The Large Warehouse of Puerto Rico Knowledge

After playing Andreas Seyfarth’s Puerto Rico (hereafter called PR) for the first time, it quickly became one of my favorites. One of the only weaknesses in the game’s design (and it’s a flaw common to many multiplayer games) is that the outcome is sometimes decided by the mistakes of the weakest player. Veteran players often complained about this, but I didn’t see much effort being made to share knowledge about strategy. Most of the strategy advice available in English is comprised of comments made after just a few games. It is also clear to me that most of this information comes from people who have played PR against a small variety of relatively weak opponents.

Why do I believe that most of what I’m reading is uninformed? I’ve played over 1000 games of PR, more than 95% of them on the Brettspielwelt (BSW) online game server. Because PR on BSW takes only 15-45 minutes per game, there are a large number of highly experienced players there. The level of play on BSW thus tends to be much higher than in a typical face-to-face game; most players who have played 200 or more games on BSW would have little trouble defeating someone who hasn’t. This is not to say that “all of the good players are on BSW”, merely that it gives a multiplicative combination of learning advantages to those who play there. The evidence of this is that nearly everyone who bothers to give advice about strategy tends to give the same mistaken recommendations, based upon playing longer games against opponents who make more errors. This is often made clear when people who always win in their face-to-face group play on BSW for the first time.

I should explain what I believe is the difference between the stronger play typical on BSW and the sort of game most players see in face-to-face PR. In a typical face-to-face game, there is relatively little competition for money early in the game. Much of the money earned early on is wasted on poor building choices, which makes the game less dynamic and increases the number of rounds necessary for most players to establish large incomes. This gradually concedes advantage to the players who are producing and loading the most barrels, turning the game into a race to acquire the harbor and/or wharf. It’s also a bit of a lottery, since the players who started with corn have a larger advantage in this style of game. After seeing a couple of wins with the corn/harbor/wharf strategy, the players often start emphasizing corn instead of quarries, which reduces the frequency of the builder and exacerbates the problem. Unless someone decides to break out of this strategy rut, the players are stuck with a game in which the players who start with corn are considerably more likely to win.

Contrast this with a game populated by strong players. Competition for money early in the game is more intense, and almost no money is wasted. The dynamic middle of the game, with its large incomes, arrives much earlier. Both of the factories are typically purchased, overall barrel sales are higher and there are more quarries in play. This makes builder phases more frequent, and it is likely that at least one player has built something in every single builder phase. Threatening to end the game by quickly filling all 12 building spaces (and thus reducing the game length until it is closer to the minimum number of rounds) changes the tempo of the game. Focusing effort on loading goods can be disastrous if the time to exhaust the supply of VPs runs out prematurely; money spent on a wharf is wasted if there is not enough time for it to be used effectively. I am not saying that strong players build instead of making VPs; I’m saying that their building effort is balanced with their shipping effort, leading to a more dynamic game with higher scores for all players.
A common response to this observation is to claim that a single player is, to some extent, at the mercy of the strategy of the other players. Although you can only react to moves that your opponents actually make rather than the moves they should make, it’s not as if your opponents can force you to imitate them in order to be competitive. That’s an illusion. If your opponents scramble for every available corn plantation and then frantically produce and load goods, you can respond by getting paid 2 doubloons to choose the roles they are ignoring. The extra cash can finance a variety of production buildings, factory, harbor and a couple of bonus buildings (or, for that matter, a number of other competitive variations). The deficit in VPs can be more than overcome by a gross advantage in building points. Even if the strategy of all of your opponents is very different from yours, there is no need to allow the game to play you. The tools to play a strong game that has an excellent chance to win are always available to you, regardless of what the other players choose to do.

This document is my attempt to address as many PR strategy issues as I can in one place. It is not a collection of hints or comments, but a structured description of how to play a strong game. Since this isn’t a collection of competing theories, it does approach the problem from a specific point of view that includes my biases. I have carefully considered everything written here and consider it to be the truth insofar as I can discern it. I have tried to avoid stating something absolutely except when I believe that it is the case 100% of the time. PR is a complex game full of ambiguous situations, in which there is often more than one strong move available. It isn’t tic-tac-toe, and there are rarely easy answers to strategy questions. Most of what I offer here are approaches, ways of recognizing what is important about each aspect of the game. Out of those approaches comes more specific advice on what to do in certain kinds of situations.

My primary purpose is to help novices bypass the trial-and-error stage of learning PR and begin playing at a much higher level. My motive for this is actually a bit selfish: Not only is it more fun to play well and win, but it is more fun for me to play against opponents who aren’t inadvertently throwing the victory to someone else. Beyond that, I hope that more experienced players can benefit from a structured presentation of game strategy. Whether you agree or disagree with the ideas presented here, I hope that your reaction to them helps to improve your understanding.

I offer my thanks to the many players who shared their skill and insight with me as I learned the game. On Brettspielwelt (www.brettspielwelt.de) Alexfrog, coolala, HalloChr, Esterio and RicoSuave were especially helpful in providing me with the dozens of losses necessary for me to improve. I strongly encourage anyone seeking stronger opponents to try BSW. The difference between playing against inexperienced opponents and opponents with hundreds of games’ experience cannot be overstated. Nearly all PR games on BSW last 20-45 minutes, and the way the presentation makes it easier to see the entire game position in one view. If you would like to play against me on BSW, my name there is “icetrey” and I play from the Pacific time zone. If you want to play against the best player on BSW…you’ll have to find that person yourself.

I. Overview

The initial experience of playing Puerto Rico can be overwhelming, with so many different things happening in each turn and a wide variety of buildings available. The tempo and scoring in different games varies widely, making it hard to draw conclusions about which strategies are effective. The tendency is to keep trying to do what worked for the winner of the previous game, which causes two problems. First, not all starting positions are identical, and trying to wedge a particular strategy into an incompatible starting position will usually fail. Second, a kind of consensus can form about which strategies “always win,” causing inexperienced players to abandon most of the options available. The solution is to understand how to construct a diverse position that can take full advantage of your unique situation.

