If you build up a large area of plains on your plate, you can drop your “farm” piece in the middle and the turnover that plains in richer plains. Put a “lumberjack” in a forest forest, and it harvests that wood and turns it into plains. Put down a “WHATCHOWER” and it recruits a few archer units for every Plains tile in his surroundings, and even more for richer fields. You could drop a lumberjack next to a farm and watchtower, and it would turn the forests into plains, the farm would change the plains in fields and the watchtower would pick up more units for all those rich fields.
That kind of multi-effect combo, as a result of one piece that you have placed perfectly in the nick of time, is what you keep back Duchy. The bitter losses come from the other side, as if you realized that you are too heavy in heavy, Halberd-swinging units when the enemy has many distance units that are strong against them. Or that feeling, known to Tetris Veterinarians, that one hasty decision that you have made 10 rows back, has doomed you to the uncomfortable, oblique stack that you are now. Except that lines are not clear DuchyAnd the boss of the game fights specifically for cleaning up good places to put things.
There is an upper strategic layer for all action of the squared where. You choose branching paths on the way to every boss, choosing different sources, fights and trading items. Every victory lets you choose a card for your deck, whether it wins military, production or later, general “technology”. Upgrade cards using your collected sources, try in balance or min-max cards in the direction of certain armies or sites and try not to lose any round of too many soldiers. You have a kind of “overall defense” lifeter, and throw away every loss. It is no longer money to refill, and that is the game.
