City Building

In Puerto Rico assume the roles of colonial governors on the island of Puerto Rico. The aim of the game is to amass victory points by shipping goods to the Europe or by constructing buildings.

Each player uses a separate small board with spaces for city buildings, plantations, and resources. Shared between the players are three ships, a trading house, and a supply of resources and doubloons.

The resource cycle of the game is that players grow crops which they exchange for points or doubloons. Doubloons can then be used to buy buildings, which allow players to produce more crops or give them other abilities. Buildings and plantations do not work unless they are manned by colonists.

During each round, players take turns selecting a role card from those on the table (such as "Trader" or "Builder"). When a role is chosen, every player gets to take the action appropriate to that role. The player that selected the role also receives a small privilege for doing so - for example, choosing the "Builder" role allows all players to construct a building, but the player who chose the role may do so at a discount on that turn. Unused roles gain a doubloon bonus at the end of each turn, so the next player who chooses that role gets to keep any doubloon bonus associated with it. This encourages players to make use of all the roles throughout a typical course of a game.

Puerto Rico uses a variable phase order mechanic, where a "governor" token is passed clockwise to the next player at the conclusion of a turn. The player with the token begins the round by choosing a role and taking the first action.

Players earn victory points for owning buildings, for shipping goods, and for manned "large buildings." Each player's accumulated shipping chips are kept face down and come in denominations of one or five. This prevents other players from being able to determine the exact score of another player. Goods and doubloons are placed in clear view of other players and the totals of each can always be requested by a player. As the game enters its later stages, the unknown quantity of shipping tokens and its denominations require players to consider their options before choosing a role that can end the game.

In Le Havre, a player’s turn consists of two parts: First, distribute newly supplied goods onto the offer spaces; then take an action. As an action, players may choose either to take all goods of one type from an offer space or to use one of the available buildings. Building actions allow players to upgrade goods, sell them or use them to build their own buildings and ships. Buildings are both an investment opportunity and a revenue stream, as players must pay an entry fee to use buildings that they do not own. Ships, on the other hand, are primarily used to provide the food that is needed to feed the workers.

After every seven turns, the round ends: players’ cattle and grain may multiply through a Harvest, and players must feed their workers. After a fixed number of rounds, each player may carry out one final action, and then the game ends. Players add the value of their buildings and ships to their cash reserves. The player who has amassed the largest fortune is the winner.

Le Havre was released by Lookout Games October 2008 in German and Australian English.

Players represent corporations competing to assemble city buildings in their orbiting plants and install them onto specially-prepared platforms in the city districts. Each player wants to construct the most living space in the blocks that feature the most desirable improvements (Greenspaces, Spaceports, and Megamalls). Players can also erect Billboards at a loss, to entice customers and to reserve space for future construction. At the end of four rounds of play, the player who has earned the most points is the most successful developer and the winner of the game!

Description from BoardgameNews.com:

The Gonzaga family ruled part of northern Italy for nearly five hundred years, losing control to the Hapsburgs from Austria in 1708. During their reign, two daughters of the House of Gonzaga married Holy Roman Emperors. In Gonzaga, players must get into the expansionist spirit of the times and build fiefdoms across Europe to stake a claim on harbors and cities, while also trying to complete secret missions. The game lasts 7-12 rounds, and players are competing in some of six regions in Europe. (The number of regions and the specific regions vary based on the number of players and the scenario tile drawn at the start of the game.)

A round starts with each player drawing a fief card from their individual deck; each fief card depicts one of twelve fiefs: plastic components comprising multiple hexagonal loops with castles on some of these loops. Each player then secretly chooses both a region card and an action card, then reveals them simultaneously. Part of the fief (but not all of it) must lie in the chosen region, and the action card determines whether a player must play the fief on one or more harbors, on one or more cities, on open land, or on both harbors and cities. With this last action – the alliance card – a player can alternatively place one or two of six individual rings on the board, even on spaces that another player has already claimed with a fief. You score points for covering cities and harbors, for connecting at least three harbors in a sea, and for setting aside your fief as a donation to the church. The cards you play are set aside for the next turn, thereby forcing you to switch regions and actions as you place fiefs.

The game ends either after twelve rounds or after a trigger point based on the cities and harbors not covered. The player with the most connected fiefs, including the individual rings, scores a bonus, then players reveal their hidden objectives and score based on the number of target cities they covered.