Although your role choice will probably be your most effective move of each round, it is critical to make progress during the roles chosen by the other players. Each time your opponents can skip your move by choosing a role that won’t benefit you, they probably will. Strong players construct a position that allows most of their opponents’ role choices to work for them; this is what I mean by a diverse strategy.

Each seat at the table has its own characteristics, both in terms of starting plantation (corn or indigo) and which roles are most favorable during the first round. A strong player uses the strengths of that position to generate the resources necessary to fix most of its weaknesses. The result is a balanced and diverse position.

Although it is very important to master the selection of plantations and buildings to suit your situation, the most critical thing to understand is the difference in the value of money at different times during the game. PR is a game of expansion in which each player turns a few doubloons and a plantation (and the variety of free stuff provided throughout the game) into a bunch of buildings and a stack of VPs. A VP scored in round 1 doesn’t do anything but count as 1 VP toward the final score. A doubloon earned in round 1 helps to buy a building that will generate additional plantations, VPs, colonists or doubloons. These can be used directly or indirectly to buy more buildings, which generate still more income and other effects. Although doubloons don’t count toward the final score, the buildings they purchase are themselves worth points and greatly contribute toward gaining VPs. This reinvestment effect makes doubloons much more valuable than VPs early in the game. Failing to recognize this leads to situations late in the game in which none of the available role choices are attractive, because your opponents gain much more than you do from each of the available options. A small VP advantage gained early is easy to overwhelm with large scoring moves late in the game, moves made possible by a larger income to spend on buildings.

The flip side of this effect is that money rapidly loses its value as the end of the game approaches. Late in the game, the focus should shift to scoring as many points as possible. Doubloons earned don’t have time to multiply, so they are only useful if they can be immediately spent on buildings.

If you are wondering where the line between the early and late game is drawn, the answer is that there isn’t one. Rather, there is also a middle stage of the game that is characterized by “normal” play. Once you have established a reliable source of income and can build something useful each time the builder role is chosen, you are mostly free of the need to scramble around for money. Then the situation is balanced between earning money and scoring and you have entered the middle stage of the game. The middle is over when the opportunity to make money starts to lose its value. This happens when there are not enough builder phases remaining to spend your current cash and future income.

It’s worth noting that not all of the players enter the middle or late stages of the game at the same time. It is quite possible to leave someone stranded and cash-poor in the early stage. It is also possible to leave a captain-oriented player behind in the middle stage while you spend the late stage filling up your last few building spaces. Understanding the difference between these stages of the game is critical to recognizing the best moves for each situation.

II. Roles

When choosing a role, one must consider the number of bonus doubloons on each role, the role’s benefits to you and each of the other players, and whether most of the benefits of the role can be gained without actually choosing it.

Early in the game, the best choice will often be a role that has a doubloon on it, if one is available. This is because early in the game, when players have fewer resources, the potential value of each role’s basic effects is much smaller. The relative value of a bonus doubloon is thus much larger than it is later in the game. In addition, doubloons are scarce early in the game and the necessity to build in order to get a strategy started is much greater. One must have a strong justification for choosing a role without a bonus doubloon early in the game.

Conversely, in the second half of the game the roles become much more valuable, with some of the choices leading to big scoring moves. The need for money is also not as severe. All this combines to make bonus doubloons less important.

Besides bonus doubloons, there are the benefits of each role to consider. The benefits of choosing a particular role can be divided into a few types:

1. Positional. Many of the choices in the early and middle game are made to gain quarries, make essential buildings, or occupy plantations and buildings. Moves designed to raise money early in the game fall into this category.
2. Scoring.
3. Defensive. Preventing your opponents from making strong moves can be critical. Sometime it is convenient and can be accomplished in the course of a scoring move. At other times, you must choose a role for the sole purpose of defending against a big move.
4. Game Ending. Intentionally reducing the length of the game can be decisive. Late in the game one must take this into account when choosing a role.

Most of your effort will be spent comparing your benefit from each role with the benefits for the other players. Understanding the benefits of each role for each player is more complex than just doubloon and point totals and can sometimes be more art than science. Learning to compare the available options can only proceed so far in theory, with experience in games situations being the only really effective teacher. I go into more detail about the benefits of each role in the rest of this section.

A further consideration is whether one can derive the benefit of a role without choosing it. If your benefit from the role does not rely on the turn order specific to your choice (for example, if there is plenty of space on the ships for all of the barrels you would like to load), it might be possible to gain those benefits after choosing a different role. If there are bonus doubloon(s) on the role, or if another player will also be helped by it, they may choose it for you. If the role has no bonus doubloons and no other player chooses it, then you may be able to collect a bonus doubloon for choosing it in the following round. Putting off important moves can be dangerous, so use this technique carefully.

Finally, there is the Governor Effect to consider. Unlike many games, moves for each player don’t occur with complete regularity. The Governor Effect is the uneven rhythm of the role choices, such that after choosing as the governor each other player gets to choose twice before your next choice. Consider the following turn order at the beginning of a 3-player game:

Round 1: 1 2 3
Round 2: 2 3 1
Round 3: 3 1 2

After #1’s governor choice, players #2 and #3 each get two role choices before #1 finally gets to choose again at the end of round 2. The effect applies to #2 in rounds 2 and 3. Consider the Governor Effect when making your governor choice, and remember that you won’t get to choose a role for a while after this one.

The flip side of the Governor Effect is the short break between choices for the last player in each round. After choosing last in round 2, there is only one opponent choice before #1 chooses again in round 3.

1. Settler

The settler is almost entirely a positional role. Although the residence offers an indirect way to score points and there are some defensive moves available while choosing plantations, nearly all of the benefits are positional. Because of this, the settler becomes progressively less important as the game continues, until it offers almost nothing but bonus doubloons near the end of the game.

