Thread: Age of Innovation:: Strategy:: Some observations after a few games on BGA

by strangest

I've played 5 games on the BGA alpha and I'm really enjoying AoI so far. Aside from a few bugs, it's a very solid adaptation.

One thing I did notice is in those 5 games is that 4 of the winners chose Forest and 2 of those winners were Forest/Inventor specifically. I've played a decent amount of Terra Mystica and Gaia Project, so I know it'll take way more games than that to get a good understanding of how to play, but I was still surprised at how strong Forest seemed to be. In one of the Forest/Inventor games, they managed to get 7 workshops out on the first round (!). Granted we probably could have stopped them if we knew openings like that were possible.

Inventors seem very strong in general. They can do some pretty wild openings, like the 2 spade tile into super fast expansion, or just a ton of books.

The north island in particular seems incredibly good for a forest start. You can easily get 3 workshops out with only a single spade. This could be blocked by someone starting Lake. It seems like Lake is on the weaker side though. I only saw it picked once and it didn't do very well. Again this is after literally 5 games, so these are just my initial feelings.

For more experienced players, I was wondering if it's worth prioritizing the stronger terrains in the draft? I mostly found myself choosing a palace tile first. Maybe this is different in the snake draft vs the standard draft?