Two actions mostly all the time please

[WhiteBlur]

Knowing when to play one or two actions is an important skill in this game. I've found the best way is to play one action as default, and two actions when you have a good purpose. There are lots of benefits by doing only one action a time:

Maximising effect of cards that give income or resources per tag or tile
Cards like Toll Station, Martian Rails, Zeppelins, Rover Construction etc.

Avoid becoming an eligible target for attack cards
There are lots of scenarios when you want to await playing a card until it is safe. You don’t want your Titanium Mine nullified by an Asteroid Mining Consortium, or the plants you got when playing Bushes to be destroyed by an asteroid or comet.

Triggering requirements
Sometimes you have a card that has a requirement that could be enabled by opponents’ plays. This also applies the other way, by playing too fast you might enable a good card for an opponent.

Gaining Temperature and Oxygen Bonuses
If you have Nuclear Zone in your hand, and the temperature track is 3 steps from a bonus, you want to be able to play it after an opponent increases temperature. Or perhaps you have Plantation, Oxygen is at 6% and an opponent has 8 plants.

Gaining Information
This gets progressively more important throughout the generations. By stalling, you gain intelligence on your opponents and the overall game state, while at the same time keeping your opponents in the dark. This is especially important during the penultimate generation, when you are not sure whether this will be the last generation or not. After the terraforming is complete, there is still a fight for awards. Will Zeppelins give you the Banker award, or are your opponent able to counter it? You could lose a lot of points by playing too fast. Also, there is a side effect that some players might underestimate you and target their attack cards on someone else.

An «always 2 actions» rule would reduce the game’s strategic depth, and make the game less interesting to play. Maybe clicking «Skip second action» throughout the game prolongs the game by 1-2 minutes, which is quite neglectible considering the total duration.

I have no problem with «sell 1 card races» myself, but I understand that some players dislike it. A possible house rule would be to consider selling patents a special action, that always must be accompanied by a normal action. You shouldn’t be allowed to do 2 actions after selling patents though. Sell patents->Build City/Claim Milestone would be just too strong IMO. Such a house rule would affect the game in some ways though, and for instance make Inventrix a slightly weaker corporation.

Needless to say, I’m not gonna adjust to a suboptimal strategy just because some opponents dislike my playing style. Rather I expect more players to switch to «1 action per time by default» as they become more experienced.

[almedeme]

I would disagree here. As a person who has Terraforming Mars as one of his favourite games in life/on bga (although I hate the steam version).

I would say that 2 actions would CHANGE the game as sometimes I just grab bacteria to get the golden 2/3 actions per turn to outpace the opponent.

Maybe, in theory it could work - I do not deni it, but it does need TESTING first. And then, judging on the feedback to go around and look at the question if the implementaion is worth it

[Gotuso]

Knowing when to play one or two actions is an important skill in this game. I've found the best way is to play one action as default, and two actions when you have a good purpose. There are lots of benefits by doing only one action a time:

Maximising effect of cards that give income or resources per tag or tile
Cards like Toll Station, Martian Rails, Zeppelins, Rover Construction etc.

Avoid becoming an eligible target for attack cards
There are lots of scenarios when you want to await playing a card until it is safe. You don’t want your Titanium Mine nullified by an Asteroid Mining Consortium, or the plants you got when playing Bushes to be destroyed by an asteroid or comet.

Triggering requirements
Sometimes you have a card that has a requirement that could be enabled by opponents’ plays. This also applies the other way, by playing too fast you might enable a good card for an opponent.

Gaining Temperature and Oxygen Bonuses
If you have Nuclear Zone in your hand, and the temperature track is 3 steps from a bonus, you want to be able to play it after an opponent increases temperature. Or perhaps you have Plantation, Oxygen is at 6% and an opponent has 8 plants.

Gaining Information
This gets progressively more important throughout the generations. By stalling, you gain intelligence on your opponents and the overall game state, while at the same time keeping your opponents in the dark. This is especially important during the penultimate generation, when you are not sure whether this will be the last generation or not. After the terraforming is complete, there is still a fight for awards. Will Zeppelins give you the Banker award, or are your opponent able to counter it? You could lose a lot of points by playing too fast. Also, there is a side effect that some players might underestimate you and target their attack cards on someone else.

