Scott Timberg
United States
Los Angeles
California
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puerto rico is a damn fine game, one that a non-gamer couple we know always clamors to play...but has anyone ever been beaten by the "corn strategy"?
it's painful. corn is so cheap, but easy to grow, and one of our players shut us all down by growing >six< corns per turn and shipping em out with the captain phase.
this sort of behavior must be stopped. but how????
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Anson Li
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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Re:How to Beat the Corn Strategy
a) By taking some corn and growing some yourself. This will eliminate the pool of corn in the game.
b) By hogging up the big boat or all the boats with an alternative product.
c) Recognize that if the other player is a corn grower, they're supposed to be short in money. BUILD BUILD BUILD...so you can take advantage of the bigger and better buildings. Never let the Corn guy get anything with 2-3 doubloons on it. You're asking for disaster if you do.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Re:How to Beat the Corn Strategy
A big part of it is that corn is in fact quite valuable to anybody, and cheap to produce ... you can't let one player get 5-6 corn plantations, but that's not generally a major problem since everyone should have some interest in acquiring corn. Getting all that corn still does not guarentee victory if you can't make *any* money, but it is an easy first step. My impression is that the all-corn strategy is powerful but very high-risk. You have to commit to it fairly early without knowing how many corn plantations you'll really be able to get, how much money you'll be able to raise, or if other players will simply avoid the craftsman & captain like the plague, knowing you'll take one of the two every turn - thus slowing you down fatally. Given the lack of a fall-back strategy, it's much riskier than a more balanced approach.
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Marc Thompson
Canada
New Westminster
British Columbia
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Re:How to Beat the Corn Strategy
Like most strategies, the best way to shut it down is to point it out to the other players and hope THEY do something about it. There are a few exleent ways of dealing wtih cornholio's though.
One, as previously mentioned, is to deny him the corn in the first place. Corn should be grabbed before just about anything in the plantation set, as it's the cheapest to produce in cost and manpower. If one player manages to grab alot of corn, there either usually picking settler themselves or other players are being idiots - and there's not much you can do about that.
Secondly, you and the other players can deny him shipping space. If your playing a 3 player game and the 5 and 6 ships get loaded with indigo and sugar, you've cut out cornboy from getting more then 4. Alternatively you can do wonderful things like putting 1 or 2 corn in the 4 space ship, screwing him utterly unless he has a wharf.
Finally, there's the other big screw, deny him corn and shipping by never doing it. Doesn't really work except in a 3 player game, but if one player is dominating, you can usually convince the other player to move away from a strategy that helps him. In a 3 player game, if one player is the only one to craft or captain, he'll only ship once every 2 turns while the builders dominate.
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