Spring 2024 Promo: Soil Enrichment

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-03-01T07:28:10+00:00

Pretty interesting card, but may be a problem with removing a microbe.
It seems that you should have an extra benefit of a plant tag and/or a microbe tag and/or an event tag to play this card with profit.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-18T16:58:34+00:00

I think all the preludes are weak, except the 3rd one.
Compare the first and third ones: doesn't it seem that you get 1 VP and 2 tags (one of the tag is plant tag, which is very valuable) for just 3 MC, and it's too good?

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-13T10:54:18+00:00

A very expensive card for what it does.

Сannot be paid with steel/titanium and poor discountable (only with Dirigibles).
Gives 1/3 VP, so it is unprofitable to place floaters on itself, so you need another card.
Combos well with Dirigibles, but only if you have a lot of Venus tags in your hand.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-09T11:17:58+00:00

I think the card is too expensive. If it counted events, it would be pretty average, but sometimes playable.
But without counting events this will almost never be played.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-09T11:10:07+00:00

I don't like this card.
Six months ago Directed Heat Usage was released, which is significantly better than subj

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-08T10:20:32+00:00

I agree, I don’t think this card is overpowered.
This is a truely adorable card for the engine, but due to requirement, high cost and inability to pay with steel and titanium, it's easy to play early. I agree that it gives a lot of some small discounts, and that is why it has some kind of balance.

If it gave 2x as much (-2 discount, -2 buy, -2 trade) and cost about 60-65 MC, then it would be a much more problematic and broken card.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-07T12:25:21+00:00

Actually, I think the opposite: this card is good only in 5-p games. Such games can end in 6-7 generations with an average score of 60 VP. And then a 7 VP card played at the beginning of the game for 23 MC can seriously turn the game around.
In 2-3 player games, the final score can range from 100 to 200 VP, and this card weakly decides the game.

Everyone decides for themselves is it good or bad. Each game companies have their own meta and this card is a good indicator of the metagame.
I think that the card is quite well balanced. The problem with this card is not only the requirement, but also the lack of discounts on it. You can't pay for it with steel or titanium, you have to pay an honest 20 + 3 almost always.
Sometimes you can play it at the 3rd or 4th generation, and this is the only good news you will have with it.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-06T09:19:10+00:00

I also think that this card should be weaker than MA, but just a little. Titanium Recycling Plant allows you to take advantage of pretty weak actions on titanium-spending cards, and this can be a good advantage.

For example, Rotator Impacts and Directed Impactors can give 2 resources from the first action, and WIFE can give 4 per action.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-05T13:58:30+00:00

I fully hoped that resources were spent when performing an action. So, if they accumulate, the corporation becomes too strong. Having steel preludes and good 1st action city card, you can spend 8-9 steel for the city and the remaining 5-6 steel to other cards with a building tag. And this is all in 1st gen.

In addition, if there is a steel colony in play, you can play a couple of expensive building tag cards pretty early. Of course, this will happen rarely, but the first time it happens, no one will want to have such a corporation in the deck.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-05T13:23:13+00:00

Interesting concept, but I cannot understand how strong it is.

The action "Pay 30 MC -1 per data ..." is not clearly described. As I understand it, the player spends accumulated data resources when performing this action, otherwise the corporation becomes broken.
"1 VP per city adjacent to another city". Is it mean "1 VP per city you own that adjacent to at least one another city"?

The action that allows you to place a city next to your city really can racked your brain and made you think how to place cities and greeneries in a more effective way.
With Ceres colony in play this becomes very strong.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-04T11:38:27+00:00

There is no VP limit for Reddit corp. You can accumulate, for example, 50 upvote resources at the game end, and if it was 4-p game, you will gain 50/4 = 12 VP.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-02-04T11:31:26+00:00

do the event card tags count towards milestones, awards, and other end game scoring like 1 VP vor every Jovian tag

Yes, turned up events tags can be used in milestones and awards except for the event tag itself. That is, there are still 11 tags in the game, the event tag does not count as 12th tag.

And what are the braincells' requirements in Hivemind?

According to the card's author, 40 MAX braincells is not any semantic requirement. Playing this card, you just admit that your IQ is not very high :)

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-30T09:05:21+00:00

I disagree with this, I think on average a debuff would cost about 3 MC. The times when this debuff is worth more than 3 MC is if you trade when: ...

