I only ever play two-player games of TM and I think this would absolutely wreck it for two-player.

For me, the game can be very broadly summarised as a race between the engine-builders who think they have time to invest heavily in the future and the terraformers who think they can win on speed alone.

On paper your idea definitely has merit - if I knew nothing about the game's nuances I'd be very intrigued, but it would screw over the engine-builders who would either keep gaining money and cards they can't use or play a very limited version of their strategy with little-to-no hope of seeing reasonable returns.

Thanks for sharing though - always good to hear new ideas.

So many nay sayers in this chat. It does sound fun!!!! Can't say I've tried it.

But I'll try it next time.

I guess what a lot of haters miss is that in 3p or more.....you don't want to end your gen prematurely cause what if player 2 And 3 decides to keep it going forever and you lose out on actions?

So in that sense maybe the shift in gameplay isn't that dramatic and makes the last two remaining players bluff each other out.

This might actually be a GREAT game balancing mechanic!!!!!!!! Cause I've often found the person with the most actions is the person winning. So if p1 and p2 sees you starting to run away, they can check you that way. And what you ought to do is do the action that is most efficient.

I actually think it could be a better variant!!!

For me, this takes the better parts of the game away. This reduces the number of possible strategies and tactics to use in the game

This just nerfs the heck out of any blue action cards. It throws microbes and floater cards in the bin. Further, it nerfs any card with a low cost. You're incentivized to just play 1 or 2 high costed cards and then pass because playing lots of cheap cards takes too many actions to do and are thus too risky to draft. Credicor becomes even more OP than it was since it already wants to play expensive cards.

It doesn't just nerf engine building, it basically destroys it and makes it entirely unfun.

People already explained the 2 action error.

Just want to note that you should be winning solo every time and that it's a poor experience. Basically you can calculate how much money you need in total to terraform successfully using standard projects (some 500 to 600 or so). Then you can calculate for every card how much it reduces thay amount by. You will learn that the MP balance doesn't work for solo. Some cards are so absurdly strong in solo while most of them are useless.

I added a variant to the official forum that makes solo feel like a MP 4p game so that the balance works. Highly recommended. Beyond that a new solo expansion is currently on KS which gets you a 2p game experience which is also better.

I’ve been playing the app, solo, for years. I highly recommend it. Yes, I often cannot terraform Mars, but I often can.

You can do as many turns as you want a round but you won't get income until you end the round

I thought it was about the board the first time. It was not.

For me, this is 90% a card drafting game. I think it is bonkers that NOT drafting everything was the default in this game. It is an efficiency puzzle, based on the wild cards you are given. You might be given a series of cards that neatly complete on another, or a disgusting disagreement happening in your hands. Enjoy managing chaos

It's like race for the galaxy as well, by the time you make your produce // trade engine and are about to make it hum, the game is over.

>the starting draft is key to victory. I pretty much win or lose based on my starting choices.

Not sure that sounds very appealing

>It’s taken over 100 plays

What

>I don’t read rules until after I’ve lost a couple dozen times, and only if I still enjoyed the games while losing.

>I just go in blind and see what happens.

Man what the hell...I have never heard of someone doing this on purpose...playing for months, dozens of times, before even looking at the rules once? BGA literally has tutorials to teach you the rules interactively...

“It’s taken over 100 plays, but I finally consistently beat players rated higher than me on BGA.”

<< quietly removes game from my online cart >>

It's my favourite game ever precisely because of that. It is one of the most balanced game ever. The only thing you need to understand is how to value projects. Almost no project is good or bad, and most of them can be good in certain situations (better with a certain corp, later in the game or if you can produce some ressource reliably)

You should approach the game as how to make the most out of my cards, while trying to slow the others. 

For instance, evaluate production (or cost) as how many ressource will it yield given an average game is around 13 generations. And this while considering what cards it allow you to access. A loan of 20 mega credits for instance is interesting if there are less than 10 generations if you produce 2 but allow you to play more expensive card quicker.

Cities can be placed anywhere, except designated ocean spots or next to another city unless the card specifically says it has to. it is in the rules, iirc.

Greenery doesn't have to be placed next to a city.

If nothing is on the board, you can place a greenery tile anywhere.

Greenery must always be built adjacent to something you own, unless you have nothing on the board where the above comes into play.

You can build greenery off non-cities. The greenery is still worth 1 at the end of the game. The non city is not worth extra.

Pretty sure you can build the city anywhere - the restriction is on where you place greenery.

You can place cities with the following restrictions:

• The city cannot be adjacent to an already existing city
• The city cannot be placed on a reserved ocean spot

With the following exceptions:

• Lava Tube Settlement and Noctis City can be placed on their normally allowed spots if they are available, disregarding the above two rules
• If either of those specific cities have their spots already filled (or are otherwise not available), they can be placed ANYWHERE without restrictions (except on existing tiles)

So straight answer: no, she is not restricted to placing her city beside her greenery. The reverse is not the same though - greenery MUST be placed beside an existing tile you own, if you own any on the map. If you have nowhere to place next to your own tiles, THEN you can place anywhere you want.

