I win around 2 out of 3 times. It takes really focusing on building production and events that Terraform the planet.

I feel like I win about 60% of the time. You have to ignore tons of cards and only buy ones that increase your production. If I won every time, I don't think I'd like the game as much! It's challenging and different every time due the number of cards in the game, but it is a tad luck based of you never get and useful cards.

Yeah I'd say I win 99% of the time. The trick I found is to give each resource generation increase a value. I use the cost of standard projects as a reference. I multiply the resource increase by the number of generations left, which tells me how much of that resource it will produce, and then I multiply it by the value of that resource I got from the standard projects (for example, if a heat increase costs 14 and it takes 8 heat for an equivalent increase, then each heat has a standard value of 14/8, so if I will net 10 heat by playing a card over the course of the game then that card is generating a value of (14/8)*10). Then I subtract the cost of playing the card, and if there's a net positive impact of buying and paying for the card then I do that, since by the end of the game the move is guaranteed to net me money.

I literally cannot lose the game since using this strategy. So I kind of stopped playing lol.

Around 70% winrate i think, mostly app. Don’t underestimate the power of steel and titanium production. And card draw. And card cost reductions.

Edit: winrate could be a little higher even, but i usually try to get a good/decent score as well. (I’d say everything 100+ is good, 120+ is great)

Base game + preludes?

Like 90% of games, when I lose it's usually because I try to push on the score too much.

I play the physical boardgame, don't like apps and computers versions.

Depends on what Corp and other cards you have. More money is always useful and if you've got say the metro card that gives you money based on the number of cities on Mars then it can be really useful for your engine.

There's a solo campaign in the files for TM on bgg BTW. I found it fun

The answer is no - only for points.

Terraforming Mars played solo is an almost pointless exercise of luck of the draw. Bear with me before hating:

You know the terraforming steps provided and their cost in MC as standard projects. You need some 700+ MC to terraform it. Each card you play reduces that amount. If you play a card for 15 MC that places a greenery you have a cost of 18 (3 to buy card) and save 23 (cost of greenery standard project) + 1 per turn left for TR income. So if there's 3 turns left you look at 26-18=8 MC gain over standard projects and 26 off the total amount needed.

Given that the cards aren't balanced around solo challenge there's simply good and bad cards. If you have a basic understanding of card value (see previous paragraph) it's purely luck of the draw how many points you will get and you're almost guaranteed to succeed. Losing becomes a consequence of pushing your luck - keeping cards or building cities purely to score points at the detriment of terraforming in time.

For example if you start with Soletta (35 MC, Space Tag, +7 heat prod) in your starting hand you are guaranteed to have an exceptional solo game. The card alone is worth like 1/3+ of your total terraforming target in MC. A city on the other hand played in turn 1 says you back 25-13-(placement bonus) total and obviously there's opportunity costs.

People have been asking me to write about the Terrafoming Mars solo game for ages and now that we are all locked in our houses, I think it's time to do it. After all, I must have played a dozen games during the last few weeks so why not?

I know many people struggle a bit with the solo mode, because it's very different from the normal game so I hope my article can help people do a little bit better. Just let me know if I can help you in any way, I love to talk about this game :)

I love this game. I almost always win with the base game, sometimes early in. I find it more of a struggle to win with prelude added.

I played two games last night back to back. I barely scraped a win, with every last penny in the final action with Aphrodite. I was using prelude, Venus and Colonies.

My highest score was with the mining guild, at 140.

This was a really good read. I have played twice solo with Prelude (haven't played multi-player yet due to quarantine) and have always been 1 objective shy (1 heat one game and 1 ocean the other). I think I just needed to be smarter about what cards I buy and what they contribute to the solo game.

Can you expound a bit on why Prelude makes it harder and what a good expectation for a score with Prelude is? I really enjoy Prelude and hesitate to take it out but would like to get a win here at some point.

Nice write up. I have played the game about ten times now and did not know about the placement bonus when playing a tile adjacent to an ocean. Don’t know how I skipped over that in the rule book

Good, basic guide to solo. Concur that you shift your focus. Except to have a card to meet tag requirements, purchasing any of the "VP" cards is right out in solo. And Standard Projects to get heat started as early as possible, especially if you don't get a card like Mohole Area or Methane From Titan, are a very good idea.

I've played over 60 or 70 games, although I have yet to try it with Turmoil. Mars is a lot of fun solo - just different enough from the multiplayer version to be it's own experience. The first rule of thumb I developed for solo play was to evaluate cards by their total purchase price and "return on investment". So if a card costs 3 to buy, and 8 to place, that's 11 MC. If I buy this card in Generation 1, when is that going to return either in terraforming or MC or resources that help me terraform? What is my return? If I do this in a later Generation, say Generation 11, will it help me with a required parameter by game end?