The most important thing that the settler does is offer a quarry. You should nearly always take that quarry. There are two situations when I consider choosing the settler and taking a plantation instead of a quarry: 1) When I have constructed a coffee roaster or tobacco shed, but don’t have the corresponding plantation, and I am concerned that I won’t get that plantation during another player’s settler; 2) When I am focusing on a large-volume shipping operation and I am only interested in acquiring corn plantations. These two situations are relatively rare. In general, if getting a quarry is not very interesting to you then the settler is best left for someone else.

You may wonder why I consider quarries to be so important. As I see it, a quarry is a plantation that makes 1 doubloon each time the builder is chosen. As I mentioned in the overview, for most of the game money is more powerful than VPs. In addition, quarries are rarer and more difficult to acquire than plantations.

Despite all that, it can be dangerous to assume that getting a quarry is so beneficial that it is clearly the best play. Remember that every quarry you take is one less plantation that can make goods, and requires a colonist to operate it. If there are several useful plantations available, then choosing the settler and taking a quarry can actually be counterproductive. You may be better off letting someone else take it, and then grabbing something nice on their turn. The opposite can also be true; if there are a bunch of useless tiles in the plantation draw, look for an opportunity to avoid them by taking the settler and a quarry.

Another consideration is whether you truly need another quarry. There is a diminishing return effect when acquiring more than one. The first quarry discounts the price of every building in the game, while the second one doubles that discount for nearly all buildings. These are both quite useful. The third quarry, however, increases that discount by 50% for less than half of the buildings on the chart. The fourth quarry is nearly useless compared to the others. Thus when considering whether to acquire a third quarry, it’s important to estimate how many 3- or 4-point buildings one is likely to buy. Sometimes taking a plantation during someone else’s settler will be stronger than taking a third quarry.

When someone else chooses the settler, you must still choose a plantation. Usually there is a plantation available that can fit into the current plan, and the best choice is obvious. Sometimes it is more difficult to decide. Generally:

1. Diversifying into a new type is better than duplicating one you already have, since diversity helps in trading and shipping and breaks up the monopolies of your opponents
2. Corn is better than the other plantations, since it requires only one colonist and no building to make one barrel
3. A monopoly is a useful thing indeed
4. Making the same high-value good (tobacco or coffee) as the player to your right is not very effective.

Some of these factors become much less important later in the game. For example, diversifying requires construction of new production buildings, which can interfere with construction of a harbor or a 4-point building. Sometimes corn is less useful later in the game, when there is more competition for both the small supply of corn barrels and the space on the ships.

In many cases, all of the remaining plantations are of no use. In that case the only value in choosing one (besides the Residence bonus) is defensive, by limiting the options of subsequent players. That’s still valuable, so don’t forget to thwart someone if you can. Choosing the settler for the sole purpose of taking a plantation that someone else needs is a bad move, in my opinion. A specific plantation type is not very hard to acquire, and the move requires some luck in the next plantation draw in order to succeed. Also, it only causes a problem for one opponent, which is not of much value.

2. Mayor

Like the settler, the mayor is mostly a positional role. Unlike the settler, the mayor is a critical role throughout the game, and has important scoring and game ending effects. There is also an occasional opportunity to use the mayor defensively. It has some of the danger of the craftsman, since it is easy to set up strong plays for one’s opponents by choosing it. More than any role except the craftsman, the mayor seems to lead to a lot of mistakes for beginners.

How do you avoid these mistakes? First, it is necessary to evaluate how every player will benefit from the mayor. If there is an opponent who desperately needs colonists, choosing the mayor solves their problem and effectively grants them a free move. They can now choose another role instead of the mayor. While it is disappointing to gain a new building or quarry and then be unable to use it immediately, often it is best to rely on someone else to choose the mayor. When I need the mayor, but don’t want to help my opponents too much by taking it, I will often choose the settler and a quarry or choose the builder. By gaining more uses for colonists, I create a situation where the eventual mayor will help me even more.

Second, you must determine whether the colonist ship is unbalanced. A balanced ship has x, 2x or 3x colonists on it (x being the number of players in the game), and will distribute the same number of colonists to each player (except the bonus colonist given to the mayor). The best example of an unbalanced ship has x+1 colonists, which gives 3 colonists to the mayor, and only 1 to everyone else. Two extra colonists is an advantage, and will diminish the need to take the mayor later on in the game. Let’s return to the earlier problem, in which one needs the mayor but doesn’t want to provide great help to an opponent. With an unbalanced ship, it’s possible to gain the full benefits of the mayor while still leaving opponents in need of colonists. In addition, the unbalanced mayor choice has been denied to one’s opponents; if they needed more than one colonist, they must wait for another opportunity to get them.

It’s important to realize that for most of the game the mayor occupies buildings and plantations that will eventually be occupied anyway. Thus the appropriate question is not usually “How will occupying my new items help me?” but rather “How will occupying my new items help me right now?” One case where that isn’t true is near the end of the game, when each mayor might be the last opportunity to occupy buildings. In that situation, the mayor becomes a scoring role when using it to occupy 4-point buildings.

The mayor can also be used to intentionally shorten or end the game. It’s very important to keep track of this, so that you can prepare for it. Even with 15 or more colonists in the supply, it’s worth making a quick count to see if ending the game with the mayor is possible.

Sometimes, there is an interesting defensive benefit to choosing the mayor. In a situation where opponents are ready to build but you are not, you can choose the mayor so that they will have to wait to occupy their new buildings. It forces the builder and mayor to occur in the least efficient order; hopefully, the extra time will allow you to raise cash so that your new building is constructed in time for the next mayor.

Once the mayor role is chosen, there are usually some decisions to make about which plantations and buildings to occupy. It’s usually very clear where to place them, but there is room to make some mistakes, especially if one is suffering from a shortage of colonists. It’s important to evaluate each building and plantation to see if they are still useful. Avoid enshrining colonists and forgetting about them. When forced to choose which goods to produce, check the trading house, ships and your existing barrels to see what you don’t already have and what is likely to trade or load. When occupying some or all of your quarries, consider your cash, income and which building(s) you intend to construct. If your next building won’t benefit from a second quarry, consider using that colonist somewhere else.

