Tips earth

Overview

Earth is an engine building resource management with min-max/optimization at its core. There are numerous factors to consider for every decision. This is overwhelming at first, but as you play more you start recognizing more and more factors and begin to understand how to weigh them against each other. Some decisions come down to card knowledge. E.g. where do I place this card now to account for a maximum number of future drawn cards that consider position? The most weight should be placed on factors that exist now, but the best players will eek out edges by considering potential future factors too.

• Note that this advice is largely geared toward 2-player games because this is the competitive format.

Which action to pick?

Planting

The highest interaction point of Earth is on planting. Whoever completes their board first not only gets 7 bonus points (you should think of this as a 14-point swing in 2-player games because zero-sum), but also is setting the pace for the game. This principle rules in most if not all games where the end criteria is determined by some form of board completion - the player who is ahead on completion status is controlling the pace of the game and *much* more likely to win. If you have two things that you can Plant and a fairly high likelihood of being able to follow your opponent's Plant action (consider that you get to choose 1 of 4 which is fairly likely to yield a cheap option) then you should do it. At its core, there is a race happening in this game and the player who picks Plant more frequently is winning it.

This leads us into the next question: what should I plant? Early in the game, the answer is usually "whatever you have". But later in the game as you get more cards, the answer becomes more nuanced.

Engine

• Green cards are very good. Plant is the most picked action so anything extra you can do in response to Planting is guaranteed money in the bank.

• After Green, the best actions are those that let you do more Planting. Some consideration should be given to "what color does my opponent have a lot of and is thus more likely to pick?" If you Plant actions of that color, then you can get more "follow" bonuses. But as we've already said, they should be picking Plant as often as possible so this is less important than:

• "What do I want to do if I can't plant?" The answer is either get more cards or get more soil. Ideally both. So the best thing you can do is add card draw to your Red/Blue action OR add Soil gain to your Yellow action. Then when you can't Plant, use the action that lets you double-dip on Soil and card draw.

• Don't forget that Sprouts are just inefficient soil (3->2) so the Blue action actually yields *6* Soil, 1 MORE than Red at the cost of 2 Compost (assuming you have the prerequisite number of open Sprout places, but you can always convert them to Soil beforehand). Until the late game, you should be using your sprouts for soil whenever you need it to do more Planting. In the late game you have to weigh the points lost in Sprouts against the extra points gained from planting a "better" card.

Fauna

This is the second highest interaction element of Earth after Planting. The player who first achieves each goal is getting +4 points (8-point swing for 2-player). While less important than Plant-maxing, this is still a considerable difference. And you know about all Fauna from the start of the game so it should immediately begin impacting all of your decisions adding a little bit of weight to Plant each card that matches some Fauna conditions especially for those that match multiple.

Even if you lose the race to a Fauna, it's still 11 points which weighs pretty heavily. It can still be correct to give up or forgo Fauna, just depends on the options being weighed.

Ecosystem / Terrain

These are being lumped together because they're effectively the same thing. There is no race with the opponent so they amount to solo goals. Ecosystems are known from the start so you can immediately start factoring them into what you play whereas Terrain can be drawn at any point in the game. This is why card knowledge is important. You cannot *rely* on getting a specific Terrain, but if you've accounted for it with your board positioning, then you've set yourself up for additional beneficial scenarios if you get lucky. Success is when preparation meets opportunity :)

Where?

Considerations for where to Plant each card are fairly limited, but this is a potential area for gaining an edge in close games:

• Stay open as long as reasonably possible. Once you have a row or column of length 4, your board is "locked". Until then you have the freedom to plant in more positions. Maintaining this freedom can net you better opportunities later in the game.

• Most important is Ecosystems and Terrain that have already been played or you have in hand and plan to play over the course of the game.

• After that is logical order of resolution. You want to draw cards before you have to Compost from your hand via some other action. Secondary to that are things like gaining Growth/Sprouts to later spend in your turn for costs, but you will almost always already have this so you can simply replace it later in the turn.

• Then the last consideration is what position-based Terrain cards could I draw into later in the game that I want to be able to play? I still don't know all the cards, but ones that come to mind are the Habitat-based "path" cards (draw a line of cards that share a habitat) and the plant-type directionals (in this row, in this column, orthogonally adjacent, etc). It is impossible to account for every Terrain, but accounting for as many as possible will help you win more games

Not Planting (anything else)

See the Engine section above. None of the actions are bad, but what to pick just depends on what you and the opponent have already played. Always look at your opponent's board - don't pick actions that help your opponent more than they help you. You're typically only even considering this if you can't pick Plant or if you're in a late game situation where you can dominate your opponent on points per action.

End Game

As the end of the game approaches (one player has 3 empty spaces on the board), there are new important considerations.

• Double check who went first. If the second/last player completes their board, then the game ends after their turn. Otherwise everyone after that player gets another turn. Make sure you factor this into your plans for what you want to Plant before the game ends.

• Tally up your Terrain and Ecosystem goals. Many of these give points based on sets/pairs/trios. If you're close to one of these thresholds (e.g. odd number for a pair-based bonus), add some priority to getting that last item.

• There is a lot of nuance around picking Plant later in the game depending on who is winning the race and how many empty spaces each player has left. The ideal scenario is one in which you have 1 empty space and your opponent has at least 3 empty spaces. The key to manufacturing this game state is to Plant early and often which is why this is emphasized so heavily
• Example 1: you have 3 empty board spaces and your opponent has 4. If you pick Plant then the result is you have 1 and opponent has 3. This is good because if your opponent picks Plant, you get the 7-point bonus and the game will end. A similar scenario occurs even if it is your opponent's turn. They Plant down to 2 empty spaces as do you. You can pick your final Plant, get the 7 points, and the opponent only has 1 empty spot at which point the game ends if you're second or they can do one last "inefficient" Plant action for the last space.
• Example 2: you have 2 empty and your opponent has 3 and it's your turn. If you went second then picking Plant ends the game - great. But if you went first, then your opponent is effectively given a "free" Plant where you cannot follow. You plant to 0 empty, opponent is at 2, then they can Plant again while you can't. A notably exception to this is if you have some Terrain that lets you replace it with a Plant from your hand. Choosing not to plant is just as bad because you now have to pick an "inefficient" last Plant of 1 or forgo the 7-point bonus entirely.
• Example 3: you both have 3 empty board spaces. This is a standoff position. Neither player wants to Plant because the result is that the opponent will win the 7-point bonus (tie for completion on the same turn goes to turn-player). Whoever has the bigger engine is favored here. By that we mean some combination of Sprout/Growth room and the resulting points per action noting that Compost and some specific Terrain bonuses do not have limits (e.g. 1 point per card in hand).

Conclusion

Hope this is helpful to some people. I have still not played many Earth games, but it clearly has high strategic depth. You may or may not find that depth to be interesting as the highest levels of play emphasize deep knowledge of all the cards, but there's a lot of room for interesting decisions leading up to that level.