Puerto Rico

The players’ VP are totaled. Each player adds: 
- The total of his VP chips plus: 
- The VP from his buildings (red-brown number in the upper-right) plus 
- The extra VP from his occupied large buildings  

In a news group the following comments by Alan Kwan is made:
There are two elements composing one's score:
1. goods shipped
2. buildings, including bonus points from large buildings

For #2, you need money and quarries. To get money from the trader, all you really need is to be able to produce a couple of the more expensive goods, like two tobacco, or a coffee and a sugar, etc., or even just one. That doesn't require many people. Quarries also don't require many people to man.

For #1, you require more people. You need 1 people to make a corn, and 2 people to make anything else. I think the best mix is some of each: a few corns, and a few more expensive crops so that you can make some money through the trader for buying the buildings you need. When you have limited people, having some corn increases your total output quantity, but having nothing except corn would cut down your income. A hospice is useful, but you can alleviate the need for people by making some corn.

I am beginning to think that buying a hospice too early, when one hasn't set up his money-generating facilities (sugar/tobacco/coffee plants, or quarries or a constructor's hut, or markets), is a trap and a losing strategy. You need money to buy the more expensive plants, which will then generate steady income for you to buy a hospice or whatever you need. If you spend your first doubloons on a hospice - an expensive building which doesn't help you generate income - this can significantly slow you down. More details in my comments at Board
Game Geek.

In order for a hospice to be really effective, you need several other things too. You need plants for your plantations. (A player who is making only corn doesn't really need a hospice.) You need to make sure that the goods you produce are getting shipped instead of thrown away, so you need a warehouse or a wharf. Both of these require money. Too often I see a player who buys a hospice too early ends up with lots of unemployed in San Juan, and/or with lots of plantations with no production because they don't have money for the plants.

Every round, each player chooses one of seven various characters, and sets a particular action for all players to take in turn order.  Thus for example the settler raises new plantations on which, with the help of the craftsman, goods are manufactured. These are sold afterwards by trader to the trading company, or shipped by the captain into the Old World. With the money made buildings can be erected, by means of the builder, building in the city etc.

For the moment this feels like my best game, although you never know when the position will be replaced. Already from the first play it felt unusually good and I thought a lot of strategies and mistakes on the way home in a way I've never done before. All information is open, so it's easy to teach and grasp the game quickly, still there seems to be an endless depth. AS soon someone are talking about a killing startegy, it seems to be easily counter-attacked as soon as every other player is aware of it. One of the interesting thing with the game is that everything you do affect the other players as well, sometimes a choice of a role can end up being better for any of the other players, even if the role choser always have both an extra advantage, excluding the advantage of being the first to do it. The roles which aren't chosen gets a dubloon, to be more attractive during the next round.

The game has a very good scalability, so it works equally good with 3, 4 or 5 players. There is also an official 2-player variant.