In Civ 6 the way you advance your scientific understanding is to live near huge mountain ranges with lots of geothermal vents nearby.
This makes no damn sense.
Lots of things in games make no sense, so that isn't necessarily a problem. However, it also feels silly and bizarre, and *that* is a problem.
The way you make most of your science in Civ 6 is to plant down Campus districts. In human history you find the greatest centres of knowledge and innovation by looking at places with large amounts of trade and people. Big cities, basically. However, Civ 6 Campus districts get huge adjacency bonuses from geothermal vents, mountains, and in the latest patch, reefs. They want to emphasize that you can learn things by examining natural features, sure, but it feels awkward.
Holy Sites also want to be near mountains, but this feels right. You don't situate your religious and spiritual places in the middle of a city in a flood plain, you put them near amazing natural wonders and majestic mountains, the better to impress people. Feels good.
But Campuses? They should want to be next to all the people doing all the things, the better to gather all the knowledge.
I suspect that when the designers were building the game they wanted to avoid mountains being terrible. A good way to do this was to make it so that Holy Sites and Campuses got big bonuses for being near mountains, so the fact that mountains are unworkable tiles would be made up for by big science or faith generation. For Holy Sites this totally worked, not so for Campuses. As patches have progressed they have added more and more science adjacency bonuses to Campuses and this has warped the game in strange ways. There is basically no way to get big science aside from Campuses, and all the other ways of getting science are extremely weak, so Campuses are needed everywhere.
In my most recent game my first city had a +4 Campus adjacency, and my next two cities had +6 and +5 adjacency locations due to mountains and geothermal vents. These numbers are enormous, as most other districts in that era would be sitting at adjacencies of 0-2. I shredded the science tree, and it made the game feel terrible because I couldn't build anything before it was already obsolete.
Campuses are too good, the adjacency bonuses are too large, and it all feels silly. I want to make baseline science generation a bit better and Campuses a bit weaker, and I want to make Campus adjacencies more sensible.
I have a few options. The first one I came up with is to remove or reduce most of the current adjacencies and just make Campus adjacencies much worse. I would trash the adjacencies for mountains and reduce the bonuses from geothermal vents and reefs to +1 instead of +2. (Reducing mountains to a 1 per 2 adjacency isn't possible for technical reasons.) This would push Campus locations towards city centres and reduce normal adjacencies to 0-2 in the early game, rising to 3 in really good locations with a lot of infrastructure.
The way to make Campuses want to be in big urban areas is to replace all of their current adjacency bonuses with a full adjacency bonus from all districts. Right now they get a 1 per 2 rate on districts, but I can easily up the rate to 1 per 1, which would mean that every city could have a good Campus regardless of location - all you have to do is build your other districts beside it and you are good to go. 3 adjacency bonus would be no problem in every developed city. This feels sensible to me from a immersion perspective, but does mean that you basically don't care about terrain because the optimal science strategy is to simply put cities close together and build huge globs of districts with campuses in the middle. This is a change to Campuses, but not a nerf - they still get really powerful, though you can't yahtzee quite so hard in the early game.
That second option feels thematically good, but doesn't address the power level of Campuses. The first option reduces overall science output in the game dramatically, so it needs to be offset by a small increase in the base science rate from population. I think I like the lower power version better. It is fun to build huge numbers, but the game is warped by just how huge those numbers are, and other districts don't get that like at all, at least not without significant planning and investment.
And finally I will be able to stop feeling silly when I rush to plant a centre of learning in the middle of the wild, surrounded by rough, unusable terrain.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Greeneries
I played 2p Terraforming Mars against The Flautist again today. Her quest to defeat me is not complete - I won by a whopping 28 points, 63 to 91. One of the things that I leveraged to cash in that victory is the Standard Technology card which makes all of my standard projects cost 3 less. I bought a lot of greeneries via standard projects, something like 8 of them, and this got me to the Gardener and Terraformer milestones.
One of the key parts of my strategy was ignoring cards. Once you have Standard Technology buying standard project greeneries is extremely efficient, costing 20 bucks while netting you an income, 3 points, and between 0 and 10 bucks worth of stuff from the board - probably averaging out to around 6. That income is worth 4, so you end up paying 10 bucks for 3 points. That is fantastic, far better than pretty much all the cards in the game, particularly since it gets you to Gardener quickly.
