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

[DrWreck]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=649054429

I need to be told what I am doing wrong and that it's not just bad luck.

[PotatOS]

Losing 16 games in a row should not be just bad luck. With that said, your opening options in this game were really unfortunate.

Your prelude options are terrible. Statistically from 3p games on BGA, your best prelude is ranked 23/35 (https://github.com/RuneDK93/terraformin ... eludes.txt)

Some thoughts:
I would probably go for Tharsis with Early Settlement + Biolabs hoping for some good draw.
Protected Habs is super nice with Tharsis and some early plant prod so pick that up too. Earth Office is almost always a keep. Very efficient card.
Consider Solar + Fuel factory if you want a long game, but it's a very slow and inefficient combo. Same with Adapted Lichen. Its decent with Tharsis and Protected Habs, buts its a very slow card. It's only really worth it if you are banking on finding Insects or NRA.

You picked Soil factory. It's a really bad card. If you were going for Solar + Soil, then you are going to pay 14+12=26mc for 2 vp and 1 plant prod. This is terrible value. You should value early plant prod at max ~ 10 mc (with protected) and early vp at around 1-2 mc.

Your draws from Biolab were super good.

I don't like your second city placement. I would place on hex (5,7) giving you access to ocean rebates and card placement bonuses.

First draft: Picking Restricted over GIA is questionable. GIA is premium card and is very dangerous to pass to Ecoline.

Gen2 You played solar power without immediate need for power. This sets you up for energy tapping for no reason.

By Gen5 you could have gotten both Gardener and Mayor if you focused directly on them with SPs. This would probably have only required to SP one city, which is okay for Tharsis with Protected Plant prod.

I did not review further. I hope this gave some pointers

[DrWreck]

I passed GIA since neither of us could afford it, and against ecoline I thought it would be more important to block his good placements.

In gen 2 I played solar power with no pay off hoping to wheel into a cheap city, since I played first the following round.

I will take what you said about SP for milestones to heart. That feels wrong, but I will try it.

Finally, with the suggestion of placing 5,7. Do you not want your cities to be adjacent for greenery VP? I haven't seen people succeed placing their cities spaced out, but if that generally works for you I'd love to hear more about it?

Thank you for your advice.

[PotatOS]

I like hearing the reasoning for your decisions. Your choices make a lot of sense in that light!

My thoughts (opinions):

Generally against Ecoline, top priority is to deny Terraforming events. An efficient Ecoline player will win most games that end in generation 8-7. So slowing the game, or at least denying game end control is usually top priority.

The gen2 solar setup for a city into mayor is fairly reasonable, but still quite risky.

Generally SP'ing is not good, as you are overpaying by about 4mc for it. But for Tharsis SP'ing a single city to get Mayor and Gardener, especially against Ecoline is very reasonable.

City placement depends a bit on playstyle, but I generally don't value cities for points early. I value them for board options. If you have access to more areas of the map you gain a larger decision space, which gives you more avenues to construct play lines. Spreading out firstly makes you less vulnerable to interference from blocking tiles between your cities. Secondly, it allows you to setup important lines through cashback from greeneries adjacent to oceans, placement on minerals for cards that depends on it, or card searching if you find key cards that require digging (i.e. NRA for plant tags, Mass, AGT for sci tags). As I generally value early VP at about 1-3 mc, I would usually prefer placing greeneries next to oceans for 4mc back over placing them next to a far away city for 1 VP. 4 mc early can usually be converted into more than 1 VP by the end of the game. This also means that placing greeneries next to opponents cities can be worth it if the cashback you get out-values the point you give the opponent.

[DrWreck]

Could you explain why the small amount of cash back from ocean placements is so highly valued for you? Like, compared to a VP?

Maybe I am asking too much for a forum post, but, obviously I understand fundamentally that resources are resources and more is better-- that they can deliver compounding value-- but 2-4 dollars is miniscule? Like, I had a powerful early income which equated to more than that, and was larger than my opponents, but it didn't make or break for me. I still ultimately fell behind. So like, why would I value those dollars enough to give a placement to my opponents?

To be clear, I have seen other people doing that. So I am not doubting you, I just don't understand.

[FrankJones]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=649054429

I need to be told what I am doing wrong and that it's not just bad luck.

That is a horrible starting hand, and one reason I never play with preludes.

Other notes:
1. Soil factory is a terrible card. NEver keep it, and never buy it in the draft. If you end up with it as a free card, it's still not worth playing, except as a steel-dump late game when you are cashing in for points after terraforming is complete.

2. Solar power. The problem isn't when you played it. The problem is, it's a terrible card, never worth keeping. It's 14 credits for 1 energy production, ad a meaningless early game VP.

3. Adapted Lichen is a bad card. 12 MC for what MIGHT turn into a greenery in 8 generations. (Granted, you Do have protected habitats, but still, this is not a good card.

4. Earth Office - Auto-keep in the starting hand, always.

5. I agree about the second city not being ideal. I would either create two adjacencies with your other city, or, carve out a strong area in the southern part of the map.

