Polania Agricultural Strategy

We return with a solid strategy for Polania Agricultural! What I love about this faction and player mat combination is it fits right into Polania’s wheelhouse of exploring the board. Additionally, it favors Enlisting, which I believe helps Polania be a faction for your opponents to reckon with.

Agricultural Mat.

The Agricultural player mat in Scythe has some solid features that most players find easy to utilize. It has potential to build up a decent economy, but does it’s best work on the move. As such, it has a good synergy with Polania’s need to bounce about getting Encounters.

Highpoints:

• Bolster is above Enlist and Enlist can be discounted down to 1 Food with 2 Upgrades. This also is our most lucrative row.
• Trade is above Deploy and can be discounted down to 2 Metal with 2 Upgrades. Good news for Polania who doesn’t have Metal accessible in our base hexes.
• Move is above Upgrade and costs only 2 Oil. This means we can add some Upgrades into our turn order without derailing our progress.

Lowpoints:

• Produce is above Build and it’s 4 Lumber out the gate for a structure. To move fast, we don’t want to Build, thus we need to limit our Produce actions.

Polania Agricultural Star Strategy.

I don’t recommend starting a game without considering what Stars you want to achieve. For those unfamiliar, Stars are Victory Points, and the first player to Six Stars ends the game. So, they’re kind of important. 

• Upgrade Star. Generally speaking, for any faction or mat combination to go for the Upgrade Star is rare. In this circumstance, we’ll want a couple early Upgrades, but not enough to continue to go for the Star. Upgrade Star is a no go then.

• Mech Star. Agricultural has Trade right above Deploy so we can generally have a mech as early as turn 3. Polania loves the mobility that mechs offer; however, with the Agricultural Mat, there may be easier and more coin generating actions. We’ll keep the Mech Star as a maybe depending on how the game goes.

• Build Star. Sadly, we don’t have the time to Build. Getting the Build Star means we’re working more on economy than speed, and unfortunately, this combination doesn’t create a stronger economy than other faction mat combinations. The Build Star is a no go.

• Enlist Star. Since the Bolster / Enlist row is our best coin generating row and because it’s essentially two Stars in one, we’ll be going for this Star.

• Worker Star. This is one of the easiest Stars to achieve in Scythe, so we’ll definitely be getting it.

• Objective Star. Objectives are always on the table. We should be able to work our game around getting one completed. If not, we’ll know at the start of the game that we have to make some adjustments.

• Combat Star(s). We’ll always have these as a focus. 

• Popularity Star. Very rarely has Popularity gotten to 18 in competitive games I’ve seen or played in. So, there’s really no point in having it as a focus. We might try for Tier 2 Popularity for scoring if Encounters make it possible, but not the Popularity Star.

• Power Star. Along with Enlisting, we want to gain a great deal of Power. As long as we can avoid spending any on combat, we should be able to get the Power Star.

All in all, for Polania Agricultural it would be in our best interest to focus on Power, Enlist, Worker, Objective, and Combat Stars. We’ll have our fallback plan be for the Mech Star if an Objective isn’t possible.

Objective Strategy.

Objectives are a strong part of any game and should be considered early and thoroughly. For those who don’t know, each player starts the game with two Objective Cards. Then throughout a game, players have the opportunities to complete one of those Objectives for an additional Star. Now, because most Stars are more difficult to get, Objectives can be an optimal choice over an option that takes four or more turns to accomplish. As such, it is highly recommended that we consider our Objectives and see how we can fit them into our play.

This playthrough, we received “Become a Despised Warmonger” and “Shore up the Shore” as Objectives. Because Shore up the Shore is a movement based Objective and requires a lot less preplanning, we’ll likely go for that.

Become a Despised Warmonger says we must “Have 3 Popularity or less, at least 13 Power, and 2 Mechs” in order to complete. Although we’ll be going for Bolstering, it’s difficult to say that we’ll be able to pull off a turn of having 3 Popularity or less. It could happen if we use it on an Encounter, but there’s a lot of moving parts to this one, so we’ll plan on it being our backup.

Shore up the Shore says we must “Control at least five territories surrounding the same Lake at the end of our turn” in order to complete. This Objective is far easier as it can be completed in a single Move action with a couple mechs and workers. As such, we’ll focus on completing this one during a Move action.

Polania Agricultural Strategy Overview.

Our overall strategy for Polania Agricultural with these Objectives is to play fast and prepare ourselves to leave our home base hexes as soon as possible. As such, we’re going to Trade for Oil right away and then Move / Upgrade until we get our first Encounter. From there, we want to focus on getting to the Factory and spreading ourselves out so that we can maintain a hold on the hexes central to the board.

With Polania, it’s essential to keep a lot of flexibility, especially when relying on Encounters, so we’re going to nail down which Stars we’re for sure going for after we get our Factory Card.

Polania Agricultural Step by Step Strategy.

Objectives: Shore up the Shore. Become a Despised Warmonger.

