Turmoil does have some of the best corps. My tierlist amongst the turmoil corps themselves would have to be: Lakefront Resort Pristar Septem Tribus Utopia Invest Terralabs Your Septem math is actually quite good but I think the evaluation in this video falls short of covering why it shouldn't be as good. In a 10gen game, I think you will only get to be chairman once, maybe twice if you are lucky. 3 times and I start looking at your opponents. Turmoil basically adds extra value to each player in the form of delegates. They can sometimes be worth buying for 5, but there's also Martian media center that discounts a delegate to 3mc. When I have that, I almost always use it. It should then be viewed that each delegate per player is somewhere between 3-5mc. For the sake of Steelmanning, we will put each delegate @ 3mc. in a 10gen game, every player has an added bonus of 30mc based on delegates. This should reduce your 99mc bonus to 69mc. It's still very good but it should automatically be placed below Aridor based on this. (Hopefully this argument is enough to dispel the enchantment Septem Tribus has cast on you haha) I think my argument here helps me put Lakefront into the top. 54mc, as you said, is an insane amount of starting mc. In this game, I think starting mc is so strong even good players tend to underrate them over fancier looking passive bonus of other corps. It's probably also good to analyze how much improved the standard project action Aquifer is. It's 18 to have a +1mcp rider, the most comparable thing I can think of is Comet which is 21mc, 6mc more than Aquifer. I don't know about you, but there are some games I will throwdown a comet just because my hand kinda sucks. Point is, Lakefront aquifer is actually quite good on gen 1! You can even just place 3 of them gen1 and still have 6-9mc carryover for gen2! Let's use your figures again. You quoted an adjacency bonus of 10-20mc, we can take the lower end of this and call it 10. Now take a theoretical but inaccurate representation of how fast the oceans will be placed to 1 ocean per gen until gen 9 in a gen10 game. This is another 45mc. This is a total of 109mc vs my new math of Septem's 105 total mc (including starting mc). The kicker to this is that Lakefront is a ground game corp. This means you will invariably be wanting to collect tile bonus (not counting ocean adjacency) so you will just be having better ocean walking picking up plants and such. I think your Pristar's Red argument holds water but I've only played it twice so I haven't thought enough about it. My experiences with it is to have 2 generations of terraforming and the rest not. This means in a 10gen game, I will make +6mc for 7 gen for a bonus of 42mc. Factor in the -2mc from its TR and you have +24mc. You will also have 7VP at the end which should have a mc value attached of 5mc for a total of 35. Pristar's grand total mc value is 112. Now this is higher than Lakefront and perhaps just purely based on this, it should go above it. However, Pristar gets punished for essentially having a less flexible game plan. It's not at all ground game friendly as it does not like to place oceans or plants and special TR-based tiles like Nuke Zone. This handcuffs it quite a lot imo, furthermore, its much more awkward to capture those nice O2 and temp track bonuses, essentially making it much much harder. Heat cards are a bit worse to buy as well. Now, its not like you can't do any terraforming, you can and you should but the timing of it all makes it just that much more awkward. Utopia Invest is a pretty okay corp. My favorite thing to do is play Robotic Workforce on it. I've played it 3 times and I think the correct usage of its ability is probably every single turn. Just hit mcp in the early gen but being able to either tap heat or energy prod to time it well to get the heat bonus on the temp track is well worth it. Just as Pristar is so so poor at getting track bonuses, Utopia Invest is stellar at it! It even catches experienced players by surprise when they are trying to go for the bonus and didn't account for your ability to steal it. However, I don't think it deserves the ranking of Always Solid. It simply can't hang with the likes of Teractor and Credicor. I do think it is deserving of the top spot in the playable tier.