The mayor is one of the least dynamic roles. Though the timing of the mayor choice is critical and the function of the mayor is essential, it doesn’t directly result in big scores like the builder or captain. For this reason, as a player’s skill increases they tend to choose the mayor less frequently and choose scoring roles more frequently. Learning to live with the effects of the mayor and choose it less often is an important part of improving your game.

Some other mayor-related points are addressed in other sections. Discussions of the mayor in the opening and the endgame are in sections IV and V, respectively.

3. Builder

The builder offers diverse benefits. It is a positional, scoring, defensive and game ending role. Almost every time it is chosen, the shape of the game will change significantly. There are two main issues concerning the builder: When should it be chosen? What (if anything) should be constructed during the builder?

When considering a builder choice, note how many quarries each player has. If you have no quarries, choosing the builder will give a nice benefit to everyone who does have quarries. Sometimes, it’s best to leave the builder for your opponent to choose. Conversely, if you have invested your plantation choices in quarries then you have committed to building frequently. You will then need to take the builder more often in order to fully benefit from your strategy.

A second factor in the decision is how much buying power each player has and what they are likely to buy. If your opponents can build critical buildings (such as a factory, harbor, or guild hall) it might be better to force them to choose the builder to accomplish that. On the other hand, if your opponents are not ready to build and/or have little buying power, the builder can offer a great opportunity for a combined scoring/defensive choice. Look for opponents that have unoccupied quarries, or that don’t have enough money to purchase the building they need. Especially important near the end of the game are opponents whose buying power is just short of the 10 necessary to build a 4-point building; choosing the builder before they are ready can be a critical defensive play.

Later in the game, the game-shortening effect of the builder must also be considered. Typically a player with two or more quarries does not produce a large number of loadable goods, and would like the game to be as short as possible. Building 4-point buildings that occupy 2 spaces along with cheap buildings like the large indigo plant can shorten the game by 1-2 rounds, preventing a large number of VPs from scoring.

Once the builder has been chosen, you must now decide whether and what to build. This decision, recurring throughout the game, is where the difference between the skillful and the inept is easiest to see. Every building in the game is specialized. Some are nearly useless and others are useful in a wide variety of positions, but no building is useful with every kind of position. Wasting money on buildings that are inappropriate for the current position is the most common form of ineffective play in PR.

The applicability of a building is best judged by two standards: 1) Effectiveness with the existing plantations/buildings; 2) Effectiveness over the time remaining in the game. These can be seen as an equation in which the benefit gained from a building is multiplied by the number of times that the building will deliver that benefit. In order to apply these standards, one must learn the positions where each building is most effective, and the best time during the game to buy each building. Section III gives an explanation of each building’s situational value.

The building purchase must also take into account the choices of your opponents. Sometimes it is necessary to buy a building earlier than planned because the limited number of those buildings will soon run out. A purchase can also have defensive value, by preventing an opponent from acquiring that building. In the case of more expensive production buildings like the tobacco shed or coffee roaster, it’s essential to pay attention to which of your opponents have built or may build the same production building. Producing tobacco or coffee while the player to your right is also producing it makes your high-value barrels extremely difficult to trade. This negates most of the value of producing the barrels and can turn one of these more expensive buildings into a waste of money and a setback.

If you have quarries, there are times when it is important to buy buildings that you have no intention of using. In the second half of the game, you will often not have enough cash for your preferred purchase. In that situation, there are some buildings that are very inexpensive to buy if you have enough quarries. Buildings like the indigo plant, hacienda, construction hut and small sugar mill only cost 1 doubloon, but generate 1-2 points and take advantage of your quarry discount. If you have (or later buy) a City Hall or a Guild Hall these purchases can yield an additional 1-2 points each.

One last consideration when choosing a building is whether that building will generate the cash necessary to construct other buildings. The factory is a good example of this; I usually build a factory before building a harbor, since the factory will provide great help in raising the money for the harbor. This is especially critical at the beginning of the game, which I explain in section IV.

4. Craftsman

The rulebook warned you about this one. The craftsman is a very hazardous role, because it provides the goods necessary for the next player to take advantage of the trader and captain. Since the craftsman player has just moved, they will have the last opportunity to trade or load goods if the next role is the trader or captain. In general, you must be producing a large number of shippable/tradable barrels and/or receiving 1 or more bonus doubloons in order to justify choosing the craftsman.

There are a few situations in which the craftsman is the best choice. One of these is to produce a high-value barrel that leads to a guaranteed opportunity to trade that barrel. If your opponents can’t force you to load your trade good using the captain, and they can’t prevent you from trading that good during the next trader, that may be an important enough trade to justify taking the craftsman. Another is when the effect of your factory combined with the bonus doubloons from the craftsman generates a large sum of doubloons, especially if it provides the buying power necessary to make an important purchase. A third situation is when you have a wharf or a warehouse and can produce a large number of goods. The wharf or warehouse then helps prevent you from being denied the opportunity to ship your goods. Finally, a shortage of available barrels can make the craftsman a worthwhile choice, to ensure that you get full production out of your plantations. Remember that even in these situations, the craftsman may still benefit your opponents too much to justify choosing it.

A shortage of available barrels can allow a “double craft” move. In a “double craft” the craftsman is chosen, leaving insufficient barrels for full production. Before the captain can be chosen the craftsman is chosen a second time, leaving other players with only partial production. When goods are finally loaded, the player who double crafted has a very large number of barrels. To be effective the “double-craft” move usually requires a wharf and the ability to produce a large number of barrels.

Which bonus barrel to produce is a recurring decision throughout the game. There are several factors to consider when deciding this. First, examine the total number of barrels of each type held by each player, and compare it to the amount of space left on the corresponding ship. You can then use your bonus barrel to adjust this total (or not) to achieve one of 3 different effects during the captain.

If the total number of barrels is exactly enough to fill the available ship space, then no barrels of that type will be left over for trading. Every barrel of that type will be loaded during the captain, and that ship will be empty for the next captain. This is useful when you want to guarantee loading of more of your barrels and/or prevent your opponents from trading after the captain.

