Since the latest version, now each faction has their own new victory condition, giving different gameplay depending on your faction. I’ve wrote a Mars walkthrought about a year ago. It’s still relevant to get your planet to habitability & paradise, but if you want extra tips for each faction this article is for you.

Horizon

I think Horizon is probably the easiest faction, if all you want is to achieve victory, all you need is 1 billion credit and independence. You can achieve it without terraforming the planet or even turning it into a Venusian Nightmare has long you get 20 culture points to achieve independence and 1 billion credit.

On Easy & Normal: start with getting a least silver and start mining. If you don’t mind spending GP you can get extra cash to research Palladium and even Rhodium. Once you got enough cash you can research to get spaceport so you can get easy credit and access to all the satellite (normal).
Probably get the orbital surveyor to make your mining easier and buy Palladium and Rhodium mining research when you can. From there you to increase your culture point to get independence.

Either make the planet habitable since it easier to get population grow when the planet is habitable or try to get by with only hab dome.

Expert:
No satellite and spaceport don’t give any credit, but you still need them if you want to intercept those killer asteroid. Minning is the way to go and basically that mostly what you will do until you got a good amount of credit in the bank. Getting habitability still useful to get culture point via population growth, but not required.

Son of Hephaesthus

The Son of Hephaestus is probably the faction that the gameplay changed the most. Since version 5, you need to keep to planet habitability the same. However, since culture point are achieve via your population it can be very difficult to do on some planet or very easy on other.

On mars your best option is probably to take a look at your starting pressure (it’s 600) and reduce it to 0. Why? because that way o2 won’t build up in the atmosphere. This will allow you to build tons of hab dome and increase your population to 2-3 million and have enough culture point to achieve independence. Once there you can try to stabilize you o2 before bringing back your pressure to 600 or you can be a savage and close all those domes, once you’ve done that just raise the pressure to 600 and you get victory.

Daughter of Gaia

The Daughter of Gaia is probably the faction that the game play haven’t change that much since the last version. You need to get independence and paradise.

Normal:
You can just follow my previous guide or you can skip mining and go straight to spaceport and Coral Reef. Once you get habitability, you can use your biosphere to generate money with the cash crop, beautiful and delicate trait. Note that to achieve victory, not only you need to achieve paradise, but all your metric should be stable. If temperature, pressure, O2 or water is still moving you won’t get your victory screen.

Expert:
Again on expert mining is key since you don’t get credit from your usual source (spaceport and coral reef). Once you get habitability, you can use your biosphere to generate money with the cash crop, beautiful and delicate trait.

United Nation Space Administration (UNSA)

To win with UNSA you need to get 500M, getting that much population you need to get habitability. UNSA is my least favorite faction, because it’s so hard to get cash (credit) and at the beginning it’s all about spending credit to get more credit (research, mining, building) and the population growth bonus is pretty useless if your planet is not habitable. Your first culture point could even go to reduce that population growth in favor of increasing your revenue.

Normal: Go for spaceport it will increase your planet pressure and give you a good chunk of credit. If your playing with biomass on Coral Reef is pretty good to since it will give you credit and biomass. Follow the previous guide to get habitability and if your using biosphere build microorganism to generate credit (see biosphere guide). At some point your cities will be generating most of your revenue via spaceport and coral reef. Once you achieve that, you can forget about mining and you will later use the extra space for more cities instead.

Expert: This one is a grind since your best way of getting credit is mining, but your output is so low it’ll take forever. Using GP to mine Palladium and Rhodium can be interesting. I usually use a few culture points to increase my revenue input, either reduce research speed or population grow. From there your goal is to get habitability and a planetary defence network since those asteroid really hurt. Once you get habitability microorganism from your biosphere help you generate credit (see biosphere guide).

For more info, check out my main Mars Walkthrought guide for the exact blueprint to get your planet to habitability & paradise.