Mauro Draco

TI3 is not a war game; in the sense that, in a war game, fighting (and winning the battles) is what moves the game forward, gives the player(s) advantage over time, gives points etc.

TI3 has battles and those matter, but battling is never without cost and there are other actions and ways to develop your civilization.

That said, it can be frustrating for some people or some plays to state, after investing in a stronger political position, hoping to accomplish his race’s goals toward ruling the galaxy, it comes down to no effect practically.
Given that the political deck is huge and diverse, that is indeed possible to happen time after time when voting on an agenda.

To make political decisions matter more, there’s a simple rule I used successfully in lots of my TI3 plays.

Divide the political deck in four:

Military Political Deck: put in this deck every political card that deals with acquisition or removal os units (plastic pieces) and Ground Forces’ or Fighters’ tokens and political cards that gives a bonus or penalty to battle rolls.

Economic Political Deck: put in this deck every political card that deals with acquisition or loss of trade goods, involving trade contracts and the refreshment or exhaustion os planet(s).

Scientific Political Deck: put in this deck every political card that deals with wormholes, technology acquisition or loss or technology cost.

Generic/”True”/Social Political Deck: put in this deck every political card introducing new rules and/or special effects not related to the above criteria and those dealing with victory points.

When in doubt which deck to put a political card on, use the following priority scale:
Generic > Scientific > Economic > Military.

Pros
Players focusing on political dominance won’t be ignored as easily by belligerent players, specially in the short term.

The feel of playing any race is enhanced by your ability to enforce certain goals through the diminished randomness of the political deck.

A greater sense of autonomy is attained with the political aspect of the game. Voting on agendas become much more meaningful and thrilling. It doesn’t stall the game and may even diminish play time a little because of that higher degree of control.

Cons
You should tag the decks laying them over a piece of paper with what kind of deck it is written on it or mark each deck with one token from the game (like a Shock Troop token for military, a Wormhole for the scientific, a Trade Good for the economic and a bonus token for the generic deck, for example).

You should definitely keep the discards separate for each deck and store them in separate plastic bags or wherever you keep your cards stored after the game ends. Otherwise you have to reserve a lot of time just to make sure the decks are ready for another game.

If this tip is well liked, I’ll take the time to post the complete list I use for my games. 😉

Thanks for your feedback!

To ensure that the game flows smoothly and timely (as best as it can), one of the best things is to everyone agree and make the habit of keeping an eye on:

1. Whose turn is it now;
2. Who wants and, from those, who has responded (executing the secondary ability) to the primary ability of a Strategy Card;
3. Executing the Status Phase steps IN ORDER;

All of this calling out firmly (but not yelling), so that everyone keeps their attention elevated and focused in the game. It’s incredibly tiresome if one (and usually the same) player gets the “mission” of tracking this all by himself.

Don’t ever forget that roughly 60% of the game time comes from distractions and delayed actions because of lack of engagement to keep things going (in an orderly manner).

In a similar way of the last tip, tracking which units have moved and if any of those moves is legal or not can be difficult as the game progresses and conflicts rise or as more pieces and regions are involved.

The two movement techs are the ones contributing the most to this effect, specially when sieges are involved (all of which sparks tension between the players). So, if you decide to move an unit, either a ship or legion, simply lay it down in the region you intend it to move on.

It doesn’t matter if you are still deciding to move it or not or where you are going to move it to, as long as you lay them down it’s easy to rethink and/or undo that particular move before you end your turn.

It can be confusing to track the new units when a player builds an army. That’s even more so when there are temples or a lot of spent iron involved!

To avoid confusion and arguing, just agree to lay new pieces down in the region they are produced until the action is finished.

It’s a great way to not risk the game be slowed to a halt by indecisiveness or arguing and strive.

This is a somewhat unknown strategy path to win Puerto Rico.

Construction Hut e Quarries
One of the the first things you have to secure to be successful in this strategy is to secure one of the two Construction Huts available early on. It should be the very first building you get and allocate a worker on.

