I am on my 16th straight loss and I need to be told where I can improve

[bwalsh96]

Yeah, what potatoes said. There isn’t much else to debate or add. Y’all need to be a bit nicer and listen to the advice of top players who have actual TM stats to share from Steam.

[FrankJones]

I agree with everything Fugacity said, except the comment about heat.

Likewise.

The statement that heat is "useless" is a bit strong. Are there some bad heat cards? Sure.
Maybe it would help if we examined the cards:

But first, a note. One problem with heat is that it might be the easiest resource to overproduce and have a large useless pile of. I think I had a game recently in which I ended with 89 heat. I do not recall whether I won or lost, but either way, that almost certainly means I went wrong somewhere.

[Edit - Yes, I lost. By a lot. 144-124. What an odd game. My ending energy production was +3 and Heat was +12. I only played three heat production cards the entire game: Mohole +4, GHG factories +4, Import of advanced GHG +2. The game went 15 generations. ]

I prefer to raise temperature with space events and optimal aerobraking, or with transferred heat from Quantum Extractor and Mass converter. Obviously, those cards aren't easy to get, since it's rare for someone to pass them in the draft.

Anyway, the heat cards:

1) Micro-mills. Garbage. Even if I draw it as a free card I rarely play it. It's not worth the 4 dollars. (Yes, 4. The card could be sold for a dollar). Exceptions: If I would otherwise have 7 or 15 heat, and I would be able to swipe one of the three temperature track bonuses by having one more heat, I will probably play the card.

2) and 3) Carbonate Processing and GHG factories. I am not a big fan – they are not all that good unless played early, and, it’s difficult to get early energy production sometimes. If I am making a push for builder, they can be very useful.

4) Black Polar Dust. Well, I hate this card and consider it to be complete trash. Probably for the same reason listed above – I want the Heat production early but I really hate taking a negative 2 in MC production early on.

5) Lunar Beam: Situational. At full cost, I rarely play it unless I am desperate for energy production. Again, an early -2 MC production is tough. As Teractor, I am obviously more likely to play it, and if I also have Earth Office, I’ll most likely play it. Overall, not a great card.

6) Beam From a Throium Asteroid. Probably one of the weaker Jovian cards. And not always easy to play, since most Jovian cards are not worth playing most of the time, and you need the Jovian tag to play it.

7) Mohole Area. Probably the best one. I am always happy to have it in my starting hand. First generation 4 heat production (Usually guarantees a temperature bump by gen 3 even without any other cards), a tile, a building card, and (usually) 2 cards or 2 titanium. Creates a very strong start when paired with Robotic Workforce to copy it.

8) Soletta: I do not like to play this unless it is gen 1. And few corporations can do that. Teractor, Credicor, Phobolog. And, Credicor and Phobolog usually will still not get to raise the temperature until gen 3. The tag is not a high value tag. Helion certainly does well with it, but it is very tough for Helion to have the cash to play this gen 1.

9) and 10) The two earth-space events. Import of advanced GHG, and Imported GHG. I love space events. Especially earth space events. They can be so heavily discounted. Many times I have played these for zero dollars AND received back 6 MC and 3 heat (From media group + optimal aerobraking. I think it is a poor play to just slam them down on the tableau at full cost with no rebates.

11) Aerobraked Ammonia Asteroid: Easily the worst space event, in my opinion. I rarely play it. It needs to come out early, and the one plant production is likely to get zapped by an asteroid before it turns into a greenery. He microbes usually have nowhere to go in the early game. Just a weird combination of effects.

12) Methane From Titan. Meh. It’s expensive, and without any support, takes 4 gens to raise the temperature and 4 gens to place a greenery. Often unplayable early because of the annoying oxygen requirement. Part of its value is in the 2 VP, which I do not want to pay for in the early game.

13) Underground detonations. No comment.

And there we have it. It’s not easy to get good value out of many of these cards, but if you can, as Potatoes noted, you’re in good shape for a TR rush. I’m guessing the possibility of having wasted unused heat is why those numbers taper off when the game runs into the later generations. And since I play 2-player without preludes, my gams pretty much always do.

Final thought: It’s difficult to play if you’re worried about every attack card around every corner, but it’s especially painful to produce heat gen 1 and have the opponent immediately play Heat trappers.

[RoyalRook]

I am just going to add something more on top of the basics:

1) Like Potato has mentioned, heat prod is super important in all settings b/c 90% of time it's the last parameter to be maxed out. So whoever controls the heat, controls the tempo of the game. Black Polar Dust must be kept and played on gen1 especially when you can get the 2 card ocean spot. That's -10 discount from the card rebate on top of +3 heat prod and 1 TR.