Of course you don't get that third point from your greeneries for free. You have to have a city, and cities are worthless on their own. If you look at standard project cities they cost 25, of which 4 pays for the income bump you get. That remaining 21 bucks gets you roughly 6 bucks worth of stuff, same as a greenery does, so you end up down roughly 15 bucks. Basically if you have a standard city beside 3 greeneries it is a good buy, but otherwise it is weak. If you have standard technology out, a city is pretty reasonable even if only next to 2 greeneries. However, if you credit those third points from greeneries to the city instead, greeneries start to look a lot more fair. 2 points for 10 bucks is reasonable, but not special.
These are only approximations, of course. You can't get a giant swath of huge placement bonuses for a city and all six greeneries around it. The board just doesn't end up working that way. However, if you try that 7 hex plan and get 8 total plants from your placements, you end up paying a grand total of 125 bucks to get an income (4 bucks), 6 TR (54 bucks), and 12 points (60 bucks) Total = 118 bucks. That is a strong rate of return, and you have low exposure to hate cards in the process.
After seeing how effective my standard project heavy strategy was I did some more math. Plant production in TM usually costs about 12 bucks each. You can get much better rates, but only on cards with harsh restrictions that usually mean they are only out for a turn or two. Since cards in TM are built with a 25% per turn ROI, this means that each plant costs roughly 3 bucks. But for 23 bucks you can just get a Greenery standard project immediately! You would have to output 24 bucks worth of cards to get a similar return.
The most compelling reason to do the standard project to my mind is that you can avoid getting blown up by meteors and other cards that munch on plant production. Having predictable plants coming in just sets you up to get ruined multiple different ways, but there are few ways to punish someone for having a lot of cash.
Other standard projects don't work out this way. Cards that produce oceans usually do so for ~14 bucks, so standard project ocean is weak since it costs 18. Cards that produce power do so for ~7 bucks, which is far cheaper than the 11 the standard one costs. Strangely if you want to most things in the game the standard project is much weaker, except for greeneries where it is just as strong if not stronger than the cards that aim to do the same thing.
Standard projects are not all that well balanced, it turns out. Greeneries cost 5 bucks more than an ocean, and they give you 1 more point. Quite fair, except that greeneries get you milestones and oceans do not. Cities are useless until there are a lot of greeneries, then they become good. Temperature increases are 4 bucks cheaper than an ocean, but they don't give you bonus stuff, so really they are a couple bucks too pricey. 12 would be more appropriate than the 14 they cost now.
The thing that stands out to me is that plant production is just crap. You don't get a better rate of return buying production than you do buying standard projects, and the production opens you up to both plant destruction cards like meteors and plant production hate cards like animals. Standard project greeneries are the way to go, and when you happen to have Credicor as your corp or Standard Technology as a card it is even better.
I think I need to test this more thoroughly, and in my next game I want to play a corp with high starting money and build tons of greeneries via standard projects. Teractor would be ideal, as they have tons of cash and no particular rules about how to spend it.
One of the key parts of my strategy was ignoring cards. Once you have Standard Technology buying standard project greeneries is extremely efficient, costing 20 bucks while netting you an income, 3 points, and between 0 and 10 bucks worth of stuff from the board - probably averaging out to around 6. That income is worth 4, so you end up paying 10 bucks for 3 points. That is fantastic, far better than pretty much all the cards in the game, particularly since it gets you to Gardener quickly.
Of course you don't get that third point from your greeneries for free. You have to have a city, and cities are worthless on their own. If you look at standard project cities they cost 25, of which 4 pays for the income bump you get. That remaining 21 bucks gets you roughly 6 bucks worth of stuff, same as a greenery does, so you end up down roughly 15 bucks. Basically if you have a standard city beside 3 greeneries it is a good buy, but otherwise it is weak. If you have standard technology out, a city is pretty reasonable even if only next to 2 greeneries. However, if you credit those third points from greeneries to the city instead, greeneries start to look a lot more fair. 2 points for 10 bucks is reasonable, but not special.
These are only approximations, of course. You can't get a giant swath of huge placement bonuses for a city and all six greeneries around it. The board just doesn't end up working that way. However, if you try that 7 hex plan and get 8 total plants from your placements, you end up paying a grand total of 125 bucks to get an income (4 bucks), 6 TR (54 bucks), and 12 points (60 bucks) Total = 118 bucks. That is a strong rate of return, and you have low exposure to hate cards in the process.
