So far I have played this game four times. Every time whoever brought the big dragon scroll on the first round (total of 24 pt) and played the book strategy seems to win every time. Is this game tilted?

I saw the same thing, first two plays. This was even done to the extreme of ignoring everything except what was required to keep the geishas alive, and getting money for more dragon tiles.

I was wondering if there is a way to compete with this.

I don't think there is a way to compete against this strategy. This is the narrow path to victory, and, against competent opponents, the game revolves around who does this the sooner and the better.

Which leads to an uninteresting game.

I will try next game the following house rule, that could cap the power of privileges as VP engines, making them worthy without being uber-powerful:
During each scoring phase, you cannot score more VPs. from the dragons of the privileges, than the number of palaces you have.

More discussion please! It's such a significant VP strategy; I'd have thought playtesting would have revealed a foil.

I think the problem is: except for the privileges, all the other elements that generate VPs need planning for maintenance. They need your hard work. A privilege, on the other hand, is a "buy and forget" thing. There is no risk of losing it no matter what you do during the game.

This will lead, naturally, to the kind of game described in the earlier posts.

A shame, because this game could be sooo good and different from the crop...

After playing once, looking at the results in another play in our group and reading session reports here, I think that it is premature to declare the "buy a 2-dragon privilege" move a guaranteed win.

What I think is that case is that it is the easiest move when inexperienced with the game and is likely to result in a win when the players are thrashing around trying to figure out what to do. This is because the privilege gives a guaranteed 24 points without having to do anything else, which is a significant amount in an early game.

This game seems to have a very significant learning curve. It rewards planning and efficiency. If you waste a move or miscalculate, you will pay. In my only game so far (4 players), it was also a case of a 2-dragon player winning with 90 points. I was in second place with 82. I knwo, though, that I made some blunders. I never used my builder and so lost the potential points from extra palaces/workers that could have been saved.

Spending all initial cash on the 2-dragon privilege gives a guaranteed payout, but leaves the player vulnerable. Options are limited if other players get ahead on the person track. On the other hand, staying in the lead on the person track limits options in other ways.

These limits are not as important in early games when the players are getting their bearings and not paying as much attention to what others are doing. Once there is more experience my guess is that the early points gained from the dragons will be given back later in the form of wasted workers, palaces, bonuses, etc. that the 2-dragon player will get aced out of. There is a lot going on here and too much to become effective at in a few plays.

In other words, this strategy will probably always make a player competitive, but as opponents get more experienced will get to be more of a guaranteed close loss than a lock for winning.

When you first play this game it certainly looks like the winning move. In my group there has been many wins from on both sides of the Yuan; Getting the priviledge first is only one of the ways to victory, and there are many others. I'm not saying it is not a good one - but it's not guaranteed. The more you play, you will notice other strategies based on the event order that will work as well unfold. I would not go selling this game short. You'll see. If you read one of the recent reviews - the one with 30 responses - we also discuss strategy there as well and I encourage you to read it. Enjoy!

I won my first game against somebody using this strategy so it's possible. I won both fireworks events and got the book action twice at the end with three book dudes (I forget what they're called now). I had been efficient in my other actions so I was able to save a wild card to recruit another book dude towards the end. I think it's pretty premature to declare the game broken.

The "2-dragon privilege at start" is not a guaranteed winning strategy. However, an early "privileges+ladies" setup is, not only extremely powerful, but also relatively easier to administer and maintain. Probably easier than any other thing you can try to achieve in the game. For example, no particular action required each turn to score VPs; has less elements to be screwed up by events or other players, etc.

Probably, a novice playing this strategy will be decimated by veterans who opt for other paths. But once you know the nuances of it (including, of course, screwing other players actions when the expected yield is high), I think it is more effective and less risky than any other I can think of.

Which will leads to a kind of game that revolves too much around that main strategy. A boring thing. Specially because the game's design has such a succulent framework for allowing multiple paths to victory.

One thing that should eliminate the boredom you fear is the variation of the events.

Even if someone tries to pull off this strategy in every game there will be a couple of things that will prevent play from becoming scripted. First, the order of the tiles themselves will make the strategy more or less effective and will require different maintenance to try to make it work. Buy a 2-dragon privilege on the first turn of different games and your point totals will be different based on the sequence of events. This provides different challenges to the player attempting it. Even with the same basic strategy, different paths will need to be taken to maximize its efficiency.

