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Are you going for the 400 point pressure guage in the mega map/expansion? I've only been able to find one way to get that score: you need at least 31 tickets completed of these 33:
*Boston-Miami (12)
Boston-Washington (4)
Chicago-Boston (7)
Chicago-New Orleans (7)
Chicago-New York (5)
Chicago-Atlanta (5)
Dallas-New York (11)
Denver-Pittsburg (11)
Denver-St. Louis (6)
Houston-Washington (10)
Kansas City-Boston (11)
Kansas City-Houston (5)
*Las Vegas-Miami (21)
*Las Vegas-New York (20)
*Los Angeles-New York (20)
*Los Angeles-Miami (19)
*Los Angeles-Chicago (16)
*Los Angeles-Atlanta (15)
Los Angeles-Oklahoma City (9)
*Montreal-Dallas (13)
*Montreal-New Orleans (13)
Montreal-Atlanta (9)
Montreal-Chicago (7)
Montreal-Raleigh (7)
Nashville-New York (6)
New York-Miami (10)
New York-Atlanta (6)
Omaha-New Orleans (8)
Pittsburg-New Orleans (8)
Salt Lake CIty-Chicago (11)
Salt Lake CIty-Kansas City (7)
St. Louis-Miami (8)
Washington-Atlanta (4)
---------
*Critical ticket = without these points the 400+ points are impossible
There's literally only one ideal configuration that allows you to overlap the maximum number of tickets with only 45 train cars. Another advantage to pursuing those routes is that it decreases the odds that you will draw a ticket you haven't completed (or won't complete later). It's mostly short "double routes" but the royal pain is that the AI can potentially draw the tickets you need, and tricking the AI into letting you repeatedly draw tickets at the end of the game is far from consistent.
You're aiming for 81 points for claiming the ideal routes (based on length of each) and getting the longest route/most tickets bonuses. You're looking for a minimum of 320 of the 331 points that completing all 33 tickets would give. So it's still feasible if you draw one ticket you can't complete, as long as the incomplete ticket is not worth 12 or more points.
Screenshot:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=620583893
This is what makes the achievement even that much harder: when you draw this many tickets it becomes very difficult to keep track of which ones of those nine you have or still need. You can't just look at the number of tickets you have and say, "I got 31 so I must be done."
The only replaceable route is the route from Denver to Kansas City. Because you have the North-South chain from Omaha to Houston, the routes from Denver to Omaha and Denver to Oklahoma are equally valid. You need to prioritize which routes to claim quickly, so this route is probably the lowest priority.
Usually you have better luck if the AI doesn't get ahead of you with claiming routes, and probably if the AI has tickets that it hasn't completed but still can complete by drawing exactly the right cards. This isn't common, though. The AI strategy is stupid, and prefers claiming the longest routes over completing tickets, so it seems in most cases as though it "thinks" it has the lead and just wants to end the game, based on points earned through length of route.
I sure hope it lets me try it again. This was he first and only time that I've seen a bot go into that sleeper-draw-cards-forever mode.
Pressure Gauge 400 and the higher games played tallies are all that's left for 100%, which I've never managed for anything before.
One more thing... I don't think your pic mentions that you still need to drop Nashville - Atlanta (1) and possibly Kansas City - Omaha (1) for a max score.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1526195122
Or may be some ideas about strategy for this achievement?
I think it's good idea to draw cards with one or two colors only (and some special colors that you need for routes) from the first turn. This strategy could make these colors very rare in deck and you have a chance that Bot want them and become drawing. Then after you have 46 cards on hand you could draw all tickets you need. Then become building routes and use rare colors only at the end.
This is my strategy, but I'm not sure that it's correct... I tried this many times and always need about 5-6 turns more when the Bot ends game.
I generally only play Europe, so I don't know if this will work for USA and other versions, but in Europe it's actually quite a simple trigger to get the AI into infinite draw mode:
Firstly, the AI must not be in a points position too close to yours, otherwise it will calculate it can win and just build some random routes to finish the game anyway.
The key to triggering the loop is understanding that the AI knows exactly which tickets you hold and what your current total score would be if it finished the game on it's next turn. Not only is it's decision on which routes to build (partly) based on that knowledge (which is cheating, since a human player could only deduce it over time based on the routes you're building and never know it for sure...). But more importantly: the AI also bases it's decision to play the last trains and finish the game on whether it's own points total after playing it's next route will be higher than your current points total. It generally will not place the last 3 trains if it calculates you still hold a point lead after it's own move. My strategy below to get the AI into this infinite draw loop will only work as long as your points total stays well above his.
Secondly, you need to deduce which one of the large route tickets the AI holds. Once you have a couple of hours of experience with Ticket to Ride this is quite simple, since the large routes usually require some parts of the map that wouldn't be logical to build for any other ticket.