After seeing how effective my standard project heavy strategy was I did some more math. Plant production in TM usually costs about 12 bucks each. You can get much better rates, but only on cards with harsh restrictions that usually mean they are only out for a turn or two. Since cards in TM are built with a 25% per turn ROI, this means that each plant costs roughly 3 bucks. But for 23 bucks you can just get a Greenery standard project immediately! You would have to output 24 bucks worth of cards to get a similar return.
The most compelling reason to do the standard project to my mind is that you can avoid getting blown up by meteors and other cards that munch on plant production. Having predictable plants coming in just sets you up to get ruined multiple different ways, but there are few ways to punish someone for having a lot of cash.
Other standard projects don't work out this way. Cards that produce oceans usually do so for ~14 bucks, so standard project ocean is weak since it costs 18. Cards that produce power do so for ~7 bucks, which is far cheaper than the 11 the standard one costs. Strangely if you want to most things in the game the standard project is much weaker, except for greeneries where it is just as strong if not stronger than the cards that aim to do the same thing.
Standard projects are not all that well balanced, it turns out. Greeneries cost 5 bucks more than an ocean, and they give you 1 more point. Quite fair, except that greeneries get you milestones and oceans do not. Cities are useless until there are a lot of greeneries, then they become good. Temperature increases are 4 bucks cheaper than an ocean, but they don't give you bonus stuff, so really they are a couple bucks too pricey. 12 would be more appropriate than the 14 they cost now.
The thing that stands out to me is that plant production is just crap. You don't get a better rate of return buying production than you do buying standard projects, and the production opens you up to both plant destruction cards like meteors and plant production hate cards like animals. Standard project greeneries are the way to go, and when you happen to have Credicor as your corp or Standard Technology as a card it is even better.
I think I need to test this more thoroughly, and in my next game I want to play a corp with high starting money and build tons of greeneries via standard projects. Teractor would be ideal, as they have tons of cash and no particular rules about how to spend it.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
I am not a bank
When people were teaching me how to play Through The Ages, (TTA) they told me that one of the key things in the game is making sure you keep up with military. Being not-last is crucial, but even if you are safely above the last place in military there is a huge benefit to more military - you can beat up the person in last and take their stuff.
The person that falls behind and gets continually pounded is the bank, and if other people are raiding the bank, you want to be raiding the bank too. You won't win if people are resolving huge wars on the person in last and you just try to build infrastructure the normal way. Get a piece of the action!
I was worried in my league games that I would be the bank. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't know what the cards did, I was confused about many of the basic rules, and I kept on making errors for both of those reasons.
Turns out, I wasn't the bank. I ended up with a 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 4th showing, which is pretty great for having gone in with only a sketchy sense of the rules. I feel like I earned that result, because I really screwed up the game where I came 4th, (discarding wonders that are almost finished is bad!) and I quite liked my play in the game I won. It was a tight finish with me only coming out ahead by 2 points, but it felt good.
One of those 2nd places was a gong show though. I declared an early war against a player 6 military behind me. I calculated that he could only gain 4 on his turn, so I was going to steal a yellow token from him. Then Napoleon flipped off the top, and this allowed him to jump to 2 military ahead of me and I lost a yellow token instead. Whoops! That player then proceeded to rush massively ahead of everyone else in military and ruthlessly beat us all up for the rest of the game. I managed to hold onto 2nd place because after pillaging and warring us all into submission he finished it off with two huge wars for culture and stripped 50 points away from the last two players, but left me alone.
Without those two gigantic wars our point spread is something like 120-140, a tight game indeed. With those wars though, the winner crushed us by 110, and I beat the other two players by ~50. It looks like I secured 2nd by virtue of looking weak and harmless, not even worth warring with.
Note to self: Don't declare early wars unless you are really, really sure you aren't going to lose them.
I quite like TTA. The flavour is solid, and the gameplay is a fun puzzle. Some parts of it do feel strange though, like the numbers don't quite work. Mostly I am referring to the Age 3 civil technologies. I was looking at each of them trying to figure out the ROI on them, and they all looked mighty suspicious. You only get about 5 turns in Age 3, and building one of the Age 3 civil techs costs ~10 science, takes 2 actions, and this gives you the opportunity to spend 6 rocks and 1 action to upgrade a worker from age 1 to age 3. If I imagine that I upgrade 2 workers, and that an action can be spent for 2 rocks, this means I need to spend 10 science and 20 rocks to get 6 production per turn. I need the full 5 turns just to break even! If I get that tech down a turn or two after age 3 starts, I can never recoup the cost.
