Pray for ecoline and good cards which increase heat or offer ocean tiles.
One once with 23 forest tiles.

i have 50/50 winrate...chose your cards with caution, use standard projet, have some luck, keep events cards with oceans and heat bonus.

If you mean what needs to happen, it's simple: you need to complete the oxygen and temperature tracks, and put down all oceans, all that within 14 generations. The score is secondary, more for bragging rights. :)

Haven't won a single solo game yet. Don't know if it's just bad luck with cards selection, but 14 generations doesn't seem like enough time to achieve all goals.

Winning solo mode is not difficult once you know the cards in the deck. Without expansions and expansion rules, you get 14 generations to complete the 3 terraform requirements: 9 oceans, 14% oxygen, and 8 degrees Celsius temperature.

Ignore all cards that don't help you terraform. Invest in early heat and energy production because temperature is the easiest parameter to raise, which then gives you significant income as the game progresses.

Ideally you will come across some good plant production cards (There are 5-6 really good ones). If not, you will need some standard project greeneries (usually you'll need a few anyway even if you do get plant production).

There are 4 cards that let you raise oxygen once per generation by converting energy into metal, which has the added benefit of giving you metal resources to sue for other things.

Space events are excellent for solo mode - almost all of them terraform at a significant discount.

If you get the card "standard technology" you should win automatically. At least 4 of the corporations can win the solo game with only that card.

I never worry about my score, so my win rate is very high - around 88% or something like that, but with very low scores most of the time.

Been a while since I tried that, so I tried it and won in one try with the UN. The solo game is tough at first because cards that are great in multiplayer (cities, rails, pets, etc.) are bad in solo and vice versa. Generally cards with VP on them are worse in solo, while cards with negative VP are much better.

Once you have won, try and win with each of the corporations.

I play mostly solo. After a rough start, I now have a win:loose ratio of about 2:1. Most of my games are won with 80-90 points, a game lost is generally 70-80. I still have to go past 100...

When starting to play solo, you have to bear in mind that you are not trying to be better than the other players, or maximize VP; you are trying to terraform all by yourself. Once you get better, you can start thinking about improving your score.

This means that pure VP cards are effectively useless. Defense fleet, most animal cards, all nuisance cards (sabotage) have no (or very little) use. Draw only cards that improve your terraforming capacities, either directly (heat/plant production) or indirectly (resources that will help you).

I normally work on building my engine for 4-5 generations (with Prelude) and start terraforming seriously around gen 8 or so.

First and main advice: learn how to count :-) . Consider for instant a card such as investment loan, costing 3 (+ purchase cost of 3) to give you 10 MC and -1 MC production. If you see it in generation 11, it will cost you 3 + 3 + 1 (lost production in gen 12) = 7 and bring you 10. It is not a great deal, but on balance the result is positive. The same card in generation 3 would cost you 3 + 3 + 10 = 16, a terrible deal. Of course if you can synergize (cheap Earth tags, bonus for events...) this changes the calculus a bit.

Likewise, always compare to the baseline of using a standard project. The soleta (35+3 MP, +7 heat production) is a good card. However remember that you can raise the temperature by 1 for 14 MC. So a soleta in gen 10 will cost 35+3 and give you 14 heat = 1 temperature, a net loss of (35+3-14 = ) 24 MC ! Don't do that ! The same in generation 1 (assuming you have a way to pay for it) will bring 11*7 = 77 heat or 9 temperatures, which would otherwise cost 126. An excellent deal.

So, don't buy cards that are not giving you a better deal that a standard project. And don't be afraid to use standard projects (in fact, I don't think you can win without using them - at least I've never done it).

Decide on a strategy. Ideally you want synergy between your corpo, your prelude and your starting hand, but you're not always that lucky! Still, you won't be able to do everything in one game. A typical strategy is space, or space + jovian : aim for 3-4 titanium production during early game, buy all the big spatial cards that you can (Deimos down, Grand convoy..). If you can find aerobraking, spatial station, etc., go for them. You will probably be short on O2 if you do that, so your money will go to buying forests in end game.

Science + energy works well too. If you can get mass driver, antigrav, etc. your life will be much easier! Get a central AI on top of that and you end up with a flood of cards.

Microbes are uncommon, but if you are lucky enough to have a couple of them, use them. Nothing is more satisfying than having the heat-producing microbes fed by e.g. imported nitrogen and work every turn!

A pure plant strategy may work (especially with ecoline), but don't overdo it. You will probably end up being short on heat, so you'll need to spend on heat.

In all the examples above, just ignore the cards that don't fit in your plan. Aerobraking is a great engine card, but if you are playing plants you may as well ignore it.

Don't underestimate placement bonuses. If you know you will place one ocean and one forest in a turn, make sure the ocean goes first to get the 2 MC bonus ! If you put the ocean and the forest on 2 plant hexes each, you won 4 plants in the process (and if you have arctic alga, that's another 3 I think - sometimes it pays to buy an ocean just to trigger enough placement bonuses to get a forest for free...).

Don't overestimate cities. They are not the best way to get VPs (although, if you have spare money in endgame and a nice city spot, it would be stupid not too). They bring some income, true, but probably too late in the game to make an impact. City-placing cards tend to be better, but they cost energy. This means that Tharsis is not very strong in a solo game.

