Post by Sam in Before the Ash comments

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Yeah sure ! Here’s my current strategy !

The starting hand is crucial :

The first set of cards is decisive. A strong start includes farms, lumber camps, and possibly a mine, as these provide the essential resources needed for expansion. If you start with statues, aqueducts, or coliseums, it slow a lot your progress and you will hit ~4500 points.

Early game :

Focus on cards that generate food (fishing huts), wood, stone, and a 1-2 houses. One-two houses are enough at the beginning to avoid spoiling ressources into too much population. At the end of early game if everything went well your hand is empty.

Mid-game :

Once you secure a steady supply of wood, and food, aim for more mines. Build the palatium & pick all coliseum available (or statues).

End-game :

Continue for a strong ressource supply, specially stone to build monuments & convert faith into new production buildings.

Fire management :

Since the beginning you can let 1 tile burn & extinguish the tile around, for a full round you will not get 3 but 18 faith. On mid/end-game ressources are not a problem anymore and you can easily replace burned places with aqueducts / statues or farms

I hope it brings you some tips !!!

Here is an even better run !

Aviv Levy11 days ago (4 edits)

That's a solid strategy right here. Plus, I was wondering if players will let some fires burn to get that early faith going. During playtests with friends, I saw that most of them went to extinguish the fires right away, but that's actually not always needed.

I'm so glad to see that you took advantage of this "discoverable" mechanic!

I wonder - what do you think about the Meadow and Forest cards? Did you find them useful in any capacity?

Sam11 days ago

In fact for me - meadow & forest are a big food cost for nothing. They have no immediate value since you can build directly producing tiles on burned lands like farms. However in potential harder maps where you start with burned tiles already healing the land first might be necessary before placing lumber camps.

If you’re too slow to extinguish fires, then restoring land can be useful for placing houses, pastures, or lumber camps.

Otherwise, there are usually enough wood-producing tiles on each map, making meadows and forests unnecessary in most cases.

The conclusion is that the game rythm and only 2 cards choices make the direct resource production way more usefull than land restoration. Even if you replace your burned lumberjack into a farm.

Aviv Levy11 days ago

Agreed, and very insightful. making tougher maps with having to restore pre-burnt tiles is actually a really good idea, too!

I added those cards for 2 reasons:

1. In case you end up with too many burnt tiles or built tiles and can't build a camp, for example. To prevent the player from getting locked.

2. Every deck of cards needs some 'lower tier' cards you can discard or care less about, imo.

Other possible use cases for them in the future are:

1. Allowing the player to expand the map, and that it could only be done with non-structure cards.

2. Allowing the player to destroy buildings with those cards, so they could build better buildings.

Sam11 days ago

Oh that sounds nice!

I really like the idea of using them to expand the map! It would give them a real purpose beyond just avoiding getting stuck. The ability to remove buildings with these cards is also an interesting mechanic, especially if it allows for better optimization (we can imagine fertile lands that can’t spawn but are buildable on burned lands only and boost food production on it for example).

I also first though plains & forest was here to replace water tiles that are used only for fishing. Maybe aqueducts can have also a special trait with water tiles ?

Aviv Levy11 days ago

I'm not sure about meadows/forests being placed on water tiles, but aqueducts could work.

If I understood correctly, you think aqueducts should be placable on water, too?

Sam11 days ago

I’m not sure too, it was just an idea like draining a swamp !

Not necessarily, but when I first used it I wondered if there wasn’t something to be done by placing an aqueduct close to the water!

Aviv Levy11 days ago

Oh, ok. I'll think about it!

Thanks so much for taking the time to leave detailed feedback. 😁

Sam11 days ago(+1)

No problem ! It was a pleasure !

itch.io

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