Sure, if I have actions / rocks / science that is worthless then I may want to turn them into something better, but generally it just seems like a terrible investment. I suppose if you desperately need food for example and you are stuck on the age A farm and you have lots of science and rocks then age 3 food could be good, but that seems pretty narrow.
I could improve my rate of return by upgrading 4 workers instead of 2, but then I am making 20 rocks / science / whatever per turn. That much of any one thing seems tough to use effectively, and even so I am still taking 4 turns to recoup costs. I can't see how I get all that done in the first round of age 3 anyway, so it seems like a losing proposition.
What I really like is the age 1 techs. They don't cost that much science, they stay out a long time, and they are an enormous advantage over age A. I am pretty happy to take all age 1 techs, quite frankly, and use all my science later on to buy things like Military Theory and Air Forces, as well as at least one type of age 3 military unit. I can't expect to actually get all of that of course, but my game plan involves getting 1 tech for rocks, food, science, and happy and only getting those techs from age 1 and 2. At age 3, I care about military and culture. The age 3 civic techs are a waste from what I can see.
However, I have only played 7 games in total, so I probably don't know anything. Can anyone with more experience tell me where I am wrong on this?
The person that falls behind and gets continually pounded is the bank, and if other people are raiding the bank, you want to be raiding the bank too. You won't win if people are resolving huge wars on the person in last and you just try to build infrastructure the normal way. Get a piece of the action!
I was worried in my league games that I would be the bank. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't know what the cards did, I was confused about many of the basic rules, and I kept on making errors for both of those reasons.
Turns out, I wasn't the bank. I ended up with a 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 4th showing, which is pretty great for having gone in with only a sketchy sense of the rules. I feel like I earned that result, because I really screwed up the game where I came 4th, (discarding wonders that are almost finished is bad!) and I quite liked my play in the game I won. It was a tight finish with me only coming out ahead by 2 points, but it felt good.
One of those 2nd places was a gong show though. I declared an early war against a player 6 military behind me. I calculated that he could only gain 4 on his turn, so I was going to steal a yellow token from him. Then Napoleon flipped off the top, and this allowed him to jump to 2 military ahead of me and I lost a yellow token instead. Whoops! That player then proceeded to rush massively ahead of everyone else in military and ruthlessly beat us all up for the rest of the game. I managed to hold onto 2nd place because after pillaging and warring us all into submission he finished it off with two huge wars for culture and stripped 50 points away from the last two players, but left me alone.
Without those two gigantic wars our point spread is something like 120-140, a tight game indeed. With those wars though, the winner crushed us by 110, and I beat the other two players by ~50. It looks like I secured 2nd by virtue of looking weak and harmless, not even worth warring with.
Note to self: Don't declare early wars unless you are really, really sure you aren't going to lose them.
I quite like TTA. The flavour is solid, and the gameplay is a fun puzzle. Some parts of it do feel strange though, like the numbers don't quite work. Mostly I am referring to the Age 3 civil technologies. I was looking at each of them trying to figure out the ROI on them, and they all looked mighty suspicious. You only get about 5 turns in Age 3, and building one of the Age 3 civil techs costs ~10 science, takes 2 actions, and this gives you the opportunity to spend 6 rocks and 1 action to upgrade a worker from age 1 to age 3. If I imagine that I upgrade 2 workers, and that an action can be spent for 2 rocks, this means I need to spend 10 science and 20 rocks to get 6 production per turn. I need the full 5 turns just to break even! If I get that tech down a turn or two after age 3 starts, I can never recoup the cost.
Sure, if I have actions / rocks / science that is worthless then I may want to turn them into something better, but generally it just seems like a terrible investment. I suppose if you desperately need food for example and you are stuck on the age A farm and you have lots of science and rocks then age 3 food could be good, but that seems pretty narrow.
I could improve my rate of return by upgrading 4 workers instead of 2, but then I am making 20 rocks / science / whatever per turn. That much of any one thing seems tough to use effectively, and even so I am still taking 4 turns to recoup costs. I can't see how I get all that done in the first round of age 3 anyway, so it seems like a losing proposition.
What I really like is the age 1 techs. They don't cost that much science, they stay out a long time, and they are an enormous advantage over age A. I am pretty happy to take all age 1 techs, quite frankly, and use all my science later on to buy things like Military Theory and Air Forces, as well as at least one type of age 3 military unit. I can't expect to actually get all of that of course, but my game plan involves getting 1 tech for rocks, food, science, and happy and only getting those techs from age 1 and 2. At age 3, I care about military and culture. The age 3 civic techs are a waste from what I can see.
