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.