KeithHendricks wrote: ↑07 May 2024, 16:24
After hundreds of games of Terraforming Mars between IRL and online, I get excited about any of these corporations
depending on my starting cards.
Interplanetary Cinematics is likely the strongest corporation in terms of rushing milestones, assuming good cards, given that most of the city tags are also building tags. The building tags are also good engine builders that continue to feed into your economy so rushing building tags is always productive.
Thorgate is much stronger than you give it credit for, and I will almost always take it over Credicor (oh look that’s a couplet). Many of the strongest cards have an energy cost, and Thorgate lets you pile on energy. Depending on card draws, with Thorgate I can often beat Tharsis to the mayor milestone.
All this said, I would say the strongest corps at your specified 2-3 player count, irregardless of any situational considerations like your card draws, are likely Interplanetary Cinematics, Tharsis, and Ecoline. These corps are all-rounders in terms of both the milestones and the awards (especially Landlord). Mining Guild would be among them except the starting assets are just too small. Phobolog would be among them if it was guaranteed at starting with 2-3 space cards. Every corporation can be great with a strong starting card set though.
I assume this post is talking about corporate era let me know if I’m wrong. If it’s not then I’m completely uneducated on this topic lol.
Interplanetary cinematicas, while very strong is not the strongest Corp in the game. At 2 for sure credicor and ecoline are the strongest two corps in the game. Tfm has two main strategies, combined with mid range between both of them. Those are rush and engine. Engine is everything money and draw related. Rush is ending the game early usually using plants heat and asteroids. Credicor is phenomenal at doing both rush and engine and is insanely flexible. Ecoline is a monster at rush. Interplanetary cinematic makes a nice third place. I can’t say much for 3p, but I can say definitively that credicor is also the strongest Corp at that player count. Ecoline is also very strong at 3. Less sure on second and third but very comfortable it’s not tharsis.
At 5p tharsis is the strongest Corp in the game(some might argue credicor is strongest still but they’re both 1 and 2 with debatable order). This is because playing cities early is good in 5p while terrible on 2 and 3. In 5p you want to play cities early because real estate is scarce and claimed very fast. This is not as much of a problem at 3. At 3 the front cost of playing a city is so expensive that it’s usually not worth it to get them down, and at a skilled table no one should be spamming cities against tharsis in most circumstances and certainly not racing tharsis to mayor. If you play at tables where players consistently do this, it can lead to a false inflation of tharsis value because players are making poor choices. Making it a goal to beat tharsis to mayor, means you invested a lot of money to give tharsis 3 free cash prod. This should not be a goal and is not a desirable thing. Even in games were tharsis isn’t in play mayor is the single worst milestone in the game. Winning mayor means you spent a lot of money on 3 tiles that are 0 vp on their own and only vp if you find plant prod or standard project greeneries which is very inefficient. Logically this should make a lot of sense, why would you spend upwards of 70$(you have to count the cost of playing power and the cost of buying the power and city into hand. For example cupola city with the card power plant is 16+3+4+3=26$. This is the cheapest power and city card besides research outpost. If we were to assume we play all 3 cities for the same cost(which we wont) we get 78$ for 3 cities) to get 5 vp(delta 10 against one player if you want) and give your opponent 3 cash prod early. Cities aren’t even prod, they cost so much that at best they will barely pay themselves off before the game ends(cupola) at worst they will not pay themselves off(standard project city and domed crater). Sometimes as tharsis or mining guild they MIGHT be prod, more often mining guild than tharsis. But it is pretty undebatable that for no other Corp they are prod unless the game goes a ridiculous amount of generations(which is likely indicative of a low level table)
Additionally, thorgate is the almost undisputed worst corp in the base game for a reason. This is the most consistent opinion we see not only from skilled players but also most new players. Getting cheap power to play cities is not good, because cities are not good on their own and come with active detriment in tharsis games. In addition most cards that have a power requirement aren’t exactly game winning(ai and dev center being noteworthy stellar cards with power requirement). Early prod isn’t ignorable, but picking an entire Corp just to get cheap energy is like saying I want a Corp with no corporation power. Getting a 3$ discount on all energy sources is just not competitive with any other corporation power. Most games the best use of energy is heat, and in this sense some thorgate hands with several starting energy cards can be used as knockoff helion hands with delayed heat prod from power. In these situations it can be passing, but i would usually want a Corp with a useful power and to not be in this position. At my otb tables it’s unanimously agreed to remove it from the deck because getting it normally just means you have one less Corp choice.
I do heavily agree with your statement about everything depending on your hand though with one caveat. Every single hand in the game is a credicor hand until a better Corp appears. What I mean is if you pick any 10 random cards you could take credicor with it and shouldn’t be upset. There might be a better Corp than credicor for that hand, but credicor isn’t bad. That’s not to say credicor will win with that hand, just that credicor is something of a baseline for good. For example I can draw 10 for a starter and say “wow this is definitely not an ecoline starter” or “wow this is definitely not a tharsis starter”. You can never draw 10 and say “wow this is not a credicor starter”. That starter could be better for another Corp other than credicor, but credicor is just never bad on its own. You take it every time your hand doesn’t snyergize with either corp because starting money is so high and ability is so strong and flexible with a lot of good cards.
I acknowledge I might have used some hyperbole in this post but in general it should be true.
I also agree with a lot of what you say(ie phoblog hand dependent, ecoline and ic good) but I am just very surprised at 3 specific opinions you have (thorgate value, tharsis value, credicor lack of value). I guess it’s wrong to say I’m surprised at tharsis opinion, as that is a very popular but easy to disprove opinion most players have.