First of all. Thank you for the long comments, I like a lot of the points you raised, keep em' coming :). Now lets got by corp Ok so if I understand your point correctly what you are saying is that the free delegate that I add every generation for Septem should count as 3-5mc per gen for every other corp, and we cn stick to 5 since martian media center is only one card. I think that's fair in that Septems eco isnt entirely free however Im not sure we can say its worth 5 or even 3 every gen for every corp, since at that point I would have to consider the additional value each delegate adds which sometimes is as low as 1 influence or you might have to use 3 to get your party in, or in some cases they dont do anything at all. So we could add a certain amount to every corp to account for this, but i wouldn't use the cost of the additional delegates, i would have to do some analysis on what do you actually get out of your free delegate on average, which sounds very complex haha. Additionally Septem sometimes can get the same benefits out of their delegates in addition to their bonus, like influence and the occasional chairman. May math video has a scenario where you basically leave delegates on 5 parties and use your additional 2 delegates to control the senate, that still nets you 84. Finally, it also has a wild tag and the easiest start of all corps (keep up to 7 cards, buy 3 delegates + 1 free, tap) and there's really no way to be more efficient than that (Septems Enchantment is strong haha). I haven't played septem as much but I might revise my ranking once it's released on steam or bga and can get like 10+ games with it. I dont think I would go for 3 SP Aquifers with lakefronts but honestly they are very solid and I've never had a bad game with them, I do think that being tied to the ground is more a weakness than a strength, since it forces you to play that way to optimize it's bonuses. I don't think we disagree on my ranking though, It's close to the top of always solid I think you would just probably lower pristar and septem. Regarding Pristar, this is the one corporation in turmoil that i have actually played a lot. I have found it to be super flexible, they only thing that you can't do with it is early plants and venus, anything else you can stockpile and terraform whenever you have 6+ TR steps i na single gen (watch my pristar math video for more detail). The reason you cant do that with plants is that they get blow up, but that only means you cant do arctic algae for the most part, you can still keep things like algae, bushes and kelp farming and play mid game, this play style also helps you capture track bonuses since you get TR Steps in bunches, you probably miss out on the heat prod on the heat track cause that's early, but those are meh. I think it's a high ceiling corp when you get used to it. Ok and Utopia I have actually played very little, when I think about you are right that it its very unpredictable in stealing milestones and track bonuses etc. Even if you don't do it the fact that the threat exists is probably a plus by it self. You kind of sold me on liking it more and then told me to move it down to tiers XD, so Ill try to play this one a little more and see, I think the 5 prod by it self is strong but maybe ill move it closer to saturn which has a similar start. glad we both agree terralabs sucks :)
Terralabs gets you an unique playstyle but it's most of the time unplayable. The worst thing is that using Polyphemos and Merger into Terralabs creates a very weak do nothing corp with a wasted prelude. That's why they both should be buffed.
lol yeah merger actually burns through some of poly's capital. S essentially you get like 22 cash 5 titanium 5 cash prod, -1 TR and no ability. Pretty shitty.
Turmoil does have some of the best corps. My tierlist amongst the turmoil corps themselves would have to be:
Lakefront Resort
Pristar
Septem Tribus
Utopia Invest
Terralabs
Your Septem math is actually quite good but I think the evaluation in this video falls short of covering why it shouldn't be as good. In a 10gen game, I think you will only get to be chairman once, maybe twice if you are lucky. 3 times and I start looking at your opponents. Turmoil basically adds extra value to each player in the form of delegates. They can sometimes be worth buying for 5, but there's also Martian media center that discounts a delegate to 3mc. When I have that, I almost always use it. It should then be viewed that each delegate per player is somewhere between 3-5mc. For the sake of Steelmanning, we will put each delegate @ 3mc. in a 10gen game, every player has an added bonus of 30mc based on delegates. This should reduce your 99mc bonus to 69mc. It's still very good but it should automatically be placed below Aridor based on this. (Hopefully this argument is enough to dispel the enchantment Septem Tribus has cast on you haha)
I think my argument here helps me put Lakefront into the top. 54mc, as you said, is an insane amount of starting mc. In this game, I think starting mc is so strong even good players tend to underrate them over fancier looking passive bonus of other corps. It's probably also good to analyze how much improved the standard project action Aquifer is. It's 18 to have a +1mcp rider, the most comparable thing I can think of is Comet which is 21mc, 6mc more than Aquifer. I don't know about you, but there are some games I will throwdown a comet just because my hand kinda sucks. Point is, Lakefront aquifer is actually quite good on gen 1! You can even just place 3 of them gen1 and still have 6-9mc carryover for gen2! Let's use your figures again. You quoted an adjacency bonus of 10-20mc, we can take the lower end of this and call it 10. Now take a theoretical but inaccurate representation of how fast the oceans will be placed to 1 ocean per gen until gen 9 in a gen10 game. This is another 45mc. This is a total of 109mc vs my new math of Septem's 105 total mc (including starting mc). The kicker to this is that Lakefront is a ground game corp. This means you will invariably be wanting to collect tile bonus (not counting ocean adjacency) so you will just be having better ocean walking picking up plants and such.
