Forum game of Through the Ages - new edition

[rho21]

How are you supposed to primarily get your culture?  I see five main paths to get culture:
1. Small gains in the early-going (early wonders, Religions/Age I culture buildings, playing events) that add up over time

These provide you a basis, but aren't really a significant component of your score in the long run unless it's a really low-scoring game (I've seen winning scores vary from 90 to 350).

2. Theaters, mostly Movies--are Libraries supposed to be good?  They weren't in our game at all, and it seems like they're just a bad Theater and bad Lab in one package--is it a strategy to, say, get a Journalism as your first major science investment (maybe getting by on UC/Library of Alexandria or science actions) and hope you can get by without much science?

Opera, particularly with the Basilica or Bach can be an excellent way to bring on some culture production in the mid-game, provided nothing else is more pressing. Movies late are a good way of turning excess production into a bit of culture. Not as good as wonders though, if you can get a good one.

Journalism is excellent and that strategy can indeed work. As you need to improve your science output in the mid-game anyway, doing so a bit less well but with a bunch of culture works out very nicely. The inability to upgrade from the initial labs means they're a bit more difficult to afford though. If you can get da Vinci or Newton to provide a bit of extra science, so much the better.

3. The Age III wonders, which reward you for specializations (but mostly in production)

You can usually take enough yellow cards to get one of these out no matter what. First Space Flight can be worth over 30 culture, and Fast Food Chains is always a good number. You can wait right until the end to build them, and there's no better way to turn that late-game production into points.

4. The Age III events, but those seem very random and biased towards the military-focused--maybe this works better in four-player games where more events will be played overall (both because there are more players, and fewer "weakest" players

If one person has focused on culture production earlier while another has built up their economy (and so now has a much stronger board position), it will almost invariably be the latter who benefits from the events. With civilizations at similar stages of development, it's certainly much more about luck. Wonders and Government were both excellent draws for me, and of course drawing one that's good for your opponent can be a big relief. There is potentially a lot to be gained if you can guess which impacts your opponents have played and respond accordingly.

If anything, I would say they are disproportionately biased towards science rather than military. Impact of Technology in particular can be a huge swing to someone who has produced a lot of science in the late game. Science, Progress, Government, Variety and even Competition also reward your investment in science. We were all pretty even in science by the end though, so not much happened with these.

5. Military, through War over Culture and Armed Intervention--as an interaction, it requires you know how much military you can expect to show up, which makes it the most-difficult to put into practice for newer players.

Increasing your military is a way of forcing other players to do the same when they would rather be investing in their economy. If you can do so more efficiently than they can, this can be a big gain. If they don't or can't increase military to match you, a raid can cause massive damage, while a plunder can prevent future development and let you keep attacking next turn. Military actions are all important here. You need loads to be able to attack and build your own forces and draw more cards. Armed Interventions can be a very nice source of points if you can draw them and get them off effectively.

Wars are much harder to pull off, but particularly War over Culture can be absurdly rewarding. They will usually work best when you are in position to make, or have just made, a big military jump and it looks as though an opponent will be unable to follow you, usually due to lack of production, sometimes science.

To a fair extent you should be deciding whether or not to increase your strength a lot based on the cards you've already drawn. Certainly makes it less about luck. You're right that it's difficult to get a feel for as a beginner though.

Other sources of culture:

6. Michaelangelo. It's difficult to afford to build the happiness production to really get a lot of points from him, without falling too far behind elsewhere, but the Hanging Gardens and particularly the Basilica can cause him to produce a ton of culture. It's not unusual to have a 50-point advantage on your opponents by the start of Age III. Strong players will generally respond to a heavy Michaelangelo play with military build-up, though, so you need to be prepared to defend what you've got.

7. Some of the mid-game wonders (late Taj Mahal, early Eiffel) can provide enough points to be worthwhile, if you have the resources to spare or manage to get an Engineering Genius.

Again, I've only played one game, but it feels like there's a lot of luck there, especially in the military cards and Age III in general.  Sure, there's enough redundancy to make sure you aren't completely dead in the early game (mostly military), but are you supposed to be building to a point where you need, say, Fast Food Chains, Movies, or War over Culture to show up early in Age III, and if not you lose?

