Mini-Countries is a mix between a puzzle game and a production chain management game.

In my first few plays I tried to treat it as a production chain management game and quickly got frustrated. Once I better understood the designer's intent and could play accordingly, instead of frustrating it became an enjoyable set of challenges.

This short guide is intended to help players understand some of the core elements of the game, while getting to the challenging fun part without the frustration.

Towns produce demand, have limited storage capacity and limited ability to connect to sources of production.

Towns can only have four connections, only one of which can be to another town or warehouse.

If you try a connection beyond this, the game will briefly throw up an error message but because of the way connections overlap in the game, you won't necessarily realize that the connection has not been made.

Tip: avoid having two of the same type of production going to the same town. Towns have limited storage and if the producer sees that the town's inventory for that type of production is full, or will be made full with production already en route, then that production is lost.

Tip: for production that goes to a town, clear inventories as soon as possible by sending it to a warehouse or another town that does not connect to production of that product. Otherwise, you risk losing production as the production site abandons production due to lack of available inventory space.

Tip: for seasonal products, like grapes, use towns that do not connect to grape production as a storage stockpile. It will reduce the work shipping demand to the town, give a little extra inventory to handle demand until production starts again and make managing town demand a little less frantic in late game when you've got a complex grid to manage.

Warehouses quickly become essential as towns have limited inventory, which can cause lots of lost production when storage is full. While towns have a limit of four connections, warehouses can have up to seven connections, three of which can be towns and one of which can be another warehouse.

On the more advanced maps, aim to have each warehouse connect to three towns and one other warehouse.

Towns are permanent, everything else is temporary and, depending on the map, deliberately kept in limited supply by the game designer while demand for product changes.

Overall demand seems to remain constant, so as new demands emerge, demand for older production will drop. What used to be enough production will become too much, so if production, connections and storage capacity are limited, you should be looking to delete production to establish new production.

Tip: when the game signals that a new product will be demanded, begin production and storage early. Particularly if the production is seasonal. Demand will be constant regardless of season, so stockpiling is necessary to tide you over until production can start again. Delete older production if necessary to get a head start on seasonal production, especially if there are decent inventories of the older production.

. connect each town to two different industries, leaving the third slot open for temporary emergency use.
. town connects to two different industries and one warehouse
. warehouse connects to three towns and one other warehouse, leaving the other slots open for industry and other temporary emergency use

Tip: The spare connections (one per town and three per warehouse) can be used to solve temporary shortfalls. When allowed connections or industry are in short supply, this will give flexibility to delete a connection, briefly recreate it elsewhere to ship needed goods, and then in turn delete the temporary connection.