Has anyone else found that terraformers seem to be a fairly reliable victory condition? Especially if you play your scoring cards to setup two consecutive turns of terraformer scoring? Just wondering what other paths to victory others have found that work out well.

Two consecutive turns of any scoring can be really good - but it means playing scoring cards quite fast, even the ones not so good for you, and therefore less control on what else is happening.

Don't forget you get your scoring cards back only when you've played all three of them.

No, I know about needing to play all 3 cards before you get them back. It just seems that 4 points for a terraformer, plus 3x the amount of terraformers, PLUS the extra 3 for winning the scoring card (usually works if you have 3) = 24 points after one scoring card (assuming several turns of game play to build the terraformers)! Its not like your not going to get several points from other's scoring cards as well, so if you go terraformers and can setup the two turns of terraforming scoring, its a pretty quick trip to 50+. I have won both games I played with terraformers, so I just wondered if there were other paths to victory that were working for people

I've only played one game so far, but I found that playing more production cards than other cards can be quite helpful... Since I had a variety of different production options, I could play two (or if I wasn't planning on scoring in a particular round) all three of my production cards for several turns, relying on other players' cards for my building and movement. Because of this, I was getting the resources I needed each turn, and could usually make use of them as well thanks to the other players' choices. I did win, so it proved to be quite effective :-)

As for scoring cards, I made it a point to stay ahead in the number of systems, and held my own in the other conditions. Also, I found that fuel seemed to be in less demand later in the game, so it's a great resource to stockpile for the "same resource" scoring.

I actually won my first game using this strategy (which i kinda discovered by accident more than planning). putting the terraformer score card as last and first in a round gives you 12 points just there. Pretty effective, I won with a 25 points difference from the 2nd player. Defintly going to keep a tag on anyone building terraformers on my next game

One thing about playing this game a couple of times is that this strategy gets pretty visible, It means at least one other player will stay neck and neck with you for terraformers to stop you from really cashing in on it.

At least that's how it's worked out with the games I've played

A strategy I like to use is to get a lot of 1 resource and then just trade away whatever I need, or do the same card scoring card. I like to do it with a water or a grain because in later rounds I can build terrafromers. Another one I use is this, I try to build a colony on each ore resource, then a factory, and then I play the score card. It's pretty effective, but somewhat unreliable.