Choosing your corporation

You’re dealt two corporations and ten project cards, and you choose everything together. This is the most leveraged decision of the game, and the tier list alone answers it wrong — because half the corporations are only as good as the hand that feeds them.

The key idea: conditional vs. unconditional

Every corporation’s value is one of two kinds:

• Unconditional — the value shows up no matter what your hand does. Teractor (60 MC), Credicor (57 MC), Thorgate, Inventrix’s cash. Their floor is their starting money. Judge these on raw power.
• Conditional — the value only arrives if the hand cooperates. Interplanetary Cinematics (needs building tags), Ecoline (needs plant production), Mining Guild (needs cheap tiles + buildings), Phobolog (needs titanium sinks), Saturn Systems (needs Jovians), Helion (needs a heat plan that isn’t a trap).

The rule: a conditional corp whose condition your hand meets beats any unconditional corp. A conditional corp whose condition fails loses to every unconditional corp. This is why the same corporation can be “the richest opening in the box” in one game and nearly worthless in the next.

The procedure, at the table

1. Read the ten cards first. Before you even weigh the corps, count: building tags · plant-production cards · titanium/steel production · Earth tags · Jovian tags · science tags · cards costing 20+ MC.
2. Test each corp against the counts. For a conditional corp, make yourself say it out loud (or in your head, Matthew’s across the table): “Name two cards in this hand this ability makes better, and the generation I play them.” Can’t name two cards and a turn? The condition fails. Take the money corp.
3. Apply the two-player corrections (the tier list already includes these, but they bear repeating):
   • Tharsis Republic sheds most of its fame — its trigger is other people’s cities, and there’s one other person.
   • Ecoline rises — less plant-hate, no crowd on the greenery spots.
   • Mining Guild falls — one opponent can cheaply deny your hexes and always knows which ones they are.
4. Check the milestones. Milestone fit moves a corp’s real value more than award fit (5 VP for 8 MC, guaranteed, versus ~14 MC and a race). Builder favors IC and Mining Guild; Gardener favors Ecoline; Mayor favors Tharsis Republic; Terraformer favors whoever rushes TR.
5. Decide your keeps as part of the same choice. The corp you pick changes which of the ten cards are worth 3 MC. Keep roughly 3-5 total (see The starting hand), and re-sort the ten the moment you commit to a corp.

Underdog math (read this one, Rita)

The data shows something genuinely useful for a player facing a more experienced opponent: variance is the underdog’s friend.

• If you’re the stronger player, take steady unconditional value and refuse to gamble — protect your edge.
• If you’re the underdog, a conditional corp whose condition is met is your upset engine: IC with a building-heavy hand, Ecoline with two plant cards, is exactly the high-roll that beats a better player. A steady-cash corp mostly guarantees the better player’s better decisions decide the game — which is not the game you want tonight.

So when in doubt between “safe money” and “my hand actually feeds this”: take the fed corporation, play its plan hard, and make the game about your engine instead of a long fair fight.

The thirty-second version

Count the tags → test each corp’s condition (“two cards and a turn”) → correct for two players → check the milestones → keep 3-5 cards that feed the winner. And if both corps fail their conditions, take the one with more money and buy production with it — cash never has a bad hand.