If you speed up the parameter increase, you may warp the balance of the game and make certain strategies better. Maybe that’s ok if not enough of your players are playing terraforming strategies.

Another thing you can try is to require players to take 2 actions on every turn and/or put a 30-second clock on a turn. That’ll increase the pace of play without changing any of the gameplay.

why not use the "Solar Phase" in Venus Next where the 1st player chooses one non-maxed global parameter to increase.

Forcing the game to end faster makes engine building cards worse; forcing everyone to just play terraforming. If you're just trying to get rid of engine building, just don't play Corporate Era. The Corporate Era cards are mostly engine focused with little terraforming on them.

We generally play with an extra prelude.

Also, I don't think it speeds things up much, but everyone has access to Merger, as we consider it too fun and too special to be restricted to luck.

Just give everyone an extra prelude to jump to fast production. Or start with higher TR.

Terraforming mars is one of my favorite games, likely top 5. The game isn’t short by any means, and there is an expansion called prelude that makes the game faster by jump starting resources in the beginning of the game. I think it’s important to note that all games are not for everyone, and terraforming mars MIGHT not be right for you. I fell in love the first time I played it, I didn’t even think how long it took. A few closing thoughts, there is a draft variant that adds more time to the game but i feel keeps me infinitely more engaged, and 2 and 3 player counts are pretty good (I can personally attest) I would never play more than 3. Lastly, if you want terraforming mars in the quickest time frame, check out terraforming mars ares expedition! It’s so much quicker and I enjoy that game too!

Terraforming Mars is an odd game in that it takes longer the fewer people are playing, because there are less opportunities to increase the global parameters.

One house rule to speed up the game is to automatically increase the GP that's lowest at the end of every generation.

And then you can add in the Venus and Colonies expansions and make it take a long time again!

It takes a really really long time if no one is doing the things that end the game. I forget what they are, something like making oxygen and raising heat? If at least one person isn't trying to do those things you just ended up with huge tableaus of cards that take forever to run, every round, for many, many rounds.

If you want the game to be enjoyable, push the end.

Are you sure you didn’t make the common mistake of performing 2 actions per round rather than 2 actions per turn?

I think it slows down the game because you get more income and build bigger engines, but I haven’t played both ways

I think this could be said for just about any open ended game that requires players to complete X,Y,Z. Some players just struggle with the focus needed for that kind of format.

My partner and I have a rule that action cards can be played at anytime without being one of the two actions of our turn. The only time it really affects the game is if the action gives a resource needed to play a greenery, but it’s honestly worth it as it does speed things up, especially in later generations when we often have 5 or more blue cards each. We can take our bacteria, animals, etc. during each other’s turns without impacting the flow of the game.

If you want to shorten the game "by a couple of generations", I'm not sure it's possible to do it without breaking the game.

Maybe you can try to add World Government Terraforming variant (usually used only with Venus Next). At the end of each generation, the first player chooses one global parameter and increases it. The said player doesn't get any benefit from it (no TR, no placement bonus). The game should end one generation sooner. I'm afraid engine building will be strictly worse than terraforming strategies though. A gen 1 Standard Technology may be gg.

More than reducing the number of generations, maybe you can try to optimize the time taken by each action: if each player thinks about his next turn when someone else is playing, it can greatly reduce the total playing time. More often than not, people only start thinking when it's their turn.

Use chess clocks or a turn timer. Analysis paralysis is very real in TM.

Double corps makes things kinda crazy. A 4p game ended on gen 6. An extra prelude is okay, doesn't break the game.

I think the best solution is the Venus solution, where at the end of round the active player chooses to increase one of the global parameters without gaining a bonus. Just do two of those and it should increase game speed without imbalance.

Just do world government. At the end of each gen the starting player raises a parameter but doesn't get the benefit.

Get Preludes. It makes the game both faster and more strategic. It is also a very cheap expansion.

Draft project cards after the 1st generation. (Deal 4 cards to each person, choose one, pass the remaining 3, continue until each person has 4 cards. Then choose which of those 4 to buy into your hand. Switch the direction that you pass each round. This allows you to both choose cards that are good for you as well as hate-draft cards away from your opponents.)

Be willing to change strategies based on the cards you have. Sometimes your cards want you to build an engine to make a bunch of metals and buy an bunch of cards, and some games call for rushing the end of the game as fast as possible. Sometimes, you opponent makes a choice that means you need to change plans.

You should talk to my kid. I can usually carry my own when playing with others, but my kid grinds me into a paste. In all plays NOT involving him, I generally am within about 10 points of the winner, even if I lose, and I sometimes win. In 10 games with him involved, I'm 1-9 and I average 30 points behind. He's brutal. He generally plays for a card engine, as he says it "the more cards I can see, the better cards I can play". I'm usually at pace with him until about 3 turns from the end, when he drops the hammer and accelerates way ahead of me. He's a late terraformer; generally holds back until his engine is cooking. I've tried to race the terraforming myself, but he has a killer sense for the end of the game, so no matter how much I push the pace, he always knows when to drop the hammer...

