Terraforming Mars - Solo Playthrough #7/12 (EcoLine)

Seventh play of Terraforming Mars solo! This serie will be 12 videos, one for each of the corporations in the game. Niramas tries to make it in the quite hard solomode of this wonderful board game!

Terraforming Mars is designed by Jacob Fryxelius and published by Fryxgames and Stronghold Games in 2016.

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[Salawon]

Wow that massive jungle on Mars was impressive indeed. That's the power of Ecoline, looks like Mars under their influence gonna become a Green Planet, neigboring our Blue Planet. Good job!

[jborland]

Terraforming Mars - Solo Playthrough #7/12
1:31 What was the card you pulled that placed city #1 in the #1 tile location? It doesn't show on camera.

One thing to keep in mind with initial board setup - the cards you use to determine the starting city and starting greenery tile locations are unavailable for your card play later. Knowing from your setup that Ore Processor, which is one of the oxygen creation cards, is out of play would make me more likely to pick Ecoline as my starting corporation.

13:30 Space Elevator - This pays for itself in 4 turns, if you have steel production, which you do. This is because the steel converts to 5 megacredits, and the titanium is worth 3 megacredits for space cards. So (5 + 3) x 4 turns = 32. You mentioned that you will be trying to place space event cards later (assuming you get some with card draws) - so it seems like a good purchase. Things that take 6 or so turns to pay off don't appeal to me, but 4 or less are almost a must buy in my opinion. Also, since you have very few cards in hand early in the game, you can afford to buy and hold 1 or 2 high cost cards.

18:10 You missed increasing your 2 TR increase for placement of the Nuclear Zone tile & the 2 heat increase from it. One thing to do to keep from missing TR increases is to count up your Ocean tiles, Temperature level and Oxygen level every turn and make sure it aligns with your current TR. Obviously, if you have also played cards that increase TR, you have to remember them as well when doing this check.

19:56 Inventors Guild - You have a very light hand of cards. Inventor's Guild gives you the ability to increase your card pull. It costs, but worth the cost in my opinion due to the added flexibility it gives you.

22:55 Optimal Aerobraking - again, I would have purchased this and skipped the Nitrite Reducing Bacteria card. Getting your TR up by increasing Oxygen, Temperature or Oceans is the most important thing in a solo game. The cards that solely increase your TR are somewhat of a trap. The money you'll make from the TR increase is about what you'll get from the impact of the Optimal Aerobraking both direct (3 extra for each space event) and indirect (3 heat contributing to Temperature increase).

24:03 You used titanium to pay 3 for Imported Hydrogen. Should have been 4 with the Advanced Alloys. You caught this at 26:18.

25:00 First Ocean tile play should be for either 2 cards due to your small hand size, or 2 titanium since you have the Advanced Alloys and you have space event cards to play.

54:00 Permafrost Extraction requires -8C, but you were at -10C. You needed to do one temperature increase before playing it, which you can get by playing a Greenery Tile, as the next Oxygen increase also gives you a Temperature increase. You later played Greenery Tile in the same turn, so it evened out.

1:00:50 Release of Inert Gases - You should wait to play it until you have a guaranteed win. If you can afford it at the end, you get 2 TR which is 2 victory points. But if you lose the game because you couldn't pay for a last heat increase, it would be because you paid 14 to put this into play.

1:04:53 When paying for standard projects close to end game, focusing on Temperature costs less for the same TR increase - which can net you a few extra credits for the extra early TR. In other words, if you need to do both Aquifer and Asteroid standard projects to get to game end, try doing Asteroids first.

1:08:25 Restricted Area - Generally, I'm a fan of this card, but you need to look at how much it will cost you to get to the game winning conditions. You needed about 2 Ocean tile placements and 6 Temperature increases at this point - This is assuming 1 Temperature increase for heat production and 1 Ocean because you increased Temperature to 0C. As standard projects, they cost (1 x 18), + (6 x 14) or 102 Megacredits. With your discount, you'll get 21 back, so total cost would be 81.

Again, in my opinion, you are purchasing too many cards that support plant production late game, which you don't need at the end of the game - but it does really ramp up the points engine.

1:18:34 Placement of the Artificial Lake should be on a space not reserved for Ocean tiles. You could have given yourself 1 plant and 4 Megacredits by placing it adjacent to two Ocean tiles.

Nice game overall. With inexpensive cards at the begining & some restraint on card purchase, Ecoline can be a very good corporation for solo play. The big thing about Ecoline in multi-player is that you have to invest in Cities defensively, so other players don't grab extra points for the Greenery tiles you place. In solo, that's not an issue.

[SarliW]

I think that Robotic workforce only can be played to duplicate a production box on a building card.