Thirdly, you need to identify the "bottleneck" in that route: a city he can't go around and absolutely has to pass through to complete his large route, but which has as few connections with other cities as possible (usually: 2)
If you wait long enough for him to commit a lot of trains to build his large route, but he leaves his bottleneck open, you then simply take those 2 routes to his bottleneck-city. The infinite card draw loop starts, because the AI somehow doesn't understand it can use a station to claim one of your routes as part of it's own, to pass the bottleneck. And since it also is unable to calculate an alternative route around the bottleneck, that automatically gives him a massive 20+ points penalty on his total, which means you will almost always be way ahead in points, so it concludes there is no winning option.
Underlying problem seems to be that the AI only seems to take into account it's current points total, your current points total and it's options for adding points by building routes. It seems to completely ignore the calculation of the probability for gaining more points by drawing extra route tickets from the pile, which means it gets stuck in a loop: it can't win in the next turn, it doesn't have a built in option to forfeit the game since that would effect in unwanted behaviour in other game situations, drawing from the route ticket pile means an initial penalty before it can turn it into bonus points, so in the end it's only remaining option is to draw new train cards and recalculate again on the next turn, with exactly the same result.
After you trigger this loop, you have time until he finishes drawing all train cards in the pile and is forced to start building.
Please note that when you pick new tickets to routes you haven't completed, this will also influence the calculation the AI makes, because at that moment you won't have a finished route, which means they are (temporarily) penalty points. So if you have the AI in the drawing loop and start to draw a lot of tickets yourself, there will come a point where the AI suddenly calculates that your points total is now low enough for it to have a winning option, even with the penalty it takes for it's unfinished large route.
I've been ranked #1 in 2 player solo mode for Ticket to Ride Europe since 2014 with a high score of 236. I know I can get a theoretical high score just over 240, but couldn't really be bothered, since it used an AI-bug instead of experience or strategic playing.
Anyway, if you want to get an extreme high score on Ticket to Ride Europe solo 2 player, my tactic to get that 236 was:
- Select Brest-Petrograd as your long route ticket, plus one of the shorter routes mentioned below. Don't take more tickets, even if tickets from the list below pop up at the start, because this will hurt your chances later in the game...
- Your opponent must choose Lisboa-Danzig or Cadiz-Stockholm long route, so you may need a few games for it to match.
- Once you notice he has one of those cards, you need to get lucky a bit and play the game until he spends a lot of trains on routes like Paris-Pamplona, Berlin-Danzig, etc., while he doesn't claim Madrid-Barcelona or Madrid-Pamplona. Those 2 routes are the key. Once he has spent a lot of trains but left those 2 routes open, midway through the game you claim Madrid-Barcelona while holding the necessary cards to Madrid-Pamplona in your hand. Make sure you claim Madrid-Pamplona immediately after that, because the AI will figure out he only has 1 option left and give priority to that route.
- As soon as his route is blocked and it doesn't calculate another winning move, it will start the card draw loop. It is important that this happens at a point where you have a big points lead and you both hold around 12 trains, so there are still enough train cards in the pile and no way to immediately finish the game.
- Next, you simply start building the routes you need for the tickets mentioned below, up to the point where you have 3 trains left. (You don't want to accidentally finish the game yourself :) )
Please note that you can just make a selection of the tickets below until you run out of trains. In the optimal route plan and with a bit of luck, you can even use some assistance from your AI opponent to get an ultimate score, by letting him claim 2 routes worth 7 trains in total. Paris-Pamplona for instance is an ideal route for him to play and help you, while Berlin-Danzig is another. Also routes like Warszawa-Kyiv or Kyiv-Smolensk are quite welcome. Any combination at least 7 trains in total is what you need. All you need to do is put stations on them to add them as destinations in your own masterplan.
- Once you've set up the above and the AI is still in card draw loop, you simply start to draw destination tickets from the pile. This is where a chance-element comes in, so this will also mean you might have to play some games before the cards come up exactly in the right order. The trick is to now start picking only the cards below, leaving any other cards. If the card order is right, then every turn of 3 destination tickets will contain at least 1 ticket from the list. That means you never have to select a ticket that is not part of your total route, so you don't collect penalty points. In the ultimate situation, you will also have the longest route, so you get +10 bonus points.
There's an easy way of telling when you need to stop taking destination tickets and finish the game: eithe you've got all tickets below, or you see the pile is wrapping around and an earlier ticket you didn't select shows up again.
I think I once calculated a maximum score of around 244 points with this optimal route plan. Once you see all the tickets I mention, you can just calculate on the gameboard to figure out which routes you need to claim. This will also give the answer to another question I read about the 15 destination ticket achievement.
