Darwin's journey solo

[sara1500]

Impossible to win against Alfred and you?

[twsansbury]

Alfred can be a difficult. Knowing some of Alfred's rules and preferences may help you hone your tactic to defeat Alfred.

Alfred's Exploration action is much stronger than a normal player. From an action economy point of view, a player need to spend 3 Coins and use 2 workers to get the equivalent benefits of Alfred performing a single Exploration action with a single worker. One way to reduce Alfred's points is reduce Alfred's ability to perform Exploration or reduce the effectiveness of his Exploration movement. For example:

• if Alfred did not place a worker on Exploration/Navigation Main Diary on Alfred's first turn, then the player may consider performing an Exploration or Navigation
• take Stamp majority away from Alfred if the reward is Exploration
• if Alfred is going to get an Exploration allowing 1 movement, then the player does not want their Explorer to be one space in front of Alfred's Explorer
• if Alfred is going to get an Exploration allowing 2 or more movement, then the player wants to position their Explorer so that a Specimen is on one of the last two locations Alfred's worker will pass through or land on

Other suggestions to improve action economy:

• Alfred will not perform the action on Special Action Tiles. The "2 Exploration and 2 Navigation" or "Perform Locked Action" Special Action Tiles are strong tiles. Also, having a silver distinction Worker for these lens is a good way to passively get Coins, enabling more placement options
• unlock the 5th Worker in the first 3 rounds
• place stamps

Alfred's Rules

When performing the Exploration action, Alfred:

• moves the Explorer in the right-most island
• always takes the longest route
• researches all Specimens passed over or landed on during the movement
• performs the action of the last two locations passed over or landed on during the movement

When performing the Navigation action, Alfred:

• always takes the longest route
• performs the action of every location passed over or landed on during the movement

When performing the Correspondence action, Alfred:

• places Stamps on the Envelope where Alfred would take majority from you
• places Stamps on the top-most Envelope where Alfred does not have Stamps when he cannot take majority from you

When selecting Main Diary actions:

• Alfred selects the bottom-most action
• can purchase Temporary Knowledge for 3 Coins

When performing Special Dairy action, Alfred:

• will not place worker if there is already a worker on the Diary
• will not perform the action printed on the Special Action Tile

When performing Small Diary action, Alfred:

• will not place worker if there is already a worker on the Diary

[jkaire]

I also just got demolished on my first game. I scored about 110 points and Alfred 180 or so. What is everyone's scores?

Loved the game though. Thanks for bringing it to BGA.

[twsansbury]

My first few games against Alfred (white - easy) had me in the 100s and Alfred in 180s. After more games, I started to win more with my points being between 180-210 and Alfred's points between 90-170. I then started to try Alfred (blue - medium), and proceeded to lose. I slowly started to win with my points being between 190-210 and Alfred's points between 180-200.

I see @sara1500 now has some wins against Alfred! Hoorah! As one gains experience with the game, it becomes easier to know how and when to synergize actions to gain tempo or slow down Alfred's tempo.

[richyfourtytwo]

Everyone who has been reporting here so far has been doing great. I conceded the game with 9 points against 96.

[Cyphen]

I've played the solo game against Alfred 3 times (but only after playing a lot of multiplayer games and getting fairly good at Darwin's Journey). My results are as follows:

• Alfred (Medium/Blue): 190 points vs. Me: 234 points
• Alfred (Easy/White): 102 points vs. Me: 204 points
• Alfred (Medium/Blue): 159 points vs. Me: 179 points

My next step will be to combat Alfred on (Advanced/Yellow) difficulty. We'll see how it goes! I'm pretty intimidated.

[Timebomb]

I had never played this game before, so I watched a video rules run-through and then played the excellent tutorial here on BGA. Despite still not understanding quite how everything works and knowing nothing about the solo bot, I dove into a game on "White - Easy" using the "First game" setup. Alfred won with with 104 VPs against my 97 VPs. If I were to go over the rules once more to get a good grasp on the game and also learn how the bot plays, I think I could be competitive at least on the very easiest settings!