Puerto Rico - Tips & Strategies

The Hacienda and University, used together, eliminates the need for choosing the mayor role, which can be game-changing late game when buying the victory buildings since you won’t need to worry about placing citizens in them since it is automatic and your opponents may have to waste a critical role selection on mayor to place theirs.

Purchasing the Small Market, Large Market, and Office early paves the way to victory. If you are able to establish those buildings, then focusing on coffee and as much corn as you can grab should elevate your victory points. Pick up a harbor later to ship all of that corn.

As a rule of thumb, avoid the plantations your right neighbour have. Most of the time you will be after them in selling as well as shipping. So, if your right neigbour go for coffee, you should instead go for tobacco. Of course, mimicing the plantations of your left neighbour can be excellent!

It doesn’t take long to figure out that some of buildings are much better than others. Fortunately, there is a lot more to Puerto Rico strategy than figuring out which buildings are best. But at the same time, a basic understanding of their relative strengths is a big boost. So, here’s a guide to the best and the worst.

Always Great
These are the buildings that you always want, and are fought over every game:
– Small Market
– Harbor
– Warf

Sometimes Great
These are the buildings that might be essential, depending on your strategy:
– Office
– Small Warehouse
– Factory
– The various production buildings
– The violet big buildings

Maybe Worth Getting
These buildings are useful, but they aren’t always worth the cost.
– Hacienda
– Hospice
– Large Market
– Large Warehouse

Only for the Points
Buildings you generally only buy if you have absolutely nothing else better to do with your money
– University
– Construction Hut

If you like PR, but find that it doesn’t come to the table very much track down a copy of expansion#2-The Nobles and add it to your game. While I am not a big fan of the first expansion(The buildings) because it seemed to lead to too much hate drafting this expansion adds new buildings which are added to the game(not replacing buildings in the game), as well as nobles(which function like colonists mostly). some of the new buildings have game effects based on whether they are occupied by colonists are nobles. Additionally, Nobles are victory points at the end of the game and no matter what # of players are involved ALL colonists are used so that is no longer one way to end the game. The expansion is available in the Alea treasure chest(a collection of expansions for their games, and may be found for sale individually sometimes.

Always sit to the left of the new player. There, I’ve said it. If you sit to the left of the newest or weakest player, you might not win, but you will have a huge advantage.

Why is that? The newest player invariably is the one most likely to Craft when it they run out of goods. They are most likely to pick Mayor at the worst possible time. The player to their left will gain the advantage of this misplay. Just make sure that not only is it you, but that you explain why a) they possibly just gave you an advantage to their own benefit, and b) might have been better off doing xxx, so that someone else won’t gain the benefit next game!

No, really, helping new players learn the strategies of the game (while not hand-holding them through it) is a great way to advance our hobby.

Colonists are one of the most vital early-game resources. With Hospice you can build a quarry and have it be useful to you, all in the same turn.

Hospice is attainable early and remains extremely effective even into the late game.

I found this guide to organizing your pieces very helpful in setting up the game.
http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/44g6axi1kb/Multi-player_Bag_Labels_for_PR_v1.PDF?

It works great if you put it in a Plano box divided up that way. That way, instead of multiple bags, you have one box to grab and go. You can label the top inside of your box, so you know which compartments to pull from based on the number of players.

There, I said it. You know it’s true. This game is awful with five players. If someone says to you, “Hey, there’s five of us, how about Puerto Rico,” you should slap them and say “NO.” Then hold their nose against it until they understand.

Why, you ask?

Being the last person to Build or Settle, especially during the early game, is ridiculous. And in the first rounds, if other people happen to choose them early enough so that you get third and fifth choice, you are well behind your opponents. Can you try to manipulate the game by choosing the governor and not getting last choice twice? Of course, but then the strategy you are choosing to play is the “Not Get Screwed” strategy, which is easily defeated by one of the actual strategies of the game.

Why do we play Puerto Rico? Because it’s a German style board game, which means everyone is in the game, doing something functional, until the end when you see who wins. How do you make this less fun? When someone runs away from the pack or someone gets left behind and can’t catch up.

Or, I suppose, someone decides to play 5 player Puerto Rico.

Keep in mind, even though it’s listed as 3-5 players, This game has excellent 2 player rules online, that make for a great game!