I just bought Terraforming Mars and have been playing the solo game some. For those that haven't tried it, here is how it works: A couple of random cities and greenies get planted on the board, your TR starts at 14, and you have to fully terraform by generation 14. Assuming you win, then you try to have the highest possible score.
There are some interesting consequences to this ruleset. You don't get milestones or awards, which reduces your access to fast points. This means that science tags lose a lot of value because competing for the scientist award isn't a thing. Also things that have raw points on them are a lot weaker, both because they don't get you to finishing terraforming (and that is actually a LOT of work solo) but also because the game is so long that you really want all your investment to go into income, not points.
The first time I tried I just failed. The second time I got a score of 124, which is absurdly high. Everything just went perfectly. The next two times I got 90, then 82. I think you would struggle to win the game at all with any score below 70, so 82 is pretty close to the bottom of the barrel for games where you win.
One thing I have been finding about strategy is that power is weak. Cities don't do anything to terraform, they just give you points, so collecting power in order to drop cities is only good if you already have amazing income going. You don't need to plant cities early because there is no competition, so you really only need to slam them down on the final game turn. The other major use of power is Steelworks and the other similar cards that turn power into oxygen - they seem good, but if you actually want to get a huge score I think they are actually weak. You want to drop 14 greeneries to rack up points, so setting up an oxygen engine actually doesn't do much of anything - in an ideal, high scoring world you get all 14 oxygen just from massive plant production. If your game is going badly though they can certainly be a path to winning with a low score - better than losing, no doubt.
The most clutch card I have found so far is Aquifer Pumping. It is 18 to play, and lets you spend 8 per turn to place an ocean. You absolutely need to get a ton of plant and heat production, but there are lots of cards that do that. Only Aquifer Pumping really sorts a category completely on its own, and otherwise you are going to have to hack together an ocean strategy from all kinds of ocean cards and standard projects.
If I am going to beat my top score I think the cards I would want in my opening hand include Aquifer Pumping + a path to setting up huge heat production and plant production. Massive early income cards like Strip Mine or Mohole Area seem like exactly what you want. There are people who have worked out ways to terraform completely by turn 2 and get 500+ points assuming you can perfectly stack the deck the way you want, but in a normal game where I don't know what is coming these cards are the ones I want to see.
Anyone else that has good ideas for how to think about cards or maximize TM solo score should feel free to chime in - I want to learn to be better at it!
Is there really people who terraform by T2 with 500+ points, or is that rhetorical exaggeration?
ReplyDeleteI've been playing a lot of solo mars recently (too much!) and coming up with all kinds of theories. But nothing specific has gelled for me yet other than my attempts at scoring big with Jovian are all doomed to failure.
I am finding that estimating how much plants/heat/oceans you need is important. particularly plants. A bunch of games I've spent time/money on pumping oxygen only to end up with so much plant production at end game that I didn't need to pump earlier (or did I? Maybe that's where I got the income for those plants). Heat is similar for fine-tuning - making sure you don't generate too much, or have a use for it if you do.
Oceans are all about waiting until the last turn, just in case you pick up 2 oceans for 18 with a 0 degree requirement. If you don't have Aquifer Pumping.