I recently played Hansa Teutonica for the 5th time, and am happy that I was still learning new things from it. It was the first time I played with Afif, who had played Hansa Teutonica a number of times with a different group. He brought his experience to the game, which taught me some new lessons. I realised a mistake that I've made since my first game - at game end, network scoring is by offices! Not cities. I had thought you just count the number of cities in your (i.e. with your office presence) largest connected network of cities. The correct way is to count each office in this network. I checked my own concise reference sheet and found that I had actually got it right when I made the sheet. I need to pay more attention to what I write.
I'm going to say it even if it makes me look stupid - network building is important. "What? It took you 5 games to realise that?" Umm... yeah, sorry. In most of my early games I have been teaching the game to other new players, so I really have not explored the strategies in any depth. In my previous few games I have been particularly attracted to improving my technology. Powering up is tempting because they make your actions more efficient. And then there's the 4VPs per maxed tech. I now realise that teching up for the sake of teching up is not such a good idea. It should be something that supports your strategy, rather than being a strategy in itself.
Network building is lucrative because there are two ways it scores for you - the control of cities, plus the scoring for your largest network. In our 3-player game, Allen and I upgraded from 2 to 3 actions early, and Afif was stuck at 2 actions for quite some time. He went for bonus tokens, we stopped him (else he would have reached 15VP, which is a lot). He went for network building, we didn't quite manage to block him. So he claimed the 7VP for the east-west route, and at game end also earned 24VP for his network. I need to pay more attention to network-building.
I have not considered getting the expansion to Hansa Teutonica yet, even though I like the base game a lot. There is still so much to explore even in the base game.
The network strategy becomes even more powerful thanks to the bonus tokens which allow you to add an office to the city. While it may initially seem only useful when trying to wrestle control of the city from an opponent, I use it simply to enhance my network scoring by controlling all offices in certain cities (usually those that don't require a merchant) and tagging on the bonus office. Add to that a nice multiplier and you'll be rolling in points.
ReplyDeleteThis is a brilliant game, one of those where every strategy is seemingly viable.
sometimes it is worth fighting for the cities control sometimes its not
ReplyDeletethats why i love the game a good balance of strategy and in game tactical choices.
ReplyDeletei so need to play this more...
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