Terraforming Mars: A New View of the Map

Using the spaces determined by the previous valuations, each of the maps is shown below. Each space on the maps was calculated and given a color. The darker the green color the more points the location is worth.

All values show the Normalized values for the locations

NOTE: All images are of the Terraforming Mars Boardgame. They were graphically designed by Isaac Fryxelius, and he did an excellent job on them

Original Map

The Original map has a total potential value of 172.25 MC worth of locations, within an average of 2.82 MC per space. Most of this is concentrated along the equatorial belt, with ocean tiles essentially splitting access to half of these spaces. This makes locations which may be built in ocean tiles (Mohole, Protected Valley, etc.) particularly valuable as they permit a player to cross these ocean locations granting access to the entire belt.

Mineral locations are clumped into three main areas. To the North and South Iron deposits exist. Titanium is only available on three locations, and not in any great quantity.

Cities may be built almost at any location and have access to resources. City placement is relatively easy and blocking/expansion of cities may take place just about anywhere. This leaves lots of open area to build in while the oceans in the middle effectively separate the two areas of the board.

Elysium map

Elysium is the richest of the maps, having both the most number of spaces with benefits and the largest single benefit locations ont he map. Two of the locations have a value of 9 or more. Like the Original Map, Elysium's main locations are on the equatorial belt, but the oceans do not as effectively break up the map.

The large bodies of water on the right hand side of the map effectively block expansion to the center of the map for those grabbing the "3-card" spot. It can be effective to take this location, but some other method of getting to the center of the map needs to be devised. Titanium is slightly more plentiful, and iron is much more plentiful than in the Original. Still, the total value difference between the maps is only 8.25MC, but the large value locations are definitely worth taking.

Despite this map being more plentiful in minerals and plants, placing cities is slightly more of a challenge. The lower portion of the map is a large wide open area, while the upper portion is broken up by all the ocean tiles. While most would choose to focus on the center or edges of the map to maximize resource gains, city scoring in these areas is severely restricted.

Hellas Map

Hellas poses an interesting challenge. Despite having fewer total resources, albeit not by much, it isn't effectively broken up. furthermore, some of the south pole locations offer heat, the only map to provide this benefit. Oceans on this map are either on the edge or in one large 7 hex structure just ot the right hand side.

Mineral deposits are more plentiful, while plants are more rare than the other maps, as befits the south pole. Being the South Pole of Mars, the plant locations are all on the upper edges. Furthermore, the most valuable spot on the board is arguably in the worst potential position and, though it provides a great benefit, it raises the cost of any actions there by 6. This means settling the South Pole requires a greater overall income, although the benefit is probably worth it.

Since the oceans are on edges or in one big area, this leaves the map wide open for settlement. Titanium locations are primarily on the edges of the map, while iron exists in a large clump in the center of the board. This large clumping of iron breeds competition for locations in the center of the map, despite having more total overall room to expand.

Terraforming Mars: Production Valuations

Production Issues

Producing resources in Terraforming Mars occurs at the beginning of every generation after the first. Two complications arise when calculating Production in Terraforming Mars.

First, the longer a game of Terraforming Mars runs, the more of a resource will be generated through production. Since the average game was calculated, the best thing is to standardize on an 'average' game. So, 10 generations (turns) is the number to use in calculating production for comparison purposes. As more players enter the game, the number of turns will decrease, but 10 provides a common baseline for most 2-4 player games.

Second, total output will differ based on when the production begins. Started at the beginning of a game, Production will generate the greatest returns. If Production is started on the last turn, it provides no benefit (plant's excepted).

Minimum Production

For evaluative purposes, Awards and Milestones will be ignored. This makes the minimum Production for all resources 0mc, except plants. Plants may be spent to boost final scores at End Game (if they total 8). Thus, plants will have one extra generation of production if produced on the last turn of the game.

Maximum Production

For all resources, except plants and Electricity, the maximum production is 9 turns of production. Thus, generating 1mc per turn will yield 9mc in total. Remember, production on Turn 1 is impossible as no production will occur until the start of Turn 2.

Plants receive a maximum of 10 turns of production since they may be used the turn after the game ends in an end game condition style mechanism (described in Minimum Production above). During this last turn, a plant can only be spent for 1VP since there is no oxygen. Both of these have minor impact on plant calculations, but they are factored into the table below.

Electricity takes an extra turn before become usable heat.

Electricity Production has an additional built-in delay of 1 turn. This is because electrictity becomes Heat on the turn after it is generated. Thus, an Electricity production on Turn 1 will become Heat on Turn 3. This delay means electricity production has only 8 turns of useful maximum production.

Average Production

For most resources, average production occurs for roughly 4.5 turns (9/2). Plants will undergo 5 turns of production (10/2), while electricity will experience 4 turns of production before becoming heat.

