Skipping second action

[smallgreenblur]

Any appetite out there for a version that enforces 2 actions per turn if possible? I’m enjoying TM a lot but as I get higher I find a lot of players skips every second action for the minor boost to win rate it gives. When they also take 40 sec to decide their action it turns a 45 min game into 1hr 15…

[CapitalDecay]

I think the gentleman's agreement, at least higher skilled players, is always two actions, unless you need to, then tit for tat (you start doing one action, I start doing one action until you go back to two). Most games I've played, players will even sell card, sell card. I've never seen someone do 1 action only every / most turns. Royalrook made a similar post https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36090 a few months back with a lot of discussion.

[FrankJones]

Any appetite out there for a version that enforces 2 actions per turn if possible? I’m enjoying TM a lot but as I get higher I find a lot of players skips every second action for the minor boost to win rate it gives. When they also take 40 sec to decide their action it turns a 45 min game into 1hr 15…

That fundamentally changes the game.

Strategically, there is no reason to take 2 actions unless it is necessary for some reason - claiming a milestone, converting plants into a greenery, gaining a TR track bonus.

For what it's worth, when I play real-time, I mostly single-action, but I don't take 40 seconds to do it. I have completed 2-player games without preludes in 45 total minutes for both players' moves.

There are plenty of games on here that have timers that are either too quick or too slow per turn; that's not the fault of the players if they utilize that time to think out what they want to do.

I would just give players a red-thumb if you find that their play is too slow for your liking.

[FrankJones]

I think the gentleman's agreement, at least higher skilled players, is always two actions, unless you need to, then tit for tat (you start doing one action, I start doing one action until you go back to two). Most games I've played, players will even sell card, sell card. I've never seen someone do 1 action only every / most turns. Royalrook made a similar post https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36090 a few months back with a lot of discussion.

Well,

When I am playing a strategy game in competitive mode, I will play strategically, and if that means performing one action, so be it. I am not aware of any "gentlemen's agreement" to do otherwise. I am aware of a select few players trying to bully people into playing a specific way, and that's not cool.

I play with a high-rated player (I myself am 497 and have been as high as 535; not sure whether that makes me a "higher skilled player or not ), and we single action back and forth at very fast speed. It doesn't add any significant time to the game length.

[Andrei3009]

An opinion from the other side of the barricade: I'm a player who does "random" one actions, all in order to get more time to think about the next move. That's why I'm always happy when an opponent takes the time to think about a move - I use that time to think about the current game situation.
If a pass before my opponent in last gen I just go to drink some water and let opponent have fun OR carefully watch every move in case of close game.

[smallgreenblur]

I think the gentleman's agreement, at least higher skilled players, is always two actions, unless you need to, then tit for tat (you start doing one action, I start doing one action until you go back to two). Most games I've played, players will even sell card, sell card. I've never seen someone do 1 action only every / most turns. Royalrook made a similar post https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36090 a few months back with a lot of discussion.

I think Frank’s reply which sounds offended that I would even ask the question because it’s not tactically optimised gives me the answer to my original question.

I made the original post because I played arena twice yesterday, the first game I was ahead but got distracted by my wife for a minute and the guy kicked me out at -21 seconds without a word. The second I played against an elite elo player who skipped every second go the entire game and got offended when I said I’d rather lose than play like that.

I think if that (and Frank) are representative of the TM community I’ll find another game

[rambling_coherently]

I think the gentleman's agreement, at least higher skilled players, is always two actions, unless you need to, then tit for tat (you start doing one action, I start doing one action until you go back to two). Most games I've played, players will even sell card, sell card. I've never seen someone do 1 action only every / most turns. Royalrook made a similar post https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36090 a few months back with a lot of discussion.

I think Frank’s reply which sounds offended that I would even ask the question because it’s not tactically optimised gives me the answer to my original question.

I made the original post because I played arena twice yesterday, the first game I was ahead but got distracted by my wife for a minute and the guy kicked me out at -21 seconds without a word. The second I played against an elite elo player who skipped every second go the entire game and got offended when I said I’d rather lose than play like that.

I think if that (and Frank) are representative of the TM community I’ll find another game

Personally, I have had no issues playing TM on BGA, everyone seems very chill. One guy was upset with my draft and called "bad game" at the end, but I just gg'd and went on, no biggie.

I've had a few moments where someone went over time (myself and opponents), I leave a quick message in chat if it's about to happen and they say they'll wait. No trouble yet. If you didn't ask, maybe they assumed you left?

CapitalDecay is right, most people take 2 actions and matching actions is normal if one person does it (for strategic purposes and all). Towards the endgame, one action can happen a bit more, but that's expected.

