Popular Early-Game Strategies (Part 2) - The Commander

Hello, and welcome to the second part of our popular early-game strategies series. In the previous part, we discussed a Wood-Brick-centric strategy named the Roadblock. This time, we introduce the Commander whose mission is to build the Largest Army by focusing heavily on Ore-Wheat-Sheep.

The most essential requirements for this strategy to be pulled off successfully are to have at least 05 pips of Ore, Wheat, and Sheep each and a minimum of 17 of them in total. There might be 03-04 pips of Wood and/or Brick in the mix which does not affect the core of this strategy, however, we will not mention them. From our point of view, it is best to have 02 hexes of each type of resource. The Commander playstyle splits into 02 sub-types: one only cares about grinding the development card stack and the other rushes for a city to supplement their lacking resource. Let's look into the examples give we prepared!

Brave Commander: First settlement on 5-9-10 Wheat-Sheep-Ore and second settlement on 3-4-6 Sheep-Wheat-Ore. This line-up has a value of 21 pips in total - 06 on Sheep, 07 on Wheat and 08 on Ore. With enough resources to purchase a dev. card right in your starting hand, it is nigh impossible for anyone to stop you from obtaining the Largest Army. Keep drawing dev. cards recklessly until having enough ammo in your arsenal, then adjust your tactic based on what you drew accordingly.

Smart Commander: First settlement on 4-5-8 Wheat-Sheep-Sheep and second settlement on 9-10-11 Wheat-Ore-Ore. This time, although the total value is still 21 pips, the Sheep, Wheat, and Ore proportions are 09, 07 and 05 respectively. That is definitely not a good sign to venture on a dev. card journey. With 01 Wheat and 02 Ore at the beginning, you had better save up to upgrade the 9-10-11 settlement to a city. When it is done, you would have 09 pips Sheep, 11 pips Wheat, and 10 pips Ore. Only then, carry on building your Largest Army.

People gave feedback suggesting that concentrating on two upgrades first and then buying dev. cards should also be considered a Commander's sub-type. The way we see it, a two-city-delay time is just too long and does not represent the playstyle properly. Furthermore, the two cities do not change your overall resource ratio, either. But worry not, that kind of strategy will be analysed in the next part of the series. Thank you for reading!