by Omahavice
I was fortunate enough to get to play this twice at BGG Con so I am also a novice. I actually thought the game had a very unique balance to it with the different abilities and it forces you to try to mitigate your weaknesses with the strengths and abilities of your race. In the first game we played which was a 5-player game, I was the Halflings and immediately noticed that I got 1 vp for everytime I Terraformed, so I spent my first few turns Terraforming just to get some early vp. After I built a few dwellings, upgraded to a Trading Post, then to a Sanctuary, I think. It was the Round building that lets you take one of the Yellow Bonus tiles. I grabbed a bonus tile that gave me 2vp everytime I built a dwelling.After a few rounds I was able to Tech up to where it only cost me 1 worker to dig instead of 3 and that gave me a total of 12vp. Unfortunately by that time, I realized that 2 of the other players had quickly expanded their towns and that I would have no chance on getting first or 2nd place on the end of game largest town scoring. I had about 3 Priests and started moving my followers up the Religous Cult tracks. I was able tosecure the top spot in 2 of the 4 Cult tracks and finished 2 and 3rd in the other 2. During final scoring all those points pushed me to victory. I never once moved on my shipping track the entire game.
Each of the other 4 players used different strategies than I did and I certainly don't believe that I used the optimal strategy but I found something that worked for the race that I was playing. All 5 of us enjoyed the game and I believe this game has a ton of replay ablity. I think that half the fun of this game will be finding out all the different ways that you can use to win the game.