I think kurilla means decent-yielding resources, i.e. 4 or 5 pips. Sometimes in a many-player game it’s nearly impossible to get 3 resources with 4 or 5 pips on them much less 4. Of course your low-yielding resources should be the ones you missed in your high-resource selection: you can get away with only 4 resources sometimes but it’s hard.
A lot of folks get so obsessed with the six and eight that they screw themselves over by taking combinations like a 6-2-11 intersection. fives and nines come up just a little less often, so sometimes a location that appears less desirable is actually more likely to yield good results.
I got burned out on the game when I worked in the game store. Seems like I couldn’t go a day without playing it with customers (I know, rough life) or having to answer rules questions when someone else was playing it.
It’s a great game, but I can’t play it anymore.
– IG
Settled down, have you? 
Yeah, for my first placement I usually determine it by a raw pip count and break ties with proximity to ports and then the resource mix. The second placement is what’s hard: sometimes you’re stuck between choosing a 10-pip or higher second placement that duplicates what you already have or a 5-7 pip placement that will give you 4 or 5 resources total.
Also, I want my second placement to include a wood and brick hex so that I can get a road right at the start. But it’s such a popular combo that it will likely get taken by someone else. So I usually bite the bullet and take it first and then hope for the best.
would anyone be willing to meet at the Java site for a game, perhaps this weekend? (4 players at a time) I’ll set it up if anyone is interested
My husband and I love it, and we have several friends that like it too so we get to play it quite a bit. We have the Seafarers pack and I really like that addition, we always play with it now and it adds a lot to the game. There are so many boards to choose from and we often make up our own, plus the added excitement of crossing the water to mystery land or gold is fun.
It’s not under my control of course but I really like when I am last to place in the beginning because I like to go twice in a row to combine spots for my best strategy. First is ok but you will only get one spot of any real value and I really hate going second or third.
I have found the value of setting up right away on a port in Seafarers, it only gives you 2 source spots but the ports are very useful (pretty much mandatory, much more so than in Settlers) and you can set sail right away. I also like Seafarers because it puts the sheep to much more use and you have choices about how to get around, so if you are short on brick you can build ships instead of roads. But you really, really need wood so I make sure if nothing else I get a good wood supply. When we have boards with no big number wood sources the game tends to stall, and if there is only one the robber tends to live there so we usually set up at least 2 good spots.
Quite often now I let the others battle over longest road and focus on other ways of getting points. Usually there are players who like longest road and they use up resources fighting over it while I quietly get largest army or build a ton of cities. I like to build cities early on too because it’s an easy way to get lots of resources later, and then you can make big advances in builds and get lots of points in one turn to win quickly and from out of nowhere.
My friends and I play basic Settlers of Catan. We just started playing it. Our games last longer than the 1 hour estimated play time (well, that’s what my friend said). You would think that having 3 actual economists would speed the game up, but as soon as someone throws out a price that beats the 2-1 market trade-in, competing offers start to fly and it slows the game down. I guess it doesn’t help that I lie a lot about what I have. Oh, and the ganging up on the leader doesn’t speed the game up either.
Though I’ve only played it a couple of weekends, I think I have a good strategy down (at least for basic). If start in-land, immediately build towards the coast, particularly if you’re the red color. If you’re blue, or on the coast already, build to the 3-for-1 exchange spot. I forgot white, I think you should automatically go for the longest road and build cities. For yellow, definitely build towards the high probability numbers 6, 8, 9, and 5 (personally, we have seen an inordinate amount of 10s, definitely skews the game). Building cities early is definitely the way to go because you can force good trades with the coast people who aren’t hitting their numbers, but this is seems only to work if you got a good trade early in the game. Unfortunately, we now hoard all brick and wood.
it should not make a bit of difference which color uses which strategy
Unless there’s a player who thinks it does.
Unless there’s a player who thinks it matters that is.
Play this game with the family all the time. I guess my only real strategy is to pick one and then STAY WITH IT. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to save up for a city, and end up dropping my rare ore on some stupid devlopment card that gets me nowhere.
I’m beginning to notice that given any respectable competition, at least 50% of this game is the roll of the dice. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you can’t get your numbers rolled, you’re going to lose. If you can get a resource or two every roll, you’re going to win. Simple as that.
There are attempts to alieviate the luck factor. I have a Catan deck that they gave you for collecting all five resources at this year’s Origins which acts as dice and gives events and there are other people who use a deck of 36 cards to flatten the probability curve.
That said, Catan is a lot less luck dependant than that. Ignoring the possibility of a 7, you have the potential to get at least one resource every turn and making sure that you do is part of the strategy of the game. And as noted, trading is the real key. Have a bit of everything and you’ll be more likely to have what someone wants when the cry goes out. Have all of one thing and just trade it in as you need to. 50% luck means that a completely new player should be able to beat a champion Catan player fairly often and you just don’t see that happening.
I wouldn’t mind doing that…I played a bit of online settlers a couple years ago but the competition was so bad I shied away. But people in this thread, like most Dopers, seem to know what they’re talking about 
I’d be available Saturday afternoon or later or any time Sunday if I have enough notice to make sure the website works on my latest computer.