An «always 2 actions» rule would reduce the game’s strategic depth, and make the game less interesting to play. Maybe clicking «Skip second action» throughout the game prolongs the game by 1-2 minutes, which is quite neglectible considering the total duration.

I have no problem with «sell 1 card races» myself, but I understand that some players dislike it. A possible house rule would be to consider selling patents a special action, that always must be accompanied by a normal action. You shouldn’t be allowed to do 2 actions after selling patents though. Sell patents->Build City/Claim Milestone would be just too strong IMO. Such a house rule would affect the game in some ways though, and for instance make Inventrix a slightly weaker corporation.

Needless to say, I’m not gonna adjust to a suboptimal strategy just because some opponents dislike my playing style. Rather I expect more players to switch to «1 action per time by default» as they become more experienced.

Thing is, no one is denying that 1 action isn't good. It is, especially when you're the only person at the table doing so. However:

a) that advantage goes away if everyone starts playing that way

b) playing 1 action in turn-based mode adds a lot more than just 1-2 minutes. It can add days to a game and really drag things out

[Nekojin]

Thing is, no one is denying that 1 action isn't good. It is, especially when you're the only person at the table doing so. However:

a) that advantage goes away if everyone starts playing that way

b) playing 1 action in turn-based mode adds a lot more than just 1-2 minutes. It can add days to a game and really drag things out

We're not talking about a spherical cow where everyone does everything. One player playing one action tactically may not be noticed by other players right away, particularly early on when players often have only one action to play.

Your "It's not 1-2 minutes" argument shows that you're talking past each other. Whiteblur is talking about live play - players making tactical one-action plays will not extend the game noticeably. You're talking about asynchronous turn-based play. Apples and oranges, my friend.

You cannot tell the difference between someone who has played one action and ended his turn with intentions of playing more later, and someone who has played one action because that's all he has to play. The game does not show you that player #2 then pressed the "Advanced Pass" button. You don't get to see that they've Passed until it becomes their turn again.

I wholeheartedly oppose any "mandatory 2 actions every turn if possible" house rule. If it ever became an option in BGA, I would mark it as "I never want to play with...". If you can't cope with other people's tactical choices, that's a "you" problem, not a "them" problem. And if the timespan of a turn-based game is really a problem for you, there's ways to deal with that. Play with a higher game speed, like 3/day, not the slowest option.

[OwnerOfTheIronThrone]

Playing single action is not some skill as you try to put it. It's obvious for anyone who learned all the rules and saw the cards, that as a rule of thumb you shouldn't double action unless you stand to gain contested resources or spend/gain threatened resources. Even the best players double action allmost all of the time though, because the flow of the game is horrible when players constantly single action. The only situations where single action is strategically relevant in 2p compared to only double action games, is when you have an odd number of actions and you want to double action on your last turn or when someone needs to double action earlier and you respond with a single action. And even then it has minimal impact.

[Gotuso]

Thing is, no one is denying that 1 action isn't good. It is, especially when you're the only person at the table doing so. However:

a) that advantage goes away if everyone starts playing that way

b) playing 1 action in turn-based mode adds a lot more than just 1-2 minutes. It can add days to a game and really drag things out

We're not talking about a spherical cow where everyone does everything. One player playing one action tactically may not be noticed by other players right away, particularly early on when players often have only one action to play.

Your "It's not 1-2 minutes" argument shows that you're talking past each other. Whiteblur is talking about live play - players making tactical one-action plays will not extend the game noticeably. You're talking about asynchronous turn-based play. Apples and oranges, my friend.

You cannot tell the difference between someone who has played one action and ended his turn with intentions of playing more later, and someone who has played one action because that's all he has to play. The game does not show you that player #2 then pressed the "Advanced Pass" button. You don't get to see that they've Passed until it becomes their turn again.

I wholeheartedly oppose any "mandatory 2 actions every turn if possible" house rule. If it ever became an option in BGA, I would mark it as "I never want to play with...". If you can't cope with other people's tactical choices, that's a "you" problem, not a "them" problem. And if the timespan of a turn-based game is really a problem for you, there's ways to deal with that. Play with a higher game speed, like 3/day, not the slowest option.

Someone single-actioning is very noticeable, very quickly. It's especially noticeable early on, since the advantage is minimal then and only people who wholeheartedly believe in single actioning do it at this stage.

