The Digital Tabletop

Ranked number one at boardgamegeek.com, Puerto Rico is basically a game of economics. There is no killing, major conflicts, or much interaction between the players (in terms of mechanics) in the game. Everyone is allowed to do the same actions and may choose how to foster their economy independently.

The premise is that you are a importer/export/land owner in the New World on the island of Puerto Rico (and you must say it with a Spanish accent). With your land you will plant fields (plantations) and build buildings. The crops you produce will be sent back to Europe and you will be rewarded for this act. Let me discuss how all of this occurs.

Mechanics

Played with 3-5 players.

First off everyone gets:

• An island board.
  • There are 12 spots for buildings and 12 spots for plantations (buildings can not go on field spots and vise versa).
• A set amount of money. (Doubloons are the currency name)
  • Money is used to buy buildings. The amount is determined by how many players are in the game.
• And one plantation.
  • This is determined by the player amount as well.

The rest of the material areas are (I’ll explain this in a minute):

• More plantations
• Quarries
• Buildings
• Ships
• Trading house
• Colony ship
• Cargo ship

There are also victory points, goods (crops that you have grown), and again money but I will get to those inside these six areas. But first turns.

Turns

The game starts with a player taking the governor card, that just means they are the first player of the turn. A turn is different from most games, it doesn’t go around once to each player but multiple times. The governor is the first to act, they choose a role card (see below). Each role card has an action and a privilege action, only the player who chooses the role card may choose to do the privileged action instead of the normal one (there may also be money on the card but I’ll get to that). The player performs the action on the card (they may choose not to unless it is the “Captain” role) and then every other player, clockwise, may also perform the same action.

So a role is chosen, the first player goes first and then everyone else can do the same action in turn. Then the person next to the governor chooses a role card, they go first and then everyone else, including the governor, can take the action. The turn ends when every player has taken a role card and everyone has had the chance to perform each role’s action. There are always three extra role cards left after a turn, the ones that no player picked. One doubloon is placed on each of these cards (which the next player to pick up that role card gets) and the other role cards are returned to the center of the table. The governor card is passed to the next player for the next turn to begin.

Plantations

These are fields that you can plant on your island. You can have any number of the 5 plantation types (corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee) but you can only have up to 12. Corn is the only plantation that will give a corn “good” every time goods are distributed (see “Craftsman” role below). The other plantation require buildings to produce their goods.

Quarries

Give no goods, take up one plantation spot, and allow the player to take one doubloon off of a building cost. More quarries means more the player can take off, though the game limits the maximum based on building type.

Buildings

There are two types a production building and a violet buildings (modifier buildings). Buildings take up one spot on a player’s building portion of their board. A special note is that some very expensive violet buildings take up two spots.

Buildings are main objects in the game that will make or break your economy. I will not get into all of the building types but they basically help their owner at certain points in the game. When I talk about roles this will be more apparent but an example is when a player is trying to selling a good to the trading house, the small market building (a violet building) will give the player one more doubloon for the good they trade.

Buildings also need colonist (people) to be assigned to them for their effects to work and to get victory points for them at the end of the game. Most buildings only need one colonist but some of the production buildings need up to three. Production buildings are the buildings you need to turn your plantation crops into goods. If a player has a coffee plantation then that player must also have a coffee roaster production building (with at least one colonist assigned to it) to get a coffee good.

Trading House

The trading house is one area where what another player does affects how other players after them can react.

The trading house has four spots. In each spot a player may place a good and receive the amount of doubloons for it as stated on the trading house card (plus any modifiers). But the trading house can only hold one type of a good at a time, i.e. if a coffee good is on the trading house card no other player can place another coffee good. (There is a building that allows a player to go against this rule however). Once the four spots are filled the goods are removed and the trading house can be used normally again.

Trades only happen when the trade role occurs (see “Trader” role below).