However, I have only played 7 games in total, so I probably don't know anything. Can anyone with more experience tell me where I am wrong on this?
Monday, September 9, 2019
Deep underground, for reasons of profit
Last week I played a game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig with some friends including Naked Man. I went hard into basement rooms and came out the victor by a substantial margin, largely on the back of 2 key things. First, I had ridiculous cards. I got the first stairway and ended up building all 6 basement rooms using 4 stairs in total. This set me up perfectly for the basement card for 12, stairs card for 8, completed rooms for 7, and 450 rooms for 6.
The second thing that won me the game was me getting the basement room that likes basement rooms, and then rescoring it when I closed it as my sixth basement room. That part was kind of funny, actually, as nobody else saw that as a possibility. Many players, most even, seem to get stuck on the idea that when you score a basement completion you simply take another turn. That is often good, but it isn't anywhere near automatic. Taking another turn often involves getting 7 points for 2 bucks or so, and that is often worse than 5 pure points, 10 bucks, or rescoring the basement room itself. Heck, even a Hail Mary for a bonus card or a blue room dig can be the best play at times.
The surprise came on the final turn of the game when I was master builder and everybody else bought the most expensive stuff from me, leaving me with a collection of mediocre tiles worth about 5 points each. Nobody expected me to buy a hallway and rescore my basement that loves basements... but doing so got me 14 points in total so it was automatic. Didn't matter to me what was left on the board, nothing was going to be as strong as that, especially for only 3 bucks!
Naked Man spent much of the early game insulting my basement investment, talking about how lots of basement rooms is bad. After all, all but one of them give bonuses to upstairs rooms, so you really want two basement rooms that match your upstairs really nicely, in an ideal world. Getting a ton of basements generally means each one is only worth 4 points or so, and that is quite weak. I agree with this principle in general. I like having a stairs available so nobody can pin me on basements, but I don't generally want to get more than two basement tiles.
However, when you have the basement card, and intend on rescoring the basement that loves basements... that +6 points / tile really changes the math a LOT.
Also I was extremely pleased to crush Naked Man with basements after he spent so much time telling me how terrible they were. I was sitting to his left, no less, and he still couldn't stop me. Or at the very least he did not choose to stop me - he could have taken the critical tile from me, but it would have cost him 8 bucks and would have only been worth 3 points to him. Still, doing so would have dropped my final score by something like 19 points overall, which is a pretty crushing blow. It would have given him the victory, I think.
The lesson here is firstly that yes, most of the time lots of basements isn't great. Secondly, if you close basements, do not just automatically take another turn. Regularly this is worse than other options. Thirdly, if you happen to talk to Naked Man, ask him how he managed to lose to someone employing a massive basement board, given how bad basements are. I am sure his reply will be entertaining.
The second thing that won me the game was me getting the basement room that likes basement rooms, and then rescoring it when I closed it as my sixth basement room. That part was kind of funny, actually, as nobody else saw that as a possibility. Many players, most even, seem to get stuck on the idea that when you score a basement completion you simply take another turn. That is often good, but it isn't anywhere near automatic. Taking another turn often involves getting 7 points for 2 bucks or so, and that is often worse than 5 pure points, 10 bucks, or rescoring the basement room itself. Heck, even a Hail Mary for a bonus card or a blue room dig can be the best play at times.
The surprise came on the final turn of the game when I was master builder and everybody else bought the most expensive stuff from me, leaving me with a collection of mediocre tiles worth about 5 points each. Nobody expected me to buy a hallway and rescore my basement that loves basements... but doing so got me 14 points in total so it was automatic. Didn't matter to me what was left on the board, nothing was going to be as strong as that, especially for only 3 bucks!
Naked Man spent much of the early game insulting my basement investment, talking about how lots of basement rooms is bad. After all, all but one of them give bonuses to upstairs rooms, so you really want two basement rooms that match your upstairs really nicely, in an ideal world. Getting a ton of basements generally means each one is only worth 4 points or so, and that is quite weak. I agree with this principle in general. I like having a stairs available so nobody can pin me on basements, but I don't generally want to get more than two basement tiles.
However, when you have the basement card, and intend on rescoring the basement that loves basements... that +6 points / tile really changes the math a LOT.
