kerravonsen | Some Thoughts on Playing Terraforming Mars Solo (Reply)

So I've been battling with Terraforming Mars again, prompted by Anne Reardon talking about Food On Mars (including how difficult it would be to grow). After an entire afternoon and evening of losing over and over again -- clearly I'd forgotten what methods were needed to win the solo game -- I tried again a few days later, and managed to get through after a couple of fails. And then again, this evening, more play, and managed to succeed.

So what's the trick? Well... no trick, really. You do need a certain amount of luck, or one is doomed to failure. (Or, as I kept on muttering to myself, "We're all gonna die.")

To summarise for those who are not familiar with the game, the aim of the game is, as the title indicates, to terraform Mars. The game deems that one has succeeded in terraforming Mars if one manages to increase three metrics to their desired values: temperature, oxygen, and water. With the multi-player game, one is competing for victory points. With the solo game, the victory points are basically irrelevant: the main aim is to complete the terraforming of Mars within a time-limit (14 turns).

Therefore I considered it reasonable to remove from the card-deck those cards which are irrelevant to the solo game: mainly (a) cards which attack other players, and (b) cards whose only purpose is to increase victory points. I know that purists would frown on this, but, seriously, it makes no sense to include, for example, the "Sabotage" card, whose only effect is to attack other players -- who don't exist in the solo game.

While I've moaned in the past about the solo game having a time-limit, on further reflection, it wouldn't work without it. In the multi-player game, each player has a "terraform rating", which determines how much funding they get in the next turn (called a "Generation"). Every time a player increases one of the three metrics, their terraform rating increases. With a solo game, the Terraform Rating works the same way, but because there is only one player, all the terraform rating increases go to that one player rather than being spread out amongst multiple players. That means that the closer you get to the goal of terraforming Mars, the more funding you're going to have, until, if they let you do more than 14 Generations, you'd have an obscene amount of money and would fulfil the goal easily. Giving it a time limit enables there to be a challenge, since you are competing against the time limit rather than other players.

And it is a BIG challenge, as evidenced by my losing over and over and over. (More stubborn than sense, maybe.)

A few key things I've figured out.

Always ensure that you do at least one thing in a Generation which will increase one of the metrics. This has two benefits: it gets you closer to your goal, and it increases your funding.
- This will likely mean that you spend most of your time in the early game throwing asteroids. That's okay.
Ignore cards whose effect is only to increase your mega-credit production: it is a distraction, because doing something to increase your Terraform Rating will get you closer to the game-goal and give you more mega-credits. (In a multi-player game, these cards are more useful, because there are only so many Terraform Rating points to go around)
Do a bit of cost-benefit analysis in regard to whether you purchase any given card. Remember that the real cost of the card isn't just the cost of playing it, but the cost of purchasing it. So, for example, if there's a card which will increase your power production by one, without any other benefit, and its playing-cost is 11 mega-credits (the same as the cost of a standard power plant), then you've just paid 14 mega-credits (3 mega-credits to purchase it, and 11 mega-credits to play it) for something which normally costs only 11 mega-credits. Mind you, things aren't usually that clear-cut. The card might give some other benefit, like an additional resource, or it might be discounted in some other way, like being able to use steel to pay the playing-it cost.
Unless the card is a really excellent card, don't buy a card which you can't use this Generation. Save your funding for actual useful things.
- In the solo game, you're always critically short of funding, simply because you start off at a much lower funding level than the multi-player game (14 rather than 20).
- This also means that the cards which cost 20 or more mega-credits to play should only be played in the first Generation (when you have the most funding) or much later in the game. This generally means that the expensive cards are useless.
  - Not always useless, though. One game I won, I played a 35 mega-credit card in my first Generation, wiping out practically all of my funding. But this particular card increased the global metrics (and thus my Terraform Rating) by four points in one go, so I felt it was worth it.
Because the solo game starts off with production levels of zero, cards which increase your production level of a resource are precious. You can buy a standard power plant, but you can't buy a Standard Mine or a Standard Farm.
- This means that a playing strategy which depends on producing anything other than energy (or heat) should not be embarked upon until after you have managed to get cards which enable you to produce that resource (steel, titanium, or plants). One of the times I crashed and burned was when I was playing the corporation Ecoline, which is an excellent corporation when you are producing plants, and useless when you can't produce plants at all.
Like cards which increase your mega-credit production, cities are useless in a solo game. There are other ways to get mega-credits, and the victory points from cities are irrelevant.
There are some corporations which work much better in a multi-player game than in a solo game, because their "special benefits" depend on things which are less frequent in a solo game (for example, the placement of cities). (Tharsis Republic, I'm looking at you.)
Unless you have a card which enables Titanium to be used in more than one way, Titanium is useless. It's useless in the multi-player game too.
- Steel is almost useless. But there are more cards you can pay for with steel than with Titanium.
- A beautiful card to have if you're a Titanium producer is "Water import from Europa". This card enables you to buy oceans with Titanium as well as mega-credits. Well, one ocean per Generation. But still, a great card.
Speaking of great cards, I think one of the keys to winning a solo game is to have one or two "great cards" (or corporate-special-ability) working in synergy with each other and with the resources you're producing. Especially cards which enable you to use a resource in more than one way.
- Some examples of this are:
  - "Water import from Europa" and Titanium production
  - A "steel production" card (there are a couple of them) which creates steel & oxygen once per Generation, plus the Electro-catapult card which enables you to sell one steel per Generation for 7 mega-credits.
  - Good energy production, plus the "water splitting" card, which enables you to increase the oxygen level once per Generation for the cost of three energy units.
  - The Helios (I think?) corporation, which has the ability to turn heat-units into mega-credits, plus the "Underground detonation" card, which enables you to increase your heat production by two units (once a Generation) for only a cost of 10 mega-credits.
  - The "Solar Mirrors" card, which enables you to build a power plant for only 7 mega-credits (instead of 11), and the "Energy infrastructure" card, which enables you to convert energy units into mega-credits.
- Of course, the rub with this is that you have no control over what cards you get. You can wish for great cards, but not get them.
If you don't know what to do, you can always throw asteroids and build power plants. Neither of those depend on the luck of the cards.