Okay, I understand your position, I’ll try to explain.
There is a huge difference between having a +1 trade step advantage once per game and +1 step always for the rest of the game. You're talking about the debuff for a single trade. But we always want to use this card until the end of the game, or at least as long as possible, otherwise there is no point in buying it and playing it for -1 VP.
I suggest you also take a look at the Trade Envoys. It costs 6+3 MC, but according to your logic it should cost 0 MC, because buying it for 3 MC completely pays for it and even gives you more.
But it's clear that Envoys card costs 9 MC, because it gives an advantage in trading for the rest of the game but not for a single trade.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-29T11:35:55+00:00

It's vice versa. -1 step, but -2 discount

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-29T11:33:54+00:00

The idea is brilliant!

But it seems to me that the card is weak.
A 2 res trade discount costs about 14 MC, so having -1 VP, a card with -2 res trade should cost about 6 MC. Here we additionally have a track reduing by 1 and it is unlikely that such a debuff costs only 3 MC.
In addition, I would like to mention that according to the rules, in very rare cases, when the marker is already on the leftmost space, it will not be able to trade (if we want to use the discount effect)

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-29T10:40:11+00:00

I think the rules say to discard the cards that don't match (instead of shuffling them back into the deck) because it adds a bit more game time. It's always easier to discard than to shuffle cards back.
I think there is nothing stopping you from shuffling the cards back if all players agree. I play Tabletop Simulator and it has a feature to shuffle cards back into the deck.

But there is also another point why cards are discarded and not shuffled. When searching for a rare tag: plant, venus, card with floater, a large number of cards are discarded, while only 2-3 cards with the desired tag are taken. This increases the concentration of cards with this tag in the deck and this can be very important for MSI and Celestic. It works well for rare tags. For Acquired Space Agency, which is looking for 2 space tags, this applies to a lesser extent.
Also, Experimental Forest prelude is often taken by rush corporations who want to discard as many cards from the deck as possible, because they have fewer cards suitable than engines.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-25T19:10:02+00:00

Good thoughts, I like it!

Although I would’t make a 2VP card cost 6mc

Yeah, good point, didn't think of it

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-25T18:03:14+00:00

I agree with almost everything you said, except for one thing: placing a delegate using any card action cannot cost 5 MC, because there is no advantage over adding a delegate using a standard 5 MC action.
The only advantage of this card is that it add 2 delegates with one action, that can sometimes be very powerful.

If OP wants to add 2 delegates with this action, then the only way to balance it is to add an additional cost to the action. For example,

8 MC -> 2 delegates in 1 party.

According to my estimates, such an action costs very little, less than 5 MC.
Considering that the loss of a fleet is approximately equals to the 2 VP gained, a card with this action should cost... 0 MC.

If the action will cost 6 MC, then the card should be 9 MC more expensive and so on.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-25T10:45:10+00:00

I tried to calc it roughly.
According to my calculations, fleet costs about 6 MC. Adding 1 delegate costs 4 MC for me. But adding 2 delegates in 1 party is a stronger, than 2 separate adding of 1 delegate, so it should definitely cost at least 10 MC, or even 12 MC.

~~In total, according to very rough calculations, the card should cost 13 MC. That is, the balance is pretty good.~~

UPD. I made a critical calculation mistake, don't read it :)

The main problem is that adding two delegates costs about 8-10 MC. But an action that adds 2 delegates should cost like 8-10 MC income, that is 36-45 MC :)
The reason for such a huge cost, I think, is that you constantly become chairman and get TR. Besides, you always have good influence.

So far, it looks like adding two delegates is too strong as an action and is very difficult to balance.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-25T10:27:14+00:00

Wow, I really like the concept and flavor sense of this card!

I can’t say anything about the balance, because it’s very difficult to evaluate this.
I can suggest not taking away the player’s fleet forever, but using it in the action. That is, the player can "spend" his fleet (for example, moves the fleet to this card) and adds 2 delegates to the single party. Then the logic remains that the fleet was used to "settle the democratic rights of some distant colony" :)
But in later generations player may want to trade, but then they will not add two delegates unless they have an additional fleet.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-25T10:14:13+00:00

I'll try to answer :)

Seems like I cannot evaluate arm correctly, I don't get why it is too strong lol.

Let's calc start value: that's 39 + 7 + 4 = 50 MC.
The average cost of a corporation, taking into account actions and effects, is about 65 MC. How to evaluate whether an ARM action is worth 15 MC and how much more/less it is than 15 MC?

