Agricola Strategy - Part 3

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Getting Better: Agricola Part 3

Rayfong Fri, 03/30/2012 - 00:03

This is a column that helps you get better at your favorite games. Whether it's knowing the odds to draw black trains that are left in the deck in Ticket to Ride, or understanding the ramifications of picking a Rocket Courier X-99 early in a game of Ascension, if you're looking to gain an edge over your friends, this is the column for you.

Agricola Strategy III
Father: “One day, my lad, all this will be yours!” *points to the window*
Son: “What, the curtains?”
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Welcome back to the third in my Agricola article series. Here, I will be number crunching some of the basic statistics associated with trying to build your farm. For example, is there enough stone in the game to build the Well, Stone Oven and have a 5 room stone house?
Before considering what we need for any given game of Agricola, consider the ideal farm below, taking into context the constraints of playing the game:

If we score this farm we get:

o 4 Points for 5 Fields
o 2 Points for 2 Pastures
o 3 Points for 6 Grain
o 4 Points for 4 Vegetables
o 3 Points for 6 Sheep
o 2 Points for 3 Wild Boars
o 1 Point for 1 Cattle
o 8 Points for 4 Stone rooms
o 15 Points for 5 Family Members
o 1 Point for the Fireplace
o No negative points for empty spaces or begging cards

Total: 43 Points
This sort of score will likely place you 2nd or 1st in your game and excludes bonus points for any other Improvements or Occupations. In a way, this “Family Version” farm demonstrates it is perfectly possible to win Agricola without having to resorting to your hand of Occupation and Minor Improvement cards.
Now, let’s consider the building resources we need:

· 10 Wood & 4 Reed for 2 extra Wooden Rooms
· 4 Clay & 1 Reed for Clay House Renovation
· 4 Stone & 1 Reed for Stone House Renovation
· 2 Clay for the Fireplace
· 12 Wood for Fences

Totals:

· 22 Wood
· 6 Clay
· 6 Reed
· 4 Stone

Now let’s calculate the total material available in each variant of Agricola and compare the amounts with our requirements for building the ideal farm above:
2 Players

· To explain the Min and Max availability columns, if both Stone cards appear in rounds 7 and 11, you get the minimum amount of stone. If they appear in rounds 5 and 10, you get to see the maximum amount of stone. · Here, there are enough resources to allow both players to create their own ideal farm although in 2 players it is viable to play a denial strategy (such as always going to the Clay Action space) since you only have one opponent to beat.
· A pattern you see here (and for the other tables below) is that there has been no allowance made for either:

o Building any of the other Major Improvements
o Using Building Resources as food or Victory points for the Joinery, Pottery or Basket Maker’s Workshop

· Whilst there is an abundance of Stone, none of it is available until at least Round 5 (As it is the only variant to not have Stone available from the start of the game)

3 Players

· *3 Players also has the “Take One Building Resource Action Space” To keep things simple, this space has not been factored into the table. · As noted, there is not enough Reed for each player to build the ideal farm. The “Take one Building Resource” goes a little way to alleviating the problem, but is generally inefficient to use multiple times and will be competed over for early Stone acquisition.

4 Players

· Building Major Improvements is easier than in 2 or players due to the high amount of Clay and Stone available. · The Pottery is usually an attractive choice to build since Clay is often deemed less critical than Wood or Reed (and can thus be eaten or stockpiled more easily)
· Reed is also at its highest availability in the 4 player version: Whilst this means easier to build those extra rooms (as there are also 3 spaces to gather Wood), racing for the “Build Rooms” and “Family Growth” action spaces is another matter…

5 Players

· Compared to the 4 player variant, Reed and Stone are in slightly shorter supply. Because of this, the “Take Reed, plus 1 Wood and 1 Stone” action space is of considerable value. In my personal opinion, I value this space more than the “Take 4 Wood” and the “Occupation” action spaces during the early part of the game, simply because of the maximum flexibility offered by the space:

o Visiting this space twice = Joinery or Basket Maker’s Workshop
o Visiting this space twice plus any “Take Wood” Action Space = Wooden Room
o Visiting this space once plus “Take 3 Clay” Action Space = Clay Oven
o Visiting this space three times (if you are lucky!) = Well

· Like in the 4 player variant, the Pottery is a good choice to build as Clay will likely be in excess (though with four other players, at least one of them will be thinking the same thing!)

This concludes our little series on “Getting Better” at Agricola for now. Covering these topics does not begin to scratch the surface of how much strategic depth the game has to offer even after four years of sowing, breeding and baking bread. Which is great because I certainly don’t want to ever grow bored of this game!