Board Game Arena

I have noticed some very high ELO players holding onto a lot of rare items and city cards until the end of the game. If the points stack each round, what is the benefit of doing this? I think its a strategy I'm not comprehending. Can someone help me understand? =)

Thanks!

It's a bit of risk vs reward.
Because of the way fief scoring works, you want all your cities and luxury resources in the same fief.
So you will score more points by placing them earlier and connecting, but there is the risk that you may never connect those areas together and score less overall.

For example, you have the wood spot in A1 and put a 2 castle there in round 1. It scores you 8 points for the whole game.
You hold your 2 castle until round 4 and place it in your biggest fief which produces 5 different resources, it scores you 10 points.

Thank you!

You want your cities to wind up in the fief that has the most resources, so players will often hold back until they are confident about which fief that will be.

You probably saw some extremely niche situations. You should be jamming down almost everything immediately, unless it's a very low amount of points, and it's very unclear how the future will go. Check out the Turn1/Turn2/Turn3 average fief score of top players to see what it's supposed to look like when you're playing hyper-efficiently.

Here's mine, for example: https://boardgamearena.com/playerstat?i ... &game=1747