Indonesia FAQ
149 questions players ask · Updated Nov 10, 2026 · Full rulebook
Components
- Which tokens mark plantations and which mark shipped goods in the second edition?
- Are goods markers limited in supply, and what happens if you run out?
- How do you tell apart the ships of two shipping companies owned by the same player?
- What do the ship colours and shapes represent?
- When are neutral ships used, and can they join a big merged company?
- How much money is in the Indonesia box?
- What are the coloured round discs in the box for?
- Which colour wooden goods token stands for each good?
- What does the 2 on the back of the cardboard production chits mean?
- What are the huts on the board for?
- How many player discs does each colour need for the research tracks?
- What do the 5 and 10 values on the ship tokens mean, and what is Ship 10 on the player aid?
Preparation
- Does the 3rd edition change any game rules?
- Are the second edition rules different from the first edition rules?
- Are city cards dealt face up or face down?
- Is money open or hidden when players did not agree beforehand?
- What role do players take in Indonesia?
- How do the Spielermaterial replacement pieces fit into second-edition setup?
- How many city building cards does each player get, and when?
- Are companies or city cards dealt to players at the start?
- Are companies available at the start, and is the first turn's merger phase skipped?
- In a 3-player game, are only three cities placed at setup and in each later era?
- What is the first step of the game, and when are companies taken?
- Do the same companies appear in the same places in every game?
Playing the Game
- Does the New Era phase happen every round, and when are new cities placed?
- How many cities does each player build in each new era?
- Must cities be built on a coastal area next to a sea?
- Where can a new city be built, and who chooses the spot?
- If a player's city card has no legal city spot, is the card discarded?
- In the New Era phase, should cities or companies be placed first, and what happens to unacquired companies?
- When does a new era start if companies cannot find a starting area?
- Do cities still grow when no goods are on the board?
- Which goods must a city receive to grow?
- Does delivering Siap Faji to a city stop it from receiving rice or spice?
- How many goods of one type can a city take in one operations phase?
- Can a city grow twice in one round when many goods were delivered to it?
- When a city grows, do the replaced smaller city markers go back to the supply?
- If all size-2 city tokens are on the board, can a size-1 city still grow when a size-2 city is growing to size 3 at the same time?
- When there are not enough city tokens to upgrade every growing city, which city is upgraded?
- If all of a production company's goods sell, must it expand for free to its full expansion level?
- If a production company has not sold all its goods, can it pay to expand fewer areas than its track allows?
- Does expanding a production company cost money, and where does the money go?
- When an expansion costs more cash than you have, do you pay from earnings?
- In what order does a production company operate, and can plantations added by expansion deliver goods in the same operation?
- Does the number of goods counters in a production area set how many goods the company produces?
- Can a production company expand outside the province where it was founded?
- Can a company start or expand next to another company that produces the same good?
- Can a company expand next to a company that produces a different good?
- Can a city block a company from expanding into an area?
- Can a city and a production piece share one area?
- What does expanding a production company look like on the board?
- Can one expansion chain through an area opened by an earlier placement in the same expansion?
- After two production companies merge, do touching pieces form one zone, and can expansion join two zones of one company?
- Does a merged production company expand once by its full level, or once per former company?
- How are deliveries recorded: do plantation chits flip, and what does the X side of a marker mean?
- Must a production company sell as many goods as it can, even at a loss?
- Must a merged production company sell all its goods in a single operation, across all its zones?
- Can different goods of one company use different shipping companies, and must all zones use the same one?
- Can goods move freely within a production zone before shipping, and ship from any part of it?
- Can goods travel over land from a production area to a city?
- Must a ship sit in a sea area next to the production area or city it serves?
- Is the shipping fee charged per good or per boat, and do you pay your own shipping company?
- Can a production company send goods to several cities, across several ships, in one operation?
- Does a ship's hull capacity reset for each operating company?
- Does a second ship of one company in the same sea area add capacity?
- Is a shipping line's hull capacity counted per company or per production area?
- What does a player's Hull Player value apply to?
- Whose hull capacity applies to a shipping company after a merger, sale or new start?
- What is the Hull Company track for, and what happens to it after a merger?
- Where can a shipping company place new ships when it expands?
- After shipping companies merge, where can the combined company's ships go?
- What happens to the ships of two merged shipping companies on the board?
- Can you move or remove a ship to free a shipping slot for expansion?
- Can a shipping company still carry goods after its company is flipped at operation?
- Do you pay to expand a shipping company?
- Must a shipping company expand when it operates?
- Must you operate one of your companies every round, even if it can do nothing useful?
- How many mergers can a player announce in the Mergers phase?
- Who may announce a merger, and must the announcer own one of the companies?