6. Pasing Giant Ice asteroid is a major error. I do not understand the "I cannot afford it" reasoning. Draft the card, pay 3 MC, pass as your action, and play Giant Ice in gen 3. You do not need to just play every playable card you can afford, and you can and should buy cards you cannot yet afford or play. (Also, on literally the next draft decision, you kept a card priced identically to GIA, while passing a very good card in electro catapult, while sitting there with energy production (albeit in a card I hate, Solar power). Also, notice, with better city placement, you could have kept Giant Ice, smashed some ecoline plants, and immediately started gaining big points for ocean adjacency. The Tharsis map allows Cities near the equator to gain ocean adjacency money and plant placement bonus simultaneously. A city just north of the two "draw-card" spots would have done well with Giant Ice Asteroid putting oceans directly above it.

7. Restricted Area should have been placed next to the 2 oceans, or maybe on a draw-card spot, or on a 2-steel spot.

8. You played Solar power (A mistake, as others have pointed out), yet you did not keep "Mineral deposit". That is literally throwing away 2 MC for zero reason. (Mineral deposit costs 8 MC to buy and use, and gives you 10 MC worth of steel.)

9. Unless you are setting up a card that uses an energy resource to activate (Development center, Martian rails, etc.), do not just dangle an energy for someone to steal. There's no gain and big risk. What if someone hits you with Energy tapping? You just paid 14 MC for an energy that you do not have.

I'll stop viewing the replay here, because I think the key points has been made and there is already much to analyze and discuss.

Honest assessment: You might not be ready for 3-player games with preludes. I suggest 2-player without preludes until you have a better grasp on the card values and the tactical placement of tiles.

[FrankJones]

Could you explain why the small amount of cash back from ocean placements is so highly valued for you? Like, compared to a VP?

Maybe I am asking too much for a forum post, but, obviously I understand fundamentally that resources are resources and more is better-- that they can deliver compounding value-- but 2-4 dollars is miniscule?

It's not minuscule. Well placed tiles can sequentially trigger a significant return for ocean adjacency on the Original Tharsis Map, resulting in seemingly free plays.

Also, I find it odd that a discussion would involve whether to place a greenery next to a city for 1 VP or next to oceans for 4 Megacredits. Why not both? A city should be placed near ocean spots.

Regardless, I'll take 4 MC over a VP in gen 1 every time. It's why "Dust Seals" is such a terrible card, and why people are miscalculating if they throw away "indentured workers."

[FrankJones]

ike, I had a powerful early income which equated to more than that, and was larger than my opponents, but it didn't make or break for me. I still ultimately fell behind.

In this game, it didn't make or break you. (I'm not even sure that's true, since the final score seems reasonably close and I only watched gens 1 and 2). But it CAN make or break you.

I had two painful losses recently, each by a point.
1) I was One dollar short of being able to play Immigrant city as my final action, which would have given me 2 points. I lost by one pint. I did not have immigrant city when I made the crucial error - failing to convert my measly 3 energy into money using power infrastructure - but, after playing a science card for the Victory point it gave, I drew (using Olympus conference) immigrant city, and realized my folly.

2) This was actually a tie - but my final action was to convert energy into money using power infrastructure (odd that both my examples involve this card). Thermalist was in play and was razor-thin, so I simply calculated the minimum money I would need to win the tiebreaker, if it came down to it (I did not have live scoring on, but I sensed the score was very close). Not wanting to make a silly mistake and lose thermalist, I transferred an amount that would win me the tiebreaker by one dollar, after accounting for greenery placement bonuses. The result? TIE GAME. What happened?? Oops. When I activated power infrastructure, my opponent had one card left. The dollar he received for selling it created the tie game. I needed to transfer one more energy into money.

Every dollar matters.

[FrankJones]

Finally, with the suggestion of placing 5,7. Do you not want your cities to be adjacent for greenery VP? I haven't seen people succeed placing their cities spaced out, but if that generally works for you I'd love to hear more about it?

(5,7) is exactly the spot for your second city. If you haven't seen people succeed by separating cities, it is because they were probably new or weak players doing what I call, "Tharsis being Tharsis", meaning, spamming the board with an absurd number of densely-packed cities and no plant production, and finishing with a big MC income and almost no map points. And the income ends up not mattering, because my TR + MC income comes close to matching theirs, but I actually have the TR points.

But, having two highly strategically placed cities in different places can be very valuable. If things go well, you might even end up with 11 total greeneries around them, which is the same number of points you would get if you surrounded both your cities (as they were placed) with greeneries.

As Potatoes pointed out through - the way you placed your cities, you are inviting a block from any one of:
Industrial Center
Commercial District
Restricted Area
Urbanized Area
Possibly ecological Zone (Although in this case I think you already had that card in your hand)
Land Claim

And possibly others.

[CapitalDecay]

Hey DrWreck,

Your post sounded familiar and I remembered we played a game together and you mentioned you were on a 6 game losing streak at the time. I re-watched our game from your perspective for the first two gens and passing earth catapult to me on first draft was a big mistake. I know you were choosing between that and WIFE, but earth catapult has so much value. Then immediately after passing me catapult , you pass me earth office too. As others have said, I think you need to spend more time thinking about card value and what you are passing your opponents. Also, I am still learning card values too, so take my opinions with that in mind.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=632522295