Top 5 Beginner Hegemony Strategies

Hegemony has a lot going on, especially for new players. These tips will hopefully provide a good point of entry for each of the four factions.

#tutorial #boardgames #RTFM #rtfmshow

[Warchoon]

Some tips for every side that I would give after over 10 plays:

1. Working Class - strike to your heart's consent in the early stages, always strike if wages are ever at 'low'; don't let the cash pile up, spend it as fast as you can on prosperity - prosperity early is way cheaper, and it will build a base for the late game. High immigration is a silent but steady killer - if you let it run rampant for 2-3 rounds, you will have to feed more people and improving prosperity will be much tougher; only accept high immigration if both the Capitalist builds 11+ companies AND the government has 9 companies, that could help with cash flow.

2. Middle Class - it is fairly easy to build an engine of several high-yield companies with 2 of your workers and every round go for Extra shift. This will yield enough materials to increase prosperity "free of charge", and almost unstoppable by other players. Your Extra shifts are free and you can always sell the excess on the foreign market for extra points.

3. Capitalist - first two rounds you need to build companies like crazy, preferably taking on 2-3 loans to fund it (you can't take loans voluntarily, but can manipulate your revenue to go bust during production and taxation) - even if you would have to pay interest on loans for the whole game, it's worth it. Make a deal with the Working Class to help them with policies 4A & 5A in exchange for them helping to get 3C - taxation at 1% is paramount, if you can manage that it's to your advantage. You can live with 2B and even 2A if 3C is in effect. 6A is good, but not more of a bonus, the bulk of your income comes from selling on foreign markets.

4. Government - always react to both objectives; sometimes they ask you to provide stuff, that is potentially an extra point, these points really do add up over the course of the game. If your cards allow it, aggressively look for class legitimacy tokens in the first 3 rounds, these help immensely with legitimacy offset at the end of the round. Your second goal is to avoid IMF, especially in the last rounds - push for higher taxes if you see your coffers running dry, IMF really screws you over; it's a bit more of a gamble with optional IMF cards from expansion, but it's easier to just avoid it. IMF in round 1 is not as impactful, but in round 5 it's basically game over.
As a side note, white objective deck gives you a bit more control, but a bit less points as they don't have "provide" mechanic - it's easier to maintain equal legitimacy with a white deck, but harder to score points.

[jwfcp]

The best thing about hegemony is that the theming is so good that people can't help but roleplay their class, even to their own detriment.

[TheRollyD]

This game got recommended to me more than once in the last week alone, I'm definitely going to give it a try.