Colony Ship

The colony ship is where colonist are placed before they are distributed to the players. The number of colonist on the boat is at least one more than the number of players in the game OR the number of open buildings spots on the player boards combined. (See “Mayor” role below)

Cargo Ship

This is going to be the tricky one to talk about. Okay, there are three cargo ships and they each have a different number of cargo spots (similar to the trading house). There are 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 spot ships, the number of players determines which three are used during the game.

The main thing to remember here is that: IF the player can place goods on a ship they MUST place them (see “Captain” role below). Here is an example.

A player starts, no goods are on any ship. If a player has 4 corn and 5 coffee goods, THEY MAY DECIDE (in any circumstance) which to place but what ever they decide they must place as many of that one kind of good they can onto one ship. No two ships can have the same good as cargo. The player places their 4 corn. If the player is forced (their may be instances where the ships fill up so the player(s) does not place any more) to put more goods onto the ships later, after all other players have had a chance to add their goods, then they must. So in the example, if a ship has some coffee or an open ship still exists, the player must place as many coffee goods as they can onto that ship.

When ships are full, and only when they are full, do the goods get taken off of that ship and the ship opens up again. This only happens after everyone has placed their goods, not while goods are still being placed on ships. So if the ships fill up right away, no other players can put their goods on board and then the ships are cleared off.

Now it may seem like the players are losing the goods but for every good they place on a ship they get one victory point. Having the highest total victory points at the end of the game means you win. So while they could have sold those goods for money, they are compensated with points for being a good exporter. Plus after everyone has placed their goods onto ships any other good that they may have are lost (due to expiration) except for one single good. There are some exceptions, by using buildings, but it makes players want to give up your goods because they are going to lose them anyways.

Roles

Alright, so I could have explained roles first but explaining the materials made a little more sense since now when I refer to them in the roles they will make sense.

• Settler: There are plantation cards lying face up by the game board, everyone can choose one to take and plant. This goes around to each player once. The privilege is to take a quarry instead of a plantation.
• Mayor: Each player takes a colonist from the colony ship and this goes around until each colonist from the ship is taken. The privilege is to get one extra colonist, not from the ship but from the supply of colonist.
• Builder: Allows players to purchase buildings, only one though. This goes around once. The privilege is that the chooser may take one doubloon off of any building price.
• Craftsman: Players get the amount of goods that they can produce (as much as their plantations and production buildings allow). This goes around once. The privilege is that the chooser gets one extra good of any kind that they produce. Also special note, if no more good types are available (meaning they are all owned by players) no one else gets any more of that good type until more are released.
• Trader: Allows players to use the trading house. This goes around once. The privilege allows the chooser to get one doubloon more for a trade.
• Captain: Everyone must to this action: place any goods they can onto the cargo ships. This goes around as many times as there are players with goods that can be placed on the ships. The privilege is the chooser gets one extra victory point overall.
• Prospector: No general action. The privilege, and the reason for taking it, is the chooser gets one doubloon. All other players can do nothing.

Ending the Game

The game ends only at the end of role phases, so after the mayor phase where everyone has had the chance to get a colonist. The game can end in these phases:

• Mayor phase: When there are not enough colonist to fill the colonist ship. (Meaning there are still colonist available but not enough)
• Building phase: When one player has filled up every building spot on there personal board.
• Captain phase: When the last victory point token is handed out. However players just calculate the rest of their victory points on paper, running out of tokens do not take away extra victory points beyond the tokens, just that the game stops.

Why is this fun / interesting?

Okay, that was a long explanation. No why in the hell this fun, right? I can see why some people would not see this as enjoyable:

First, you do not directly conflict or hinder people. You can not sabotage someone’s crops or force them to get rid of goods.

Second, victory points are added up at the end of the game. You do not have to show everyone how many victory points you have and at the end of the game the grand buildings give you extra victory points based on some other resource amount (for example the number of colonist you own divided by 3).

Third, there are 17 violet building types, 12 of which have duplicates so 2 players can have one each or one player have can have two. These buildings all modify something different and to keep track of what each player can do and gets extra can be frustrating.

