Grundbegriff wrote:Any observations about the expansion buildings, the strategies anyone employed, or anything else?
I'm going to read back through the game to see if I can learn anything in hindsight, but my general impressions before I do so are:
1. It is interesting that El Guapo won the first game with a balanced approach, while I focused almost entirely on a building approach. I suspect the next game might be won by a shipping/VP approach. It's such a cool game that every turn (much less every game) takes on a life of its own.
2. I really enjoyed the mix of expansion buildings and original buildings. I loved the Harbor in the first game (even though it served EG better than it did me). When this game started without the Harbor on the board, it forced me to re-evaluate all the building choices.
3. I am intrigued now by the expansion buildings that did not get randomly inserted into this game and would love to see how they would play out.
4. I have a hard time seeing the value of a forest house. I suppose if you adopt a pure build strategy, it would be more beneficial than a marginal crop choice, but having to get two forests to equal one quarry left me ignoring it completely.
5. Chaos and Issy made good use of their Black Markets, but I (probably over) value VPs, crops, and colonists so much that it would be hard for me to sacrifice any of them to take advantage of the Black Market.
6. As I mentioned earlier, I fell in love with the Library, especially in conjunction with the University. I realize that in a different game, they would not play out exactly like they did for me, but it felt like a perfect storm once I had a foundation of coffee, large market, university, and library.
7. I found that my one big regret (that haunted me the entire game) was choosing an office when I could have had a hospice. I haven't had a hospice in either game, but it has moved way up my list of priority buildings.
Hopefully, I'll have more thoughts after going back through the game again.