本帖最后由 bibby001 于 2009-10-23 23:18 编辑
原文地址：http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/22259
Some brief power grid strategy thoughts
Well, some thoughts on Powergrid after playing + watching a couple dozen games.
First of all, plant capacity is of high importance, because your final score is the minimum of your plant capacity and the number of cities you have (assuming you have resources for your plants...if you cant get teh resources, that plant is effectively 0 capacity). Late in the game it tends to be easier to increase your number of cities than to increase your plant capacity. Players tend to be able to reach the number of cities needed to end the game before they are able to reach the same number in plant capacity.
The game tends to punish those that are ahead in terms of number of cities, through the turn order mechanic, but it punishes those ahead in plant capacity to a much lesser extent (occasionally through the tiebreak for number of cities, determined by highest number plant).
So how do we get high plant capacity? Buy the high capacity plants when they appear. usually the game goes through 4 main parts:
Part 1, only crappy plants are available, you just make do.
Part 2, the first decent, higher capacity plants become available. Most important are the 5 or higher capacity plants.
Part 3, the plant auctions dry up, because these good plants are taken enough lower plants that are bad come up that people want none of the available choices and do not auction. Here, if you are behind in capacity, YOU CANT DO ANYTHING TO CATCH UP. If at this point you are behind in cities but ahead in capacity, you can generally catch up in number of cities, with a reasonable board position.
Part 4, is when the plant auctions finally start moving strong again, and you get to the realy good plants at the end. Here, generally all players are able to upgrade, so everyone is improving their capacity. A lead you had in capacity from earlier will tend to REMAIN, unless this phase goes on for more than 2 turns and the others catch up. The leader in plant capacity will attempt to end the game before this occurs.
Knowing all of that, it is critical to get at least one high capacity plant in the second of those 4 parts of the game (which should not be confused with the three formal stages of the game). 2 high cpaacity plants is even better if possible. High capacity generally means 5 or better. 4 is ok. 5 means it definitely wont have to be replaced later on, except in the very bad case that resources for it do not exist and you have no stockpiles.
Almost always, this means going for coal or oil plants. The garbage 6 cap plant (the 30) may come out, and the uranium 4 and garbage 4 plants (28 and 24 respectively) might work. However, the coal and oil plants tend to be the best way to get a high capacity, before the end of the game.
This is balanced by the late game difficuly of finding resources for them.
Early and in the midgame, these high capacity coal, oil or hybrid plants, like the 20, 21, 25, 26, 31 and 32, tend to cost less or and equivalent amount to run than their alternative energy peers (which are a bit lower capacity). Wind plants are of course free to run but have significantly lower capacity and are a good secondary plant.
This generally means that you will need to have at least one mid number, 4 to 5 capacity coal, oil or hybrid plant. The 15 and 16 (3 capacity coal and oil plants) are good in the early game as well.
However, you should not over do it. Buying all the coal plants tends not to work, as I found in a game last night. I bought the 20, then the 25, then the 31, and ended up being too dependant on coal and screwed at the end.
However, if you notice that either coal or oil is having few plants of its type appear, and especially if people quickly stopped running their early coal or oil plants, it can be a good idea to simply by the only two or three of that type that ever come up in the midgame, and be the only one using the resource. If it was cheap enough before you do this, you can run very efficiently. However, if the game puts out too many good plants of that type, you just get screwed trying to do this.
Board position, while important, tends to be a less important factor than plant capacity.
Unless your board play is particularly bad, or someone gets a particularly large area of the board or somethimg, buying the right plants at the right price has a greater impact.
That said, it is of course better to go for the cheap areas of the board, even if there is a bit more competition. One important thing to note is that if you play the cheap connections early and expensive connections late, that is only a tiny bit better than the expensive connections early and cheap ones late. You might expand a little faster and get more money a couple turns, but you pay the same amount for cities in the end. What is more relevant to how good your board position is, is how many cities you get to place the first connection to, and how many the second and third, since each further player pays 5 more to get there. Also important, is to get access to the cheaper areas of the board at SOME point in the game. Making expensive connections early for 10 above the connection costs, and expensive connections later for 20 above the cost as the third player to the city, is bad. Either early or later you need to get at the cheap cities, some way or another. In 2-3 player, this wont be an issue. In 4+ player, it will, as three others can lock you out of an area of the board where the connections are fairly cheap.
Regarding the initial plants, there are advantages and disadvantages to different numbers.
The 1 capacity plants give you less income on turn 1, but you spend less on resources and on the plant as well, and you get to pick first.
The 04 plant is particularly good, in my opinion, as you can buy 4 coal for only 5 on turn 1, AND you will be the first player buying coal on turn 2, so you cna buy two more for cheap then. If you buy a bigger coal plant on turn 2 like the 10, 15, 20, 21 (hybrid) or 25, then you will be able to buy more than 2 coal, relatively inexpensively, and then use the 04 plant as a coal storage facility. You can then leap into the lead in cities, while using your supply of coal purchased inexpensively to avoid buying high cost coal at the bad end of the player order. When you want more coal, you get back into last place in cities for a turn, having picked up extra cash before hand.
The 03 plant is like the 04 but oil is much more expensive, starting at 3. Buying 4 oil on turn 1 is much more painful, and so the use of the 03 as an oil storage facility is not so desirable. I am not fond of the 03.
The 05 is good, you will likely play second, and buy relatively cheap coal, while having more versatility later on.
The 06 is a pile of garbage, as it burns garbage that costs 7. These early plants tend to be used only a couple times anyway, so you dont want to be paying 7 for a garbage to run your 1 capacity plant when you could be buring two, cheaper oil or coal instead. There will always be a better choice than the 6.
The 07 is a good plant, 3 oil for 2 capacity. Its a bit worse is the 03 is in play, but at least that 03 wont be run much, and neither will your 07. You gain 11 from powering another city, but you pay 9-13 in costs for 3 oil instead of 2 for two coal with the 4, so your gain is actually only a few bucks. As a tradeoff for these few extra bucks, you go in a worse position in the turn order later, and so get worse plant chances and worse prices for materials.
The 08 is also good, but probably worse than the 07. Generally the 04 and 05 are bought, and the 05 player will buy 2 coal, so you are paying 3 per coal, like the 07 player is paying for oil.
If the 03 plant is out, then this 08 is better than the 07 however. The disadvantage in return for extra money is you go late in placing cities and buying raw materials, and early in auctions.
If I had to rate these four plants, I would say:
04, 07, 08, 05. But difference between say the 04 and 07 is not so much that I would pay more than a couple extra buck for the 04.
The 09 is good, only 1 oil to power 1 plant, so its only about 4 a turn to run. It can be run in the early midgame efficiently, while things like the 03 and 04 really cant.
The 10 is also good, but if the 04, 05 and 08 are all out, you are going to get screwed on coal prices.
I tend to think that the advantage of playing cities first is more than the advantage of a few extra bucks from a 2 capacity plant. When you play first, you should play in a relatively cheap area of the board, hopefully such that no one can go in behind you and steal the cheap area. Also very good is to play in a more expensive area which BLOCKS a small cheap area behind it (which is too small for anyone else to play in). Thus, no one will go through you because its too expensive (at least not early), and you get some cheap cities when you want them.
The advantage of this is that you guarantee access to those cheap areas of the board at SOME time. If you dont get them early, and then people block you off from them late, that hurts. This is clearly more critical in 4+ player than in 4 player.
