What rewards to take

In the early rounds, focus on taking the number tokens to increase your knowledge, especially on your inventors with the big (6 and 9) point bonuses. You want to do this as much as possible in the first age especially because as you add knowledge to build toward those big bonuses, you also get to play extra cubes when using those inventors. The earlier you add that knowledge, the more you will get to use those extra cubes.

Plan your contributions to inventions based on which tokens you need for the first two ages. These should be dedicated to finishing the inventors with the big bonuses and snatching up an occasional 2 or 3 point ribbon. In the third age, you want to focus on taking inventions.

The tokens you want to use as ones (remember, every token has a one on the back) are, in order of preference:

-Numbers that you don't need for your big bonuses

-Additional knowledge and free refresh tokens (the coffee and the chocolate)

-Stars

-One victory point tokens

-Two and three victory point tokens if they are the only way to get a bonus big enough to use them

Refreshing inventors

A lot of new players are afraid to refresh inventors before using all four. Don't be. Refreshing inventors with one or even two left can serve several strategic purposes:

1) It allows you to more frequently use inventors with 4/5/6 units of knowledge instead of doing the best you can with the inventors with only 2

2) It can allow you to play consecutive/nearly consecutive turns when other players need to refresh their inventors at the same time.

3) Especially at the end of the second age, refreshing your inventors can save the most knowledgeable inventors for when they can be most beneficially used. Ideally, you want your most helpful inventors available at the beginning of the third age, when they will be most efficiently used.

Using knowledge effectively

-Spread out your knowledge! Don't get too focused on one invention...spreading out your knowledge gets you more bonuses. Remember that once you have the majority of knowledge on an invention, the only way you should play anything else on it is to make sure it isn't the leftover invention at the end of the round.

-It stinks to get shut out of an invention, but don't waste an inventor just to get something you don't need. Always ask the most effective place to play an inventor, and don't let emotion overcome reason.