Our game wasn't entirely typical in that we all had fairly underdeveloped and brittle civs. A large part of the game is about mitigating the luck of card draws: if you've got yourself into a position to benefit from whichever Age III wonder you can get, and a large proportion of the impacts, there's not all that much that can go wrong.

FSF is great in all metas but it came the turn CH played the war over technology. I had to choose between 1) getting FSF and the potential to defend against future wars but conceding a lot in the war and risking an aggression 2) Getting FSF and defending the war/aggression but not being able to defend against future wars and 3) Skipping FSF and defending the war/aggression and being able to defend against future wars. Since two of the other wonders were okay for me I choose the last option.

I should have said that when I couldn't afford to take it from the 3 section, I wasn't expecting it to still be there on my next turn. Of course the war then made a huge difference, and you were almost certainly correct not to take it.

About meta more generally. My group was in that meta until some of us started playing in the online league. This was of in the old edition, but there improving to Iron was incredibly risky and hard to make it work. Investing 5 actions, 9 resources and 5 science in improving mines very often lost out in the short run to the player getting actions and military and supplementing production with actions cards and events/aggressions and was not great in the long run as you often disbanded all your mines for military by the end.

The new edition has changed it a fair bit.
1) Military is no longer dominant. Early military has been hit hard by the new defense rules giving the players more time to build up. Late military is slightly nerfed as well. You still need to keep up but you have some extra breathing room.
2) Action cards are even better than before, all the bad and situational ones have been made much more versatile.
3) Culture strategies are much more viable with the discounts on theaters and libraries and the boost to culture leaders and wonders. Especially theaters have gone from utter garbage to really nice with one of the combo cards. Them being cheaper and action cards being better means that you do not need great infra to build the age 1/2 ones.

Yeah, my group was closer to that meta in the old version, though we never got quite that aggressive. I always felt that meta was partly driven by the experience of 2-player games (where military was even more important than other numbers) spilling over into games with more players. It's also a bit of a prisoners' dilemma: once one person goes into heavy military, everyone else needs to make at least some response.

My favorite card in age 1 is Monarchy, though I think I play it slightly too often. I'm expecting your card ratings to be wildly different than mine: http://boardgamegeek.com/article/21690614#21690614

I don't mind irrigation, but you need 3 of them.
I'd rate iron a fair bit higher, but as with so many cards, it's important to get them as early as possible. While yellow cards are better in the short term, the investment in mines does pay off in time. Later mines get harder and harder to justify. Also, sometimes the yellow cards you get will be Rich Land, which make the mine upgrade rather more effective.
Printing Press I still don't rate at all. You just can't afford the population to only get 1 science per worker.
Drama is OK, but a trap if you play it in Age I: you just can't afford to be investing that much in culture that early. Still, having it in hand going into Age II can be a good play, particularly if you get Bach.
I feel I don't play Monarchy as much as I should.
I'm also not convinced about Code of Laws unless I have science to spare. Given the difference in my rating of it and Pyramids, I should almost certainly be regarding it as a bit stronger than I do.
I rate Moses rather higher than you and Barbarossa quite a bit lower. Moses works whatever, while Barbarossa requires you to have food production to make the population increases possible.
Bach is situational but can be excellent. Robespierre I'd rate a bit lower, as his power comes into play just as losing all your military actions in a turn can be really painful. Still, he's good to use once then replace as soon as possible.

[Cheater Hater]

@chumchu: Interesting stuff about all the meta/card rankings, as well as the late game stuff I asked about--though when I was talking about events being military biased, I was talking about actually playing them (as they'll trigger Age II events) rather than the contents of the events themselves. However, how are you going to be in a position to benefit from all the Age III things equally--doesn't the nature of the game mean you're always going to be short on something (food/production/science/military/culture) if you're playing against decent opponents?

Also, I'm wondering if it might not be better to make a new topic for the new game?

[chumchu]

Triggering bad events is less of an issue in the last turns as the impacts give so much points compared to the damage you can get from the age II military events. Refugees is probably the worst but it is still not that many points as there are only a few rounds left.

Please make a new topic.