If the total is greater than the available space by exactly one, then one barrel will be left over. If you can ensure that you will have that extra barrel, this is a good way to increase your chances of trading.

If the total is slightly less than enough to fill the ship, then all the barrels will be loaded and that ship will not be cleared. This type will be more difficult to load next time, and the global total of barrels loaded will tend to decrease until the ship clears. In addition, the large number of barrels in play after the captain reduces the number available for later production, possibly causing some players to suffer partial production of barrels. Setting up an “almost full” ship is a useful technique when trying to slow down the rate of VP scoring.

Try to optimize your barrel supply for the best combination of these outcomes. If there are ships empty, it is more difficult to predict what will happen. If the ships are congested and you have a warehouse, adding a bonus barrel to your largest stack is often a good idea. If you have a monopoly on a high-value trade good, having at least two of those barrels for multiple trades can be very lucrative. For that matter, being able to trade a good and then start a ship for the same type is useful.

The craftsman is similar to the mayor, in that everyone needs for it to be chosen in order to set up other moves. Thus, by choosing it, you are granting one or more other players a free move. They can now use their choice to do something more desirable. Because of this, it requires a larger inducement to make the craftsman an attractive option.

5. Trader

The benefits from the trader are perhaps easier to see than those of any other role. When you need money and have a high-value barrel that will fit in the trade house, it can be hard to see how any other choice makes sense. It’s actually not so simple, because the trader isn’t the only way to make money and choosing the trader isn’t the only way to sell goods.

When considering the trader, it’s critical to determine whether you will get to sell your barrel regardless of who chooses the trader. If there is not an immediate and pressing need for the money, choosing the trader just to sell a barrel you will eventually sell anyway can be a wasted move.

A second consideration is whether the trader offers defensive value by preventing one of your opponents from trading. This is accomplished either by filling all the available spaces in the trade house, or by selling a specific type of barrel before your opponent can. This is especially important early in the game, when there is intense competition to make money.

Third, check whether you will be forced to load your trade barrel during the next captain phase. If not, consider choosing the captain to force tradable barrels onto the ships. This can leave you with one of the only tradable barrels, denying income to other players when the trader is eventually chosen.

Be sure to check the amount of money you will earn from other sources this round, including the bonus doubloons on the non-trader role choices. It may be possible to make plenty of money this round without choosing the trader, which can free up your choice for another role that is important to you.

Always know exactly how many doubloons are necessary to buy your next building. There is no point making decisions about income without a clear goal in mind. This is especially important in the late phase, when most players are trying to accumulate the 10 doubloons necessary to buy a bonus building.

It’s also important to avoid choosing the trader unnecessarily during the late stage of the game. Usually incomes are high and builder phases are scarce near the end of the game, so there is a real risk of raising more money than you have time to spend.

Since the influx of money from the trader leads naturally to the builder, try to estimate what choosing the trader will allow your opponents to build. It’s possible to set up moves that will deny you a building that you need, or allow someone to shorten the game by filling more building spaces.

Once the trader has been chosen, it may seem obvious that each player should simply sell a barrel for as much money as possible. However, the best move is not always to sell the most valuable barrel, or even to trade at all.

One reason to sell for less money is if the more expensive barrel is the one you would prefer to load onto the ships. This is especially important if you have a harbor and/or you would like to reserve a ship for a good type that you have monopolized.

Another motive is to prevent another player from selling an identical barrel. This can often lead to your more expensive barrel being sold anyway during the following round, yielding the benefits of both trades while reducing your opponent’s income.

Refusing to trade is a useful technique when you have neither a highly valuable tradable good nor much prospect of making a large amount during the next trader phase. If you are at a serious ongoing disadvantage during the trader, it’s worthwhile to slow down the selling of barrels. One way to do this is by intentionally leaving the trade house three-quarters full so that only one barrel may be sold during the next trader. There is actually a situation in which refusing to trade can be a critical defensive move: The “double trade,” in which one player produces two high-value barrels and then trades one of them. If the house fills up and clears, it can leave that player with another big (and perhaps solo) trader move on the following turn. Allowing someone to make such a large amount of money early in the game can be disastrous, and a refusal to sell in order to prevent the trade house from filling and clearing is sometimes the only way to stop it.

Because both the captain and the trader draw on the same pool of goods, the trader phase can make critical changes to the barrel supply that affect the next captain phase. Sold barrels can change whether there are enough barrels to fill (and thus empty) particular ships or whether a tradable surplus is left over after the captain phase. This isn’t the largest or most important concern during the trader, but noticing these effects can reveal an occasional opportunity.

Conversely, the captain phase can be used to manipulate the pool of tradable goods. I address that subject in the following section.

6. Captain
This is a big scoring role that includes some important defensive functions. It combines offense and defense more dynamically than any of the other roles. The loading tactics include some subtle effects that often distinguish the strong player from the weak player. Because sub-optimal moves during the captain phase can be very damaging, it’s hard to improve your overall game without mastering the loading of the ships.

Unfortunately the question of whether to choose the captain is inextricably linked with the questions of what will be loaded, who will score VPs and what barrels will be left behind. To make an informed decision about the captain you need to compare the potential loading sequence during your captain choice with what will likely happen if your opponents choose the captain. This amounts to playing out different possible sequences in your head, and then deciding what you think of each one. It’s actually one of the best ways to spend the downtime between moves. I won’t claim that it’s easy; for the novice just learning the loading rules, it’s a real pain to try to figure this out. I offer the following series of questions that can help clarify the issue.

Will I get to load most or all of the barrels I would like to load regardless of who chooses the captain? If you are assured of loading your barrels, there is probably a better choice available than the captain. This assumes that there is no “double craft” move to change the number of barrels held by the players.

How many VPs do I miss by leaving the captain for one of my opponents to choose? If a large number of barrels will be lost instead of loaded, that must be taken seriously. Losing one barrel is not such a big deal and can often be justified in terms of the first question.

