Anybody here enjoy settling Cataan?
God knows I love it and have finally manged to get a group of friends to enjoy it as well.
What are some good tactics and strategy for you all? I prefer to set up on the second “Ring” in if it’s a basic game. Then I angle the roads outward to run along the coast.
Yes, even without the extra “a”. (I don’t usually snark over spelling, but in this case it pretty much insures that anyone searching for a thread on this topic ain’t gonna find this one.)
I’m a fan of it. In fact, I played it with a few friends a couple of weeks ago. I’m afraid I don’t have a successful strategy yet, although I do favor setting up my first two settlements close enough together to connect up easily if possible.
How do you feel about the variants? I’ve played Knights of Cataan, but it would be more interesting if you could use the knights to attack as well as cooperate.
We play Settlers and Cities/Knights and (on occasion) Spacefarers.
My strategy is to set the initial settlements on high probability numbers that give a broad variety of resources. All five is best, of course; four is good; three is the minimum acceptable. Short connectability is a major consideration as well.
I also try to build cities as quickly as possible to increase my resources, and try to get to a 3:1 port as soon as possible.
Depending on where I am in the start order, it works out pretty well. (Now, if I could just get the dice to realize what “high probability” means…)
I wonder where I got the extra “A?”
Some of my considerations for setting up include getting a good spread of numbers, ideally six, a good spread of resources, and good access to ports.
Some players put their initial settlements connected by the initial roads but that is a waste. It limits how much territory you can cover. If you place the initial two roads going to different areas, you can branch off to many more intersections.
I play and have the basic game and seafarers (plus the 6 player expansion for each)
Knights and Cities is fun also, but it is a different game.
Winning stategy depends on the board. I try to cover all the resources. Usually there is a shortage of one resource - it may worth it to get good source(s) of that and skip something else that is common.
Number diversity is good.
There are older threads on this - they may be usefull
good online site (you have to register {free}, but don’t have to give them an e-mail) http://games.asobrain.com
Brian
Settlers isn’t my favorite game ever but it is a good one. I don’t play it very often any more but I always approach it from a position of flexibility in the initial set up and then stick to the plan I’ve worked out for the length of the game. I’d prefer to have all resources available to me but I’m not above cornering the market on a resource and using a port or going for an expansionist road and soldier strategy.
BTW, if you haven’t seen BoardGameGeek yet, it is the definitive site for anything board game related on the Internet. They’ve got tons on Catan including varients to strategies: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/13
We love it at our house. Generally, we use both the Seafarers and Knights/Cities expansions, and use a board that we draw at random. This adds a lot of replay value, since the board is different each time.
I have all the sets but have only gotten to play Knights and Cities as well as Seafarers once each. But it was with six players and they were quite happy about both variations. So I should have many more games still to go.
Only played it once but I loved it. I started at the yellow-orange starting position on the default map and proceeded to corner the market on wheat (or nearly so). That and a port worked out very well.
Love some Catan. Unfortunately we don’t have amny folks to play it with, so it gets played infrequently at best. A friend gave us Starfarers for Christmas last year but it seemed to nit-picky and all the platcis parts got broken even as we were trying to take them out of the box.
Love it. Online versions exist of varying quality, not all of them authorized.
Bataan.
you may also want to try Java Settlers. For servers 1 and 2 you don’t even have to register - just make up a screen name - it could be different every time you play
okay - I just tried the Aso Brain site and compared to the Java site it is sluggish and noisy, altho the graphics are truer to the board game
Try both - see which one you like
I may be going to a gaming convention in Tampa this weekend. That could be a good place to find some other Catan folk. Hopefully, people with poor trading skills.
Is it me, or is trading the single most important part of the game? It seems like the only way to get what you want often enough to win is to get it out of your opponents.
Also, since everyone stops trading with you when you’re close to winning, there is a certain pattern to most games. One guy gets close to winning, say one point away, and then he stays there until one or two others catch up. It can be rather frustrating. Especially when you get there early and then have to wait forever to get enough cards to trade to the bank.
When I play on line with others, we set up games with no trading allowed (we just all agree on it beforehand) I’ve found trading tends to drag an already inherently slow game. Also playing without trading (your only choice is to save up cards and trade with the bank) tends to even out the scores as you go
That pattern seems to happen more with C+K of Catan than the original Settlers, since no points are kept in secret. Whereas in Settlers no one knows how many of your development cards are victory points so you don’t know how close people are to winning (while of course if you have 3 or 4 of them you could reasonably assume at least 1 or 2 of them are victory points.)
That said, it happens in Settlers too.
I don’t see how you can get by with three, unless you get a 2:1 port for one of them pronto.
One advantage I find with Cities and Knights is that you’re much less likely to be stuck without something useful to do on your turn.