I think your Pristar's Red argument holds water but I've only played it twice so I haven't thought enough about it. My experiences with it is to have 2 generations of terraforming and the rest not. This means in a 10gen game, I will make +6mc for 7 gen for a bonus of 42mc. Factor in the -2mc from its TR and you have +24mc. You will also have 7VP at the end which should have a mc value attached of 5mc for a total of 35. Pristar's grand total mc value is 112. Now this is higher than Lakefront and perhaps just purely based on this, it should go above it. However, Pristar gets punished for essentially having a less flexible game plan. It's not at all ground game friendly as it does not like to place oceans or plants and special TR-based tiles like Nuke Zone. This handcuffs it quite a lot imo, furthermore, its much more awkward to capture those nice O2 and temp track bonuses, essentially making it much much harder. Heat cards are a bit worse to buy as well. Now, its not like you can't do any terraforming, you can and you should but the timing of it all makes it just that much more awkward.
Utopia Invest is a pretty okay corp. My favorite thing to do is play Robotic Workforce on it. I've played it 3 times and I think the correct usage of its ability is probably every single turn. Just hit mcp in the early gen but being able to either tap heat or energy prod to time it well to get the heat bonus on the temp track is well worth it. Just as Pristar is so so poor at getting track bonuses, Utopia Invest is stellar at it! It even catches experienced players by surprise when they are trying to go for the bonus and didn't account for your ability to steal it. However, I don't think it deserves the ranking of Always Solid. It simply can't hang with the likes of Teractor and Credicor. I do think it is deserving of the top spot in the playable tier.
First of all. Thank you for the long comments, I like a lot of the points you raised, keep em' coming :). Now lets got by corp
Ok so if I understand your point correctly what you are saying is that the free delegate that I add every generation for Septem should count as 3-5mc per gen for every other corp, and we cn stick to 5 since martian media center is only one card. I think that's fair in that Septems eco isnt entirely free however Im not sure we can say its worth 5 or even 3 every gen for every corp, since at that point I would have to consider the additional value each delegate adds which sometimes is as low as 1 influence or you might have to use 3 to get your party in, or in some cases they dont do anything at all. So we could add a certain amount to every corp to account for this, but i wouldn't use the cost of the additional delegates, i would have to do some analysis on what do you actually get out of your free delegate on average, which sounds very complex haha. Additionally Septem sometimes can get the same benefits out of their delegates in addition to their bonus, like influence and the occasional chairman. May math video has a scenario where you basically leave delegates on 5 parties and use your additional 2 delegates to control the senate, that still nets you 84. Finally, it also has a wild tag and the easiest start of all corps (keep up to 7 cards, buy 3 delegates + 1 free, tap) and there's really no way to be more efficient than that (Septems Enchantment is strong haha). I haven't played septem as much but I might revise my ranking once it's released on steam or bga and can get like 10+ games with it.
I dont think I would go for 3 SP Aquifers with lakefronts but honestly they are very solid and I've never had a bad game with them, I do think that being tied to the ground is more a weakness than a strength, since it forces you to play that way to optimize it's bonuses. I don't think we disagree on my ranking though, It's close to the top of always solid I think you would just probably lower pristar and septem.
Regarding Pristar, this is the one corporation in turmoil that i have actually played a lot. I have found it to be super flexible, they only thing that you can't do with it is early plants and venus, anything else you can stockpile and terraform whenever you have 6+ TR steps i na single gen (watch my pristar math video for more detail). The reason you cant do that with plants is that they get blow up, but that only means you cant do arctic algae for the most part, you can still keep things like algae, bushes and kelp farming and play mid game, this play style also helps you capture track bonuses since you get TR Steps in bunches, you probably miss out on the heat prod on the heat track cause that's early, but those are meh. I think it's a high ceiling corp when you get used to it.
Ok and Utopia I have actually played very little, when I think about you are right that it its very unpredictable in stealing milestones and track bonuses etc. Even if you don't do it the fact that the threat exists is probably a plus by it self. You kind of sold me on liking it more and then told me to move it down to tiers XD, so Ill try to play this one a little more and see, I think the 5 prod by it self is strong but maybe ill move it closer to saturn which has a similar start.
glad we both agree terralabs sucks :)
Terralabs gets you an unique playstyle but it's most of the time unplayable.
The worst thing is that using Polyphemos and Merger into Terralabs creates a very weak do nothing corp with a wasted prelude. That's why they both should be buffed.
lol yeah merger actually burns through some of poly's capital. S essentially you get like 22 cash 5 titanium 5 cash prod, -1 TR and no ability. Pretty shitty.