Two actions mostly all the time please

[Magicnerd]

Here is the problem: In 2 player, there is no advantage to ever doing 2 actions except for when you want to place a tile combo or grab 2 milestones at the same time that are contested.

There is a clear advantage to only doing 1 action that is constantly in effect. Namely that you can see what the other does and respond accordingly.

If in 2 player you are ever playing 2 actions while not having a good reason to, you are playing suboptimally. This makes 1v1 matchups devolve into some weird game of chicken, where both players are not doing anything substantial until the other is forced to make their good moves or pass, as not to give away information unncessarily.

This behavior / tactic is often not deciding in who wins of course, but it severely slows down the game to a crawl and for me personally it ruins the experience.

I think a good variant option would be: maximum 1x action passing per era. Then you still keep the option to use it strategically without hindering the game pace unnecessarily.

Adding to this, I forgot to mention that the presence of quite a lot of agressive cards (remove resources or steal production from opponent etc), makes it so that delaying your important actions as much as possible is always beneficial. If your opponent has to pass the era first, you get a big advantage in being able to play your projects without fear of your resources being stolen in that same era.

All in all, I think this whole issue is a big rule oversight in TM, as it is quite obvious that there is often a huge advantage in taking less actions, artificially and unnecessarily stretching out the game time.

[HappyMeaI]

I’m not sure what is a bigger waste of intellectual capacity, arguing two actions per turn over one, or the merit of an argument being based on the Elo of the poster rather than the argument itself.

[FrankJones]

Adding to this, I forgot to mention that the presence of quite a lot of agressive cards (remove resources or steal production from opponent etc), makes it so that delaying your important actions as much as possible is always beneficial. If your opponent has to pass the era first, you get a big advantage in being able to play your projects without fear of your resources being stolen in that same era.

Agreed, and there are many other situations in which doing single actions is beneficial.

All in all, I think this whole issue is a big rule oversight in TM, as it is quite obvious that there is often a huge advantage in taking less actions, artificially and unnecessarily stretching out the game time.

Many games only allow one action per turn. One could just as easily make the case that Terraforming Mars is sped up compared to other games by allowing players to take two actions instead of 1, if desired.

Or, taking the argument that "doing one action wastes time", one could argue that the rules should have allowed for 3 Actions per turn.

I take the position that one appealing element of TFM is that we can take one or two actions. Most games are not like that, and I like that about TFM.

People playing home games should play however they want. People who play in a tournament can set up specific rules. It's possible to create private tournaments among players who agree to this unwritten rule.

But, pressure (or bullying, harassing, whatever) the general TFM player pool into playing one specific way is not okay. Pressuring people by appeal to authority ("Well, I'm an elite level player and you're not, so do what I say because you just don't understand the game well enough to argue otherwise") is even more wrong, and fallacious, and contradicts the general rules of this website.

There are ways that other people in this thread could express their preferences without insulting or being condescending and without making the forum and the game itself uncomfortable for other players.

The stretching out of game time is really only a factor in turn-based online games. Making a set of unwritten rules to "fix" a "problem" that only exists in turn-based games seems a bit odd to me. This can also be averted, mostly, by coordinating game play so that both players are online at the same time. In my turn-based games, I often find myself and my opponent basically playing "real-time" once we realize we're both making moves online at the same time.