Terraformers

Games
1

This game has been mentioned a handful of times in various threads, but I think it’s good enough to have it’s own - even if it doesn’t get a lot of activity. Terraformers plays similar to a board game, but with a map bigger than would be normally found in a physical game.

The basic loop is that you can use a leader action each turn to explore (reveal what is on a hex on the map), or use one of their two special abilities. Exploring will give some resources, based on what is on the hex, and reveal the paths to connected hexes. Some hexes are suitable to start a new city. Cities can build mines to collect resources on the map, or build buildings within the city to provide certain benefits.

There is a cool system where a city needs people or robots in the city to claim a hex, and further hexes can cause unhappiness (unless you have buildings to mitigate that). There are maybe a half dozen of resources to manage, with various things to build costing some combination of these resources.

So this is basically a turn-based resource management game, developing an economy to fund different building projects, working your way towards the victory conditions (based on the type of game you choose to play). There are many different leaders, and you choose a new one out of a choice of 2 every dozen turns or so.

There is a manual on the Steam web page for the game, so you can take a look to see if it is something that seems interesting. Maybe this will get it on your radar @tomchick :-)

2

I’d be curious to know how much it has changed from the demo they released a year or two back

3

About $10 on greenmangaming for a steam key right now.

4

@robc04 did you get this new dlc they just released?

5

I didn’t play the demo, so I can’t answer that.

@vyshka I didn’t get the DLC yet. I figured I’d play vanilla and get the DLC at some point if i still want more.

6

I enjoyed exploring this, but I eventually gave up in favor of games like Per Aspera and even Paradox’s Surviving Mars. In terms of building up a space colony within the context of a semi-hard sci-fi setting, I feel both those games had a better handle on issues like interface, pacing, documentation, and gameplay progression.

I also really disliked the cavalcade of leaders swapping in and out while you play Terraformers, which seems to be a cornerstone of the design. But it strikes me as a weirdly unfocused and desultory way to try to push players through different gameplay styles. For a far better example of how to do that, consider Dot Age and Against the Storm, which change out the basics of the economy each session instead of randomly swapping out your powers every few turns. The former approach really pulls me into the game, whereas the latter just alienates me. It’s a difficult dynamic, but I don’t feel Terraformers has a handle on it.

7

I enjoyed Per Aspera quite a bit, but didn’t feel it was a game I’d want to replay (not that all games need to be) with how story focused it was. I haven’t checked out the DLC for that so maybe that warrants playing it again. I don’t know if Surviving Mars has changed much since release, but I wasn’t that fond of it when I played. I meant to give that another try after the DLC came out, but never got around to it.

It’s funny that you dislike the leader swapping in Terraformers, because I liked it quite a bit. It wasn’t quite as often as every few turns - I think it was at least a dozen, and it didn’t always change how I was playing. Sometimes I’d greatly appreciate one leaders ability to generate resources, or some other benefit and I would make use of it quite often, others neither choice meshed with what I was doing so I would pick one and move on. In any case it’s always interesting to me when the same feature causes such different reactions between people!

I’ve been reading the Suicide Squad thread and I found it interesting that whether the player can switch their loadout in missions causes such big reactions, when I couldn’t care less if I could or couldn’t do that in other games I’ve played. I don’t know how much SS would appeal to me for other reasons, like switching who I’m controlling in missions, and having to keep track of who can do what, so I don’t know if I’ll ever get it.

8

The DLC basically adds a new progress bar - space colonization - for you to fill up in addition to the terraforming ones. Space colonization regularly lets you choose between little benefits like +1 of a particular resource.

My main problem with higher difficulties is how much success relies on getting the right card draws, random leaders, and map layout. The Space DLC does a little to get you resources more reliably but a lot still feels outside my control.

With this game, when I pull something off, I feel lucky. I agree on the above Against The Storm comparison, that’s a game that makes me feel clever when I climb out of a bad situation.

9

I’m starting to see that a bit. I’m not that high on the difficulty, maybe half way, and sometimes I can spend what feels like a lot of turns waiting for a building so I can make progress. It hasn’t been so bad that I lose. I’ve played a bunch of games and have won so far, but I can see how maintaining enough support will be an issue at some point.

I still think this is a lot of fun. I’m a little sad to see almost all my friends have < 10 hours in it.

10

I assume the secret service building is on some card? I had the mafia show up, and couldn’t really do much about it beyond trying focus on using those resources before they got there.

11

Is there a tab or little button next to the countdown? I haven’t seen the mafia yet, but I’ve had other time-based challenges and they had a little button to press to build the thing I needed to build.

12

Found it in the Mars??pedia:

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13

Research Centers and Development Centers are the key here. They are easily overlooked buildings. If you build them too late then you will find yourself stuck with too few draws and no good cards to play and it will be too late to recover.

14

I bought the expansion and have been playing a lot over the last few weeks. I finished all the scenarios up to Utopian level (one notch below the highest difficulty) and just won a game on the highest difficulty of the “Red Planet Awaits” scenario. Here’s my typical strategy.

In the early game I like to prioritize getting a synergy of food, energy and science buildings. So that means placing three of each around the same connecting node, then using the “adjacent +1” building on the center node.

When expanding I focus on founding cities in lava tubes due to the comfort of living bonus. I focus mainly on housing+comfort synergies as above for nodes with more than two surrounding connections. If there’s no craters are also okay since they still give a smaller +2 bonus. I only use robots if I need to increase expansion points or if I need to increase the building limit in a city because they don’t give you any support via comfort of living. In the nodes with only 2 or 1 connections I build the non-synergy buildings like atmosphere-increasing buildings, robots, expansion hub and project increase-type buildings.

Once I have a healthy stream of resource income and have surrounding mines built up I start thinking about getting bacteria spreading and also building +heat/oxygen/atmosphere buildings. These are very important even if they are not part of the scenario goal because leveling up these gives you a once-off shot in the arm for support as well as improving your comfort of living bonus. I’ll also be looking to improve the amount of projects proposed and amount of projects you can pick per turn around this time when I have spare science.

You should get a few rovers for exploration + resource gathering. Also, rovers can sometimes save your game when support is running dry - you can focus on the support-giving nodes which can keep you running until the next shot-in-the-arm from +heat/oxygen/atmosphere level. On the higher levels I’m often ALWAYS behind on support but I’m able to build more population and support-giving buildings and stay in the game (sometimes only barely but I make it - these can be the best games!).

The leaders are very situational so I’ll choose the one that I think is good for me depending on the situation.

Trade routes are often useful to top up a laggard resource. You don’t need many early on but as the game goes on you need them for space projects, which can be lucrative. They are also a good way to expand oceans. By end game I’m constantly picking and fulfilling space projects.

Approaching end game you are now at the stage where animal and plant spreaders are useful. Support needs will be growing big, but animal and plant spreading WILL get you from being in the red into being in the green. You should also be able to build some large support-giving buildings to help out. It is about this time that I start to focus on the actual scenario goal and go for the victory.

Later in the game, make sure you don’t build more mines than you need. Your biggest income will need to be energy, food and research. There’s no point building another mine if your income is already 10 - instead use it for a plant or animal spreader, support building or a big +food provider.