Value of Production

The value of production is calculated for Maximum and Average production. Minimum production is always 0, so it isn't worth noting. Multiplying out the production, and assuming every resource is efficiently spent on generating VP (e.g. every amount generates a VP), the following values are calculated for each Resource Production:

	Actual		Normalized
Production	Max	Average	Max	Average	Return
Money	9	4.5	9	4.5	1
Electricity	11	5.5	13	6.5	1.181818
Heat	15.75	7.875	14.625	7.3125	0.928571
Iron	18	9	18	9	1
Plant	28.75	14.375	16.25	8.125	0.565217
Plant-oxy	28.75	15.8125	30.875	16.25	1.073913
Titanium	27	13.5	27	13.5	1

Actual and Normalized Resource production values

Summary

The Return of all Production values didn't change, except for Plants which generate oxygen. This dropped slightly from 1.13 to 1.07. This is due to the last turn of production being worth just slightly less. Still, it remains above 1, which indicates it is still a good option.

When looking at Totals output, Plant production is always the best purchase by a long shot, especially when Normalized to VP values. Titanium and Iron make a second and third "best" investment, but this is only if the Titanium and Iron can be converted directly into VP.

With Production values and resource values determined, it is now time to begin evaluating the "worth" of elements in the game.

Terraforming Mars: Valuing Resources

Resources

The goal of this post is to normalize the cost of all resources for comparison purposes.

Normalized & Actual Cost of Resources

Calculating the Actual value of a resource requires looking at that Resources Standard Project cost and dividing by its conversion rate (typically 8). Similarly, the Normalized cost is the VP cost (13) divided by the resources conversion rate.

Money (mc)

Money is the easiest to calculate, as it is the basis of all analysis, 1mc=1mc. This is both the Normalized and the Actual cost for money.

Steel & Titanium

Iron and Steel are worth 2mc and 3mc. This is because Iron and Steel may be traded 2 to 1 and Titanium 3 to 1 when play Buildings or Space tags, respectively. For this to work, we will assume every token of generated either resource is also spent.

 Normalized Heat & Energy

It takes 8 Heat to generate one Temp increase (1VP).Thus, Heat and Energy have the same "normalized" cost of 1.625mc.

Plants

8 Plants will generate 1 Greenery tile. This will provide either 1 or 2 VP depending on if Oxygen will increase or not. With Oxygen, the Normalized value of Plants becomes 3.25mc, and without Oxygen it is the same as Heat or Energy, 1.625mc.

Cards (Patents)

It costs 3mc to keep a card in a player's hand. Therefore, if a card is generated it "saves" the player spending 3mc to keep the card. A card's value will differ depending on the card, but all cards can be sold for 1mc. Thus, the card's least value can be calculated as 1mc. If, after calculating a card's effectiveness, it is less than the value of selling a card, it would be best to sell the card.

Summary

In this post the value of individual resources were determined. From this, the calculated values for each resource are as follows:

Resources	Actual Cost	Normalized	Effectiveness
Plant w/oxy	2.875	3.250	1.130
Plant-no oxy	2.875	1.625	0.565
Heat	1.750	1.625	0.929
Electricity	1.375	1.625	1.182
Card (traded)	3.000	1.000	0.333
Iron	2.000	2.000	1.000
Titanium	3.000	3.000	1.000
Money	1.000	1.000	1.000

The most surprising result of this analysis is the most effective move possible is to gain Energy, although no cards offer this. This is because of the reduced cost in comparison to Heat. Next post will concern with calculating Production values of various resources.

Terraforming Mars: What a Game Looks Like

Charting a Game

(Pre-Note: Information I have is limited to 3 & 4 Player games. I am looking for data on 5-Player games, and if your interested in helping me collect data, please contact me at: cfolmar@gmail.com. I'd like to create a library of Game Plays and share the results after a period of time. If enough interest, I'll create a sheet to download and record game plays with instructions).

Having determined the magical 13MC/VP, it's time to look at what a game actually 'looks' like. This is important to determine how long a game of Terraforming Mars lasts. It also shows an interesting trend.

Any individual play will differ based on a number of factors: corporation chosen, card draw, player experience, set chosen, etc. The focus of these individual factors is for later blog posts. For this analysis, however, we will look at the total VP given out to all players each turn. We will also only look at the Terraform Rating gained from working towards one of the main End Game conditions. So, for example, if during Turn 1 Player A increased Oxygen 1 Step and Player B increased the Temp 1 Step, then Turn 1 earned a 2 VP total (just to different players).

This may seem a strange and arbitrary way of looking like at a game, but the insights are amazing.

3-Player Game

We start with a four 3-player games (graph below). The important thing to see is how the games ended from Generation 10 to 12. More can be seen, but we will dissect it more later in the post.