- Can a company that was already merged in a Mergers phase be merged again in that phase?
- Can a player who passed on a merger bid rejoin it, and how does merger bidding end?
- In what order do players bid after the announcer's opening bid?
- Who may bid on a merger, and must a bidder have a free slot?
- Can a player bid more than needed to win a merger just to pass money to another player?
- Must you hold the full merger bid in cash, even if you own part of a company being merged?
- How is a merger's final bid split among owners, and must bids be multiples of something?
- Where does merger money go, and what goes into the Bank on the player aid?
- How many company deeds can one merger combine, and what Merger level is needed?
- What merger level is needed to merge two Siap Faji companies that each have two deeds?
- Can more than two companies merge at once, or companies of different types?
- Can a company that nobody has acquired yet take part in a merger?
- Which rice or spice tokens may be removed at the border in a Siap Faji merger?
- After a Siap Faji merger, do adjacent rice and spice areas count as one production zone?
- Can a Siap Faji merger leave the new company in two separate pieces?
- How many goods does a Siap Faji merger give up, and is it rounded up?
- When discarding half the goods in a Siap Faji merger, must one good stay in each production area?
- Must a rice or spice company merging into a Siap Faji remove tokens that touch an existing Siap Faji company?
- What happens to a Siap Faji company whose every production area is next to another Siap Faji company?
- What is left on the board after a Siap Faji merger, and what happens to the merged companies' leftover chits?
- Does a rice and spice merger into Siap Faji count as one deed or two?
- If a Siap Faji merger leaves no legal place for its goods, is the deed still in play?
- Does merging two existing Siap Faji companies still require giving up half the land?
- Must a Siap Faji merger use a 3-to-1 rice to spice ratio?
- Can a rice or spice company join an existing Siap Faji company, or can two Siap Faji companies merge?
- What nominal value is used for a rice and spice merger that forms a Siap Faji company?
- Can a player acquire more than one company in one Acquisitions phase?
- Can you acquire another player's shipping or production company outside a merger?
- When is a company deed discarded if no legal starting area is left for it?
- Can removing an unclaimed deed end the game?
- If a company's starting area is blocked and it is discarded, does it come back when the blocking goods move?
- Is a company that can never ship removed from the game?
- Can the game stall when nobody wants the leftover companies?
- Can a production company start or expand inland, away from any coast?
- Where inside its province can a newly started production company be placed?
- Where can a new company be started?
- How does the turn-order bid work, and is it open or hidden?
- Does investing in the Turn Order Bid research multiply a turn-order bid, and how much is paid?
- What is the Bank for, and does money bid for turn order count at the end?
- Is research and development free?
- How is the last-round earnings doubling calculated when shipping fees are paid?
- What happens when shipping costs exceed sales, leaving negative earnings, and is it doubled at game end?
- In the Sulawesi example, can goods reach the middle city through shipping company A?
- Is the city in Kalimantan Timur in the shipping example on p. 7 legal?
- Are land areas that touch only at a corner immediately next to each other?
Victory Conditions
- Is only the last operations phase's cash doubled at game end, or your whole cash pile?
- Is money received in a merger doubled in the final round?
- In the final round, are shipping costs doubled along with income?
- Does paying to expand a company reduce the income that is doubled in the final round?
- When does the game end if the last Era C company is removed during operations?
- Why is income doubled in the final round?
- Why keep the last round's earnings separate when it is not yet clear that the round is final?
- Can a player make a move that helps another player win when they can no longer win?
Map Issues
- Are Aceh and Sumatera Utara adjacent on the Indonesia map?
- Are provinces that meet only at a corner (an X junction) adjacent?
- Are the unmarked islands in Nusa Tenggara adjacent on the 3rd edition map?
- Are the sea areas north and south of Jawa Timur adjacent?
- Can cities be placed on the small islands off western Sumatra and on the lighter Nusa Tenggara Timur island?
- Do the board clarifications in the old Indonesia FAQ apply to the second edition map?
- On the second edition map, are small islands near a larger island their own land areas?
- Do the arrows between islands make areas adjacent for expansion, and do production zones span them?
- Do the unlabelled islands at the bottom of the board belong to Maluku?
- Is the northern sea next to both Sulawesi Selatan provinces?
- Are Jawa Tengah and Jawa Timur, or Kalimantan Tengah and Kalimantan Timur, adjacent on the map?
- Can a city or production zone go on an island with no circle or arrow?
- How many production areas does Maluku have for building a production company?
- What do the dotted lines around island groups mean?
- What do the slash-separated symbols printed on a province mean?
- Must a newly placed city be on the coast?
- How are the seas around Jawa Timur and Bali laid out?