Agricola - Tips & Strategies

After quite a few games of Agricola, we discovered that a great card combo can give a player a very big advantage on the game. To even this odds out, we experimented using a common pool of Occupations and Minor Improvements that can be used by all players.

We simply took 10 occupations and 10 minor improvements and put them face up beside the game board. Each player may buy any of this cards using the appropriate action on the board. Each time someone buys a card, it is replaced by a new one from the deck. After each round of play a new card is added also.

I liked this system as it gives every player the same chance to get a big combo of occupations/improvements. Some other players liked more the normal rule… try it out and find out for yourself if you like it.

Once early game has passed, it’s very important to decide on a methodology to feed your growing work force (that is, of course, if you paid attention to my first tip about growing your family!).

I will focus on the two main sources: Bread and Meat. Other food sources are viable through smart play of occupations and improvements, but you of course can’t rely on getting a certain combination of cards.

Bread is gained from obtaining grain, then using a baking improvement to prepare the grain into food. The main investment is time. Plowing fields, taking grain, planting, buying the improvements, and baking bread have to be interspersed with the other actions you need to take.
The attraction of grain comes with the idea that your production grows with your family. By end game, if you could achieve both ovens and have enough grain, you could bake 13 food. Thirteen food in a single action is ridiculous! The challenges come from carefully selecting your actions to have food at the right times.

– Remember that when you purchase an oven, you get a free bake action.
– Combine actions like sowing and baking to increase efficiency
– Think hard about solely using this strategy if you find yourself battling hard with an opponent to bake

Meat comes from animals. Mmmmm, they are delicious! Cooking your beasts, though comes with it’s own ups and downs. The major advantage of cooking animals is that it requires no time, your most precious resource, to produce the food. The downfall, however, is that the requirements to build fences, stables, and a cooking hearth will slow down your early game. There are also a limited number of animals in the game, and *everyone* wants some for their score.

– Do whatever you can to make sure you will be able to breed at harvest time. The extra animals are vital for your success!
– Remember that if all else fails, once you have a cooking hearth you can eat animals even if you don’t have room to store them.
– Balance your use of wood so you can still expand your home, and thus your family, with your animal husbandry!

I hope this helped you consider how you will feed your struggling family, and stop feeling so haphazard about your game!

Your hand of minor improvements and occupations is the biggest differentiator in Gric, so play your cards well.

Seldom will you want to play all of them, and sometimes you’ll only want or need to play a couple of them.

If your cards are begging you to play a “grain game”, oblige them. Don’t try to play an “animal game” instead.

Conversely (and this is a special situation), if you are in a 2-player game and your cards indicate a “stone game” is the way to go, ignore them because stone is much too difficult to get soon enough with only 2 players. In a game with 4 or 5, this would be a totally different situation and very doable.

The best thing about Agricola is that players are able to play multiple different strategies, and gain equal points in doing so. For instance, One player may have a booming vegetable patch along with a couple animals, while another player may have 10 sheep, 6 boars, and a few cows, while only having a couple veggies in reserve. Both strategies can lead to victory, and the most important aspect is that your family is fed by whatever means.

This is really what a lot of games look like, at least for new players. It is very common for players to overlook other means to get food, and to forget to utilize all resources. For instance, there are buildings that give victory points at the end of the game for a variety of resources that you have in reserve, sich as the basketmaker’s workshop for reed. These buildings can also be used at times to convert their resource to food.

In my observation, clay is not taken much a the beginning, reaches a peak, and then tapers off again. It isn’t uncommon for me to see 9+ clay on the board toward the end, split between a couple of spaces. Whether players don’t pay enough attention or merely don’t know how to utilize clay, this is a mistake on their part.

To summarize, take advantage of what your opponenets are not doing, whether that be underutilizing resources, plowing fields (to reduce negative points), or scoring bunuses.

Try to build more with less moves.for example use 1 action to build 2 rooms and 1-2 stables at once no need to lose actions building rooms every time you have 5 wood(s).
In multiplayer avoid to chase materials your opponents go for.Let em fight for wood while you plough or heading for the Hearth.
Go for that HEARTH before your opponents.
And one more *obvious*…
Try to synergize your strategy with your advanced cards.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you might find yourself with a free action (You do not need or really want anything left available). If this happens it is almost always beneficial to plow a field.

In the games I play this action seems to be available often in the middle of the game and plowing an extra field is almost always a good thing. That is one less empty space to subtract from your score and if you can get extra vegetables or grain, then it makes later plowing more efficient since you can plant in more fields with a single action.

Like I said, you rarely have a free action, but I never regret plowing an extra field.

If your group would like to eliminate some of the un-balancing effects of being dealt random cards for occupations and minor improvements in Agricola, try distributing the players’ initial hands using an limited-card passing draft instead.

1. Instead of 7 of each type (occupations and improvements), limit the number to 5 of each. Prepare your chosen 2 decks.

2. The initial player will draw 2 cards and pass the decks to the next player, and so on.

3. This cycle repeats 5 times until each player has 5 occupation cards and 5 minor improvements.

4. The player who drafted last may choose either a or b of the following options:

a) receive 1 additional food as compensation for being the last player to draft

b) start first and receive 1 fewer item of food (as per standard Agricola rules)

The last three rounds have the most desirable spaces, depending on your needs, the last space in particular is the most wanted. There will also only be one round in which anybody can get it. You want to be sure to snag the first player the turn before so that you can capitalize on the last card which allows you to both renovate AND build fences.

OK. Here is the one tip every newbie should know when playing the Gric. Feed your family! This may seem obvious, but it is easy to get caught up in building you farm and forget you’ve got people to feed. I have yet to win a game when I had someone starve a round. Luckily, Agricola doesn’t have diseases or barbarian hordes to deal with…my family would die for sure.

For casual games of Agricola I have used a “Stage 0” Round to help give players a bit of a helping hand to start the game. Everything works the same as usual except that we play a round without having the first “Stage 1” card revealed for Round 1 play.

It’s a small boost at the beginning of the game that makes a nice difference when the game is played casually or infrequently. I definitely don’t recommend this for experienced and regular gamers.