Puerto Rico is a Eurogame by Andreas Seyfarth. Published in 2002, it was once considered the pinnacle of Eurogames. Players assume the roles of colonial governors on the island of Puerto Rico during 17th century. The aim of the game is to amass victory points in two ways: by exporting goods and by constructing buildings.
Puerto Rico can be played by three, four or five players, although an official two-player variant also exists. There is an official expansion released in 2004, which adds new buildings with different abilities that can replace or be used alongside those in the original game. A second, smaller expansion became available in 2009. Additionally, a couple of changes to the rules have been suggested that serve to balance the game.
There is also a card game variant, with a complete overhaul of the rules. It is officially named San Juan, but in many markets, it's still sold as Puerto Rico.
Tropes occurring in the game
- Anti-Hoarding: If you don't have a warehouse, you can't stock remaining barrels once ships are loaded. And even if you have one, you can stock a very limited amount.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Unless a very specific set of plantations happens early on, a big processing building for sugar is this: you will never manage to get the return of investment, if by turn 5 you don't have three sugar plantations.
- Boring, but Practical:
- If you start with an indigo plantation and don't get a second one in the very first Planting phase, a small processing building for indigo becomes this. It can process your starting output just fine, while cheap (or even free if you buy it with the Builder bonus).
- One of the most potent and easy strategies is to amass as many corn fields as possible. Corn doesn't need to be processed in any way and earns you lots of points. You might not make big money on trading (since it's worthless without being the one who picked Trader role), but you don't exactly need it anyway.
- Cash Gate: Numerous very useful buildings deliberately have prohibitively expensive pricetag - but getting them allows to then push through other cash gates. Large buildings in particular, while offering very useful point multipliers, require either a robust economy to afford them or simply hoarding money to get them at all.
- Command & Conquer Economy: Each and every building requires at least a single colonist token to operate at all. It doesn't matter how many things you manage to build if you don't have the manpower to make them operational.
- Competitive Balance: Corn vs. plantation goods. Corn doesn't require any processing buildings and provides goods directly from occupied plantation... but by itself, it is worthless, meaning it lacks an income source. The reverse is true with other goods: they all require processing buildings, but at least they can be sold for money without additional tricks and support structures.
- Construct Additional Pylons: To get more colonists, there need to be unmanned buildings on the island. Thus, the game operates on a self-balancing loop - the more buildings built, the bigger the next shipment of colonists. Fill up the slots, and the next shipment will be smaller.
- Cool, but Inefficient:
- Coffee. It's expensive when sold to the merchant, but requires an equally expensive building to process it — and it can only generate two barrels of coffee, rather than regular three you get from big processing buildings.
- In the expansion, planting forests instead of building plantations is this. You need two forest tiles to get benefit equal to a single quarry.
- Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: Digital version of Puerto Rico became one of the cornerstones for the success of Board Game Arena.
- Disc-One Nuke: Getting Large Market very early on. While it might be tricky to pull - and other players might even deliberately delay it - the extra money it will provide will carry a looong way.
- An Economy Is You: The whole economic model is build on competition between players and there is nothing outside player-run operations. The game is notable for containing very limited randomness (the set of plantations to pick from during Planter phase), but everything else is depending on players' actions.
- An Entrepreneur Is You: Each player acts as a governor of Puerto Rico, running an elaborate enterprise that's intended to both provide money for running the whole operation and to send colonial goods back to Europe.
- Euro Game: One of the Trope Codifiers. There is no player elimination, minimal randomness (the set of plantations to pick from during Planter phase), and the whole game is about resource management, while the outcome is decided by the point score.
- Expansion Pack: It adds handful of new buildings and few additional options, like planting forests intstead of setting up plantations.
- Griefer: A whole lot of strategies aren't as much about winning, but to deny other players maximum benefits.
- The game is decided roughly by mid-game. If you aren't winning or going head-to-head with the leader, your best bet isn't as much to chase after them, but make their life miserable and picking roles in order that will hurt them. It will hurt you too, but the current leader will be screwed and someone close to the lead can catch up.
- Another denial strategy is about getting the big buildings, despite not getting their full benefits. Someone exporting like crazy? Buy the Custom House to deny them extra points. Someone is most populous? Build the Fortress.
- Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: The prices of goods are fixed, the only thing modifying them is either playing the Merchant role or having specific buildng - but supply is meaningless.
- Magikarp Power: A single quarry can actually set you back in the long run. But three or four? Their discount will allow to turn even a middling economy into a booming business.
- Master of None: Inverted - you want to be this. There are five different goods in the game. If you aren't producing at least three of them, it's very easy to end up completely blocked with both ships and merchant store, as you will be unable to fill the only free spots left, essentially giving the other players free hand with goods you are not producing.
- Meta Game: A huge part of the game is making other players do your own work when they have to decide a phase or, even better, creating a situation where their benefit will benefit you even more. It is also crucial to both do and understand I Know You Know I Know mind games.
- Money Grinding: The "Double Market" strategy. The result showers the players with doubloons, as it's +3 to whatever they are selling - essentially doubling your profits for high-tier goods, and turns even things like normally worthless corn into a reliable source of wealth.
- Money Is Not Power: Despite doubloons being needed to buy buildings, they are not counted for points - you might be sitting on a literal pile of money and still end up with the worst score of all players. It doesn't matter how well you are doing economically, if you can't supply Europe.
- Money Sink: Played with. Large buildings don't provide any economical benefit - they exist to multiply specific source of score points. But the game is decided by the highest final score, making it pretty tricky to win without having a single large building.
- Prospector: One of the roles to pick. It instantly gives whoever uses it 1 doubloon and whatever amount that might be stacked on it.
- Refining Resources: Any plantation that isn't corn requires a specific refining building to turn the crops into actual resource token. Some of the related buildings can come in two sizes, processing different amounts of the input goods.
- Scoring Points: The game is decided by the amount of points scored by players. While there are many ways to gain points, the main source is sending shipments of goods to Europe - it doesn't provide money, but money doesn't count into the point score. In fact, one of the end-game states is achieved by running out of points to score from shipping goods.
- Unstable Equilibrium: Getting ahead with money in the early game pretty much wins it for you in the long run.
- Violation of Common Sense: It is often more beneficial to not play Merchant role, allowing doubloons to stack on the tile. Hell, it is possible to have nothing to sell, and simply collect the money sitting on the tile, getting out of it more cash than people who actually have some goods to sell.
- With This Herring: Each player starts with very modest supply of money and a single plantation, with no colonists or buildings.
