I've played quite a lot of Triple Town the past few months. It's a charming game, free to play, easy to get a thrill with in just a few minutes, and the turn counter keeps it self-limiting. I'm certainly not the best player in the world, but I consistently score a few million points in my games - so I think I'm qualified enough to discuss tactics.
Step One
The most important element in the game is to understand the very simple core mechanic - three or more like objects will transform into a different type of object and give points. Matching 4 or more objects gives double points for the resulting object. (If matching 3 grass to create a bush is worth 20 points, matching 4 is worth 40!)
Step Two
The other thing to understand is the basic progression of objects, which is:
Grass(5) -> Bush(20) -> Tree(100) -> Hut(500) -> House(1,500) -> Mansion(5,000) -> Castle(20,000) -> Tower(100,000) -> Golden Castle(500,000)
(Something must be wrong in my Mansion or Castle points - but I'll have to correct it later, when I get another build)
Step Three
The next thing to understand is how bears work. About 1/6th of your given items to place will be Bears - Bears move one square (if possible) each turn. A group of bears will die if it is entirely enclosed - turning into gravestones. 3 or more Gravestones will turn into a Church (1,000), Three churches will turn into a Cathedral (10,000), and three Cathedrals will turn into a treasure chest worth 500 coins.
Bears take turns in their movements - top to bottom & left to right. All the bears in the left-most column make one move, then all the bears in the second column, and so forth.
(Interesting aside - three treasure chests will turn into a large treasure chest worth 1,500 coins - so there isn't much reason to make that meld. Usually.)
Step Four
The final element (Only four - it's a very elegant game!) to learn is the distribution of granted items. Roughly the percentages seem to be:
Grass : 36/60
Bush : 5/60
Bear : 5/60
Imperial Bot : 3/120
Crystal : 3/120
Tree : 1/60
Ninja Bear : 1/60
Hut : 1/120
These are obviously approximate, but they seem to match up decently with the 5x point values (Bushes show up about 20% as often, and are worth 5x points).
Placement Strategy
Here's what you're really here for - my breakdown of where to place items and when, which is really the only choice you make in the game.
Let's imagine you are given nothing but Grass to place - what is the optimal strategy? Well, first we need to realize that, if we were only placing grass, we could never build anything better than a House! An ideal arrangement would be a square (where we will place our final Grass) with 2 Grass below it, 2 Bushes to the right, 2 Trees above, and 2 Huts to the left. It is impossible to create Mansions, without a Bush (or better) object - which occur so infrequently that you really can't count on them showing up when you need them. So, ALL YOU BUILD ARE HOUSES AND CATHEDRALS. Anything better than that comes as the result of a crystal match. Period.
So, how should we place our Grass to build Houses together in the right spots? Let's take a term from Go and think of each square as having 4 natural "freedoms" - or open edges to match. If we reduce the freedoms of a square, that square becomes much less valuable for matching - so whenever possible we want to keep our high-level objects confined to the sides, and leave the center open. This advice reverses itself in the case of Towers - because you need to match 4 Towers to create the 500,000 point Golden Castle, which you can't reasonably do in a corner or against the side (remember that you need 4 of them via a Crystal Match - a tricky thing to do!)
Tactical use of the open slot should ensure that you always have Grass or a Bush to place - saving Crystals or Imperial Bots is sometimes important, but you shouldn't do that in general unless you are very close to an important match. Saving a Bear is also a good idea on rare occasions - when you need to wait 2-3 turns for your bears to cycle, for example, into proper position.
Using the Store
The store should be used very sparingly - as a rule of thumb I only use the store (which allows you, 25 times during the game, to get EXACTLY the piece you need next!) when I have a Bear or Crystal in my save slot. Your first few games you won't have the coins necessary to buy things from the store, but by your third game you should be using the store at least a few times - and once you do your games will start to pay for themselves quickly - I generally float about 50,000 coins or so between games.
It is important to realize that you never need to buy an item from the store - you can always just safely wait for an item. What you are really buying from the store is time. If you absolutely need a grass RIGHT NOW, THIS TURN but you get a bush instead? Time to buy a grass from the store. If you have a bear in your save slot, but you need to let your bears cycle once more? Buy that time with a purchase from the store.
Crystals and Imperial Bots should only be bought in the most spectacular situations - when you think you have a really excellent shot at getting a high score. It's almost impossible to get anything which will actually improve your town enough to justify the 1000 or 1500 coins they cost you.
Bear Strategy
Creating Cathedrals is very easy - the trick with a good Bear Strategy is getting your Cathedrals to turn into chests. You can use a crystal, of course - I do that occasionally. But it is much better to let it happen naturally, and the simplest way to do that is to make sure you never make your first two Cathedrals diagonally adjacent - that seriously restricts your ability to place your final Church into the correct spot - since you will have only a single freedom to work with. Adjacent Cathedrals are much better, and 1-apart Cathedrals are even simpler to merge.
Keeping a region blocked off for bear hunting is a proven method. I strongly prefer to have a 3x4 area to work with - anything only 2 blocks wide is liable to suffer from mistakes which cannot be easily corrected. As you fill with churches you create smaller, easy to fill areas. I've recently started leaving my treasure chests around for hundreds of turns - using them as "blockers" to break up my bear-hunting space. It's really easy to get your bears placed properly in 3-4 block areas, so allowing chests to build up is useful. Initially, when you have no chests, getting your first church / cathedral to appear in the middle of your bear hunting area is a good way to break up space and make your subsequent bear matches happen more quickly.
Thanks for the tips, I'll give them a try.
Posted by: Mike | January 12, 2012 at 11:05 AM
You need pictures...
Posted by: Joe | June 21, 2012 at 10:00 AM