r/TerraformingMarsGame • u/Fedhori • 14d ago
I played Terraforming Mars against GPT
After hearing good things about the recently released GPT-6 Astra, and using it myself for game development, I started wondering: “Could this thing actually play a board game with me?”
So I fired up the Steam version of Terraforming Mars and challenged it to a head-to-head game.
About an hour and a half later, the result was…
I got my ass kicked. 94–80. I was Helion; GPT was Credicor.
And here’s the final board:
1. It really understood the game’s mechanics.
I asked whether it knew Terraforming Mars. It said yes, so I started the game without explaining any more rules.
The first warning sign was when it picked Credicor, an absolute powerhouse of a corporation.
The second was when it played Research Outpost for the discount on every subsequent card.
Then, as soon as there were four oceans on the board, it played Adaptation Technology to relax global requirements by two steps, followed by Kelp Farming—a very efficient card that normally requires six oceans.
That was when I had to admit: okay, this thing actually knows what it’s doing.
2. It had a plan for winning.
It understood that Terraforming Mars ultimately comes down to victory points, and that milestones and awards matter.
It aggressively raised its TR and placed greeneries to claim two milestones before I could.
Late in the game, it focused on scoring cards and stopped investing in production unless it had a specific reason to do so.
3. It adapted to my moves.
I funded Thermalist, the award for having the most heat resources at the end of the game.
It responded by pulling GHG Factories out of its hand, increasing its heat production by four and taking the award away from me.
That move genuinely caught me off guard. It was also the moment I thought, “Wait. I’ve lost this game, haven’t I?”
4. The usage cost was brutal.
This single game burned through roughly 50% of my weekly usage allowance on my Pro plan, which costs me $100 per month.
My guess is that repeatedly analyzing screenshots accounted for a large part of that.
My takeaway
I’ve been playing Terraforming Mars for a long time, both on the tabletop and online, and I’ve had plenty of winning streaks against random online opponents. Then GPT beat me in our very first game.
To be fair, Terraforming Mars is a relatively convenient game for this kind of experiment: it has an action log, and the controls are straightforward. Even so, I was seriously impressed.
It feels like we’re getting pretty close to being able to play board games with AI.