2) Since you are improving, don't EVER buy more than 4 card in the initial draft, trust me you probably don't understand the main lines nor has the skill the manage the starting cash pools; which means majority of times you are overbuying, so you gg yourself from the start. As you get better then you can experiment more. So right now? Buy no more than 4 cards from the start, 1 cards each gen, no buy on gen 6 and 8. Try it, and I will see you ELO 400 in no time.

3) Don't ever pass earth catapult, AI central or Anti grav; if you see all three in a draft 3p pick earth cat over AI, 2p AI over earth cat; Don't pass Media Group, Optimal Aerobreaking, Mass Converter(I can talk about this card all day, it's ridiculous) Nitrogen Rich Asteroid, Insects, Herbivore, Viral Enhancer, Loan, Arctic Algae, Ecological Zone, Decomposor, Big Asteroid, Deimo, Giant Iced Asteroid, Pets(when against low ranked), Research, Mars University, Olympus Conference and earth office. Just don't do it.

4) Don't play Phobolog, Inventrix, Helion until you get better, and never play UNMI.

5) Finally, if you are going to improve your production, just play it. Don't be fancy about it, gen 2 two prod cartel is better than gen 3 three prod cartel b/c of tempo at lower skill level. Keep it simple, take the sure things, if you already get 2 milestones and a reward, don't risk your position by fund another awards unless it's gen 10 or something(in most cases). Against normal players if you can finish the game on gen 8 on your terms, it's usually a win for you. Calculate your outs for gen 9.

Remember, count everything out in the beginning, be disciplined in the mid game, and cash out on gen 9 = easy 400 Elo. After that, just play more games, build on top and be more flexible regarding to the points listed above.

DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO PLAY UNMI, DON'T DO IT UNLESS IT'S FOR MEMES.

[FrankJones]

This is a general reply to the forum, not to RoyalRook specifically.

1) I think it's a bit odd to say that Black Polar Dust is a must-play in gen 1. In my own experience, including a large number of games against high-level players, I have rarely seen this play made. Also, in my experience, Oxygen is usually the last parameter, not temperature.

2) I would never advise a player to take such a rigid approach of "never buy more than 4 of the first 10 cards." If 7 cards are worth buying, it is a major error to only buy 4.

3) Passing Earth catapult is indeed a disastrous play, though it should be clarified that it can sometimes safely be passed in what is likely to be the last or second-to-last generation. This likely depends on how many cards the opponent is holding. Passing AI Central or Anti-grav is also very dangerous. Even if the opponent has zero science tags, passing Antiigrav (especially in a long-gen game) will eventually come back to haunt you.

Also, add "Mass Convertor" to this list. Passing that card is insane. One could make a case that the card's value, when played, approaches 40 MC. Some players, especially when playing colonies, love playing Giant Space Mirror in gen 1. That card (17 MC, space tag, +3 energy production) Seems to set the value of 6 energy production at 40 MC. And Mass converter has a better tag and also gives the effect of space station. Mass converter sometimes comes out late, which is why I said the value might approach 40 MC, rather than saying its value approaches 50 MC.

Oops. I just noticed that there were more cards listed after the first sentence, and Mass converter is one of them.

Media Group, Optimal Aerobraking, Research, Olympus conference, Mars University, Earth office - Agreed, these are all top tier cards.

Nitrogen-rich asteroid can occasionally be passed if it looks as though the opponent will have difficulty affording it and making use of it (sometimes the opponent has no plant tags and is obviously not likely to play any). Still, this is a dangerous card to pass.

Passing insects is generally a terrible idea. If it is passed, there better be a really good reason.
Herbivores is, in my opinion, nothing special. There are many cards I would keep over Herbivores. I don't lose any sleep over passing this card.
Likewise Pets. It's usually an early investment in VPs, which I am not a fan of. At full price, I find it can stunt early development. I feel as though this card needs to end up with 6 pets on it to be worth having played it, and that will not always be the case.

Viral enhancers is a great card and should rarely be passed.
I assume "loan" means "investment loan" and not the prelude card. Cards such as Investment Loan, Indentured workers, and media archives can be deadly. I'm sure every experienced player has fallen victim to an end-game barrage of points resulting from an opponent playing those cards at discount prices with media group. It can be brutal.

Ecological Zone and decomposers are strong. And eco-zone has the extra side benefit of being a good blocking tile. The trifecta of Viral enhancers + decomposers + Ecological zone can rack up big points.

Most space events are excellent cards, but, yes, Deimos, Big asteroid, and giant ice are insane card to pass. They are so underpriced for their value, and so easily reduced in price by discounts and rebates.

It should be noted, there are only so many cards that can be added to such a list (Hence why I would not put pets or herbivores on it). Most players who are stuck at any particular level of progress probably understand to some extent that these are all great cards, but struggle with drafts that have more than one of them.