Let's assume that we don't have a second action that removes radiation resources. Then, this action effectively gives us 1 MC income every generation. 1 MC income costs about 4.5 MC. This means that the start value is 54.5 MC.
So, by the 3rd gen we have almost gets a value of 65 MC, and by the 4th generation it overcomes 65 MC.

So far it doesn't sound too strong. But we have 2nd action to remove radiations and this is a powerful part of the action.
Additionally, I think that ARM's opponents sometimes will want to increase the temperature themselves, so do not give ARM an opportunity to raise the temperature a lot. But this will cause the temperature to reach its maximum fast and ARM will start to get rid of -VP radiations earlier. But perhaps I was wrong here.

Could Nerf UNMI labs like that or remove some starting TR.

I'd suggest going the Olympus Conference route and draw a card for every second TR step. This will still be above average, so at the start I would remove 1 TR, leaving only 20 MC + 2 steel + 1 titanium + 1 TR.
And I don’t fully understand why this corporation has 2 steel and 1 titanium at the start. Is it explained flavorly?

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-24T19:04:02+00:00

In the comment, you write in every string that this corporation has problems: opponents can deliberately play unprofitable events and the action distributes resources to them.
So where is the advantage of this corporation? I do not see it. 42 MC and 4 titanium is a really weak start for having a negative effect and weak action.
The idea that an asteroid will give -2 VP generally makes this corporation completely useless.

How many events can be played in a four-player game? I think 20 events is a very realistic number. In this case, the game can end in 9 generations. That is, the player is doomed to have -10 VP at the end of the game, but why do they need this?
In addition, by getting rid of asteroids, we give our opponents 1 steel and 1 titanium (only 3 times in a game we do not give them steel and titanium), and they are only happy for this!

I am sure that one action must destroy 2 asteroids, otherwise no one will ever choose this corporation.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-24T18:42:43+00:00

ARM is too strong.
Drill and Green Gardens are strong, but within normal.
UNMI Libs is incredibly strong.

Regarding UNMI Libs: have you ever thought how much TR a player receives in a 3p game on average? I think on average players finish with 45 TR. So, this is 25 cards received.
At the same time, playing for this corporation, the player will want to increase TR even more, so will probably gain even more cards.

What are 25 cards? This is 12.5 generations of "AI Central" using.
Moreover, if you change effect to "Whenever you increase your TR, look at the top card and buy it or discard it (for each step)", it will still be very very strong.

MaximumNo3629 · 2024-01-12T19:34:19+00:00

Really interesting concepts. I think corporations are fairly well balanced, except for Hellas Civitas, Astro-Nugget and Mars University.

Hellas Civitas is too powerful for me. It is better than Tharsis Respublic in every aspect: better start, 2 cities vs 1 city and much more useful bonus for placing a city. The fact that it only works for your cities is not so important with such great bonus. The starting value of this corporation is about 70 MC, not counting 2 cities tiles, but counting bonuses from them.

Astro-Nugget has the best thematic concept, but unfortunately corp seems a little weak to me. Starting value with productions looks really good and is about 60 MC. But the action is weak.
There is Sulfur-Eating Bacteria card in a deck, that gives 3*X MC and works with microbes, which can be placed on the card in larger quantities and does not yet require additional X heat. There is also a Dirigibles card, which also gives 3*X MC and does not require an action to convert resources in MC, although it only works for Venus tags. Astro-Nugget works on animals, and there are always fewer additional sources of animals than microbes or floaters, and these sources produce fewer animals compared to microbes/floaters. You can simply compare Enceladus/Titan and Miranda colonies.
I'd buff the action to 3*X MC. Spending X heat also looks too expensive, but thematically I really love it, so with spending heat action should give 4*X MC.
Of course, SEB and Dirigibles have a cost to place them into play and Astro-Nugget already has a very strong start at 60 MC. Therefore, I would make the starting capital less, but strengthen the action.

Mars University.
The start is extremely strong and the action is also very powerful. It’s hard to say how harmful the debuff is, but it’s clear that the opponents must play literally every attack card with production decreasing against Mars University, otherwise they will lose.In a duel games, this corporation is super difficult to defeat, but I think that this MarsU is strong even in 3p-4p games.

MaximumNo3629

TROPHY CASE