by Bendalf
Zark wrote:
It takes a few plays to get used to how the buildings interact before you can start on the nuances of strategy.
This is what I failed to understand over the first 3 plays. I traded away the game because the most of the games went like this: (Get fish go to the smoke house. Get cattle, go to the abottoir. Get frustrated because you can barely buy wooden ships. Conclude the game is broken because who can ever do the thing necessary to make steel to make a steel ship let a lone a luxury liner).
Zark wrote:
I have tried the loans route (don't bother with food just rack up the debt, then use the riches gained with all those actions you didn't use to generate food to pay off your debts at the end of the game).
Love the loans route. This seems to be a dominant mindset of mine as during plays 5-10. However, I have noticed there seems to be an optimal number of loans one can carry and still win (2-4 loans). 6+ I've never been able to recover from.
Zark wrote:
Lately I have been targeting buying a ship really early (build a building, then selling it, grab francs, sell wood). Although it is only worth a few VP's it can bring around 40 food over the duration of the long game.
It seems like knowing when to target ships within the context of the current layout of buildings within each game is an art that is only mastered through experience. Target them too soon and you miss out on building buildings. Target them too late and you seem to be scrambling for food while everyone else acquires the high-end resources (coke and steel) or capitalizes on currency creating special buildings that are revealed in the last third of the game. I LOVE this aspect of the game - timing the building of ship just right.
Zark wrote:
It also helps to be able to adapt to opportunities, unusually in my last game the Black market was on top of one of the build piles. I went last but the other two players didn't notice the opportunity. Iron and cattle had not come up so I bought it and swiped two iron and two cattle as my first action!
It is situations like these that make Le Havre shine IMHO. Were you snickering to yourself when you pulled this move off as if you had just stolen something and gotten away with it?