4) Phobolog with a good phobolog hand is better than Thorgate with a terrible thorgate hand. Same goes for Inventrix. Helion? What's the issue with Helion? That's not a difficult corporation to use. I think it's overrated, but it's not difficult to use. I do generally try to avoid Phobolog, but that's mostly because a good phobolog hand is hard to find.

I would generally agree about UNMI, especially since a "good UNMI hand" is so rare. The other choice is almost certainly better.

5) I am usually okay with playing cartel as soon as I have 2 other tags. As noted by Rook, delaying it in hopes of getting more tags can end up losing value. Sometimes you can hide it in your hand and trick the opponent into funding banker. But yes, generally speaking, play the production cards as soon as they are viable. The same goes for Satellites, medical lab, and other similar tag-based production cards.


I should add a disclaimer - my advice in this post is more geared to 2-player non prelude, so take it for what it worth. I think most of it still applies. But in any game that ends in 8 generations, a lot of usually good cards might be worthless much of the time.

[Sonid]

2) Since you are improving, don't EVER buy more than 4 card in the initial draft, trust me you probably don't understand the main lines nor has the skill the manage the starting cash pools; which means majority of times you are overbuying, so you gg yourself from the start. As you get better then you can experiment more. So right now? Buy no more than 4 cards from the start, 1 cards each gen, no buy on gen 6 and 8. Try it, and I will see you ELO 400 in no time.

The rest of this post made good sense, but what's the theory behind not buying cards on gen 6 and 8? Never seen that piece of advice before.

[FrankJones]

The rest of this post made good sense, but what's the theory behind not buying cards on gen 6 and 8? Never seen that piece of advice before.

I missed that part because I stopped reading after "don't EVER buy more than 4 cards in the initial draft".

There is no theory. It's nonsense.

Imagine a gen 6 draft with 3 of the cards in the "never pass these cards" list, but buying none of them because someone on the internet said to not buy any cards in gen 6.

[charliec247]

I don't think that's a hard rule on those two specific gens, but more like by that time your engine should be up and running and you should be focused on only cards that can get you points and get you to the endgame. By that point most of the cards don't matter.

[bwalsh96]

Yeah, if you want to win more… follow what Potatoes and Rook said. Frank said Lunar Beam is not good but it is one of the highest win rate cards when played early and every top player knows that one. There are lots of opinions out here when in reality the game has been pretty thoroughly studied. Just go read the steam forum instead of this one. It’s a safer bet.

[FrankJones]

Yeah, if you want to win more… follow what Potatoes and Rook said. Frank said Lunar Beam is not good but it is one of the highest win rate cards when played early and every top player knows that one. There are lots of opinions out here when in reality the game has been pretty thoroughly studied. Just go read the steam forum instead of this one. It’s a safer bet.

I said Lunar beam is situational. Playing it gen 1 can be a bit rough with the MC production hit. I said "overall not a great card". That's different from "not a good card".
Additionally, correlation does not equal causation. It may be the case that Lunar Beam is only played early by very strong players, thus creating a correlation that lacks causation.

Other context matters also. Potatoes noted that the stats for heat production tail off badly in games that approach higher generations - and those numbers for higher generations are where most of my games end up. I did not int my post that I play 2-player without prelude, so that is going to result in very different card valuations that, let's say, 4-player with preludes.

Here is what Potatoes said about Heat:

"I.e. heat was the most important resource to outproduce your opponent in. Note this is in games ending in generation 9 or 10. If we go to gen 11 or 12 plant and mc production starts outscaling heat production"

Okay, well, my games tend to go to gen 12 or 13, sometimes 14. In which case, I stand by my comment about Lunar Beam being "not a great card". But, I am not a master-level player. Maybe I am undervaluing
Lunar Beam and that is why I peaked at 530 Elo and am now sitting at 500. I don't know. I tend to think my biggest weakness is sloppy play and carelessness, which has cost me a bunch of games. I also probably have some personal likes and dislikes of specific cards that might be hurting me.

One comment I saw was, "all top players know this (that Lunar Beam is correlated with a high win percentage)" May I ask how we are defining "top player"? Because, I think only 1% of TFM players on this site are expert level (500+, right?)

[FrankJones]

Yeah, if you want to win more… follow what Potatoes and Rook said. Frank said Lunar Beam is not good but it is one of the highest win rate cards when played early and every top player knows that one. There are lots of opinions out here when in reality the game has been pretty thoroughly studied. Just go read the steam forum instead of this one. It’s a safer bet.

The steam forums are littered with some pretty terrible advice. Any forum will have good advice and bad advice.
When I think about the cards that have burned me, Lunar Beam just isn't one of them. There is a list of cards that have come back to bite me pretty bad and made me curse myself for passing them, but Lunar Beam is not one of them. I will take it under advisement to examine my assessment of the card, given your TFM rating. I would also be curious about your thoughts on the card in light of what Potatoes said about longer-gen games and my own preference for 2-player without prelude.