This enables you to receive one of the only eight quarries of the game instead of the plantation tile you’d get when someone’s uses the Settler role. Do it always, until you get at least three quarries – the billing discounts they provide can define your success or failure.

Stealthy strategy
Not being an obvious path to win the game (after all, buildings are usually seen more as a means to implement other strategies, than as an end on itself) and being somewhat despised by fans of the exportation or heavy production strategies opens up the perfect opportunity for the building strategy to thrive.

Few things in Puerto Rico exert more negative impact in your final score (and are more frustrating) than losing the opportunity of build that coveted large purple building perfect for maximizing the points for the play style you developed. That’s what happens when you successfully implement the building strategy in a table full of people that fail to acknowledge it as a viable good strategy to win; you end up with three large buildings and the opportunity to sweep off the most coveted large building of one or two other players, if not off of each one.

Flexibility is key
Being centered on building acquisition means you have an advantage to exert any kind of other action that is influenced by some building (provided that you invest in getting the proper building that benefits the action or actions you are interested in).

This is a central point in succeeding at the building strategy. The most of your points in the game will come from the points value of each building plus the bonuses from the large final ones. Since every building of a certain tier gives roughly the same numbers of points, you won’t have much advantage until the end of the game approaches.

That said, it’s important that you keep building faster than the other players and, even more so, that you have a means to not fall behind too much in points during the game and to be able to buy the two or three large final buildings. After all, if buying (and activating) one large building is kinda hard, do it with two or three of them is much harder, even with this strategy!

Summary
All in all the building strategy is powerful and interesting because it has a sturdy core with few easy milestones, while keeping a broad array of options in the middle game which allow a lot of flexibility.
For this reason it also can take sometime to master and one of its strongest points is the ability to make you lay low in the other players’ radars and surprise them in the end.

I hope that’s useful for Puerto Rico fans and, if so, you can expect more tips around this strategy on the practical side of how and when to act to be effective with the building strategy.

The only aspect of Puerto Rico that can (and usually do) spoil the fun is when a player acts as a clear kingmaker by “giving” the victory to a contender for the first place.

Why is king making so easy in Puerto Rico?
Since the play flow is always to the left, each player can exert great influence in what happens to the player at his left and, in turn, is heavily influenced by the player at his right.

In that way, if any player, willingly or not, cuts other players some slack on his turn, the player to his left will benefit more than any other and, not rarely, might benefit even more than the current acting player (that did the slack cutting)!

The emergent rule that fixes this
It’s usually understood and silently agreed in any Puerto Rico table (with experienced players) that you, as a player, has two main “duties” or personal goals during the game (that are required if it is for you to win the game):
*manage own resources well
By optimizing your actions, production, exports etc;

*hinder the opportunities available to the player to your left
In a way that limits him the most AND benefits you the most;

This is tricky though and depends on your skills as a player and on your observation and timing skills to notice when and how you should act for the desired effect. It’s a great part of why Puerto Rico has a great replay value and hard to master.
Each table might play in a different way and you have to be able to sense and react to this so your strategy doesn’t get crippled by lack of a certain building type, basic resource or sheer competition exerted by the player to your right.

If you found this interesting and would like to discuss it further wi some specifics and examples, please follow and ask me. I’ll be happy to develop it further in specific game scenarios! 😉

Thank you all for reading this!

By using the river extension the game is no harder or longer to explain (or play) and, besides being cool looking, it gives more options for players to use different strategies!

Also it practically removes the chance of the rare event where you draw a tile that’s unplaceable (like the situation presented on the video here).

Most other gamers I know that have the game or usually play it tell me that the expansion is VERY important in correcting the disbalance of how easy it is to achieve the economic victory compared to others.

For that reason (and extra civilizations) it is greatly suggested that avid gamers (specially if they know the PC game) buy and use the expansion early on!

Seriously, it makes for a much better game and FFG is specially good at releasing good, worthwhile expansions to their games.