The first three generations

The opening isn’t glamorous. Its whole job is to make generations 8-14 rich. Here’s what that looks like concretely.

Generation 1: put the engine’s first piece down

• Play your economy keeps first. MC production, resource production your hand can spend, card draw. This is the whole agenda.
• Cheap TR is fine too — an early ocean or asteroid card at a good price is income (see Terraforming rating), and oceans’ placement bonuses effectively rebate their cost.
• Don’t panic-spend into standard projects yet. 11 MC for a power plant step or 14 for an asteroid is the fallback rate; generation 1 money usually has better cards to feed.

Board moves that echo

The first tiles set the geometry for the whole game:

• Oceans: take the hexes with card/steel/plant bonuses — the ocean scores the same anywhere, so the bonus is free money. Ocean-adjacent placement pays 2 MC per adjacent ocean to whoever places there later; putting oceans near the hexes you plan to build on is a small standing rebate.
• First city: the strong-player consensus is exactly one city, placed early, with room for up to six greeneries around it — and the whole cluster finished before oxygen maxes (after that, greeneries stop giving TR). A second city needs a concrete reason. A city in a corner you never green is 25 MC of almost nothing; the standard-project city only breaks even at 3+ adjacent greeneries.
• Deny thoughtfully. In two-player, taking the hex Matthew obviously wants is sometimes worth a slightly worse bonus for you — but only when his loss is visibly bigger than yours.

Generations 2-3: compound, don’t sprint

• Keep buying production while the payback math is overwhelming (each step pays ~10 more times — the economy page has the rule).
• Energy before heat, usually: energy production feeds cards that need power and spills into heat every generation; straight heat production does one job.
• Convert opportunistically: if heat or plants drift toward a conversion anyway, take the TR — just don’t chase conversions at the expense of income yet.
• Watch the early milestones. If your plan naturally walks toward one (Builder for steel hands, Gardener for plant hands), nudge it; if Matthew’s plan does, know the number and don’t be surprised.

What “ahead” looks like at generation 4

Not points — rate. You’re ahead if your MC production + TR income clearly outpaces his, if your kept cards are getting played rather than hoarded, and if you have a visible route to points for later (a plant engine, a heat pile, a VP-card pipeline your discounts feed). A player who’s 5 TR ahead but producing nothing is not winning; he’s borrowed against a mid-game he hasn’t funded.

The opening’s one-line grade: did every generation raise your income? If three straight generations added production or TR, you opened well — whatever the score says.