Tips harbour

TL;DR

• As often as possible, use Buildings that give you a net gain of 2 goods.
• Your starting Building is very useful. Use it!
• If your opponent is closer to buying a building than you are, mess up their plans by using buildings that rearrange the market.
• It can be useful to figure out what building your opponent wants to use next and block them by using it yourself.

Introduction - Overarching Goals of the Game

Harbour is a game that asks you to do two things:

1. Generate certain sets of goods as efficiently as possible (Ex: Get 2 lumber, 4 stone, and 5 livestock).
2. Stop your opponent from generating goods efficiently.

In order to play well, you have to understand how the different types of Buildings in the game help you achieve those two goals. Let's take a look.

Building Types - Fixed, Flexible, and Utility

Buildings come in three broad types, each of which has strengths and weaknesses. Not every Building falls perfectly under one of these types, but most of them do, and it’s a helpful way to think about the game.

The three types are:

Fixed Buildings

These are Buildings that exchange specific type(s) of goods for other specific type(s) of goods (Ex: Golem Crafters exchanges 3 livestock for 5 stone).

Flexible Buildings

These are Buildings that exchange goods of your choice (Ex: Salvage Yard exchanges 5 of any good for 3 each of any two other goods).

Utility Buildings

These are Buildings that do something other than exchanging goods. These usually allow you to manipulate the market and/or buy a building.

For now, I’m going to focus on Fixed Buildings and Flexible Buildings. We’ll come back to Utility Buildings later.

Fixed Buildings almost always provide a net increase of 2 goods. For example, Golem Crafters causes you to lose 3 livestock, then gain 5 stone. You've gained a total of 2 goods in the exchange.

Flexible Buildings almost always provide a net gain of only 1 good. For example, Salvage Yard causes you to lose 5 of any good, then gain 3 each of any two other goods (for a total of 6 goods gained overall). You've gained 1 good in the exchange.

It’s obvious that Fixed Buildings are better than Flexible Buildings for building up the total number of goods in your warehouse, but the benefit of a Flexible Building is, of course, its flexibility. The marketplace in Harbour cares both about the number of goods you have *and* what types of goods they are, and that can sometimes make Fixed Buildings inconvenient. When you use Golem Crafters (which is a Fixed Building), you have to pay in livestock and you have to gain stone. But when you use Salvage Yard (which is a Flexible Building) you can pay however you want and gain whatever you want. When you use a Flexible Building you’re sacrificing some raw production power for the privilege of customizing what you gain and lose.

To sum up what we’ve learned so far:

Fixed Buildings:
Strength: Powerful (net gain of 2 goods)
Weakness: Lack versatility (can’t decide what goods to lose and gain)

Flexible Buildings
Strength: Versatile (you get to decide what goods to lose and gain)
Weakness: Lack power (net gain of only 1 good)

Moral of the Story #1

The moral of the story, then, is that you should use Fixed Buildings as much as you possibly can. Remember, Harbour is a game about generating certain sets of goods as efficiently as possible. You should try to have a net gain of 2 goods on most of your turns, otherwise you’re not building up your goods as efficiently as you could be. If the Fixed Buildings that are available don’t gain/lose the right types of goods for the current market, you should still use the Fixed Buildings most of the time in order to build up the total number of goods in you warehouse as quickly as you can. Then use a Flexible Building to convert some of them into the correct types.

But doesn’t that mean that you’ll probably only use a fraction of the Buildings that are available at any given time? Yes, it does! If you’ve played Dominion, this will be a familiar concept. In Dominion, players are presented with a set of 10 different cards and asked to use them to build a deck that can get the most points. You are NOT supposed to try to use all 10 of the available cards. Instead, you’re supposed to figure out what subset of the available cards will work the best together, use that subset, and ignore the rest. Harbour is similar. You are NOT supposed to try to use every Building that’s available. You’re supposed to figure out which subset of the available Buildings will allow you to buy the building you want as quickly as possible, use that subset of the Buildings, and ignore the rest.

Moral of the Story #2 / The Best Building in the Game

Now that we’ve laid some groundwork for understanding types of Buildings and a general strategy for generating goods, it’s time to look at the best Building in the game: your starting Building. (Yes, really.)

Your starting Building is objectively the best Building in the entire game, especially when you play without the Custom Characters. Why? Because it has the production power of a Fixed Building and the versatility of a Flexible Building put together! When you use it, you get to gain 2 goods *of your choice* (as long as it’s two different types of goods). No other building in the game is able to generate goods that quickly while also leaving you so many options. When you play with the Custom Characters, your starting Building generates one good of a specific type and one good of your choice, so it’s slightly weaker than the starting Building on the Wharfs side of the character sheet…but it still has more production power than any other Flexible Building and more versatility than any other Fixed Building.

Our second moral of the story, then, is that you should use your starting Building as much as you possibly can. Ideally, you’re using your starting Building, then using a different building, then back to your starting Building, and so on.

I bet this is starting to sound really boring. There are all sorts of Buildings in this game with fun art and varied effects and I’m telling you to just bounce back and forth between your starting Building and whatever Fixed Buildings are available. That means it’s time to have a look at the second goal of the game: stop your opponent from generating goods efficiently.

Oh, Right, There’s an Opponent

Your opponent is not going to sit around and do nothing while you hop back and forth between your starting Building and the available Fixed Buildings, happily scooping up armfuls of goods. For one thing, they’re going to want to use those Fixed Buildings for themselves, so you’ll likely have turns where your opponent is blocking the building you wanted to use. And for another thing, you can’t ignore your opponent for the whole game and expect to win. You need to try to screw up their plans. That’s where Utility Buildings come in.

As I said before, Utility Buildings are Buildings that do something other than exchanging goods. They might allow you to manipulate the market, buy a building, do both, or do something else entirely. (On rare occasions they might also allow you to exchange goods, but that’s not their primary function.) Utility Buildings are how you mess with your opponent, and how you cope with it when they mess with you. Are they about to ship goods and buy a building? Rearrange the market so that they can’t afford a building anymore. Did they just rearrange the market on you? Rearrange it again to put things back in your favor. They blocked the building you wanted to use? Go to the Ghost Ship and get to use that Building anyway. Utility Buildings also often have the benefit of allowing you do something and also buy a Building on the same turn. You get to take some action and then immediately capitalize on it without your opponent having a chance to react.

Utility Buildings are what makes Harbour more than simply an optimization exercise. They allow you to interact with the other people playing the game. They are what makes Harbour fun.

The Special Symbols (Anchors, Warehouses, Coins, and Top Hats)

Coming soon!