The tickets:
- Brest-Petrograd
- Frankfurt-Smolensk
- Paris-Wien
- Bruxelles-Danzig
- Barcelona-Munchen
- Amsterdam-Pamplona
- Amsterdam-Wilno
- Berlin-Moskva
- Zurich-Budapest
- Kyiv-Petrograd
- Essen-Kyiv
- Warszawa-Smolensk
- London-Berlin
- Barcelona-Bruxelles
- Madrid-Zurich
- Brest-Marseille
- Madrid-Dieppe
- London-Wien
(- Berlin-Bucuresti: only if after the above you have 1 station left to play and the AI has built the Kyiv-Bucuresti route for you)
(- Stockholm-Wien: only if after the above you have 1 station left to play and the AI has built the Stockholm-Petrograd route for you)
Choose Jane Stanbot as the only opponent, and plan to complete the route as others have posted, which will require every train. (Other bots will probably work as well if you figure out their idiosyncrasies - but I figured out Jane's.)
Start the game, and keep restarting until you can get three tickets on this route that DON'T include Miami. The higher the points on these tickets, the easier this will be, so you might just want to keep restarting until you get at least two long tickets of, say 17-21 points. Note that there are only 8 out of 69 routes that are on our path, have 17 or more points, and don't include Miami. (There are two more that DO
include Miami.) Note that you CAN take shorter routes, but you may lose more often and waste time, so you might want to hold out for better odds at the beginning.
Now having your initial tickets, do your damnedest to claim the following short city pairs as quickly as possible, because Jane loves to claim these for some reason, so beat her to it:
Nashville - Atlanta (1)
LA to Phoenix (3)
LA to Vegas (2)
SF to LA (3)
Montreal to Boston (2)
Boston to NY (2)
This will solve a lot of grief from her blocking you.
Next, go back to drawing tickets, and draw enough tickets that DON't have Miami to give you about 75 points in total tickets. This hopefully won't take more than two or three turns.
Once you have that, only now start drawing train cards and working on completing the route, but NOT MIAMI. Draw from the deck, don't worry much about gathering blue, and complete the route as you draw. Work first wherever Jane is working, but generally I complete the coast to coast path first, and leave SF to Vancouver and the east coast for last. Your goal here is to complete your tickets before Jane runs out of cars. (That might sound like "well duh", but if there are parts of the final route that you don't need to complete your initial tickets, then don't do them now.) You might imagine that the one-car city pairs of Seattle-Portland and Vancouver-Seattle would be risky to wait on, but I've never seen Jane take those.
IF you manage to complete your tickets before Jane completes hers, and not get blocked, you have probably pulled it off. Now Jane should glitch and go into drawing mode.
Assuming she does, if you don't have the blues to get to Miami, keep drawing until you do. Take the wild cards.
Once you have the cards to get to Miami, and Jane is still drawing, now go back to drawing destination tickets. Now you can take any tickets on the route, including Miami, but dont take every ticket on each draw. Start by trying to take the longest ones, leaving any short ones for later if you can. I think this will minimize the chances of having draws that are all duds. Keep count of your ticket point totals, and draw until you have something in excess of 316 ticket points, after subtracting any duds you have to keep. You have as much time as it takes for Jane to draw the entire deck of train cards. It should be enough time.
Once you feel comfortable that you have an excess of 316 ticket points, stop and complete Miami.
You did it!
Thanks to spekske, I now know why this works. I'm just repeating here the relevant points of what he said. The bot knows what tickets you have. No she shouldn't, but she does. The bot knows what score you will have if you complete your tickets, and if she's running low on trains and won't have the same or better score herself, she will just keep drawing rather than play and lose. She won't gamble on drawing more destination tickets. So you need to draw enough tickets early on to make sure you will beat her if you complete them. If you complete all but Miami, you will have 49 points from city pairs. I don't know if the bot considers the longest route and globetrotter bonuses, but even if she doesn't, drawing about 75 points in tickets initially should give you 124 points, which will almost always beat her, while minimizing the time spent drawing tickets. It's a close call to then be able to beat her finishing your tickets. You've lost some time drawing destination cards, and you have far more short city pairs to complete. But Jane always takes tickets with long city pairs, and that takes a while too, so you should be pretty closely matched. You have to hold out at least three trains, so not taking Miami tickets gives you more possibility to complete your tickets before Jane does, and she almost never seems to go to Miami, so that's a bonus. Miami is out of the way, so you can complete the vast majority of tickets without having Miami. And Miami is blue, the color you need the most of, so not worrying about gathering cards for Miami saves you some time too.
Let me know if this works for you. I played dozens of times before reading the explanation of the bot's brain, figured out this strategy, and pulled it off on the third try.