What trade benefits/problems are caused by choosing the captain or by allowing someone else to choose it? It’s important to see which sales can be prevented or enabled by forcing goods onto the ships.

How many VPs is each player going to get if I choose the captain, and how is this different if my opponent chooses it? This is the basic value comparison of the move, and is critical when you are at an ongoing disadvantage in gaining VPs. Choosing the captain when you don’t make many VPs helps your opponents press their advantage and is usually not a good idea. By asking these questions and then comparing the captain to the other options, you can make a well-informed decision about whether to choose it.

During the loading of goods there are some very interesting decisions to make. First of all, remember that the loading move which yields the largest number of immediate VPs is not necessarily the best move. Because of limited space on the ships, lower scoring moves can have defensive value that gives them a higher priority than higher scoring moves. I find that it’s best to evaluate these by examining each ship. When it is your turn to load, each ship will be in one of three states: 1) Partially loaded with enough space for all the barrels of that type; 2) Partially loaded without enough space for all the barrels of that type (glut); 3) Empty.

A ship in state 1 seems at first glance to have a low loading priority, since you will end up putting your barrels there anyway. If there is at least one empty ship then immediately loading to a state 1 ship can be critical if you are trying to manipulate which barrels are left over. Consider the following example: It is player #1’s turn to load. #1 has 1 corn, 1 indigo and 2 sugar. Player #2 has 1 corn and 1 coffee. Ships are corn with 3 spaces, indigo with 3 spaces and an empty ship. If #1 emphasizes VPs then the obvious move is to load sugar on the empty ship to block #2’s coffee. If, however, the priority is to earn income then #1 needs to load corn and indigo until #2 is eventually forced to load coffee. Although #1 must then discard a sugar barrel, the other sugar can be sold and the coffee barrel has been forced onto the ship where it cannot be sold. Note that near the end of the game the money from selling sugar might be completely irrelevant, making the 2 VPs the best possible yield from #2’s sugar barrels.

Ships in state 2 force you to decide between racing to get your barrels on that ship first and avoiding that ship so that you end up with leftover barrels of that type. This choice depends upon whether you need money or VPs, how bad the glut is, and which buildings you own (harbor, wharf and/or warehouses). A state 2 ship is often good to use for a delay move as described above, since there is both an offensive (VP scoring) and defensive (VP prevention) aspect to the move.

Empty ships are the most difficult to deal with because there are 2 different variables, the type of barrel loaded and the amount of remaining space on the ship. Loading barrels to an empty ship is similar to choosing a role in one way: It’s important to know how much you and your opponents will benefit from loading that type. Establishing a corn ship to make 1 VP can be very foolish if it allows someone else to load 4 corn for 4 VPs. Conversely, loading a coffee barrel which you have no intention of trading usually results in a slow-loading ship that makes loading other types more difficult. If you have a coffee monopoly, you will be the only one loading that ship.

Another important effect of empty ships is forced loading. It’s important to check the barrels of the other players to see if there is someone who can be forced to load their only type of barrel to an empty ship. Forcing that move can help to assign more ships to the types of barrels you want to load. If there is enough space for your barrels then you can net a few extra points this way.

When there is more than one empty ship available, you must choose which one to load. To make a good choice, you need to not only consider whether there is a glut on the ship you load, but also whether the other empty ships will have a glut of goods. If you make plenty of barrels of the type you are loading and the ship will not fill up during this captain phase, then the basic technique is to choose the largest available ship, thus reserving more space for future loading. This also leaves smaller ships for other types, reducing the available space for those barrels. If you can choose a ship that will fill up during this captain phase and you don’t mind leaving your opponents with leftover barrels of that type, then you can choose the smallest available ship and prevent your opponents from loading as many barrels. This will leave a larger ship available for another type, however, which may or may not benefit your other loading moves.

Of course, the best outcome is to load every barrel you wished to load while saving only what you want to sell and/or load later. Less obviously, there are some nice defensive outcomes to try for. If your opponents are producing a lot of a particular type, leaving that ship with one space open is a desirable outcome. Not only does it make loading much more difficult during the next captain, but the smaller number of barrels in the supply can cause a production shortage during the next craftsman. If you have a warehouse there is some defensive value in having two different types of barrels left over at the end of the captain phase. Having two types increases your options when occupying empty ships during the next captain.

Some tactics must change to account for the effect of buildings. Players who own harbors are more interested in loading many times than in loading many barrels. Trying to completely prevent a player with a warehouse from loading their goods is difficult; the usual effect of defensive moves against a warehouse owner is to delay loading, not prevent it. Wharf is a special case because it is so difficult to prevent a wharf owner from loading barrels. One interesting tactic is to load an empty ship with the type of barrel that corresponds to the wharf owner’s largest stack. They can then fill up most or all of that ship with their large stack of barrels, preventing anyone else from loading that type. The wharf owner then ends up using the wharf to load 1 or 2 barrels rather than a large stack. Often, this is preferable to the situation in which (for example) there is no corn ship but the wharf owner still gets to load a stack of corn for VPs. By making a small change in your own move, you can negate much of the value of the wharf in that captain phase.

Finally, take the relative position of each player into account when evaluating defensive plays. If someone has no chance of winning, it’s fine to let them score plenty of VPs. Save your defensive options for use against opponents who are actually threatening to win.

III. Buildings

Small Market: This is the most versatile building in the game. Its effect is small, but since it is easy to purchase early in the game, it can be used a large number of times. How effective this building is in your position will depend on which good you are trading; selling indigo for 2 is a 100% increase, while selling coffee for 5 is a 25% increase. In other words, if you are already making plenty of money, small market’s effect is less important. It’s very common to purchase this during the first round. When doing so, make sure that spending that doubloon doesn’t prevent the purchase of something more important, like a critical production building. Small market pairs particularly well with corn in the first few rounds, since being able to trade corn for doubloons is quite useful then. Later in the game, the colonist necessary to operate it is often better used somewhere else; this is especially likely if you also have a factory and several production buildings. Finally, this building is the cheapest way to fill up one of the 12 building spaces necessary to end the game.

