John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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I'm a big fan of solitaire gaming, because there's no down time and other people don't take your stuff. When I found out Luna was playable solitaire I decided to get it without doing much more research.
I've played a variety of solitaire games - Pandemic, Blackbeard, Thunderstone, Runebound. In some, such as Runebound, I just play for the story without using many rules that make it likely I'll lose the game. In Pandemic (and Ghost Stories and Yggdrasil) you're managing randomness to avoid losing until you win. Luna is a different sort of solitaire experience, in that there's no randomness at all and the player is overwhelmed by complexity.
In my first solitaire play I wasn't able to get my head around all of the strategic trade-offs. You're playing against an AI opponent for whom you have to make some choices, but of course you're fully entitled to make choices that are strategically good for yourself, so you're almost playing two games - your own that you're trying to play well, and your opponent's that you're trying to play badly.
The solitaire AI plays very aggressively to dominate the island spaces. As she (I'm sure the AI player is a she) is so strong there, so far I've attempted to score my points winning points from the moon priestess and by building shrines. I'm just starting to explore how much influence I can manage over the island spaces - it could be that it's possible to fight her on the island as well, but so far it's beyond my abilities.
Here's a picture of how the game ended up. I'll describe the strategies I followed in spoiler quotes, so that if you're learning the solitaire game I don't give you an unfair advantage over yourself.
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): In this play, I decided to minimise the opponent's points from shrines by conceding points in the council. However I had to stay ahead of her in the council so I won ties for the Moon Priestess. So I started by sending her one novice from the master builder's island to the council, and sending two of mine from book island to the council to make sure I had the advantage there.
For the first three rounds it was all I could do to build a shrine, stay ahead of the opponent in the council, equal the opponent on the island with the priestess, and avoid the apostate. I denied her any shrines, which meant that she took lots of points in the temple. I didn't bother with books (as they just get taken away from you), or bribes (too hard to think about) or even extra novices. However I did spend a lot of time on the tide island, where I knew there'd never be a shrine; and a lot of time on the shrine island; and I would take boats or herbs as required to achieve my other goals. If I ever had a guy spare he went to the council.
Once I'd built a few shrines I started having a few spare actions, and getting ahead a little with the tokens, so I started thinking about the temple. In the fourth round I started thinking, and decided it was too hard, but in the fifth round I started acting. Until this point the opponent had been getting more points than me on the island, but I'd been getting more than her at the moon priestess. However as she was also getting huge points from placing novices in the temple, she was far ahead and I needed to claw back whatever I could.
By that stage of the game I could predict which temple tiles she was going to get, so I was able to predict tiles that I could take that she wouldn't bump me from. At the end of the last round I'd managed to get to 4 novices each in the temple, with even a couple of bonus points for bumping her off.
For some reason which escapes me now - maybe incompetence - she did manage to build a second temple. In the end game scoring I had 10 in the council and 24 from shrines, she had 6 in the council and 8 from shrines.
I thought I'd done well, considering this is quite tough to win, and the final counting was quite tense. However, I did manage to catch up to win 83-75.
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Wade Nelson
United States
Saint Louis Park
Minnesota
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I really like Luna solo play. The rulebook has ways to make the AI tougher, and the designer has admitted that on the most difficult setting the best he's managed is a tie
I think it takes a few plays to really grasp all the things that are going on in Luna and how to keep it all under control. You did better than I did though, I didn't manage to win until about my fourth attempt (and I barely won at that).
One strategy I've tried with varying success is maximizing the number of times I can acquire and use the leaf and wave tiles. It seems to me to be pretty crucial to do some novice recruiting early in the game too.
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Andreas Odendahl
Germany
Horstmar-Leer
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Friendless wrote: The solitaire AI plays very aggressively to dominate the island spaces. As she (I'm sure the AI player is a she) is so strong there,
That's absolutely awesome! Totally in the vein of the game!!! 
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Brett
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Between this post and the Luna online version now @ www.yucata.de [which is beautiful] I not only want to learn this game but I want to spend my hard earned
  
thanks!
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John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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D'oh! I play at Yucata all the time and didn't realise they had it there!
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Yours Truly,
United States
Gainesville
Florida
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Thanks for posting, I had no idea this one had a solo AI. Cool.
Now this edges even closer to my wishlist.
Hopefully a new publisher will pick it up eventually so the prices will be reasonable by then I'm still shocked that Z-man isn't reprinting.
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Spoiler (mouseover to reveal):In this play, I decided to minimise the opponent's points from shrines by conceding points in the council. However I had to stay ahead of her in the council so I won ties for the Moon Priestess. So I started by sending her one novice from the master builder's island to the council, and sending two of mine from book island to the council to make sure I had the advantage there.