Don' overdraw, especially in early game. A card that you cannot play in the next generation or two is probably not worth having - it will cost money that would be better used elsewhere. In late game, when you are past the engine building stage, a card that does not contribute directly to victory, and more cheaply than a standard project, is not worth buying.

Won solo game in generation 11 with Interplanetary Cinematics. Got Mohole and Lava flows right off. By game end, only producing 1 plant per turn. Only real production was energy and heat. Had an early factory to convert energy to oxygen and metal.

Solo Game is actually more entertaining and challenging.

The solo game can be a real challenge. If you get stuck with Corp choices that don't progress the terraforming, or are just plain slow, and you don't draw cards that help you terraform in some way, you are in trouble.

Even without cards that help terraform, if you can get sufficient production engine(s) going quickly, it's doable. But if your Corp power is drawing cards, or a bonus/discount for less common occurrences like Earth or Jovian tags, it may not help.

I've found it easiest to win the Solo game with corps that have an advantage in some sort of terraforming (Hellion, Econoline), or those that can get a decent production in something quick (Tharsis, Mining Guild, Robinson), or start with lots of cash or resources (Terractor, sometimes Interplanetary Cinematics).

Solo can be rough. I try to score at least 121 (or 101 if playing with Venus Next) and I've played almost 3900 hours on Steam and my win-rate (including forfeits from the get-go) is below 1%.

Okay, listen.

Free advice, take it for what it's worth.

I win Solo almost every time. Tharsis map, NO preludes (They're garbage), no expansions.

I just played 18 or 19, and won all of them. 100%. Some with completely trash hands.

And I was not getting ecocline and Helion every time.

It's not difficult if you know the cards (I have the 208-card base deck memorized) and can plan and do the math.

My results, on Board game arena (I'll happily open my profile and provide the game logs if anyone challenges this, which I am sure people will, because that is what people do.):

114 - Thorgate
83 - inventrix
81 - Helion
131 - Credicor
86 - Thorgate
78 - Phobolog
95 - Credicor
65 - Mining Guild
67 - Inventrix
99 - Thorgate
82 - Inventrix
109 - Ecoline
91 - UNMI
86 - Inventrix
86 - Inventrix (not a typo. Same corp and result twice in a row)
67 - Inventrix
85 - UNMI (I had 76 TR)
89 - Helion
109 - Interplanetary CInematics.

I was offered Ecoline and interplanetary cinematics exactly once each. Likewise Teractor, but I picked Interplanetary Cin instead.

The best corps for solo are Ecoline, Helion, Thorgate, and Credicor.

The worst are Tharsis, Saturn Systems, UNMI, and Phobolog. Saturn Systems probably has my worst win rate.

UNMI usually results in a high score but a fail. Saturn systems is just brutal. There is no opponent to play jovian tags, and the jovian cards are rare and ludicrously priced.

UNMI is dreadful.

Helion, Thorgate, ecoline, and Credicor are usually an auto-win. Those 4 corps can win with a single card - Standard Technology. Any corp should auto win with that card.


..........................


If you're struggling:

1) Study the deck.
2) Read strategy threads on BGG, here, wherever.
3) But make sure you're listening to qualified players. Not players who say they win 2/3 of the time. I am a high-tier player.
4) Listen to other strong players. I was coached extensively by a top-3 player. Probably top 2. I am grateful for his mentoring me.
5) There are a lot of helpful cards. At least 1/3 of the deck is helpful.
6) DO not use preludes or the expansion maps until you can win 90% of the time on the base map without preludes.
7) Colonies makes it kind of a joke. With colonies, I would often have 150+ Credits to sue on the final gen to plant the board with cities and greeneries.

In some of those wins, I had horrible hands.

1) Inventrix with search for life and AI central as my only keeps. Ended up selling them both because I never got the third science tag. Won anyway.

2) Inventrix in another game that was astoundingly absurd: 13 research phases, saw 52 cards, bought 11. Spent heavily on Business Networks and inventor's Guild in gen 1 and 2, saw 27 cards, bought SIX of them. Through gen 8 I had done 4 total terraforms and had 6 cards in hand. Won anyway. I have a full write-up of that one, play by play.

3) There are 4 cards that convert energy into oxygen. If you get one of those, you cannot possibly fail. Likewise standard technology. So, that's 5 auto-win cards. If you get an early Soleta, That's a win. Likewise Mohole Area, usually. Etc.

4) Don't goof around with Earth catapult and other such nonsense. You'll only be playing 20 cards much of the time. Points do not matter. Either you win or you fail. Do not fail.

You want space events, media group, optimal aerobraking, kelp farming bushes, Trees, Aquifer Pumping (sometimes), Standard Technology, any of the 4 energy-oxygen cards, nuclear zone, mangrove, lake Marineris, Any of the cards that terraform.

Do the math. Around gen 8, calculate your total heat including current heat and production. Do not end up one heat short. Likewise for plants. Calculate for the plant-rich equatorial placement spots on the tharsis map. Do not overinvest in terraforming that you'll end up with excess resources for. Etc.

I'll be happy to elaborate further, if anyone requests, or play a PvP on BGA. I haven't used BGA much, having shifted to other games on other platforms, but I was a top2% player on the steam version back when they kept the leaderboard public.