3-Player Games

4-Player Game

 Next we look at 4 player games. Here the games end from Generation 9 to Generation 12. Still, despite the somewhat shorter games, for which there is a reason we will go into later, we can see the beginning of a definite patter. To make it more obvious we will take the average of the 3 and 4 player games and compare them.

Comparison: 3v4 Player Game

The games above may seem to have no pattern, but when we average the games together, and compare these averages, we see a definite pattern. I've included an average of the 3-player and 4-player games as a reference in the graph below.

 Here we can see the general outline of a game take shape. The game starts with an initial rush of Terraform Rating increases, immediately followed by a slight dip in turn 2. We can begin our analysis here on a relatively turn by turn basis.

Turn 1 - Initial Grabs: Turn 1 sees a player's jockeying to get some early initial TR. This can provide a boost to income in later turns, and (as we'll see), an boost early is significant. I suspect much of these initial boosts are also related to the Heat bonuses on the Temperature chart at the 3 position.

Turn 2, 3, 4-Economy Setup: These turns see players grab a few additional TR, but money is in
shorter supply as they are now dependent on 'self generated' income and not on the initial income. This is also where most players begin focusing on building their economy. This may be either to supplement their gains from Turn 1 (focusing on Heat production), or building resource  mining operations.

Turn 5, 6, 7 (& 8)-Milestone Grabs: Here we see real activity occurring. In particular there are three points of interest.

First, the economies built from turns 1-4 have come to fruition. Players actively begin grabbing TR at a rapid rate. These are not haphazard, however, and lead to the second indicators.





The Second point is the "Turn 5/6 Plateau" in 4-player games or, in 3-player games, the "Turn 5/7 dips". I suspect this is caused as players begin to snatch up the Milestones. In both types of games this would be a reduction in total income of 24MC. However, in the 3-player games the removal of the MC effect is more pronounced.

Lastly, there is the Peak. In 4 player games this peak is more pronounced and definitely occurs around Turn 8. In the 3-player games, given the smaller total economy of all the players, the curve occurs around turn 8 and 9, but is still present. This is also when players hit those Upper Level Environment Bonuses (Free Temp & Ocean). Even if not grabbed, another player may rush to get the last Ocean in place to prevent an opponent from getting the full benefit, which has the same net effect on our graph.

Turn 8, 9, 10, 12 - Decline and Game End
Typically by Turn 8 the TR purchases are in decline. Instead, players have changed to focus on grabbing the Awards, which are a big drain on the overall economy (-22 MC to purchase first two awards, -42 to purchase all 3 awards). In the end, there are only a few TR left to grab so player's position to maximize their score by purchasing Settlements next to Greenery, blocking opponent's, or pursuing VP maximizing cards.

Conclusions

Looking at the games, most 3 and 4 player games follow a definite pattern (although anomalies exist: keep reading if interested below). Although there is enough variation in the game to keep it interesting and challenging. Understanding the flow of a game will assist in recognizing what to expect in the game.

Lastly, it is important to recognize that most games end around the 10 Turn mark. Some finish earlier, some later, but a good game length is 10 Turns. This will become the standard used in calculating values in later blog posts.

Interesting Anomaly

 Look at the graph of a 3-player game below which is somewhat anomalous:

First, There is a huge initial TR grab on Turn 1. Second, the game was over by Turn 10, with almost no plateau, although one huge dip in Turn 7. Except for the Initial Turn 1 Grab, it looks like a fairly standard, if short, game.

The reason for this game is because of 2 of the corporations chosen by players and both choosing a similar strategy. The Corporations were Credicor and Teractor. Both of these have high initial MC (57 & 60 respectively). Both players decided to take no cards and, instead, just purchase Temp increases. These two players accounted for 8 of the 9 TR in the first turn (4 each). The 9th was purchased by the 3rd player. The two of them continued to purchase TR throughout the game until Turn 5. Around Turn 4 they switched to Oceans, and used ocean placement plants to power Greenery tiles.

Both players seemed in competition (the third player was never really in the running) until Turn 6. At that point Teractor switched strategies. While Credicor would continue purchasing Oceans and Heat, Teractor purchased Greenery outright and grabbed the Gardner milestone. On Turn 7 both players switched to Cities to try and gain the Mayor Milestone, which explains the sudden drop of TR. Teractor, due to Turn order, managed to beat Credicor to that milestone again, although Credicor did burst forth on Temp claimed Terraformer, it was too late.

At first glance, this game appears to defy the "average" game described earlier in the article. However, on closer examination we can see the same overall pattern. Except for the dip on Turn 6 and 7, this more closely resembles a 4 player game than a 3-player game. This is due to the players opting for the same strategy with two corporations with unusually high initial incomes.