Also I was extremely pleased to crush Naked Man with basements after he spent so much time telling me how terrible they were. I was sitting to his left, no less, and he still couldn't stop me. Or at the very least he did not choose to stop me - he could have taken the critical tile from me, but it would have cost him 8 bucks and would have only been worth 3 points to him. Still, doing so would have dropped my final score by something like 19 points overall, which is a pretty crushing blow. It would have given him the victory, I think.
The lesson here is firstly that yes, most of the time lots of basements isn't great. Secondly, if you close basements, do not just automatically take another turn. Regularly this is worse than other options. Thirdly, if you happen to talk to Naked Man, ask him how he managed to lose to someone employing a massive basement board, given how bad basements are. I am sure his reply will be entertaining.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
44 stranded plants
Last night I played Terraforming Mars with The Flautist. She is on a quest to beat me at the game, as I have taken victory in all of our five plays so far. Last night was not her night as I won the game 133-114. A high scoring game, no doubt, and one that broke a couple of records in my experience.
First off the game ended on turn 16. I have never seen a game go that long, and it happened because I built a modest heat engine and she didn't build one at all. Oxygen ran out rapidly due to Steelworks and Ecoline, and oceans followed. However, heat sat there ticking up once per turn and we continued to pour our money into buying cities and greeneries.
The Flautist was definitely way ahead in the early going because she grabbed 2 Milestones (Gardener and Terraformer) and had many Greeneries out. I built an engine producing a ton of steel and titanium and eventually my engine got enough cards in play to rush past her early lead.
Bizarrely we ran out of room on the board to play all those greeneries and cities we were buying as standard projects. On the final turn nobody could legally place a greenery and we had 18 plant production between us so we ended the game with 44 unused plants. I have in the past seen a single four player game where someone couldn't place a greenery on the final turn, but I have never seen anything like this is terms of wasted opportunities. 5 greeneries unable to come down!
The game had a lot of fascinating choices. At turn 10 it looked like it was going to end really quickly, but the lack of heat cards meant that if it was to end soon, somebody was going to have to buy ~9 standard projects to finish it off. That would have left all kinds of juicy opportunities for the other player to place key cities and greeneries, so neither of us could afford to end the game fast - we just had to play it out. This lead to a lot of tricky choices about city placement - how do you decide how many cities to play? Slamming down tons of cities with no greeneries seems nuts, but if you get all the best placements by doing so and the game takes forever it could be fantastic.
It ended up that we spent 4 turns or so just placing cities and surrounding them with green while throwing away all the cards because they were junk. I certainly haven't seen that dynamic before.
In any case my respect for TM as a 2 player game is still growing. The game can play out so many different ways that there is a huge amount of skill and practice required to be excellent, and I like that.
First off the game ended on turn 16. I have never seen a game go that long, and it happened because I built a modest heat engine and she didn't build one at all. Oxygen ran out rapidly due to Steelworks and Ecoline, and oceans followed. However, heat sat there ticking up once per turn and we continued to pour our money into buying cities and greeneries.
The Flautist was definitely way ahead in the early going because she grabbed 2 Milestones (Gardener and Terraformer) and had many Greeneries out. I built an engine producing a ton of steel and titanium and eventually my engine got enough cards in play to rush past her early lead.
Bizarrely we ran out of room on the board to play all those greeneries and cities we were buying as standard projects. On the final turn nobody could legally place a greenery and we had 18 plant production between us so we ended the game with 44 unused plants. I have in the past seen a single four player game where someone couldn't place a greenery on the final turn, but I have never seen anything like this is terms of wasted opportunities. 5 greeneries unable to come down!
The game had a lot of fascinating choices. At turn 10 it looked like it was going to end really quickly, but the lack of heat cards meant that if it was to end soon, somebody was going to have to buy ~9 standard projects to finish it off. That would have left all kinds of juicy opportunities for the other player to place key cities and greeneries, so neither of us could afford to end the game fast - we just had to play it out. This lead to a lot of tricky choices about city placement - how do you decide how many cities to play? Slamming down tons of cities with no greeneries seems nuts, but if you get all the best placements by doing so and the game takes forever it could be fantastic.
It ended up that we spent 4 turns or so just placing cities and surrounding them with green while throwing away all the cards because they were junk. I certainly haven't seen that dynamic before.
In any case my respect for TM as a 2 player game is still growing. The game can play out so many different ways that there is a huge amount of skill and practice required to be excellent, and I like that.
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