[CapitalDecay]

I think the gentleman's agreement, at least higher skilled players, is always two actions, unless you need to, then tit for tat (you start doing one action, I start doing one action until you go back to two). Most games I've played, players will even sell card, sell card. I've never seen someone do 1 action only every / most turns. Royalrook made a similar post https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36090 a few months back with a lot of discussion.

I think Frank’s reply which sounds offended that I would even ask the question because it’s not tactically optimised gives me the answer to my original question.

I made the original post because I played arena twice yesterday, the first game I was ahead but got distracted by my wife for a minute and the guy kicked me out at -21 seconds without a word. The second I played against an elite elo player who skipped every second go the entire game and got offended when I said I’d rather lose than play like that.

I think if that (and Frank) are representative of the TM community I’ll find another game

I would say most players will kick for a time penalty, but not sure if that's a TfM specific thing. If someone's asks for a few minutes I would give it to them, others maybe not so much.

As for Frank's response, I guess I haven't had the pleasure of playing with him or others that take one move tactically every turn, but I have been playing more turn based recently. I don't speak for everyone, but most players I see do two actions unless needed. But play how you like, I'm definitely not on the side of bullying people into playing a specific way.

[FrankJones]

I think the gentleman's agreement, at least higher skilled players, is always two actions, unless you need to, then tit for tat (you start doing one action, I start doing one action until you go back to two). Most games I've played, players will even sell card, sell card. I've never seen someone do 1 action only every / most turns. Royalrook made a similar post https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36090 a few months back with a lot of discussion.

I think Frank’s reply which sounds offended that I would even ask the question because it’s not tactically optimised gives me the answer to my original question.

I made the original post because I played arena twice yesterday, the first game I was ahead but got distracted by my wife for a minute and the guy kicked me out at -21 seconds without a word. The second I played against an elite elo player who skipped every second go the entire game and got offended when I said I’d rather lose than play like that.

I think if that (and Frank) are representative of the TM community I’ll find another game

So, you missed the part of my post where I said I do not actually play like that? (Meaning, I do not kick a player from a game.)

[FrankJones]

I think the issue here is that any player can, if desired, use the turn-timer system to drag out a game, possibly to get an opponent frustrated and/or want to quit.

Bu this isn't about taking one action or two actions and it is not specific to terraforming Mars. Please allow me to explain.

In Race for The Galaxy, the turn timer is bizarre; even the fastest setting is very slow, and the slowest setting makes it allowable for any one turn to take half as long as the entire game usually takes. Fortunately, nobody ever comes close to using the entire turn timer, and all my RFTG games take the expected amount of time. But, a person acting in bad faith could, if desired, waste a lot of time by allowing the clock to run down to near zero on each decision, which would make for a very frustrating experience. As I said, in my 300? games in RFTG, nobody has ever done this.

In Terraforming Mars, any player could do something similar, regardless of the number of actions taken per turn. Even if a player takes 2 actions per turn, the game will be agonizing if that player uses 2:40 of the 2:42 minute turn timer every turn.

Conversely, if I can play my entire game in 22 minutes, in a 12-generation 2-player game, does it really matter whether I am taking 1 action or 2 actions per turn? If, overall, I am using a reasonable amount of clock that is aligned with the expected typical amount of clock used and gametime length, what difference does it make whether I do single actions half the time and double actions the other half? Or 60-40 or 70-30 or whatever?

As for being kicked because of being out of time:

1) I have never kicked an opponent from a game. I think it's terrible sportsmanship.
2) What does that have to do with the topic at hand? An opponent's choice to do single actions or double actions or any combination of the two, should not have any bearing on whether the opponent's clock goes into the negative.
3) Even when the clock goes negative, it's not as though you automatically get booted. The opponent would need to click "skip players out of time", and then you get a 20-second countdown. I've only had this happen one time out of hundreds of games and probably 10,000+ turns, and that was when my entire internet crashed and I hadn't yet thought to have my cell phone ready as a backup (Now I always do). It is not anyone else's fault if a player goes 20 seconds into the negative and gets kicked. As I said, I have never kicked anyone, but that is a player's right to do so when an opponent is not able to avoid going more than 20 seconds into the negative.


If an opponent is playing Terraforming Mars (Or any game) too slowly, maybe the player is new, or struggling with decisions, or any number of other reasons. I would just say in the chat, "This game is moving a lot slower than my preferred pace; is anything going on that is distracting you from the game, because I would very much appreciate a better pace?" If the person does not respond or responds rudely, just give that player a red thumb after the game.

There are some games here that typically have a pace I do not like. So, I mostly avoid those games.