Second, this will lead to a different game for the opponents of the player trying this strategy. While the dragon/lady player is trying to find his best path, his opponents will also be looking for the best counters, put in context of how to put together their best game.

With the number of combinations possible with 10 varying events, there should be plenty of exploration in this game before it gets stale.

Even if it ends up that someone will probably always try a "dragon/lady" path, and it might work, I don't see this as any more of an inherent problem than the fact that someone is probably going to try a shipping strategy in Puerto Rico, and that also can win. There are other ways to win with this game, just as a building strategy can win Puerto Rico.

I have played around 10 games and the game has been amazingly balanced so far in my view. Granted, I haven't tried any extreme strategies (every time I tried, I got caught up in the events and veered away). I think I have won and I have came in the middle of the pack with buying a double dragon in the first turn.

I think buying a double dragon on the first turn is a viable strategy, but I don't see it as a dominant strategy. I see the drawbacks of the double dragon purchase as you are being at the mercy of the other players for a few rounds, and you might take heavy losses--which you might not recover.

I see three possibilities why the double dragon seems dominant:

1. It is actually dominant and our group hasn't discovered it yet.
2. Somehow your group is letting the double dragon purchaser "off the hook" easily by allowing him to easily get money, and that more efficient scoring methods have not been discovered.
3. You are playing some rule wrong which makes this a dominant strategy.

It would be interesting to know your winning scores. Our winning scores in the last few games have been in the high 90s and the low 100s. If your winning scores are much less, than perhaps #2 above (or #3) is the reason why.

Paul, I agree with you to some extent. The thing is, you don't really stick with the dragon/lady, in the sense of trying to grow it during all the game. If this would be the case, other paths should beat it.

No, you try first to setup a maintainable dragon/lady as soon as you can (if you, by luck, go first, you are at advantage). Around fourth turn, maybe up to 2 players had achieved this (the first with some advantage in VPs already). Then, you spend the next turns trying to recover a little, growing a little your setup (if you can), placing cannon fodder for the close events, and begin to prepare your secondary path for the last 5/6 turns. This secondary path should be, if possible, the one used by other player that seems to have a high expected value by the end of the game, in order to screw up him a little. As I said, this is not always possible, as it depends of the remaining resources and the remaining sequence of events.

Anyway, most of the time, none of the players who early followed other paths (specially your secondary one), will be able to beat you or the other player who also managed to set up a dragon/lady scheme early.

So, in our 4 players games, we know by the middle game. the half of the party that is already doomed. And tell me if this is not boring...

And this is because of the "stream-like" nature, and lack of maintenance requirements of the privileges. Between a dragon/ladies-then-X strategy, and a X-then-dragon/ladies strategy, the first win, almost always.

This is a game of risk management. There should not exist an element with such a high yield and low risk as the privilege.

Something just doesn't sound right about this plan, particularly the following what someone else is doing as a secondary plan. If you try to mirror someone, then you should end up in a money, tile (as in not enough of them), person (getting killed off) or palace (decaying away) crunch fairly quickly. There just isn't enough of everything to let someone do equally well as another at one path.

Also, if you build up before getting the double dragon, you are wasting turns that net you little. However, if you blow your cash on him in the first turn, you cede a lot of control over your fate to the other players. That's the balance and where the risk/reward is at the right level.

There are so many things built into this game that would seemingly prevent an unstoppable double dragon that I'm owndering if you have all the rules correct.

- number of person tiles is set according to number of players
- total cash on hand if choosing to pass in a turn is capped at 3 yuan
- choosing the dragon means foregoing the use of another power that can also have long term benefits
- having to pay 3 yuan to take the same benefit as someone before you

Building a palace in the first turn and maintaining it (just about as easy as the dragon) yields 12 points in the game, eliminating 1/2 of the double dragon yield right off the bat, plus allow for some more flexibility later on by having more capacity for persons. Add in a max monk and some other actions that are available to the other player over the course of the game because of the limits imposed on the dragon player and the rest of the advantage disappears. At that point, it becomes a matter of which player is more efficient over the rest of the actions. Given that the dragon player will probably be in a worse picking position, if both players have equal ability the dragon player will come colose but lose in the end.

there's not that much difference between buying the 2 dragons privilege on turn 1 or on turn 2. There's plenty of opportunity to make that 2 VP during the game.
There's usually other valuable actions available on turn 1, of course it depend on the charachter you choosed at start. It's a good time to build as usually this action is not yet contested. Money or rice are also valuable depending on the events order.

