OP strat ?

[Panurge]

I just found an OP strategy but it relies a bit on luck.
I just won with a little less than 50k in score.
Here's how :

- Take Mrs Choi for the +2 bonus in train car
- obtain 2 blue cards (academy) as a priority to place at least 2 and start accumulating them for free
- Upgrade to 4 blue cards as soon as possible to accumulate them even faster and improve them quickly
- Place the “Train Power” cards (gear) as a second priority to improve the speed of the train. In my game I went up to the max bonus (5) but you should be fine with 3.
- Keep the white cards (Central Supply Bureau) in your hand, unless you can place them on your train to gain a bonus at some point. Keep in mind that you will need all 6 cards (including the extra large wagon) for the last part of the game (they can be hard to obtain late game).
- Discard all other cards (unless it can give you a small bonus at the start of the game).
- For the last ¼ or 1/3 of the map you should have all your blue buildings at max level and will start drawing “Ivory Tower” cards. Raise them to max level and only place them on the train if it does not affect another bonus (Academy or TrainPower).
- When the speed of the train seems sufficient to you (for my part after the radioactive city), remove the TrainPower cards (gear) except the blue and white ones (obviously).
- Place your white cards to have all 6 and activate the max cycle time bonus
- The “Ivory Tower” cards will start raining ! Upgrade them to the max level in your hand before placing them for maximum happiness bonus.
- Don’t hesitate to make “unnecessary” loops on the route to continue accumulating points.
I didn't push this strategy too far (I stopped before the blizzard arrived) so I think one should be able to get a much better score than me.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198007255880/screenshot/2316606177396228601/

[Slywyn]

How did you even unlock her? Haven't been able to.

[Panurge]

I used almost the same strategy. Get blue cards ASAP, unpgrade your engine (TrainPower) and don't hang around too much (watch for the comming blizzard)

[Zodh]

OP strat?
step 1 go full zeal
???
profit

[Panurge]

Originally posted by Zodh:

OP strat?
step 1 go full zeal
???
profit

Yep, this strategy is definitely OP, I just finished the game with a score over 3.7M on day 204 (I stopped there because it was getting boring).
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198007255880/screenshot/2316606177399582602/
My final configuration is 5 level 5 Ivory towers, a level 4 (max) Executive Branch (Diamond white car) and the other 5 white cars (only for the reduced cycle time bonus, level doesn’t matter).
It might be “less OP” (but at this point, who cares) than the Zeal one but it might be easier to build as Academy cards are really easy to get.

[Kristoff]

I was also able to finish with around 9 mio points after grabbing every node in the ice storm.
I used the same strat at the beginning. But i switched out the blue factione after a while to make room for the white large car (that reduces cycle time up to 2 seconds) (still kept 6 white cars for the full bonus), the first class car that increases its gain over time dependend of the ammount of cars behind it, and 2 zeal cars (one random and the tier 4 one that gives you 33 times the happiness per zeal). This way the tier 4 zeal car and the first class car will improve the longer you play and will give you over 10k points per second at some point.

[EtherIord]

Max out engines as soon as possible to get a lot of room, collect white cards and the front card, once you reach level 10 and max speed, remove all engine cards but the white card, put all the white cards and the front cards. Try to combine the front cards as little as possible (wide is better than tall), until you can upgrade it all the way to lvl 4. https://i.imgur.com/sYK4JeT.jpeg

When collecting cards, you sometimes run out of space - in such case don't pick up the drones until you get 4 of them, then keep picking cards from drones until you can somehow manage to get back to your limit (by combining) - if you don't, remove some engine card from hand, if you do, keep the remaining drones until you again have 4 of them.

[Graven Ash]

[/quote]
Yep, this strategy is definitely OP, I just finished the game with a score over 3.7M on day 204 (I stopped there because it was getting boring).
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198007255880/screenshot/2316606177399582602/
My final configuration is 5 level 5 Ivory towers, a level 4 (max) Executive Branch (Diamond white car) and the other 5 white cars (only for the reduced cycle time bonus, level doesn’t matter).
[/quote]

The only thing I might consider altering would be swapping 1 Ivory Tower for a [Front Cart] as when you are going for 100s of days that thing should ramp crazily, idk if you can get it to tier 4 or 5 but at T3 you are getting +2 Happiness for every 4 cars behind it so that's +6 permanent happiness per cycle which should exceed even T5 Ivory towers pretty quickly.

[EtherIord]

Originally posted by SelWrynn:

The only thing I might consider altering would be swapping 1 Ivory Tower for a [Front Cart] as when you are going for 100s of days that thing should ramp crazily, idk if you can get it to tier 4 or 5 but at T3 you are getting +2 Happiness for every 4 cars behind it so that's +6 permanent happiness per cycle which should exceed even T5 Ivory towers pretty quickly.

here's the maxed front cart https://i.imgur.com/g3i6xqM.jpeg

[Carmeops]

won my first game thanks to this guide, tho i didn't get much luck with the academy ones, i managed to get 5 train power and by the time i reached the poison area of the end, i switched to the 6 whites and a first class, with a +135% speed, but that was overkill, since the cycles were fast enough to counter the poison anyway, and i got a pretty good lead in front of the storm

so i reached the end pretty relax

[ponyryov]

The game is fun but it needs a little balance. I completed the achievements and each one was made easier by focusing on the blue/engine/white combo first.

Also, 9 is the max speed apparently but instead of saying maxed, it keeps showing points accumulating which seems misleading.

[Brasshawk]

With great sadness I must tell you... that this strat does actually work quite well. Ofc it's nowhere near Zeal+CSB level, that I used to successfully stack overflow the happiness counter, but I did end up with 6 CSB and 5 Ivory Towers which delivers enough happiness to outlive -6666.

[Enter the Wang]

Zeal+CSB is currently the undefeated king of endless stack overflow, but academy consistently gives beginners a path to winning.

[Mr. Moneybags]

Miss choi with full zeal build + full supply bureau build + first room is complete broken, game crashed on day 120 with more than 54 million happyness

[RedPandaViking]

https://steamcommunity.com/id/RedPandaViking/screenshot/2451717972221860112/

137 Million and explored every node on the map using the full zeal + supply + First room combo. Was tempted to keep going until it crashed, maybe next time

[lembos-hauser]

Originally posted by Slywyn:

How did you even unlock her? Haven't been able to.

win more often.