Luke

The pirate ship seems much more inferior to the robber and is moved much less often. We like to increase the power of the pirates with the following house rule:
As an alternative to placing the pirate ship on a hex, you may instead place it on a port blocking use of the port for the owner. You can steal a card from this player too.

In my gaming group, the aqueduct is often the most sought after city improvement since it allows you to pick any resource card (not commodities) if the roll means you wouldn’t otherwise get anything. It’s the third improvement on the science (green) branch, so you’ll need six papers to activate it.

Initial placement: Try and build your first city or settlement on the best possible wood supply so that you will actually harvest paper! (If its a settlement you’ll need to upgrade first – but at least you stopped someone else going there). Bear in mind to still try and get the best possible spread of other resources in the process. If other players get there first… try another strategy 😛

Limit your numbers: If you’re doing well at collecting paper, or have already acquired the aqueduct, then consider the effect on the aqueduct when building new settlements. e.g. if you already have a 5,6,9,10 and 11 … then its preferable to build on intersections that provide the same/similar numbers – this will mean you yield more on the numbers you already have, and you still get your card of choice on the numbers you don’t. The ‘Inventor’ card is especially useful for this since you get to swap numbers around. (However, be careful not to get caught out having too many cards when a seven is rolled, since you’ll be picking up maybe 4 or more cards at a time sometimes.)

Remember the aqueduct: It can be very easy to get the aqueduct and then forget to use it… don’t do that!

Go for the metropolis: Since you’re already majoring on paper… try and get to the science metropolis before anyone else. When possible try and trade for (or steal) paper to stay ahead of the competition.

Obviously, this strategy alone won’t win you the game… you still need to remember and work on other aspects of the game… knights, other commodities, etc… but this is something I will always steer towards if possible.

Hope you found this helpful!