Editing Terraforming Mars (section)

=Corporations=

You play as one of several corporations competing to amass the most prestige, political influence, Good Boy Points, or whatever the fuck victory points are supposed to represent in-universe, I dunno. The corporation you choose determines your starting resources and what special ability you get for the game. You'll want to take a good hard look at your starting draw before you choose; if there's no space tags or titanium production and yet you go with PhoboLog anyway then you get what's coming to you.

'''Beginner Corporation:''' NoobCorp doesn't have any ongoing special abilities, but they get to keep their entire starting draw for free--a $30 value. This gives them immense flexibility, hence why it's good for beginners. Players always have the option of taking one of the Beginner Corporations instead of the two others they were dealt, though this choice must be made before looking at your starting draw.

'''Teractor:''' Their special ability gives them a discount when playing cards with Earth tags, but perhaps the better reason for picking them is simply that they have the highest starting credits of any corporation in the game, and thus can build up a strong economy right at the outset if their starting draw has the cards to do so. The Earth tag discount is just a nice secondary bonus. Earth tag cards generally help you to get even more credits and save even more money, making Teractor a strong jack-of-all-trades corp that can pursue just about any kind of build or strategy. Want to get lots of cities and greenery on the ground? Teractor can do that. Want to focus instead on getting lots of heat and do rapid terraforming? Teractor can do that too.

'''Saturn Systems:''' Start with 1 production each on the megacredit and titanium tracks, and their ability increases their income further every time any player plays a Jovian tag. The obvious play for these guys is to build up a strong space infrastructure and then go for victory via Jovian tag VPs, putting themselves in the running for Banker and Miner in the process. Of course, you may also want some card-draw tools such as Restricted Area and Inventor's Guild to ensure you actually get the necessary cards into your hand, which will also put you in the running for Scientist. As for milestones, you're kinda fucked in that department, unless you get a strong enough titanium/discount-on-space-tags engine going that you can just spam space events until you qualify for Terraformer.

'''Interplanetary Cinematics:''' IC actually has the most starting wealth of any corporation in the game--$70 worth. However, over half that wealth is in steel rather than liquid cash, so if your starting draw doesn't have any building tags then good luck actually being able to spend any of it. Their special ability gives them a small refund whenever playing an event (red) card. Since event cards do all sorts of stuff--everything from terraforming to card-draws to adding VP tokens to animal cards--they aren't really pigeonholed into any particular strategy (other than that they'll probably want to be gunning for the Builder milestone), so play them however you like.

'''Thorgate:''' Starts with a respectable amount of cash as well as one energy production, and they get a discount whenever playing any card that has a power tag or when using the Power Plant standard project. They're very much dependent on drawing the right cards, but if they do they are quite "power"ful indeed. You can play a good cities build with them if you drew those cards, or go for rapid terraforming with cards like Water Splitting Plant and GHG Factories. Or Lady Luck might REALLY smile on you and give you a starting draw that includes Nuclear Power, Fusion Power, and Physics Complex, in which case your opponents might as well forfeit immediately.

'''[[Druid|Ecoline:]]''' Tree-hugging hippies that start with plants and plant production, and their hippie druid powers let them plant forests for only 7 plants instead of the usual 8. You want cards that help you get even more plants (since they're effectively more valuable to you than to other corps). You also want cards that build cities so you can maximize the VPs you get from all the greenery you'll be placing, and for that you'll obviously need some power as well. Ecoline's ground game is unrivaled; you WILL be going for Gardener and Landlord, and all of your opponents know it. Their predictability is something of a drawback, but the sheer strength of this corporation's abilities makes up for that.

'''PhobOLog:''' A high-risk, high-reward pick. These guys start with next to nothing in terms of liquid cash, but what they do start with is a fat stack of super-high-grade titanium. Any titanium they spend is worth 4 instead of the usual 3. So they can get a powerful space program going right from Turn 1, but this of course is entirely dependent on having the right starting draw. And of course, if they don't draw anything that gives titanium production, their special ability will become completely useless once they've shot their initial wad--which is bad, because their starting wealth even with the titanium factored in only totals $63, which is just slightly more than Teractor. On the other hand, if you were lucky enough to get dealt, say, Io Mining Industries and Vesta Shipyards, you can coast to an easy win as the sheer weight of your economic advantage will overpower anything your opponents can hope to do.

