Gaia Project

Gaia Project is a successor to Terra Mystica. In Gaia Project you are one of fourteen factions (races), each with special abilities, that are attempting to colonize planets and expand your race's potential. Each faction has a particular type of planet that is easily colonized with others that require more resources to colonize. There is no conflict in this game beyond which faction claims actions in the shared action pool first and who colonizes/terraforms the planets first. It is a very different game than I have played before with lots that you can do. The strategy is in which pathways to success you will take, which are affected by what other players do.

This game plays well in solo or automa mode and up to four players. Here is how it looks after a game ended, which I lost by just a few points. Each colour can be one of two separate races. I was red or the Hadsch Hallas, a race of traders. From left to right and clockwise is the research board, space sectors, scoring board, round boosters, and faction board.

Each faction board has resources indicated with markers at the top (credits, ore, and knowledge). below that is the power cycle area, with the purple markers. Power can be added, prepped, charged, or used and is how you do many extra actions in the game. to the right of that is the tokens from the two federations I created in the game, which give bonuses when a federation is completed and token selected. To the right of that is the starting bonus, which was one tech advance, and three green AI cubes that are needed for other bonus actions including making planets hospitable for your faction. Just below that are the three Gaia Formers which I did not use. On the lower left side of the faction board are the structures you can build and upgrade to, and also determine what resources you get at the start of each turn plus special actions with the Planetary Institute. There are finite buildings and require a good balance in deciding which ones you require for the next turn when upgrading. To the right of that is the planet type terraforming index indicating how difficult it is to colonize planets, from top easiest to most difficult bottom. Finally to the right of that is a list of free actions that can be taken and what is required to do that action.

Here is the board at the end of the game. It is made up of tiles that can be reconfigured randomly, but was set up for a starting game. The cubes indicate which planets are linked in a federation.

The research board allows actions to be cheaper or more resources to be gained (once or each turn). At the bottom of the board are the special tiles you can get for upgrading from a trading station to an research station or a research station to an academy. There are also advanced tech tiles if you meet certain criteria.

The round boosters are chosen by the first player to pass in a turn and then the round booster they had is placed in the pool. It can sometimes be important to pass early to gain an advantage in the next turn. There are ten of them in the game but they are randomly determined at the start of the game, with three more than the number of players drawn.

The here is scoring board for the six turns. Each turn has one of ten scoring tiles placed on it which gives the bonus victory points gained for certain activities. There are also two of the six final scoring tiles on the board, also drawn randomly at the start of the game, with a handy gradient. 

With 14 factions and random space sectors/advanced tech tiles/round boosters/scoring tiles/final scoring tiles this game can be played again and again with no duplications. I like the different paths you can take to try to achieve victory. Its also nice to have a space game about expanding factions without conflict. I'd like to play this more and with other people. There is also a version on Steam that I will pick up when it is on sale.