Production early, points late.

Card draw.

If you're not building the best engine at the table, rush terraforming.

Card draw.

Milestones and awards are an inexpensive source of VP.

Card draw.

you got some god advice here. I will add to check out card tier lists (from the last 2 years) remember they are aimed at strong players so some cards might be stronger on your table (immigrant city is better for weak tables because they like spamming cities)

realize that you need to be efficient with cards and not buy cards you aren't going to play when you are poor and use standard project only when you need to compete for milestones or in games with a lot of players where production is not as valuable.

greenery is very good try getting a lot of it while trying to not let the opponent destroy your plants

cards that let you place greenery, get enough plants to place a tile quickly or destroy greenery are all good and high priority if you place 2 greenery and your opponent puts a city next to it it's perfectly fine try to avoid giving 3 points

try placing most of your tiles on the middle of the map next to oceans and plants

don't get too much steel and titanium without card draw. 3 is usually enough unless you draw a lot or already have many cards that need them

If you don’t have the app, I’d get it. It’s a great way to play a bunch of games quickly and learn your own strategy.

At least for me, my strategy is going to depend on what corporation, prelude and starting cards I have. Also what board I am playing. I really can’t go in with much of a plan before that.

You’ll find it a lot simpler once you learn all the cards, boards, milestone, awards and corporations. It is a complex game and every time you play it’s so different, which is one of the reasons I love it so much.

Can anyone with the new maps discuss new awards and milestones? Although placement differences are important, the main reason my group shifts boards is when one player "solves" the milestones and regularly guarantees themselves 10 or 15 points. We shift for a while but wind up back with Elysium, which we have all solved. I would enjoy some new challenges.

Only comment I can say is that we play 5 (well over 100 games at that count) and the new 5 player map didn't really add anything except length to the game honestly. The other maps are certainly cool for their variability and twists on strategy that you might not have with the base maps.

Their a pretty low investment and we've enjoyed them for sure.

The newer maps offer some interesting variation; things like resources (animals, microbes, etc) not on other maps, and one (Amazonia...) that is larger to better accommodate 4-5 player games without getting overcrowded.

It's just variety. The milestones and awards are different for each, but there's also the milestone and awards expansion that just gives you tokens to randomize without buying new maps. The large map is fun for filling up the larger area, but it's ultimately just a longer game.

I'm a big TFM player, so my ranking of the maps are as follows:

Maps #4-7 are the new ones. I'm also ignoring milestone/award discussions for the most part since I generally use the random ones these days.

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1) Map #4 Terra Cimmeria

I love the idea of a big open area, and this map is FULL of resource goodies, and I love how many cities/greenery you can match together on this one without oceans splitting your areas apart. It even has a cheap Colony, YES PLEASE!!! Very fun, my favourite

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2) Map #1 Tharsis

The classic starting map, and also the most balanced (has everything you need). It's really "the one" designed for true TFM games, what else to say, it's great

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3) Map #7 Amazon Planitia

The 5-6 player map, it's pretty much Tharsis's big brother, feels designed in the same way, just for more players. If you can't get 4/5+ players, you can also place Gold Markers to set the global milestones (and bonuses) to normal rate. With the only disadvantage being far more space so less opponent interaction on the map, but this hasn't resulted in any bad skewered scores, and is certainly very fun (but not very balanced)

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4) Map #3 Elysium

The big reward maps, 3x plants and 3x cards, like map #4 there's a big placement area (but less resource bonuses) which makes it less fun (unless you want a certain award) and whoever controls the water, controls the game. its chaotic, and certainly fun... unless you're losing!

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5) Map #2 Hellas

Lots of ground resources and its satisfying creating that giant ocean (or just getting the ocean bonus placement). But other than that, I found this map a bit... plain, like it feels like ones the above steps are done, it feels a bit a of a slog. Fun at first, boring later.

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6) Map #5 Utopia Planita

i really like some of the placement bonuses on this map, and the energy resources are more useful than you think (especially with colonies). But the problem with this map (and upcoming map #6) is that it feels really cramped with the oceans, like your cities are inefficient with greeneries, but at least you get a lot of ocean MC in return. On top of that, its really just plant rewards for oceans, making it less rewarding earlier on to get oceans (and screws certain corporations like Mining Guild with no steel/titanium resource) Suburbian award is there for a reason. Not a big fan of this one.

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7) Map #6 Vastitas Borealis

This map feels too much like map #5 Utopia Planita, too cramped and the same issues. (when Tharsis and Amazon Planitia feeling like brothers, these two feel like runt twins). Again why are there such boring ocean rewards, it really feels shitty unless you're Ecoline, and even the middle "temperature" bonus is boring compared to an ocean or colony. At least map #5 had some cool bonus resources.

To be honest, none of the maps are unplayable, but it feels less interesting to play these last two maps compared to the starter maps.