Even if we're talking live play, you're kidding yourself if you think it only adds a few minutes.

The whole "if you can't cope with other people's tactical choices" is just fluff. You make it sound like it's some masterful move that only a few can pull off. When in reality it's just a cheap stalling tactic that drags games out if people catch on.

[nanospy]

'The advantage is minimal' just means to me that there is an advantage. I am playing to win, and within the rules, will play for any advantage I can. 'Minimal' advantages add up to wins.

[OwnerOfTheIronThrone]

'The advantage is minimal' just means to me that there is an advantage. I am playing to win, and within the rules, will play for any advantage I can. 'Minimal' advantages add up to wins.

I don't think that stalling without any reason on early gens will give you more advantage then being targeted by raid, because you were the last target with cash on that gen, will put you at disadvantage. And it's not even good sportsmanship if you are relying on someones good intentions to gain an advantage (real or just in your imagination). Doing 1 action constantly just to stall is something that can only work if other people want the game to go faster.

If you care for elo that much let me try to convince you this way. Doing 1 action might improve your win rate by a pretty optimistic 1% (other players will 1 action back when it actually matters). You will however play the games 10% slower, so your elo gain over the same amount of time will be worse than if you played faster and played more games. This doesn't even account for people who might targed you out of spite lowering your win rate.

[Nekojin]

'The advantage is minimal' just means to me that there is an advantage. I am playing to win, and within the rules, will play for any advantage I can. 'Minimal' advantages add up to wins.

I don't think that stalling without any reason on early gens will give you more advantage then being targeted by raid, because you were the last target with cash on that gen, will put you at disadvantage. And it's not even good sportsmanship if you are relying on someones good intentions to gain an advantage (real or just in your imagination). Doing 1 action constantly just to stall is something that can only work if other people want the game to go faster.

If you care for elo that much let me try to convince you this way. Doing 1 action might improve your win rate by a pretty optimistic 1% (other players will 1 action back when it actually matters). You will however play the games 10% slower, so your elo gain over the same amount of time will be worse than if you played faster and played more games. This doesn't even account for people who might targed you out of spite lowering your win rate.

This is a spherical cow argument. The amount of time "saved" by playing 2 actions all the time, every time isn't enough to add up to an extra game. If I'm playing TfM (live play), it's because I have a few hours to play a game. Whether the game takes 115 minutes or 125 minutes, that 10 minutes isn't going to be enough for me to play another game. I can't bank that into a time vault that I can then cash in on when I've banked enough time. The only possible exception is if your day is literally nothing but Terraforming Mars for 16 hours from the moment you wake until you fall asleep... and if that's the case, I'd say you have other things to worry about than whether you can squeeze in one more game.

Also, even if we're assuming the dawn-to-dusk play, you can't predict that your ELO changes going slower would definitely have a negative effect - that's an assumption you're making that isn't supported in any way. More games is more chances to win or lose, not just more wins. That "extra" game you're spherical-cow-ing could be a loss that wipes out your entire day's progress.

If you're playing asynchronous/"turn-based," your time isn't actually impacted by other players' stalling. You take the time you take, and if things are going too slow, you can spin up another game, or another 20 games, and it has no impact on you. The fact that the game takes 23 days instead of 20 to complete is irrelevant, because you're literally not waiting around for someone to finish their turns. You lose more time to people who only log in once a day than you do to people who only take one action at a time. You acknowledged that it was going to take a while when you agreed to play the turn-based mode.

It boils down to a playstyle choice - a playstyle that is completely supported by the rules as written. If that playstyle annoys you this much... again I say, that's a YOU problem, not a THEM problem.

I can accept that you want to play two actions every turn. I don't accept that you get to dictate how I play. That's the fundamental difference here. This is like playing Catan, and demanding that people play with friendly robbers who never steal. I want your sheep.

Edit: Amusingly, this appears to be the opposite end of the bell curve compared to the "draft the opening 10" thread. That one demands too much choice, while this one is attempting to strip away some of the more important choices in the game.

[Corbz]

You've just highlighted one of the issues - that your games can take 115 to 125 mins. Have a look at the game history of the top ranked player, Threadpacifist. He's legitimately probably the best player on BGA and always takes two actions. Also, his games usually take 30 to 45 mins.

At least part of this is the result of taking two actions at a time.