Ludus

The players are plantation owners in Puerto Rico in the days when ships had sails. Growing up to five different kind of crops: Corn, Indigo, Coffee, Sugar and Tobacco, they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors; growing crops and storing them efficiently, developing San Juan with useful buildings, deploying their colonists to best effect, selling crops at the right time and, most importantly, shipping their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit. A novel game system lets players choose the order of the phases in each turn by allowing each player to choose a role from those remaining when it is their turn. No role can be selected twice in the same round. The player who selects the best roles to advance their position during the game will win.

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Puerto Rico Expansion This expansion to Puerto Rico adds forests and the following new buildings to the game: Aqueduct, Forest House, Black Market, Storehouse, Guesthouse, Church, Trading Post, Small Wharf, Lighthouse, Library, Specialty Factory, Union Hall, Cloister, and Statue.

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Puerto Rico is a heavy strategy game, and a lot has been written about the best strategies. Here are some of the best articles from BoardGameGeek that may help you become a better player:

• Puerto Rico Strategy Principles (Condensed) Alex Rockwell discusses the key principles crucial to achieving victoy in Puerto Rico and offers a brief explanation of why they are important.
• The 'best' Puerto Rico strategy + startegy & tactics Alex Rockwell offers some more detail on the basic principles and offers some game examples.
• The Large Warehouse of Puerto Rico Knowledge (part 1) Jim Campbell walks the reader through every role and the when, why, and how of using them in accordance with key principles. His writing is clear, comprehensive and avoids the myopia of discussing tactics for a specific number of players.
• The Large Warehouse of Puerto Rico Knowledge (part 2) The continuation of the previous article.
• Puerto Rico Opening Theory part 1: General Principles Alex Rockwell revisits the key principles and discusses why the early game plays much differently from the later stages.
• Puerto Rico Opening Theory part 2: Openings Alex Rockwell discusses specific, common situations in the early game and shows why some moves are clearly stronger than others. Additionally, he highlights common mistakes made by beginners.
• The Ten Commandments of Puerto Rico David Grabiner wrote another article that hammers on the key principles in addition to pointing out some mid-game and late-game plays that are crucial to avoiding a few endgame pitfalls.

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The following statistics were collected from 346 tournament games of four-player Puerto Rico played at WBC and EuroQuest events from 2002-2006:

Seat	Avg. Score	Wins	Pct.
1 (indigo)	42.15	74	21.1%
2 (indigo)	40.82	61	17.4%
3 (corn)	43.51	108	30.9%
4 (corn)	43.19	107	30.6%

NOTE: Total wins equals 350 because of double winners in four games.