The value proposition is a lot different in 1 than 10, or even 1 vs 7. What if the card costs 28, like Methane From Titan? Do I need it? Am I in Gen 8? Do I have the funds? If so, I'll get either 4 or 6 generations out of it. That's 8 plants (1 forest) and 8 heat or 12 plants/12 heat. Can I then use that 28 more effectively on other things, or is this what I need to ensure that I hit that benchmark by the required Generation (12 or 14)?

Solo really encourages you to think like a business owner. :)

It's interesting that you're much better at solo than mp, since most players experience the opposite. You probably have a good sense of which cards will help most with terraforming, and filtering everything else out.

Multiplayer is different, especially with just 2-3 players. The strongest strategy in a 2p (or slow 3p) game is to ignore terraforming for the most part and just build a mammoth economy so you can vomit project cards all over the table the last few generations. The holy trinity of this strategy is 1) card draw, 2) discount/rebate blue cards, and 3) money/steel/titanium production (especially the cards that increase production by 1 per X tag you have). AI Central, Earth Catapult, and Mars University are maybe the best cards for this strategy (certainly in the top 5). By lategame you'll be able to play (and draw) so many cards for free it gets to be pretty ridiculous. With enough luck, you will also accumulate enough Jovian tags that they will become a large chunk of your card-based VPs at the end (like 30-40 points).

The best way to crack 100 VPs in a solo game is to use this strategy (sort of). You still have to terraform everything in 14 gens, so don't pass up something like Mohole Area or the cards that spend 4 energy to raise the oxygen. You have to risk not being able to terraform everything in time and hope you get the right cards in time. It takes a lot of luck and repeated attempts, but you should be able to tell within maybe 5-8 generations if you hit the tipping point where your economy is growing exponentially and you're going to score big. Hope this helps!

If you want to absolutely steamroll the game (150+ VP) there is no other way than by investing heavily in card-draw, discounts, rebates, and science.

It's because cards get better when you have lots of effects, and the only way to get more effects is by drawing more cards. Eventually the synergies get so good that you can play 10-15 cards per turn racking in lots of VP, 1-point animal stacks, jovian tags, or bio-synergy tags.

Most production cards trigger once per turn. Which can be good in the early game, to be able to afford the cards.

But in the end game, discounts and rebates trigger multiple times per turn making your scores shoot up exponentially in the last few turns. Also, cards like cartel, satellites, and insects scale with the number of cards played.

High scores are largely going to be draw dependent.

An early tag-based economy card like cartel or satellites for 6+ is going to pay huge dividends and allow you to play a bunch of point cards.

Speaking of point cards, look for combos: Jovians can be big points. Any card that adds animals is amazing with the 1 point/animal cards.

The ground game is easy points because no one else will interfere with your perfect tile placements.

Lastly, prioritizing card draw enables you to find all these good cards.

It's a risk/reward issue. . .you have to prioritize card-drawing and the card-drawing cards, recognizing that if you're going for a high score you may end up not terraforming and losing some games. Some corps are better than others for high scores- I do best with Mining Guild, Phobolog, Tharsis, Ecoline, and Point Luna, roughly in that order. If you can snag Advanced Alloys in your initial draw with Mining Guild or Phobolog you're golden. I always grab Large Convoy and look for the 1-point animal cards to synergize with it (Birds, Fish, Predators)- you can get 7 VP from a single card play that way!

To be fair, if you win every game you already know a lot about how to play solo. Getting points, too is based on having cards that are good for solo anyways but in addition give you points. If you can reliably score 90 points, reaching 100 is just card luck. Try to grab more drawing to just have more cards. That's basically it

I don't think I win as much as my friends think I do, but I do ok and always have fun. A few guidelines I use:

• It's better to have money now, than a card you might use eventually. Try to only draft projects you have a plan to put in play immediately, unless they're crazy good

• Points from temperature, oxygen and oceans are the best because they're zero-sum - every ocean you place is a point you denied someone else from scoring. Pushing to the end of the game also denies everyone else the time to make their engines go nuts.

• MC production is a bit of a trap in my opinion. It's nice when you can get it, but I would be wary of spending any significant resources to up your MC production. Sometimes I do the math: how many generations until this MC production card pays for itself? Does it do anything else for me?

• Greeneries are worth a point, and cities are worth points for adjacent greeneries, and that can be big points. You may benefit from placing a city in a good spot a little earlier than you might otherwise be comfortable with

• Sometimes it helps me compare the cost of the card ($3 to draft it, plus the cost, plus anything it costs to activate) vs. the relevant standard project. Is it any cheaper than just buying the thing I want? Do I get any additional benefits?

TM, like Catan, has a player defined game length. The key to success is to watch how fast the parameters are rising and to switch from engine building to points scoring as you predict the game coming to an end with you in the lead at that moment.

Two general things I strive for: lean into the corporate advantage, and try to only spend money on 1 or 2 new cards every generation

Two specific things I’ve found is that space/titanium cards are usually more expensive than they’re worth points-wise unless titanium production is really humming along; and that plant-based engines are almost always worth it, as they both increase rating through oxygen and give city points, as well as more board presence, which usually wins some milestones or awards

One of the common starting mistakes is building too many cities.