Hacienda: In a game with very little luck, this is the only way to add a bit more. If you plan to include this in your strategy, it should be one of your first three purchases. Buying it later doesn’t give much advantage over your opponents, since by the middle of the game everyone has most of the plantations they will ever need. A disadvantage of buying it early is that the extra plantations received don’t immediately return the 2 doubloons spent. This tends to limit early construction of production buildings to the small indigo plant and small sugar mill, as well as possibly delaying construction of the factory or harbor. For this reason, I check the available plantation tiles when deciding whether to buy a hacienda. If I’m likely to get something I want without the hacienda, then buying one will be less effective. In that case a small market might be a better choice. Because diversifying is more important for an indigo player, hacienda tends to be more helpful when starting with indigo instead of corn. Corn players need to focus on getting a revenue source, and hacienda doesn’t directly help with that.

Once you own a hacienda, how to use it depends upon the available plantations. If there is plenty of good stuff available, wait for someone else to take the settler. If not, then choose it yourself and grab a random plantation and a quarry. The diversity from the random draws can easily lead to a good position for the factory and/or harbor, and the large number of plantations works well with the Residence in the endgame. If you get lucky and draw a lot of corn, you can build a small warehouse or a wharf and load a lot of barrels.

Don’t forget to remove the colonist from the hacienda later in the game. Once you have 8-10 plantations the remaining settlers will usually be enough to fill your board without the hacienda, so find a better use for that colonist.

Like the hospice and the construction hut, the hacienda is more useful in the 5-player game than in smaller games. Because role choices are less frequent, gaining an advantage in the settler phase is somewhat more valuable.

Construction Hut: Quarries are quite valuable, so it is tempting to conclude that the construction hut is a broadly useful building. Unfortunately, the situations in which it is the best option are relatively uncommon. Like all of the buildings that affect the settler phase, the construction hut is most effective when purchased early. Its enduring usefulness is fairly limited, since once you have 2-3 quarries, getting more is no longer necessary. It only takes 2 settler choices to get 2 quarries, so the construction hut uses 2 of your precious initial doubloons to get an ability that is already available in the game. In addition, the quarries taken with the construction hut displace plantations that you would otherwise get. Thus if you are unhappy with your current plantations, a construction hut will usually present a difficult decision between an important plantation and a quarry.

In general, I consider buying the construction hut when I already have 2 or 3 excellent plantations (for example corn/sugar/coffee) and don’t yet have any quarries. I also take into account whether I can easily occupy the construction hut, and how soon I will probably receive a quarry from it. Buying a construction hut near the beginning of the game when you already have a quarry is very silly; hacienda is a better (though not necessarily the best) choice in that situation.

Construction hut’s value increases as you add players to the game. Because in a 5-player game there is more competition for the settler role, for the tiles in the plantation draw and for the 8 available quarries, the construction hut is much more useful. A 5-player game also makes it easier to avoid the following simple countermeasure against the construction hut: When you have a construction hut, your opponents know that you intend to wait for them to choose the settler. They can counter that by refusing to choose it, and since your plan is relying upon getting quarries you will need to take the settler yourself, which wastes the ability of your construction hut.

If it’s already an appropriate purchase for your situation, buying a construction hut while the player to your right has a hacienda can work out well. The hacienda owner is seeking to make the random plantation/quarry play by choosing the settler, so you are likely to get the early quarries you want.

Small Warehouse: Before the PR expansion was released, this was an underused building. Because of a powerful combination with the expansion set’s union hall, the ordinary benefits of the small warehouse are now more widely understood. Each time you save a barrel and load it later on, you have gained one VP. In addition, saving barrels yields benefits in the subsequent trader and captain phases. By saving more than one type of goods you are better positioned for the trader. By saving more barrels than other players you have a better chance to choose which types of goods are loaded and to simply outscore your opponents in the next captain. Until the closing rounds of the game, the small warehouse provides much of the benefit of the wharf, but at a fraction of the cost.

Having said all this, there are many positions that won’t use the small warehouse well. It’s necessary to be making several barrels of the same type (preferably 3 or more) for the small warehouse to be very useful. When I get 2 or more corn plantations during the first few rounds, I look for a convenient opportunity to buy the small warehouse.

There are two additional benefits with the small warehouse. First, each barrel saved is one less barrel available for production during the next craftsman. If the craftsman is timed correctly, you can deny barrels to your opponents due to the shortage. Of course, it is also possible to prevent yourself from getting full production by doing this. Second, the small warehouse makes it less dangerous to choose the craftsman. Your barrels are much less likely to be discarded, though it’s still possible to get the short end of both the trader and the captain.

Hospice: This is the last of the buildings that affect the settler phase. Like the others, it must be purchased very early in the game to be effective. The problem is that each early building purchase needs to be evaluated in terms of how quickly it will return its purchase price in doubloons. Hospice fails miserably in this respect, chewing through most of your early cash and returning only colonists. Nothing makes me smile in round 2 like watching an opponent with a coffee or tobacco plantation buy a hospice.

I find that it’s better to just learn to live with the occasional shortage of colonists. The colonist output does self-adjust as more buildings are constructed, and the effects of a shortage are only temporary. Unfortunately, the game just doesn’t provide a building that solves this problem efficiently.

This building is somewhat more helpful in the 5-player game because the players start with 5 doubloons, role choices are less frequent and the timing of the mayor tends to be more irritating. There is a specific round 1 situation in 5-player PR when I consider buying the hospice. As player #2, if I don’t get a corn plantation during player A’s settler choice, then buying a hospice will allow me to choose the settler as the governor in round 2. I can then take an occupied quarry, which helps to solve some of the cash problem caused by the hospice. This is really only interesting to me if I took sugar or indigo in the first settler. If my first two plantations are indigo and coffee, then buying the hospice delays the coffee roaster too much.

Office: Situations when the office is a good purchase are relatively rare. The problem is that the price is high compared to the effect. If you aren’t producing tobacco or coffee it takes a lot of trading to return the cash spent on the office. Even if you are producing a high-value good and the player to your right is also producing it, you aren’t necessarily going to be thwarted every time, nor is there any guarantee that the trading house will have space remaining for your office to be used.

