I learned a lot from this video. Thanks for helping me be a better player & to more wins. I play the 1910 mega game. 5 opening tickets, keep 3. One of the things I've learned is setting up for the long game. Meaning, what tickets am I hoping/aiming for on my 2nd, 3rd & even 4th round draws. La to ny is a great route. What cities you go through make a big difference to those later draws. Knowing all the possible destination routes, which can be hooked into other routes, can save a lot of train cars, a lot to ticket draws & turns laying down cars. If lv is hooked into the la to ny, if the lv to ny ticket is drawn later, we'll it's already done. How about phx to Boston or ny. But that wasn't connected because San Francisco was used. It's important to know the possibilities & what opponents might have to know what is available in the later draws and how to maximize which segments you use and use again & again. Maybe this isn't math based. Idk
Firstly thanks heaps for the great comment. I think maths does help a little with just better understanding the game but as you said so many possibilities can happen during the course of the game. Last time I played I preplanned for LA to NY even before I picked up my route cards. I wanted to see if concentrating on this and prioritising over everything else made sense. I ended up coming 2nd mainly because my routes I picked up just didn't align with my strategy but I felt there is something to this and I want to explore this further.
Simplistically you are right, though I truly believe there is more strategy than this. Getting rid of wagons fast is one thing but having a proper goal on how best to utilise them in as an efficient manner is where the strategy comes into play. Appreciate the comment 👍
@@BangersProject if we are going deeper in strategy.... that's my way of thinking about Ticket to Raid (it's simplefied way of thinking): Pick two long tickets (if we are talking about Megagame it will be three tickets the best option is if this tickets combine with each other, in next step try to build routes in perfect world it would be longest routes but in reallity it's easy to block you this way and it's risky also it's rlly time waster so you will probably will take routes that are shorter or just avaible. In proces if you will starting to draw cards (from market if you need anything from top of deck if it's nothing interesting) you will probably end up to be forced to take some routes bcs other players behavior if you will be not threatened by other players you just keep drawing cards. Your in game decisions will be splited by two options: Draw or put wagons bcs you felt threatened by oponent behavior When you end up you ticket it's good time to use rest of your card you didn't used to stretch out your route by adding long routes (6 squers) nearby route you already had... and that's it, at the end you will try to use unused colors and oportunites other players gave you to flush out all wagons by using cards you have to complete your routes and add more in best case scenario 6 squers (but often just look for longes routes possible and available to combine to route you already have) to collect many points you can and to force fast end. You will get lot of points for ticekets you will have a lot of points since you will be collecting them during game by taking long routes and you will probably get (that's the goal)bonus from longest route. If you are playing with Megagame you will porbably not get bonus from the biggest number ticket recieved but you will probably out scale with points, wagons and with tickets your opponents.
@4:47 But Los Angeles to New York's shortest path (such as the one you list here) is 21 train segments, not 16. And the other route you say is an anomaly at @5:05, Los Angeles to Miami, is 20 train segments, not 18. Therefore, all 30 destination tickets have the same balance system. Or am I missing something? It's generally known that longer routes are stronger, partly because they have more 4/5/6 length routes. I think the more interesting mathematical analysis would be to consider for each route's shortest path, how many "points per train" you'd get, including the value of the destination ticket. Or even further to that, you could look at how many turns it would take to get the required train cards, then figure out the "points per turn". And lastly you could consider not simply just the shortest path, but the "best" path if it's a very similar amount of trains (e.g. LA to NY is much better going El Paso -> Oklahoma City -> Kansas City -> Saint Louis -> Pittsburgh -> New York, yes it's one more train, but it's I think 6 more points than going through Phoenix and Denver) Anyway, I learned alot from the video, thanks!
Thank you for the comment, sorry it took me a while to answer been away for work. I will need to go back and find the report I got this off. That info came from one of the university studies i found. I really appreciate you checking it for me. I will be honest there was so much information and analysis out there it was overwhelming. Shortest path and point per train was covered in multiple reports I read but I think this data was superseded by the advantage of using a longer path with better point per train ratio. In regards to the best path, the key always here is that the board state forever changes. These mathematical equations were so fascinating to research. I think the takeaway is that maths can help theoretically and give advantages but you need to also be able to adapt quickly when your optimum path is blocked. As long as you see the bigger picture and know your goal from the start you will do really well. Thanks again.
The commenter here is correct. Every ticket in TTR USA is designed to equal the segments needed via the shortest path. The only error made by the designer is SSM to OKC, which should be an 8, but it’s a 9. Shortest LA to NY is 21, and LA to MIA is 20. Bravo on the tip around 11:30. Finishing fast is so much more important than completing tickets, and about 99% of players don’t know this.
Great video and tips! Appreciate all of the work you put into your analysis. I’m a big fan of Ticket to Ride stand alone games and expansion maps. I can see how most of your trips will apply to other versions.
Thanks heaps for this. I knew there was lots of research out there, so hopefully I touched on all the main points. It's rare to see so much study based off a game but Ticket to Ride is such a modern classic now.
