Hermits vs. Merchants

[Cos-]

If you're playing a game with both hermits and merchants, which do you tend to prioritize in the first half of the game if you have some relocator tiles available (ship, paddock, barn)? How do you decide which to prioritize in different situations, and why?

You often don't know yet which merchant connections you're more likely to make, so you often have a tradeoff between using your relocator tiles to aggressively split up all your groups of settlements to create more hermits, or leave them adjacent to form parts of what may become merchant links later. But if you leave them together to form possible merchant links, you're "wasting" turns when you could be generating hermits, and will generate fewer hermits.

I think the answer here is different depending on how many players are in the game, and how many relocator tiles you have. If you answer, would you say whether your answer is for 2-player, 3-player, 4-player, or 5-player?

(I have my own thoughts about this but want to see others' without biasing them with mine first)

[franko]

If you're playing a game with both hermits and merchants, which do you tend to prioritize in the first half of the game if you have some relocator tiles available (ship, paddock, barn)? How do you decide which to prioritize in different situations, and why?

That's a hard question to answer, especially as it depends a lot on the 3rd variable scoring objective, the active tiles and board layout, and exactly what terrain cards you draw.

If there's only harbour, then it's going to be harder to rack up hermits points regardless (although this does open up more possible short merchants on many boards).

In general, I don't think I actively prioritize any particular objective in the start of any game. I go for power tiles, good board placements for future expansions (not committing to too many terrains to start, but then if committing doing it in a place where I can soak up points later -- obviously again this depends a lot on how many mobility tiles there are), and sometimes blocking my opponent.

I think the answer here is different depending on how many players are in the game, and how many relocator tiles you have. If you answer, would you say whether your answer is for 2-player, 3-player, 4-player, or 5-player?

I essentially exclusively play 2 player, but yes depending on the amount and which particular mobility tiles you have will change the answer. If the third scoring condition is fisherman or miners that will also likely have a large bearing on the final score and can make particular placements / merchant routes far more powerful. If the third scoring condition is farmers, again that obviously changes things and again makes particular short merchant connections much more powerful.

I don't think there's any particular general rule to follow as the game does involve some tactics in dealing with whatever terrain cards you've drawn compared to your opponent.

[Cos-]

I don't think there's any particular general rule to follow as the game does involve some tactics in dealing with whatever terrain cards you've drawn compared to your opponent.

You misunderstood me. I was not asserting that there's one generally applicable way to do it, I was specifically looking for all of the _specific_ considerations that go into your decision making on this. In other words, all of the examples you gave when attempting to show me that there's no general rule, are actually exactly the kinds of responses I'm asking for here. But since you were using them as illustrations of why my question is wrong, you gave only a few of them rather briefly. If you'd be willing to go back to this answer knowing that I was asking for exactly those kinds of things that you talked about, I'd welcome you getting into them further: In the early/mid game, when you're face with situations where you have to place for more likely merchant connections or more hermits, how do you make those decisions? What are the conditions that pull you one way or the other? And yes, what the third scoring condition is, and what other tiles are available, are definitely big parts of that!

[franko]

You misunderstood me. I was not asserting that there's one generally applicable way to do it, I was specifically looking for all of the _specific_ considerations that go into your decision making on this. In other words, all of the examples you gave when attempting to show me that there's no general rule, are actually exactly the kinds of responses I'm asking for here. But since you were using them as illustrations of why my question is wrong, you gave only a few of them rather briefly.

I understood your question, although I can see why you thought I did not. The reason I only gave a few rather brief examples is more due to the fact that there are so many additional factors than just merchants and hermits that it's not really particularly easy to respond to your question as worded. My statement about there not being any particular rule of thumb may have come across more dismissive than I had meant it, and I was not suggesting you thought there was a simple single answer, but rather more just sort of a "well I wouldn't even know how to start given how many things we could discuss...".

