Chris Wood
United States
Wheaton
Illinois
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In our two players games, in the first round when the builder role is chosen, almost every time a production building is built. If the opponent builds a production building and the player can't, the player is at a huge disadvantage it seems, and spends the next 4-5 rounds trying to negotiate and manipulate roles to catch up. Meanwhile the opponent is producing more cards comparatively and pulling further ahead. Eventually, around 85% of the time, the player who got the production building out first wins.
What is a good defense for this, when the opponent builds a tabacco or coffee and you can't?
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Crazy Bob
Philippines
Cebu
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Without any details of how those games went exactly, if you dont have production buildings then you probably have buildings that give you cards in other ways, or can let you be more selective about what you draw. Even later on you will probably never want to pick the goods production role yourself btw you are not playing that you must build something in the builder phase are you?
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John Earles
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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My wife regularly cleans my clock without taking a production card strategy. Finding good card symmetry will often be more efficient in getting card throughput.
It takes two actions for a production card to work.
1) Producer (to get goods)
2) Trader (to sell goods)
I think once you get familiar with the cards you'll find that this is often just too slow to compete with violet buildings that complement each other.
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Lars Wagner Hansen
Denmark
Sorø
Any time, any place!
Fingers off, that's my car!
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I you opponent gets ahead in a production strategy, and you try to catch up using a production strategy, then you will loose. You need to focus on another (purple) strategy to win.
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United States
Danbury
Connecticut
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Right. Think about it - production requires TWO role choices to gain cards, while purple does not. If your opponent in 2-player goes heavily into production, you need to not bother with it (beside getting a second prod building so prod-prod-trade-trade doesn't hurt you so much) and concentrate on violet buildings.
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Len
United States
Austin
Texas
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In two player games, production is an inferior strategy (as alluded to by Jearles). The game is nearly broken as a two-player game in this respect.
Just go purple and you will win, 9/10 times if your opponent uses production. Don;t even bother building one production building.
Example: build library, and pull the prospector role every chance you can, and build out purple buildings.
Just keep playing...you'll see 
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United States
Danbury
Connecticut
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LSMB wrote: In two player games, production is an inferior strategy (as alluded to by Jearles). The game is nearly broken as a two-player game in this respect. Just go purple and you will win, 9/10 times if your opponent uses production. Don;t even bother building one production building. Example: build library, and pull the prospector role every chance you can, and build out purple buildings. Just keep playing...you'll see
"build library". Hmm. Never realized you got to pick your starting hand of cards
The above is overstated, but perhaps not by much. Violet should beat Prod in 2-player at least 7/10 times. If a person slavishly, mindlessly followed Prod-only, yeah, they'd lose 9/10 times. But usually the Prod player is at least diversifying a bit, if he's smart.
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Len
United States
Austin
Texas
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cannoneer wrote: LSMB wrote: In two player games, production is an inferior strategy (as alluded to by Jearles). The game is nearly broken as a two-player game in this respect. Just go purple and you will win, 9/10 times if your opponent uses production. Don;t even bother building one production building. Example: build library, and pull the prospector role every chance you can, and build out purple buildings. Just keep playing...you'll see "build library". Hmm. Never realized you got to pick your starting hand of cards The above is overstated, but perhaps not by much. Violet should beat Prod in 2-player at least 7/10 times. If a person slavishly, mindlessly followed Prod-only, yeah, they'd lose 9/10 times. But usually the Prod player is at least diversifying a bit, if he's smart.
Using Library was just one example.
You have to use cards up to build/pay for production buildings, and in order to use production to get cards requires an extra role. For this reason, I disagree a person would have to "slavishly" follow a production strategy to reveal the weakness in it.
This changes in a 4-plpayer game, as someone will always have to select at least one of the roles for production, making it much more viable.
OK, I concede it will not best your opponent 9/10 times. Perhaps 8.5/10 
In any case, due to the above, 2-player games got pretty boring for me after a while. I do like SJ, but with more players it is a far better game. Without getting too off-topic, the OP I think will find with a few more plays he can beat someone even if they start an early production building.
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United States
Danbury
Connecticut
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LSMB wrote:
In any case, due to the above, 2-player games got pretty boring for me after a while. I do like SJ, but with more players it is a far better game. Without getting too off-topic, the OP I think will find with a few more plays he can beat someone even if they start an early production building.
I completely agree that San Juan is a much better 4-player game than 2 or 3, for the specific reason you mention (production is FORCED to be a viable strat because at least producer or trader is going to get chosen every time).
I also predict the OP will soon learn how to counter a production strategy in 2-player.
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b holle
United States
Minnesota
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I agree with what most of what the others have said.
First turn production building doesn't give much advantage; especially if it is not silver.
If tobacco or coffee the good usually sells for two. Your wife has to choose two roles to complete the transaction. She gets one from indigo and two from tobacco/coffee for a total of three cards. Meanwhile you get one from indigo. This is a net gain of two cards for her; but since it took two role selections it is one card per role.
Meanwhile while she is going produce/trade you are picking prospector/builder. This is also a one card advantage per role. So you have parity.
I actually think two-player San Juan is a fantastic game (at least with the expansion). With two player it is much more a game of tactics. You should almost always just try to maximize your card advantage with each role selection.
The correct pick constantly changes as more buildings are built. Don't ever pigeon-hole yourself as the producer or the purple guy. Rather, this changes over the course of the game.
You may build silver early and get an advantage as a producer (remember - you need more than a one card advantage per role selection per the above analysis, otherwise you aren't beating prospector/builder) but if your opponent then catches up with a new production building you need to stop produce/trade.
Try to piggy back on the roles where your opponent has an advantage and/or gain an advantage on other roles. Piggy backing on your opponenet is especially good if they are not good tacticians and only blindly continue with whatever strategy they have chosen.
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