You can however see what everyone has for plantations, buildings and how many goods they have. The real trick is figuring out a strategy you want to use and then find instances during turns where it is beneficial for you to take a role now as opposed to letting another player take the role later. So for instance, maybe you and another player have a lot of corn plantations. If you take the craftsman role now you would take the rest of the corn goods left and not allow the other player to get any. You then have all that corn that you can use to fill up an entire cargo ship.

Some choses to make in strategies, I have seen, are:

• How many crop types to grow? One or two means you can focus on those, but three and up allows you to have diversified goods.
• Grab quarries? Getting quarries make buying buildings a lot easier and the max you can gain from having them is four doubloons off the building price so you still have eight plantation spots left.
• Which production buildings? There are small and large production buildings. You need them for every crop other than corn, but the buildings cost money. So which ones will you buy first? Will you go for one that no other player has or will you try for a crop that someone else is going for too.
• Low buildings vs High buildings? Low buildings or less expensive help out a lot at the beginning. The hacienda building allows a player to get an extra plantation each settler phase, more crops = more goods. Or a high building example thea university building, where for every building you get a colonist to go with it.
• Which grand building will you buy? The grand buildings are the most expensive buildings in the game, they don’t do anything during the game but give you extra victory points at the end of the game. Each one does this differently however, by using other factors like how many violet buildings you own, how many colonist do you have, or even how many victory points you have before the buildings modifier. Players do not have to buy these buildings but when the game is almost over you start looking at which building could help you out the most at the end.
• How will you combine these strategies? Lets say I grab as many quarries as I can (that may affect my goods production), buy a lot of production buildings (to help with what plantations I have), and then near the end buy the grand building that gives me extra victory points for each type of production building I have. That could be one combination.

These strategies are what I find fun about it. You have a set goal that you are trying to reach but based on the order the role cards are picked and what other players try to achieve, you may not progress as fast at certain points. It’s always fun to pick up the Captain role card when you know that other players will have to discard most of their goods. Again the fun part is evaluating what everyone can do and then trying to get the order of the role cards to work for you.

Mapping to Computer Games

From a high level, Simcity games or Sims online are examples where players build their own place and can compete against others for money. In general many simulation games allow a single player to build something and then they can “compete” against other players for who can get the top score with some resource in the game.

RTS games have set resources where once those are exhausted then no one else gets any more (as well as unit caps), similar to if all goods are in play in Puerto Rico then more can not be produced. Though some RTS games have moved to an “infinite to mine” model where you just have to have the means to get resources but you will never stop receiving them. Also RPGs force classes on players making them choose which skills they want to have, similar to deciding which buildings to buy.

This game actually reminds me of hungry-hungry-hippo. In that game there are a set number of balls that players can collect. No one person can affect another’s ability to grab balls (in a fair game), and no one can take balls away once you have acquired them. The highest number wins. The only difference is that you can’t do something that would force the player to give up a ball in order to gain something else.

I’m trying to think of how to add these mechanicsto a digital game: fixed resource amounts, personal modifiers (buildings), not allowed to take away from a player without them getting at least something in return, and being rewarded for giving up resources.

One could be a MMO Simcity where resources like coal, lumber, and farms could be outside of a city. The resources would be fixed, only producing a certain amount each year. Players would bid to see who gets the resources, or it could be through buying shares of the resources. Players could sell their shares, to one another or just on a stock market. The city can’t directly attack each other or hurt each other but if one city has all the resources locked up in one area it will be hard for another city to stay afloat in the same area. Then based on what buildings you have in your city you could take those raw resources and produce higher level goods: computers, furniture, power. Which are also needed to fuel a city but can only be produced by players.

The Caesar games worked sorta like this and EVE Online has a very elaborate economy production system, though war is a capable action in both of these games. A small arcade game could use these mechanics too, try to lock up resources before others can, and only giving up resources when you are given a reward for doing so. Maybe you have to connect colored blocks. You could spend a turn to switch a block to a different color, acquire a new block location (that is not owned), or cash in a set of the same color blocks. Just a thought.