My apologies, because this issue about the "secondary mirror path" is only relevant when you are competing against another player who also follows the privilege/ladies path. I didn't make a clear or complete example when I translated from spanish to english what I wanted to say. I understand why all your alarms went on, and I'm really sorry for making such a mistake in a discussion I found interesting.

Forget about this mirror thing. Let me set a clearer example.

Suppose you are the only one following a privilege/ladies plan. Past the middle game, you should consider a secondary focus ("path" is not the right word).

You need to assess your treats. You probably need to start to screw up a player in order to weaken her final score. Sometimes you will need to do that on two players. Sometimes, because of an incoming event, you can safely grow your scheme instead of mess with another player. What to do and when, depends on the other players setup and the sequence of incoming events. There is no recipe for that. This is not a mechanical strategy. However, I have seen this done more than not. The reason is that, while the other players need to struggle until the end of the game, and trying to screw you is a luxury, you, instead, are basically done, because your maintenance needs are much lower than the other players. So, the game is much more forgiving towards the privilege/ladies strategy. A bad thing.

I would say that this strategy wins near 80% of the time. Some of the more relevant situations when it doesn't do, are:

- The player goes blindly with this strategy thru all the game, and then loses to a big end-of-game VP harvest.

- The sequence of events and action selections has been such that you can do little to avoid the execution of another player's good plan. I have seen this happen, but this is not a typical situation.

- One player screw you most of the time. That player loses the game, and you too. But a game that needs a sacrifical lamb against a single strategy, is a bad thing.

- The other players agree on weaken you, taking each one a fair quote of sacrifice. Again, a strategy that needs to be countered this way is a bad thing for a game.




But this privileges/ladies scheme is very resilent to this inital situation, as long as you place the ladies in a timely fashion. Otherwise this strategy would never show up.

There is a big difference between buying 2 dragons early when you will go for a privileges/ladies strategy vrs. when you will not.

If you buy it, and you are not going for a privileges/ladies strategy, you are shooting your foot. You really, really need that money early.

Has anybody considered the influence of the number of players? In a three player game, even the player going last has the choice between two actions without paying yuan. This surely helps ignoring getting influence and still getting the odd useful action.I think in 4 or 5 player games there's a much higher chance of getting screwed if being stuck last in the turn order without a single yuan. Skipping every second action is an option, but can cost you dearly.

Still unanswered question: "How many points did you score?".

A short calculation:

Big Priv (Turn 1): 24 VP
Ladies (2xTurn 1, Turn 2, Turn 3): 2x12+11+10 = 45 VP
Palaces: (average:3): 36 VP
Final scoring: 4 Ladies : 8 VP

Total Score: 113 VP

How does this calculation compare to your actual scores playing "dragonladies"?



Jeff Two

I haven't played a 3 player game, but your reasoning sounds good. I would add that with a more compact set of groups (3-2-2), there is a much better chance to screw up the privileges/ladies player and also get a useful action for you plan.

Winning scores in our group are around 90 points.

Your calculation has some issues:

-Setting up this sequence of ladies is easier to say than to do. You would require a very nice sequence of events and a group of players very kind towards you. Just think about what will happen if you bought the double dragon in your first turn, the first event after peace is imperial tribute, and you arrived at the third turn in one of the lasts positions (very probable).
- One of the main elements of this strategy are the small privileges.
- Three palaces on average is too much for this narrow focused strategy. Probably you will lost at that average. You basically only need to care about to maintain your ladies, to buy privileges, and to screw up your closest contender(s). You can do that last thing better than anyone else, because your infrastructure is relatively small.

As a note not related to your post: one thing that isn't true is that a "first turn 2-point privilege = win". If you go first, this is generally the optimal move for this strategy . That's all. But there are exceptions. However, even buying it in the second turn is viable. Another error is that you cannot analyze punctuation by tailoring palaces vrs. privileges. I doesn't happens like that during the game. A palace requires maintenance, privileges don't. Maintenance requires sacrifice and/or slowdown of your main strategies. This is the advantage of privileges over palaces. You buy and forget privileges. You get and take care of palaces and persons.

