difficult to recoup in phase 2. Despite this, I recommend sticking with the 2 cards, from marketplace or lumberyard, to get the stone. Having more makes the build card take longer to cycle which can be an issue in both of the first 2 phases. The have objectives: 5 roads=6 4 houses=5 2 farms=5 2 masons=7 2 hunters=5 9 dice = 4 Marketplace=4 Church=5 Have 5 roads is just as useful as build road, except you get a free VP. Have 4 houses is quite good, although not as good as build house, since it's only worth 5 VP. Have 2 farms is also nice, even though each costs 2 build actions and 1 wood, since you are recommended to always build 1 farm at least for move-efficient food collection. Of course, if you get the builders hall you might get the 2nd farm in 1 action. Failing that, you can use 2 separate build actions in a pinch. Have 2 masons isn't at the top of the list despite being worth 7 VP. That's because, at higher ranks, having early masons inhibits reproduction unless you also have hunters, which is unlikely. There's also no guarantee that you'll get enough builder faces to get the masons in time, so you'll need good reproduction. However, if you do survive phase 1 with this objective, it's one of the best for setting up phase 2. Have 9 dice and have marketplace are equally bad because they only give you 4 VP. Unless the other objectives make up for this, that puts you in a worse position, making it more likely you will need to get a 1 VP bridge or stone to VP at the marketplace or a 3 VP fountain to make 18 VP. Have church is the worst. It takes 4 build actions, even worse than a fountain, and the same resources, 1 wood and 2 stone. You're likely to have to skip the builders hall to make it, and then you're down 2 stone and 1 wood in phase 2. It's true that it can be useful to activate a crusader on the church to get 2 wild faces. But that doesn't make up for the waste of resources and the build 3 and the chance to make a builders hall in phase 1. The action objectives: kill spawner=2 (total 3) work farm=1 chop tree=1 reproduce=1 gain card=1 kill barbarian = 2 hunt animal=1 (total 2 with hunters hall) The best is kill spawner for 9 VP, unless you have a split map and have to build a bridge. It's even better if you can kill all 3 spawners before there are any barbarians. Work farm is the next best. You should always have a farm for move-efficient food in phase 1 and 2, before you have the castle and can use stone for food. If you have 2 farms, or use up and rebuild the first farm, then you can easily collect 4 or 5 VP or even more. Chop tree is rather variable depending on the location of the trees. It's usually good for 4 to 5 VP, but without roads or a well-placed house it could be expensive in movement. Reproduce is quite good, better than you might expect. I budget 4 VP for it, because I prioritise reproduction and take risks to get the ball rolling early. It doesn't cost movement or resources compared to other objectives. Gain card is not usually good. You do not want more than 2 marketplace cards in my opinion, because of the extra delay in cycling the deck with more cards. So it's only worth 2 or 3 VP if you do go for the 3rd marketplace card. But if you get the builders hall and 2 cards from it, then this objective is worth 4 VP and is decent. With the lumberyard card strategy, this objective is slightly better because you can get 2 lumberyard cards quickly and use them to get 2 stone for the builders hall for another 2 cards. Kill barbarian is not that good unless you have a split map. It requires 5+ trips, which is a lot of move cards or dice for movement, instead of the usual 3 or 4 trips when you kill 1 or 3 VP spawners without any kill barbarian objective. I budget 8 VP for it, killing 2 spawners and 3 barbarians. Hunt animal is pretty bad, unless you also get have 2 hunters. It's normally only worth 2 or 3 VP for 2 or 3 trips, and these usually cost move cards, which makes this objective as bad as kill barbarian in movement and much lower in VP. Even with have 2 hunters, it's probably only worth 5 VP because you will likely need to hunt a rabbit before you have the hunters hall. Practice mode As with any strategy, you can fail in phase 1 if the objectives are difficult or you get too many poor dice rolls hurting your action per round efficiency and card cycling, or restricting your reproduction. But if you get through phase 1 with 2 stone with this strategy, you have a fighting chance of getting the castle up in time, especially if you managed to get the builders hall in phase 1. This means you have decent chances to survive phase 2 regardless of phase 2 objectives, which is better than strategies which depend on getting favourable phase 2 objectives and a phase 3 castle. There's always a trade-off between short term strategies which just go for VP directly in the first 2 phases, which will tend to get through phase 1 more often, but fail a lot in phase 2, and long term strategies like the lumberyard and phase 2 castle one in this guide, which will fail more in phase 1 since there's extra stuff to do which doesn't get you VP, but gives a much better chance of surviving phase 2. There's nothing to stop you mixing and matching short term and long term strategies depending on the phase 1 and 2 objectives. Whatever works for you. It's also more fun to try different strategies. If you're worried about your rank dropping if you try a new strategy, in the game settings you can set practice mode, which stops your rank changing whilst you play games. Then you can play 10 practice games with a different strategy, or combination of strategies depending on objectives, and evaluate the strategy according to how it feels. At least try long enough to win a game so you can get a feel for playing this way. You will likely take time to get used to shifting your priorities for a new strategy. With practice games, you don't lose rank and you can try different things and have fun without risk. At median ranks 20-35, as you will have experienced in your own games, surviving phase 2 is usually enough to win the game since you can easily get a castle and nobles raking in the VP in a snowball in phase 3, unless you are still on 7 dice! Assessing your play against difficulty spikes The first difficulty spike in the game is when the phase 1 total reaches 18 VP. The 2 lumberyard strategy is intended to help with this spike, which is then a constant at all higher ranks, whilst giving you a chance of a phase 2 castle if you prioritise close access to a stone pit and getting the builders hall and two of its cards plus a mason or two as early as possible to help with building a lot near the end of phase 1. However, the next difficulty spike is a more gradual one as the phase 2 VP total