'''[[Techpriest|Inventrix:]]''' These nerds start with a science tag and draw three cards for free as their first action. What's more, they can treat the planet's temperature, oxygen, and water as being 2 points higher or lower when playing cards that have prerequisites related to those parameters. If Ecoline has the most predictable game of any of the corporations, then Inventrix is perhaps the least predictable. Your opponents have no idea what the hell's in your hand or what the fuck you're going to do, which makes it rather difficult for them to foil your [[Just as planned|keikakus]]. Go for whatever strategy you like; their abilities don't inherently favor any particular gameplan over any other, though you might want to take advantage of that free science tag by playing a few more.

'''CrediCor:''' According to the flavor text, this company is run by Not!Elon Musk. Appropriately, you start out filthy rich and your special ability encourages you to do big, expensive, flashy projects. Make the most of your starting wealth and get the ball rolling with an expensive-but-powerful card or two that'll leave you with a strong economy or early terraforming engine. It is worth noting that CrediCor's "get a refund when playing expensive projects" ability also applies to the Greenery and City standard projects, and if you can get the Standard Technology card, which their ability stacks with, then standard projects can actually become a viable alternative to getting cities/greenery from cards. Of course you're free to pursue other strategies as well; their ability works with anything, as long as it's expensive.

'''Mining Guild:''' Start off on the poor side, but they've got steel, steel production, and an ability to get even more steel production whenever they place a tile anywhere there's metal deposits. You start with TWO building tags, and all that steel is just encouraging you to play even more. Take a wild guess what milestone you're aiming for. You want to place lots of tiles which in turn means that you will be getting lots of steel production. Take a wild guess what awards you're aiming for. That said, you aren't necessarily locked into playing a cities-and-greenery game like you might initially think: there are plenty of other types of tiles you can place, and many of the cards with building tags are great for a rapid terraforming strategy, like Aquifer Pumping and Mohole Area. Really, it all depends on what cards you draw.

'''Tharsis Republic:''' Gets to place a free city at the start of the game, and any time ANY player places a city (except for Phobos Space Haven and Ganymede Colony) their income increases. They also get cash back if they're the one who placed the city. This corporation's mere presence in the game causes a shift in the entire meta. They're going to place lots of cities, obviously. So other players want to get cards like Pets and Rover Construction to take advantage of that. Then they see that Tharsis Republic is putting down some greenery to make his cities worth more points, so other players decide "well I've already got Pets and Rover Construction, and if I build my own city next to his greenery I can take advantage of it and block him off at the same time". Suddenly everyone's in a race to get the best real estate, the Landlord award is funded by the second generation, and the efforts to terraform Mars end up covering it in concrete and smog. But Tharsis Republic stands at the top at the end of it all, because now they're richer than God, have secured Mayor and Banker, and they just bought every victory point card in the game. Many players consider them overpowered, and even if you don't agree you can certainly understand why one would think that.

'''Helion:''' Starts with heat production, and their special ability lets them spend heat as money. How does one turn heat into money exactly? [[Wizard|Magic]], obviously. This wizardry presents the Helion player with a unique dilemma: should I use my heat to increase the temperature, or use it as money to buy more cards? In any case, one thing is clear: you want all the heat production. All of it. You want Soletta. You want GHG Factories. You want Underground Detonations. You want to fund Thermalist before someone else funds an award first. Steel and titanium production are also useful, since most of the cards that produce heat have either building or space tags. Energy production also works since that turns into heat. For milestones, you can go for whatever you want. Use your heat as heat to progress towards Terraformer, or use it as money to get the other milestones. Foil your opponents' plans by using your vast reserves of alchemy-produced wealth to beat them at their own awards. Win every single point tally from TR to cities/greenery to card VPs. Jump on the table and dab. Have all your friends swear to never play with you again.

'''United Nations Mars Initiative:''' Technically not a corporation but rather the agency of Earth's world government tasked with overseeing the entire terraforming effort. They start with average funds and an Earth tag. Their ability lets them spend a small sum to raise their Terraformer Rating provided they previously did something else during the same generation that raised their TR as well. Naturally, maximizing the utility of this means you want to do something that raises your TR at least once per generation. This is harder than it sounds, especially if you aren't drawing any good cards. You may find yourself using Standard Projects more often than you'd like to. One option is to build up a card-drawing engine with things like Business Contacts and Development Center to increase the chances you'll get what you need. TR translates to income during the production phase, so once you hit your stride you'll become pretty wealthy, but it will take some doing to get to that point. If you're fortunate, you'll draw Aquifer Pumping or Equatorial Magnetizer and some power tags.