What are your tips for playing for the middle class?

[ilya_1887]

7A is the worst thing that can happen. And also pay taxes more than the СС

[Jigukman]

No, rather, 7A is the best thing to go for.

You can get more population with using your own health token, and also prosperity.

If you get imigrants, your population grows and you suffer from food to feed.

[Elzo]

Managing you population is most important. I personally try to concentrate on producing food, education, phones (in that order).
Manage your pop. Don't grow it unless necessary.
Don't be stingy with working class on your board, especially it's a high value trained that gives a big bonus. That pocket change won't win you game, but will prevent that guy from leaving to capitalist or the state.
Try to raise your property every turn to number of your businesses -1.

Laws
Try to go for middle row on everything. It benefits you endgame and it's easiest to keep there because other two players will try to move them to extremes, giving you the weight to hold it in the mid.
Close/open imports depending on your own needs. Some game, you want prices high because you produce enough. Others, you want access to cheap food and phones for yourself.
Close migration - population growth is not your friend. High migration means demonstrations.

[Potatoking620]

I always try to be as self sufficient as possible with food to cut down on costs. Also manage population so early game, middle immigration is okay then I work to turn it off. I like to be able to determine elections 1 or 2 purples, especially early, to generate influence and then know when to side with the capitalist or the working class. I tend to not build a lot of education since I work with the working class to get it cheap from the state. I like generating luxury and pricing it at maximum to prevent others from buying it so I can use it for myself, either on the foreign market or to boost my prosperity depending on needs.

[jetye]

I think this guide by chris t is good

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/310128 ... th-musings

if the link doesn't work here is the text from the link:

'So .. with the recent celebration of Hegemony finally having a full set of "X is overpowered" threads on BGG I've given some thoughts to how exactly I am consistently doing well with MC and what went wrong in those very few games where I didn't.

I think it has a lot to do with me gravitating to something that I consider the ideal path for Middle Class.

My main assumptions that inform my thinking:
- Prosperity is the core VP driver for Middle Class and optimizing for it will yield nonlinear results (double the investment results in more than double the improvement), where most other paths only yield linear results (double the investment leads at best to double the improvement).
- Middle Class has two "efficiency" effects for raising prosperity: getting a free step from fully operational companies and reliably buying enough resources for two steps with a single buy Action

The basic path for Middle Class in most of my games seems to be:
Round 1 is used for setup and not building prosperity with resources. This means I will "save" the resources for two prosperity steps that would be lost due to the Start of Round 2.
From Round 2 on my main goal is to increase Prosperity by at least 4 steps every round. If the companies line up nicely enough, one of the 4 steps will be free.
This forms a base score of 76 Points (Round 1: 1 VP, 2: 10 VP, 3: 17 VP, 4: 22 VP, 5: 26 VP) while going all the way through the track once.
End Game Scoring should net you about 2 VP from Policies, 6 VP from Resources (6+ each in Luxury, Healthcare and Education; balance and combination may vary based on extra storage) and 1-2 from Money.
So we are looking at a solid base of 86 points, assuming you never use health care.
If you mix in 3-5 Health care increases (about one third of your resource based increases) you are looking at a total of 92-96.

To achieve this, we are likely to need:
Round 1: 1 Action to build a company
Round 2: 1 Action to build a company, 1-2 Buy Goods Actions
Round 3: 2 Actions to build companies, 1-2 Buy Goods Actions
Round 4: 1 Action to build a company, 1-2 Buy Goods Actions
Round 5: 1 Action to build a company, 1-2 Buy Goods Actions

Whether you need one or two actions will depend on whether you will have enough fully operational companies to get your free step and how many resources you have left over from previous Actions.

These means we have 11-15 Actions "left over" to do other things with.
We probably want to propose at least one bill every round in some way or form. If 3 of those 5 get through, that's another 9 VP.
Getting a "participation VP" at least once per round also doesn't seem all that extraordinary, so another 5 VP.

We are already at 106-110, which according to the data collection thread, would already be a winning score in nearly half of 4 player games. And we still have 6-10 Actions unused.
Just one extra prosperity step and one or two extra "sell to foreign market" Actions put you near 120, which would be a winning score in most games.


So .. what does all this mean?

To follow this path, you will need a few tools. Predominantly the tool you need is enough Money to build the companies and buy the resources, the right companies to build your own resources, the right workers and enough storage to occasionally forgo buying something directly (healthcare in particular).

And this is where playing Middle Class becomes hard and tricky. You need to strike the right balance between sufficiently well paid workers in state and capitalist companies, that get you Money and workers in your own companies to produce your own "free" prosperity. And on Top of that you need to keep an eye on occasionally throwing a wrench into the works of other players.

So ... what helps the middle class?
You prefer Immigration A. Your starting workers in the various companies provide a solid base income and you can usually easily staff one company per turn with the two minimum new workers coming in at the lowest level of immigration. Also it will keep your cost for prosperity resources low and most importantly within your production and storage capacities. The only exception to this is if you have the card in hand that allows you to procure working class workers from the supply. This needs Immigration B or C and you should take advantage of it.

You prefer foreign Trade C. Being able to buy Luxury for 6V from the international market as your second source cannot be beat. Plus it makes things extremely difficult for the Capitalist since they won't find national customers for their food and luxury with reasonable profit.

For all other policies you will usually want them in the middle. When it comes to Healthcare and Education, you either want both of them free or none of them free, because if only one of them is free, the working class will gobble it up anyway. You will usually be quite happy if both of them are at 5V, since that will usually be cheap enough for you to afford a full set and you might even get both if the working class is unusually strapped for cash.

You want to keep your prices at maximum. Your resources should usually be reserved for you own use and if someone buys them to annoy you, you should at least be compensated enough to buy from another source instead.

You want to buy up some extra resources in round one and always have a prosperity resource or two in reserve, just in case one of the other players plays one of those nasty cards that pushes your immigration just that one crucial level higher than you had planned for this round.

What hurts the middle class?
Immigration. If you can force them to a population number that is higher than their education and luxury production, or even worse, their respective storage, the middle class is in trouble. If they miss so much as two prosperity steps from the path above it costs them 14 VP, taking them out of contention for the win in most games.


Anyway ... so much for some afternoon musings. Do feel free to check my math. I feel it lines up too neatly to be correct '