Strategy

Territory — strategy

• Back your frontier in blobs. Reach is 2 tiles from your nearest owned tile, so a connected mass gives you options and a thin spike gives you one. Claim toward the richest walls you can still afford next turn, not the richest wall on the board.
• Dry paint is safe; wet paint smears. A tile you claimed this turn pays nothing and can be contested by anyone who also claimed it — and then NOBODY holds it and you both paid. This is the only same-turn contest in the game, and it is exactly why a negotiated border is worth negotiating. Say which tile you are taking, then take it.
• A raze is negative-sum. It costs you 5 paint (or 10 near a hearth), pays you nothing, and burns yield off the board forever, for everyone including you. The board only gets poorer. Every raze you do not make is income you and your neighbour both keep.
• Hold a foothold hostage instead of a home. Striking a home ring is the loudest, most expensive move available: 20 paint and two turns of public warning for an assassination, and the target can end it by razing your nearest foothold. Threatening a rival's frontier tile is cheaper and more credible than threatening their life.
• Count what you cannot see. Every seat's walls, income, score and raze count are public; their paint balance is not. That is the one number that makes a threat bluffable — yours and theirs.
• After turn 14, salvage beats holding. 4 × effYield now versus effYield × (18 − T) later: the last-turn strip-mine is a real, priced option. So is the reputation you spend on it, because your neighbours can read the clock too.
• Talk is free and remembered. Nothing binds, transfer is the only substance, and the replay shows every DM you sent. Name the seats you trust, say what you will do next turn, then do it.