Which gets us back to the likelihood that a dragon/lady strategy will win against newbies but end up giving a competitive but losing score against players who have learned how to pull off the maintenance and sacrifice most efficiently. This will make the dragon/lady strategy effectively useless in games against experienced players. What is left is the need to play efficiently and plan ahead properly.

Given that the specifics of the maintenance and sacrifice will change for each game and that will provide fresh challenges, your worries that the game becomes boring appear to be unfounded.

I think an average of 3 palaces is optimistic if your first three hires are ladies. I would say 2 palaces on average is what you are going to get. There is no time to build in the first three turns (if you get to build in the 2nd or 3rd turn going last, then the opponents are giving you the victory). I also don't see you keeping the 4 ladies past the third month event (unless it is the celebration).

The Average scores in our group are over 100. Our high score on a 5 player is 113 and 4 player is 119. Usual winning scores are in the 110 region. Having 3 palaces are manditory for points. As a rule of thumb, each player should take the build action at least twice during the game. No one ever stays with 2 palaces, and 4-5 palaces are also quite common to see. Good Luck!

First, a clarification, because maybe (as usual), I didn't express myself clearly: I don't find the game lacking variety. I love its topic, mechanics, and menu of choices. Otherwise I wouldn't bother posting in its forum. This is the only game I have where you play competitively against its harsh mechanics. The other games of this kind I have, like Shadows over Camelot or Lord of The Rings, are cooperative.

But, when I know in advance who will finally win, most of the time, I get bored.

Now, on the topic.

One of my fellow players is very good (or at least, that's what I'm think of), at using a strategy based on researchers/monks. When she doesn't win, she generally get the second position. Other players of my group (including me, of course), are not near as good as her using this path. She has an extraordinary sense of timing on when to place these persons in play, facing the incoming events.

If, as I'm beginning to suspect, a 3-player game weakens enough the privileges/ladies path, I will see her wining many games, not because researchers/monks is a vastly powerful strategy compared to the others, but because of her dexterity.

Now, from our last four 4-player games, she won 1 game using this strategy. Guess which strategy won the other 3?

This is not a matter about who manages with better efficiency their investments (including sacrifice). It is a matter of having, in addition of the sorties ahead, a bug with an extra and very resilient VP engine, trying to ruin your setup during the last turns of the game, in order to lessen your final score. And this bug can do that, with little retaliation from your part, not because it excels at bugging more than you excel at manage in monks and researches, but because of an intrinsic characteristic of some elements (aka privileges) that allow for such a situation.

Really, this is a very difficult topic to discuss, because, except for saying "Generally, it's an optimal move for the privileges/ladies path, to buy a 2 point dragon privilege in the first turn", it is extremely difficult to make a practical example of a move for any of the possible strategies (including the ladies/privileges), because what you do in a turn depends too much on what have happened, what will happen because of the events, an what other players have done. This leads the discussion to a pretty high level of abstraction, using mostly terms like "better management", "timing", "anticipation", etc.

If my group is willing to play again this game with four players, I will post a detailed session report. This could shed some light about why our style of play has lead, not only me, but all my players, to this conclusion.

I would say given your winning scores that the double privileges are the easiest route to winning that you have discovered so far. Our winning scores recently have been in the higher 90s, and the winner have not bought the double dragon on the first turn. Of course the scoring will depend on the order of the events.

Also the scoring track can be very deceptive. We have guys who looked to be way back in the scoring track, score big in the final scoring and jump back into the pack.

This might be like in Puerto Rico where players claim that the Hospice is broken because it is too powerful. After more experience, players see that Hospice is actually one of the weaker buildings.

I saw regular scores over 100 only in our first games.

I'm sure I would see such a high final scores for some strategies, if not because the privileges/ladies player (or players) precluded them. He (or they) sometimes causes a cascade effect that hurts the rest of the players, depending on the status of the person track and the incoming events.

Our scores are in the same range. That means that my optimistic calculation for the Dragonladies (113 VP) is not high enough to guarantee a victory. It's possible that there are orders of events best suited for this strategy, but most likely you would end up second best.

My strangest victory: 115 VP with just two palaces an two persons remaining (I played an early double privi, one ladie and up to 3 scholars, pretty much ignoring the final draught in the last turn)


Jeff Two