Tips teotihuacan

1. For Starting Tiles Selection: 1st Gold > Cocoa > 2nd/3rd Gold > Wood > Avenue of the Dead > Rest.

2. Don't neglect early movements on the Avenue of the Dead. A Temple action during Eclipse 1 can translate to to 8+ points for just two wood in the long run.

3. Plan your turns around your next desired resource gathering move that involves 3x dice and work backward getting the cocoa and levels required to make it happens.

4. Taking the extra die on your first ascension is great if you can immediately use it to activate another solid 3 dice action, especially if it it’s all level 4+ dice.

5. Your strategy should involve heavily using one of the three tiles clockwise from the Palace (where dice ascend to), and chaining that with another tile within 3 tiles of that tile. Usually just this is enough to ascend a couple dice and repeat it until the end of the game.

6. In general, your strategy should be predominantly Decorations/Gold based or Pyramid based. Get upgrades and plan movements accordingly.

7. The technology that allows you to gather an extra cocoa and VP is the best upgrade. It's worth getting even if you're the 4th person to do so. The second best technology is the one that gives you an extra resource, but that one is optional if you're going a heavy decorations strategy.

8. The best pyramid building technology is the one that gives you an extra die and resource discount. You can just park a die on the pyramid and get a double level up every time you use it. Double pyramid upgrades can be pretty good if you can get them early.

9. The Gold/Decoration strategy has the highest scoring potential, but a lot of the points require the game to go a bit longer so that you can reach the end of two tracks. The pyramid strategy usually ends the game several turns early though, especially if multiple people are doing it.

10. The green track is usually the first track you go up. It combos naturally with the extra cocoa required for the double track move when you ascend and just makes everything a bit easier.

11. In order for masks to be worthwhile, you generally need the bonus tile that doubles mask scoring to be at the top of the green track (because you always go up the green track) AND there must be a good distribution of masks available to pick up. Otherwise, don't bother.

12. Worshiping generally isn't something you want to do too often. Sometimes you may want to do it just to reposition your workers, or pick up a bonus, but in the long run, normal actions and ascensions should be better.

Previous tips for a second opinion:

For starting titles, I like to make sure I get at least 2 to gold and a worker in range of the tech tree set up. The best time to have a tech is before you need to use it, and the sooner you get the tech the more likely others buying after you will give you a few points (while the points are not too much overall, they can edge out a win in a close game).

The technology tiles are very powerful, and getting a few of them on turn one and/or turn two is rather important.

If the level 1 tech that gives one more resource per resource tile is in game, it is almost always a good buy.

Resources are very important, but only up to the amount you need to buy stuff before the end of the game. Ending the game with a ton of extra resources normally means a game lost. I have won many games where I barely got my last "buy" in with other players sitting on 15 resources and just not in position to get to the buy point titles (pyramid, Nobel house, steps) . The temptation to do the 1 then 2 then 3 die on a resource is very strong, but if you do not have the time to spend them, all you have done is waste 3 turns. A lot of the time it is better to get a few resources and spend them right away than try to horde a lot and try to get them all spent. This is of course also based on how many turns are left in the game.

The game will go much faster than expected, and always keep an eye out for other players with the “extra aging” tech or just lots of 4 and 5 dice sitting on the board. With one or two well placed moves they can cut 2 to 3 turns off the eclipse (per player) in one turn. I have seen an eclipse last only 4 turns because of all of the deaths. Never count on having the number of turns shown before scoring. I always assume it will be at least 2 shorter for the first eclipse, and sometimes as many as 4 less for the next two. The “pay all coco free” titles are very powerful and can be used to pay for workers. This lets you have level 4 and 5 workers and pay them all for free (from 3 to 8 coco).

You always (most fo the time) want to kill your 4 and 5 workers before the end of the eclipse for cheaper workers and nice bonuses.

I personally think trying to get masks is a trap. Even with the temple bonus of scoring masks again, I have yet to see anyone win with this strategy. You just do not have the control over which masks you can get with the random factor, and even at max masks, they just are not THAT many points.

The pyramid is worth more on the first eclipse by a rather large amount (4 extra points per buy). If you can get 4 of them on year one, that is 4 * (1 + [0-4]+4) which is an average of 28 points as well as a possible few temple bumps for more resources, coco, or points. I personally feel it is worth at least 40 points with all of the bonuses you get. If you get the tech that gives free temple bumps on pyramid buys, that is a hard tactic to counter (other than doing it better).

By careful of the allure of getting the 4th dice. If you are planning on locking a lot of dice or have need of some really easy to get 3 dice resources, or builds, then it can be worth it. I personally have almost never found a good use for it unless I am locking dice (something I am more likely to do with the expansions, which are not on this site as yet).

I hope these hints have been helpful. They are by no means all of the hints, but for a beginner, I think they are all solid until you get a few games under your belt and can adapt some of the more complex other paths to victory.

Another small hint. It is best to level up your "1" dice on the thing like building (steps, tech, ext), as the number on the dice do not matter. A "1" really hurts any combo of dice on resources, so always try to use "2-5" for those as the rewards are so much better.

If you find the game options too complicated as a beginner, try focusing on one goal (such as pyramid tiles or decorations) and simply collect those resources needed followed by the pyramid or decoration action(s) those enable. You can still collect bonus tiles, technologies and ascend. It can be alot of fun just focusing on those basic actions while getting used to the pace of the game, and you might even win.