If your high-value good is also produced by the player to your right, one fix is to buy a large market and sell sugar or indigo to make money. You can then load your tobacco or coffee onto a ship and make it difficult for other players to trade it instead of loading it. I generally prefer this solution to the office because it is more flexible and more likely to pay for itself in the long run.

As in my earlier comments about the hospice, it is usually better to just accept that the trading won’t always work for you. There are ways to gain advantage in trade by using the captain creatively, or by trying to adjust the timing of the craftsman. The office is an expensive fix for a problem that can be solved by other means.

The office is a bit more useful in a 5-player game, but the trading house seems very small in a 5-player game and the office doesn’t solve the space problem.

I have seen games (usually 3-player games) in which one or more of the higher-priced goods aren’t produced for a long time and the trading house stalls. In that situation, an office can allow you to gradually fill the trade house with coffee or tobacco. If your strategy is relying heavily on income, that can be a very important fix. Of course, for the same price (or cheaper) you can just start production of a new type of goods…

Large Market: This building offers twice the effect of the small market, at a mere five times the cost. There is a specific kind of position that will make the large market a very good purchase, but it’s not a very common one. If you end up without a small market and don’t have a tobacco or coffee plantation, cash shortage can be a problem. My favorite solution (if I make sugar, indigo and corn) is to buy the factory. Sometimes that’s just not possible. If you don’t expect to afford the factory anytime soon and you are having trouble making money, the large market is worth considering. This can also be useful if you have several corn plantations but no small market or high-value good to trade.

Many players seem to think that combining the large market with coffee production yields an unstoppable tidal wave of doubloons, and thus a victory. The situation is similar to the small market: Indigo with large market sells for 3, an increase of 200%; coffee with large market sells for 6, an increase of 50%. If you are selling coffee you already have plenty of money, and all the large market does is delay the purchase of your first 4-point building. Focusing enormous effort on the trader is a very narrow strategy, and narrow strategies are generally weaker than diverse ones.

This is a building I often see players buy out of frustration, when the builder catches them without enough money for the building they truly want to buy. This usually prevents the purchase of a factory, harbor or 4-point building during the next builder. The 2-point violet buildings all have this problem, since they are generally not the kind of bargains seen in a higher or lower price range. Avoid building the hospice, office or large market just because you don’t know what else to do.

Large Warehouse: It seems like twice the effect of the small warehouse for twice the cost. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really offer twice the effect. I almost never see someone with two big stacks of barrels after everyone is finished loading. In actual games, the large warehouse is almost identical in effect to the small warehouse. Having a large warehouse of knowledge is, in fact, fantastic. Having one in your colony is just brutal. Avoid it.

Factory: This is one of the finest buildings in PR. Diversifying production is already a great idea, but the game offers the factory just to make sure. The factory helps a building-oriented player manage the production and shipping pace of the game by extracting compensation whenever goods are produced. The money is then used to out-build the other players, to make up for their greater share of the VPs.

There is an additional timing effect of the factory that is subtle and took me a long time to fully understand. The factory offers the only way to gain non-bonus doubloons outside of the trader phase. This allows the factory owner to receive steady income without the trader being chosen, which tends to unbalance the cash supply during subsequent builder phases. An alternative income source frees up choices that would otherwise be used on the trader. Without the clear need for the trader, factory owners can also work to prevent trade without suffering a cash shortage themselves.

There is a tendency to look at the pay schedule on the factory and think that it’s important to make all five types of goods. Purchased relatively early, the factory is useful to buy even if you only ever produce 3 different goods; the 2 extra doubloons per craftsman are well worth it. They can also, of course, quickly supply enough money for a fourth production building, which increases the factory’s output to 3 doubloons.

Factory is also an important remedial building. In the corn/indigo/sugar situation, without a high-value trade good, factory should be given high priority. The extra 2 doubloons helps cash flow without increasing the need to choose the trader, like the large market does.

If the production building necessary to make a fifth type of goods is costly (such as a tobacco shed or a coffee roaster), it is often better to spend the money on a harbor or a 4-point building. Don’t let the opportunity to make 5 doubloons with the factory distract you from scoring points.

Another common mistake is to assume that producing fewer loadable barrels to get more doubloons from the factory is always the best move. If you don’t have enough colonists to occupy all of your effective plantations, consider giving up production of a non-corn good to occupy all of your corn plantations. This is especially important if you have a warehouse or wharf that can help your corn convert into VPs.

Owning a factory makes the craftsman less dangerous to choose, but it’s still usually better to wait for someone else to choose it. Keep in mind, however, that barrel shortages might reduce the factory bonus.

Like all the 3-point buildings, it’s important to buy it early enough to make a difference. Purchasing a factory late in the game can prevent the purchase of a 4-point building and fail to produce enough money to matter.

University: The university is grossly overpriced compared to the benefits it provides. With any combination of plantations, the harbor is a better early purchase at the same price. Late in the game, the university helps to occupy 4-point buildings as they are constructed. There is a specific endgame sequence that can use the university effectively, but it is quite rare and relatively easy to disrupt. I would rather spend the money on something else and plan on choosing the mayor at some point. For 2 more doubloons a 4-point building can be purchased instead of the university. That’s a difference of at least 5 points. This a bad building that doesn’t fit into any good full-game strategy.

Harbor: This building makes points. If you are likely to be loading goods at least twice during each captain, and there are still several rounds remaining in the game, harbor is a very good choice. It combines well with the factory to improve positions that produce a variety of goods.

Another fine combination is with the small warehouse and production of at least 2 barrels of the same type. Making a variety of goods and then saving two different types can set up a very strong captain choice, in which you get to load twice for at least 5 VP while the other players don’t get to do much.

Building a harbor can be a mistake. There are times when the wharf is a much better choice, or when there is not enough time left in the game for harbor to generate many extra VPs. Consider carefully wh