Unless you're getting them on cheap cards, standard project cities give 1) zero VP 2) 1 MC production 3) basically nothing else. 25 is a LOT to spend on that. Look at the 25 value cards: they are almost ALWAYS a better deal in terms of engine building or end game scoring. If you can get a city down next to 2-3 other forests and/or some oceans, maybe it's worth it. If you can get multiple of your own cities around a cluster of forests, MAYBE it's worth it. But just building cities to build cities rarely works out unless you have a specific plan on how you're going to make them work for you. Even among standard projects, every other standard project is a better deal.

Your starting corporation’s special abilities

I found my game drastically improved after playing solo for a while. completely terraforming the planet in 14 rounds was challenging but really taught me to show a little more discipline in card selection and helped me build my production engine. You can get a lot done in round 13 when you have 80 MC!

Get the new solo automa, it’s supposed to be a huge improvement.

Ooo hadn't considered Terraforming Mars having a solo mode, great game!

I love Ares expedition solo, someday will have to come back to the original now that it's more soloable!

Give this one a try: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/150779/solo-variant

Much better solo mode

Ooooh didn’t know you could play on solo mode! I know what I’m doing tomorrow :D

Note that Prelude will make the solo game more difficult. It is not a problem at all to start with if you have it at hand, though it is not at all necessary.

The prelude helps alot but makes for a faster game

Once you add Prelude, you’ll likely never play without it. The starting perks it gives you adds a lot to the game and shortens playtime a bit, without adding any complexity.

It's fine for teaching. Easiest thing to do is deal out cards for an extra player, and show them how it works, one corp, two preludes, and their starting hand, look for synergies, etc.

1. Blue cards are ongoing effects or actions. You can always use an ongoing effects; but you can only use an action once a round. You don’t ever get to use the action for free, but blue cards (actions or ongoing effects) are available right after you play them. So with one action, you pay the cost to play Aquifer Pumping; and with any action in the future you can then use its action (paying the cost), as long as it is not more than once per round.

2. You can always take an action to spend 8 heat or plants to raise temp/plant a greenery. If you have 16 heat, you can take 2 actions, spending 8 heat each time and raising temp once each time.

3. I’m good enough now (I’ve managed hundreds of plays thanks to the app) that I can most times win any given solo match; now I try to win with higher scores. I’ve cracked 100 a few times, just got my all-time high score of 117 last week. Points are a good measure of how well you did, and scoring VPs is critical if you want higher scores. Winning is a threshold; there is a minimum score (which if I remember correctly is 56; 14 steps oxygen, 9 oceans, 19 temperature steps, and 14 starting TR). Your winning score is usually going to be higher because greeneries are worth 1 point and also are usually the way you increase oxygen. Starting out though, don’t worry so much about cities or VPs; try to get them after you’ve made sure you can complete terraforming.

Some advice:

• As I mentioned, I can win most games if I play to win now, but I lose most of my games now because I take big risks for higher scores. It’s perfectly fine to play it safe and focus on winning starting out, once you get to where you feel like it’s not challenging enough, start pushing for VPs and cities.

• Like others have pointed out, it’s not two actions a round. It’s one or two actions a turn, and after it’s your turn is over it’s your turn again. So basically in solo you play as many turn each round as you want until you can’t or don’t want to do more. That’s a classic solo rookie mistake! You definitely can’t win with 28 actions, probably even with perfect card draws.

• Some games are not winnable. The cards you get play a big role, so don’t get down if you don’t win.

-Some cards should probably never be played solo; you’ll learn which ones eventually. Likewise, some should almost always be taken (always buy Standard Technology, it’s always worth it!). You’ll figure those out too.

• My strategy for success: I try early to get as much heat production as I can. That also means trying to get those first five steps of the temperature track, since they give you two heat production. You want to do that because it’s the cheapest standard project, but there’s a lot of steps. I also tend to grab every card that gives plant production, even if it’s prerequisite is something I likely won’t meet until much later in the game. That’s because greeneries are expensive, and even a few extra plants later in the game can give you that extra boost you need to complete the oxygen track. I also try to pick up every plant placement bonus for the same reason. Finally, try to take advantage of the ocean tile bonuses as best you can. I try to always play oceans next to each other, and I avoid placing anything in a spot next to an empty ocean spot I know I want to fill later. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s important; lots of times the difference between winning and losing comes down to a few bucks.

After playing and failing a bunch, I didn’t realize you were allowed to take Multiple turns in one round. I enjoy the game.

1 or 2 actions on your turn. Playing by yourself is multiple turns in a row until you pass to finish the round. I interpreted this In solo to be run out of actions then end round.

Neat! You may want to consider submitting this to BGG’s 2023 Solo Mode Contest.

I’m gunna try this, thanks for sharing!