There are 8 boards, so 70 different combinations of power tiles (8c4), although if you're saying one of the 3 movement tiles must exist that does limit the number slightly. If you're first player, there are 5 potential starts that you could do, which depending on those power tiles might make you lean more towards some particular board positions over others (generally regardless of the scoring objectives). If you're second player, there are technically 25 potential starts by your turn (although in reality you probably only need to consider 10 -- one for each terrain card where you didn't draw the same as your opponent, and one for each terrain card where you did given presumably that could have blocked your desired start). Either way, there are 8 different scoring objectives that could take up that 3rd slot, which again changes the landscape of which positions in the board are worth more points. To answer given all of those potential unknowns would probably need some generalization, or would require so many examples that I'd be hard-pressed to write them all up.

I'm always happy to discuss more specifics / a particular game or turn / puzzles on the Kingdom Builder discord (as you may have seen me responding to these sorts of items there), or even play some friendly games with folks where I do tend to provide thoughts on both my own and their play, but all of those again are very specific single examples so they're easier to discuss.

If you'd be willing to go back to this answer knowing that I was asking for exactly those kinds of things that you talked about, I'd welcome you getting into them further: In the early/mid game, when you're face with situations where you have to place for more likely merchant connections or more hermits, how do you make those decisions? What are the conditions that pull you one way or the other? And yes, what the third scoring condition is, and what other tiles are available, are definitely big parts of that!

It's not necessarily about willingness, but more perhaps an inability to quantify what goes into my decision in a way that is actually easy to convey. I consider quite a few factors when taking turns, and as a mainly fast realtime + 2-player person, the amount of time I have to make my turns are fairly limited so a portion of this does just boil down to what "feels right". Trying to take a stab at it...

For the early game, I typically consider how many terrain my play commits me to as the key judging criteria, and when looking at "commitments" I do tend to consider what power tiles are in play (committing to the edge of the board is perhaps less good in a game with Tower -- maybe not if it's a small enough stretch and Knights is a scoring objective though). I'm more optimizing for being able to have free jumps around the board to get settlements on different powers / scoring areas. That is true regardless of what the scoring objectives are, but the ability to get free jumps may be more limited depending on whether any of the movement tiles exist, and so I might make slightly different plays in a game with no movements (i.e. committing to more terrain by factoring in the points I gain / stand to gain from that particular commitment). In all these cases, I do tend to mentally keep track of the terrain cards that have come out and slightly tweak my judgements based on what terrain cards are more / less likely to come out in the future.

Once we transition into "mid game", which presumably is turn 3 or 4 in most games (although could be later if Oracle is the only power that speeds up settlement), I've probably gotten all the free jumps that make sense and start going for points. If I'm still not committed to one of the terrain types and can keep it that way, I'll still probably try to keep it that way at this point. Likewise, I'll generally keep combinations like <blank> + paddock that are giving me free placements free to use, unless giving up that combination is granting me (either directly, or by blocking my opponent) a relatively substantial chunk of points (or inversely costing me too many -- if it's a fisherman game, I generally give up harbor jumps around this time to transition into getting points). I hopefully have good settlements across the board, so now I will focus more on the objectives. If it's merchants + hermits + <fishermen, miners, workers>, I'll probably still not care as much about hermits if I can help set myself up for merchants while getting the points from that 3rd scoring objective. If it's knights / farmers as the third, I'm probably more concerned about figuring out a knights line that "double dips" on merchants if it's possible (to either get, or block my opponents) or making sure I'm placing somewhat evenly (and mainly opting for short merchants). Assuming there's less good plays, I'm making the "star" pattern that can be paddocked to gain +3 hermits to at least get something. In all these cases, I'm still keeping an eye on what my opponent seems to want to get to try to make their future turns less optimal, and still trying to inch towards castles that I may not have picked up (but not trying to expend too many powers on just grabbing one).

[Kavorka]

I won’t disagree with franko’s points.

That being said, if I had to choose - Merchants, specifically at short connections and key choke points.

Merchants connections can be blocked and are limited, Hermits cannot be blocked and can be scored anywhere on the board.
Merchants can score 4 points per tile at short 2 tile connections, Hermits can only 1 pt per settlement.