Greg Jones
United States
Washington
-
So you've managed to evict all the other player colors from your island, or less commonly, another player has sent you to an island all by yourself. Now, of all the nerve, they have filled a beach facing it one short of full and are threatening to
invade settle your island. Time to become king and lock them out!
Not so fast. If they have at least two boats on the facing island, becoming king gives them a potentially powerful opportunity to launch a beach that was two spaces short of full. They expand and place one boat on that beach, and another on the beach facing your island. The beach facing your island bounces back, and then can place one of the returning boats (not necessarily their own) on the beach they want to launch. That is an opportunity that didn't exist for any other player, and might be quite powerful. So use caution.
If you have to king your island, try to do it preemptively. Don't wait until someone is about to invade it. Then if later on someone nearly fills the beach facing it, it won't be that player who gets the unique launch opportunity.
However, ideally you don't king your island at all. One reason is just because you can only do it twice in the game. You might get your hands on more than two exclusive islands. However there are more powerful reasons.
One exclusive island is good, but a whole chain of them is a lot better. It's nice if you can wait to king your island until at least you have expanded from it once to a new island, which is also yours exclusively. Then, if you have to, you can king the first island, and usually there will be no other path your opponents can use to reach the second island. From the second island, you can continue to try to expand out more into more exclusive islands.
Also, your exclusive island might be excellent as a base to set up moves back into contested territory, especially if it has a beach with four or five slots. Normally it's hard to get an opportunity to launch such a beach, because players will be hesitant to place the second to last boat on it and give another player the opportunity. But from an exclusive island, of course, you only give yourself the opportunity. With a launch from a four- or five-slot beach, you get to place more than one boat on the same beach on landing, and that can give you an opportunity at the landing island that other players didn't have.
There can also be long-term strategic impacts of a king island sitting among a pattern of migration, but those may work for or against the player who becomes king of the island.
So, try these alternatives to becoming king:
- If the beach facing your exclusive island has two docks, then when it's your turn and that beach is nearly full, instead of being king, launch it the "wrong way". Keep doing that every time they set it up, if you can. Of course, you have to make sure that repeatedly launching that beach won't get you into some other sort of strategic trouble.
- Set up your island ahead of time so that one or more beaches have one empty slot. Then when you have to launch the beach facing your island, you immediately send off all opposing players' boats as soon as they arrive. It's often not as good as the first option, because you might be sending them further into your territory, or what you hoped to make your exclusive archipelago. As above, make sure you aren't forced to set them up with some good opportunity where you launch them to.
- If the beach facing your island has more slots than your island has beaches, you can usually use a variant of this approach. Most of the time, your island will have a beach with two spots free. Then you can usually put both enemy boats on that beach and launch them away. However if there are three or more enemy boats coming, you might need to set up a particular arrangement to be prepared to get rid of them all.
- If you haven't prepared for this technique ahead of time, but your island has a beach facing the island the opponents are coming from and it's ready to launch, you might be able to use a variant. Expand first on your exclusive island. Fill the beach to launch to the opponents' island, while at the same time setting up your other beaches appropriately. Then when you land on the opponents' island, launch their beach back to your island, and flush their boats through.
- Set up all of the beaches of your island ahead of time to have either one or two empty slots. Then let the opposing player launch to your island. Afterward, expand on your island and launch them away from whatever beach they landed on.
You usually need to have at least one beach with two slots empty and one beach with one slot empty. In addition one of the ones with two slots empty needs to have two of your boats (so it must have at least four slots total). If each beach has one slot empty, then when the opponent arrives (if they have enough boats) they will clear the whole island. If each beach has two slots empty, then when you expand, you will clear the whole island (unless your boat supply is low). After the opponent comes, you will typically have some empty beaches, where you left one slot empty, and some beaches now with one slot left with some of your boats and some opponents' boats. You want to launch each of those and place one of your boats on a now-empty beach. You can do that if you have more boats on the island than beaches you want to launch.
If the beach facing your island has more slots than you have beaches, this approach is probably not viable. The opposing player has the choice to launch either beaches that have two slots left or beaches that have one slot left. The flexibility usually will allow them an option that's disadvantageous to you. So use the previous approach instead.
- If you have a beach with four or five slots that faces a significant island, then fill it two slots short of full. Even if you do not guarantee that you can evict the opponent by having the other beaches one or two short of full, they usually cannot afford to give you such a huge opportunity. Or you might be able to plan an elaborate chain reaction that revisits your island two or more times and reestablishes your exclusive position. Or give up exclusivity on your island and use the opportunity to establish exclusivity on a different, possibly better island. The same principle can work if it's only a three-slot beach, but faces a two-beach island.
All of these techniques are more tricky with more than two players in the game, because you don't get a chance to react after every move. Two or more opponents colluding can usually overcome them. However they are all applicable at least some of the time even with three or more players, since in any particular part of the board there may be only two colors that can act. Also, some, for example the last technique, rely on opponents' reluctance to set up a powerful move. Even if you don't stand to benefit from that powerful move, an opponent usually won't set it up for another opponent. However, if you have a strong lead they might.
-
Neuro Gamer
United States
Grand Prairie
Texas
-
morningstar wrote: One exclusive island is good, but a whole chain of them is a lot better. It's nice if you can wait to king your island until at least you have expanded from it once to a new island, which is also yours exclusively. Then, if you have to, you can king the first island, and usually there will be no other path your opponents can use to reach the second island. From the second island, you can continue to try to expand out more into more exclusive islands.
As I understand the rules, expanding on your own is very risky - odds are your boats will never reach land. Achieving a "chain" of exclusive islands (of course only two can be designated as "royal") would be a longshot, to say the least.
I always explain to new players that in Tongiaki successful migrations are a function of diversity. You need little boats that don't look like your little boats in order to achieve survival and growth.
Gg
-
Garry Rice
United States
Perkasie
Pennsylvania
-
Expanding on your own can be risky to be sure, but you have about an even chance of drawing another island. I never hesitate to try exploring on my own - it's always good to not share an island
-
Greg Jones
United States
Washington
-
Gamegrunt wrote: morningstar wrote: One exclusive island is good, but a whole chain of them is a lot better. It's nice if you can wait to king your island until at least you have expanded from it once to a new island, which is also yours exclusively. Then, if you have to, you can king the first island, and usually there will be no other path your opponents can use to reach the second island. From the second island, you can continue to try to expand out more into more exclusive islands. As I understand the rules, expanding on your own is very risky - odds are your boats will never reach land. Achieving a "chain" of exclusive islands (of course only two can be designated as "royal") would be a longshot, to say the least.
50% of the tiles are land tiles. Roughly speaking, 50% of the time you launch an expedition, you reach land without having to cross any water. I forget the percentage of water paths that require only one color, but it too is pretty high. I am confident in saying that better than half the time you launch an expedition by yourself, you will find land.
It's only necessary to designate the first island as royal, and the rest usually (but not always) become unreachable. Then it is unnecessary to designate them as royal. You will be the only player to score for them in either case.
In a two-player game, the game is entirely about exclusive islands. You will win if you have more points in exclusive islands than your opponent has. With more players, no exclusive islands are required to win, and you can win by being the player who plays nice with everybody. But exclusivity remains a viable tactic as well in limited use. You don't want to stake out one side of the board for yourself, while two other players share the other side of the board, but you have no presence there. But having your exclusive section while remaining part of the group action is advantageous.
-
|
|