1. TRADE: 2 Oil.
2. MOVE: Heroine out and 1 Worker to Village. UPGRADE. Move / Deploy
3. TRADE: 2 Oil. 
4. MOVE: Heroine to Encounter and other Worker to Village. UPGRADE. Bolster / Deploy.
   1. Encounter: We’d prefer to get Mechs, Food, Metal, an Enlist or Upgrade. Barring those, Power would be ideal.
   2. We received Encounter 18. We chose to gain 2 Food and 1 Popularity, then paid $2 for 3 Food.

5. TRADE: 2 Metal. DEPLOY: Submerge Mech on Village.
6. PRODUCE: 2 Workers.
7. TRADE: 2 Metal. DEPLOY: Speed Mech on Village.
8. MOVE: Hero to Factory, Mech + 3 Workers to Farm, Mech to Lake.
   1. Factory Card: We want something that gives us Enlists, Mechs, or Power.
   2. We took Factory Card #7 because it allows us to Deploy or Build which will help us with our production and to reach a Star.

9. FACTORY CARD: Deploy Riverwalk Mech on Village. MOVE: Heroine to Saxony Village Encounter.
   1. Encounter: We’d like an Enlist or Power.
   2. We received Encounter 24. We decided to gain 1 Combat Card and 1 Popularity, then pay $2 for 3 Food.

10. PRODUCE: 3 Food and 1 Worker.
11. MOVE: Heroine to S. Village Encounter. Mech + 2 Workers to Village (3 Workers on Village), then to Lake. Mech +1 Worker to Tunnel Farm, leave worker, then to S. Village. UPGRADE: Bolster Combat Card / Enlist.
    1. Encounter: We’d like an Enlist or Power.
    2. We received Encounter 9. We decided to gain 2 Oil and 1 Popularity and dismiss the other options.

12. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Deploy / Coin reward.
13. PRODUCE: 1 Food and 3 Workers. [Worker Star].
14. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Upgrade /  Combat Card reward.
15. FACTORY CARD: Deploy Camaraderie Mech on Village. MOVE: Mech + Workers from Polania Village to Tunnel Mountain, Factory Forest, and then to Combat with Nordic on the Factory. Leave 1 – 2 workers on each hex along the way. [Combat Star] [Objective].
    1. Combat: Nordic had 4 Power and 7 Combat Cards, but because of them having Seaworthy, we were willing to gamble on putting a 5 Combat Card down. As it happens, they didn’t put up a fight and we won.
    2. Objective: By surrounding the Lake to the Factory we were able to complete Shore up the Shore.

16. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Enlist /  Power reward.
17. MOVE: Heroine to the Factory to help hold it, mechs to Lakes.
18. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Build /  Popularity reward. [Power Star] [Enlist Star].

End Game Stats.

• Stars: Power, Mech, Enlist, Objective, Combat, Worker.
• Round 18; 75 Coin.

Polania Agricultural Thoughts & Tips.

Well, what started off as a desire to rush the game, eventually plateaued into more of an economy building engine. We’re okay with this as we got a good deal of Coin and Popularity to help our scoring for the delay. As such, we didn’t gain the turn advantage that would’ve made things smoother. This isn’t to say that this wasn’t a solid strategy, but it goes to show that Polania, perhaps more than other factions, is sensitive to the results of Encounters.

So, what would’ve made this Polania Agricultural strategy faster? To start, we would’ve really loved to get a mech or a good deal of metal from our first Encounter. Then, had we gotten a Factory Card that gave us an Enlist then we could’ve focused on speeding that up and getting an additional Combat Star to speed the game up. Some better Encounters mid game would’ve helped. Although they gave us food, we didn’t need as much as we received – ending the game with 4 Food remaining to us. Had we gotten an Enlist or additional Power from one we would’ve been closer to our goal a lot faster.

On the other hand, one of the great things that happened this game is we managed to reserve enough Popularity to gain Tier-2 scoring on our final Enlist. Pretty solid for only getting 3 Encounters, though that also speaks to how non-ideal those Encounters were. But we learned that even when the Encounters don’t go our way we can pivot and work with what we get.

Aside from all that, my obligatory rant about playing Scythe bots. They aren’t anything close to real players. So, even when we’re playing the hardest difficulty bots, we need to remember that they’re not going to get us better against real players. 

Polania Agricultural Strategy Videos.

That’s not all, we have high ranking Digital Edition player and content creator JoyDivision here with a fun and easy to follow video for this combination. Check it out and see if it can help further your understanding of Polania Agricultural!

Thanks for checking this strategy out! I hope it was informative and helps to enhance your playing style. If you’re a newer player or want to brush up on some general Polania specific strategy, check out our Polania Strategy overview. Additionally, feel free to peruse our entire catalog of Faction and Mat Strategies.

If you haven’t yet gotten into Scythe gaming, you can check out the physical tabletop game at Stonemaier Games. Or, if you’d prefer, the less expensive Digital Edition option on Steam.

Lastly, as always, feel free to comment below on any thoughts or concerns or successes you have with this strategy!

Happy gaming!

• Norman