The thing about Teotihuacan is that it’s easy to get lost in the sheer number of pieces and actions in the game. At first glance, it’s like trying to manage a giant city — but, unlike the real thing, it’s also fun.
Once you begin to understand the flow of the game, you’ll notice it’s less about individual piece development and more about coordinating those developments to optimize resource use. Think of it as a form of choreography with your pieces. If you’re able to synchronize your advancements in a way that allows you to maintain a steady flow of resources, you’ll be able to build and collect more efficiently.
Here’s a basic overview of how your worker dice function:
Your worker dice have a number of pips that determine the strength of the action you take. When your worker takes an action, it will advance by one pip each time it performs an action. When it reaches 6 pips, it “ascends” to the gods and rewards you with additional resources. Once it returns to the starting line, you can send it out again.
You may be thinking, “That sounds like a straightforward process.” However, it’s not quite as simple as that. For example, when you ascend your workers, it can disrupt your entire economic engine. This is especially true if you’re in the middle of a critical turn. In the beginning, I made the mistake of focusing primarily on advancing my workers to be as strong as possible. While it makes sense to try and maximise the strength of your workers, it doesn’t take long to realise that you need to balance advancement with resource availability and stability.
A great example of this is Marcus, our club’s resident destroyer of strategy games. He consistently destroyed me in games, despite his dice typically having fewer pips than mine. One night, I finally sat down to analyse why he was winning so often. As I was going through my notes, I realised that I was completely misunderstanding the timing of my workers’ advancements.
The key takeaway from this experience was that you don’t want to have all your workers ascend at the same time. If they do, you will essentially lose your entire workforce. From that point forward, I began to track the timing of my workers’ advancements and limit the number of workers that could ascend at the same time.
Another important lesson I’ve learned is that you shouldn’t always focus on advancing your workers. There are many times when keeping your workers at a lower level is the best option. One example of this is when constructing pyramids. A 4-pip die is usually far more effective at building pyramids than a 5-pip die. This is because the higher pips are more likely to cause your workers to ascend at the wrong time.
For example, let’s say you have a die that is 2 pips away from ascending. If you advance it, you will likely lose access to that die for several turns. On the other hand, if you leave it at 2 pips for a few more turns, you can continue to use it for pyramid construction. This trade-off ultimately led me to realise that it is sometimes better to keep a die at a lower level, rather than constantly advancing it.
As you progress further into the game, you will begin to realise the significance of timing in the game. You will learn when to ascend your workers based on the rewards they provide. Early in the game, you will want to ascend your workers to gain resources for building your engine. As the game progresses, you will want to ascend your workers to gain temple advancement rewards. Finally, near the end of the game, you will want to ascend your workers to earn direct victory points.
At this point, I have developed elaborate mental systems to optimize the timing of my workers. I know that ascending when I am about to enter a new temple tier will create a chain reaction of rewards. I know that ascending at the wrong time can lead to wasted resources. These mental systems allow me to predict and prepare for the outcomes of my actions, which helps me to play the game more strategically.
In addition to optimizing the timing of my workers, I have also developed a strategy of specializing my workers. Instead of trying to develop all of my workers to the highest level, I concentrate advancement on only a few of my workers. I keep the remaining workers at lower levels, which creates specialized roles. For example, I can have a group of low-level workers that perform simple resource collection tasks. Meanwhile, my highly developed workers can perform complex tasks that require a high level of development.
However, I have found that managing the acceleration effects of various technologies and actions can be difficult. Accelerating the advancement of your workers can seem appealing, but it can disrupt your entire ascension plan. I have learned to be extremely cautious when using acceleration technologies.
Using cocoa to delay the advancement of your workers is another strategy I have used. It seems counterintuitive to spend valuable resources to weaken your workers, but delaying their advancement can be worth it. In fact, I have developed a rough formula for determining whether delaying the advancement of a worker is worthwhile. If the additional resources generated by delaying the advancement of a worker are greater than the resources spent to delay its advancement, it is generally worthwhile.
In addition to optimizing the timing of your workers, you must also match your workers to the correct actions. For example, decorations are greatly affected by the value of your workers, while alchemy can be performed by any value of worker. Understanding these relationships allows you to develop a pattern of movement and development that maximizes your efficiency.
Finally, I have come to understand the pacing of the seasons in the game. During the first season, I try to rapidly develop my workers to construct pyramids as quickly as possible. During the second season, I focus on staggering my workers’ advancements to position them for the best temple placement. In the final season, I focus on maintaining my operations as smoothly as possible, rather than rapidly advancing my workers.
The greatest benefit of mastering the worker development system in Teotihuacan is the strategic depth that it offers without requiring a steep learning curve. I can easily explain the basics of the game to new players within a few minutes, but the depth of the game allows experienced players to continue to improve their skills for dozens of plays.
Within our gaming community, we have developed a number of terms related to the timing of your workers’ advancements. Terms such as “ascension window,” “value preservation,” and “temple syncing” have become common expressions in our discussions. In fact, one evening, my roommate walked into a post-game analysis session and asked us if we were studying for an archaeology exam.
While it’s easy to get caught up in the complexity of the timing system, the reality is that it’s relatively simple once you understand it. What adds complexity is the variety of choices available to you at any given moment. However, once you develop the ability to recognise when it’s beneficial to reset a worker’s value, you’ll be able to utilize that advantage to outmaneuver your opponents.
To that end, I’ve begun keeping detailed notes on the timing strategies I employ across games, as well as noting the results of each strategy and how they relate to different opponents and situations. While it’s certainly excessive, this type of record-keeping has allowed me to significantly improve my overall performance in the game.
Ultimately, the beauty of Teotihuacan lies in how the mastery of worker development affects the way you view the game as a whole. Instead of simply reacting to the opportunities presented to you, you’ll begin to anticipate and plan your moves in anticipation of your opponent’s next move. The result is a truly engaging experience that combines strategic planning and timing optimization in a unique and exciting way. While I’m sure the ancient Mesoamerican city builders didn’t intend for their workforce management practices to influence modern-day board game enthusiasts in such a profound way, that’s precisely what I’ve discovered in the course of playing this incredible game. As a result, I look forward to continuing to explore the intricacies of Teotihuacan, as well as applying the lessons I’ve learned to other games I enjoy.
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