Knights of the Cardboard Castle

We played the Europe map just a couple of weeks after we played Railroad Tycoon. The rules are essentially the same, so no point in going over them and making the Major Line bounties something that is clearly known and available from the start is just common sense. Some notes:

• The Europe map is smaller with less cities and more evenly placed cities. Russia is still pretty sparse, but nothing compared to the sprawling west of Railroad Tycoon. With four players on a more crowded map, this resulted in predictably tighter competition. Sean repeatedly complained that there weren’t enough goods to ship. I found that it made for a very distinctive difference from the base game and I quite enjoyed that.
• Despite finishing behind both Sean and Chee Wee once again, I was quite happy with how I did in this session. Due to a bounty card, there was a very obviously lucrative first-move in the game which Sean went for so I tried to make him bid high for it and competed with him quite a bit in Italy. Unfortunately, this left Chee Wee free to build as he pleased in Eastern Europe while Shan dominated Spain and Portugal.
• The vast majority of my deliveries were only for three links, though some were augmented by a hotel card that I held. I upgraded my locomotive very late and only ever went up to six. I stayed competitive simply by issuing very few shares, even making small deliveries to bide my time to collect more revenue before I upgraded my locomotive. I actually had too much cash at the end of the game, which arguably is a sign that I wasn’t efficient enough.
• The other players went very single-mindedly for the Major Line bonuses. I wanted to connect them in a way that made sense for later deliveries but the others simply went for the shortest possible connections. I’m starting to feel that this is a bit too gamey. Perhaps the bonuses are just too lucrative? It offends my sensibilities that people get so much revenue just for making a connection compared to actually delivering goods. Chee Wee commented that I could probably beat Sean if I had tried harder to get the Rome to Berlin Major Line connected before he did.
• Surprisingly, no one did an urbanization action at all in the game. Due to how the cities are laid out, it wasn’t difficult to find destinations for goods, so the point of urbanizing would be to introduce new goods into the system or to devalue an opponent’s route. No one used the new City Charter cards either, which prevent other players from making any links to the named city.
• I think we got a rule wrong. I think you’re supposed to pay $3,000 per tile as long as any water appears on it, regardless of whether it is a river or the sea. I was just surprised that you could build over the sea in some places and that it only cost $2,000 per tile.

Once again, I liked this expansion and see the value of a different map for the base game. My only gripe is that going for the Major Lines seems to be too dominant a strategy, as opposed to cleverly constructing your track to maximize delivery opportunities.