climbs. There will be steadily less phase 2 objective triples that can be reasonably reached without a phase 2 castle, until finally you're only playing for phase 2 castle. The lumberyard card strategy doesn't help here too much as it doesn't really help with getting nobles, except by turning gatherers into saved moves. In particular, if you use the base version of the card on a guardhouse, then you produce a gatherer rather than a crusader, which is not what you want to build nobles. The next difficulty spike is also fairly gradual, as the phase 2 VP total climbs so high that you not only need the phase 2 castle, but you need it a full round earlier to get the noble VP snowball rolling. You will need to start prioritising reproduction a little more so that you have enough dice to speed through the necessary actions in phase 2. The only contribution lumberyard cards make other than changing gatherers to saved moves is allowing slightly more efficient gathering of stone, food and wood than you have without these cards. However, it eventually becomes clear that, for the price of substantially more risk in phase 1 to cram in the actions to get marketplace cards, which require activating a crusader on the marketplace, marketplace cards are vastly more efficient in phase 2 to help with these difficulty spikes. Activating any dice on a marketplace card gives 1 stone, 1 wood and 1 food, without costing movement or food for deployment, which is an incredibly efficient way to gather stone without needing stone pits, whilst also taking a little pressure off your food and wood gathering so you can spend actions on chopping trees and working and gathering farms or rabbits a little less, which makes for a lot of indirect savings. The 7 movement option of the marketplace card is also tremendously helpful to accelerate actions with a large number of dice once the castle starts building, and it combines well with increasing needs for reproduction since you can theoretically manage up to 7 actions in a round with 7 movement (although that would probably only happen in phase 3). In phase 2, 7 movement is very helpful for dealing with barbarians and spawners, and provides enough movement to chop trees or hunt rabbits that are more distant than 1 move away. The marketplace itself also provides a way to get stone at the cost of 1 wood and 1 food for the deployed +, with the movement and die needed to activate on the marketplace -- usually 1 move. With lots of dice, there are frequently spare +s even with a couple of masons, and this usage can make up for the RNG of masons rolling other than stone. The lumberyard card requires a worker and a gather card or die to activate, plus 1 food for the worker deployment, and the movement cost of a single trip to a stone pit. Because of movement and dice costs this is usually a less efficient way to get stone than the same number of marketplace cards, with the indirect savings of both marketplace card options included. Movement costs are an increasingly important limit on action efficiency as rank increases. For all these reasons, I would advise at least getting a marketplace and a card from it in phase 2 if you have lumberyard cards and you're not going for a phase 2 castle, as it will help with the movement costs of actions in phase 2 as well as efficiently gaining resources. Once the castle is built, marketplace cards can be used mostly for their movement, whilst stone from masons or builders hall card activation is converted to food in the marketplace with worker activation, which is more efficient than lumberyard cards because of the minimal movement cost if the marketplace is 1 move from a house, and because farms and rabbits are not needed. Eventually, once you're losing a large enough proportion of games in phase 2, it will become necessary to avoid lumberyard cards and get marketplace cards in phase 1 as early as possible. This will initially have the effect of you losing more in phase 1, but that will be countered by surviving phase 2 more often. Until extremely high ranks are reached, surviving phase 2 is generally enough to win with castle nobles without needing very precise play in phase 3 or being greedier with phase 2 in order to set up phase 3. All situations where you go for marketplace cards in phase 1 are beyond the scope of this guide and covered by Allan's excellent guide. Recent changes Removed even more abbreviations to make the guide more readable. Added section on how to get to 15 buildings in phase 2 and why. Extended some sections to give a little more detail and explanation. Added Phase 3 castle section with a variety of options for the lower end of the rank 20-40 range. Added section on whether to get the marketplace in phase 2. Added section on assessing your play against difficulty spikes. Added to reproduction section to cover exactly when you should or shouldn't leave out a +. Added section on theft events and how to get around them so the thieves get nothing. Added section on road and movement theory -- a crucial aspect of efficiency in the game. Added section on reproduction risks and the thought process to decide if they're worth taking. Added section on double gather. Went through the guide and removed as many repetitions as I could, placing the repeated information in the most relevant section. Some of the sections have got pretty long! Sorry about that. If I can find ways to have more shorter sections I will. Added a section on basics of the game, so new players can learn to avoid common pitfalls. Added a section on the strategy of not building a farm. Added a section on spawner numbers and split maps. Added a section on a schedule for my previous favourite, the 2 marketplace card strategy. Added a section on phase 1 objectives analysis. Edited schedule section for the option of activating a + on the marketplace. Added a section on a schedule for reproduction, including advice on leaving out a single + communicated to me by Allan. I hope I haven't mangled his suggestions! Added a section on the 3 marketplace card, no builders hall strategy which is my current main strategy. Future expansion of this guide Appendix on probability values for those who want to fine-tune their decisions. Appendix on 18 VP plans for all phase 1 objective triples. A section giving examples of situations in the game, how the round was played with the logic and thought process behind the decisions made explained. Acknowledgements Thanks to everyone who contributed to discussions of strategy in the Steam forum for this game and especially to Allan, a great player with a different marketplace card-based phase 2 castle strategy for rank 100 players. Thanks also to scippie for useful insights and screenshot examples, especially into games around rank 30.