Catan cities and knights how to#

Catan cities and knights how to#

But no strategies can do without ore and wheat, so if you don't start with them, you'd better have a plan of how to get them. There are highly competitive strategies that need very little brick and wood. Where to next? You need to consider options for expansion, and this can be a good tie-breaker in your decision making if you feel two placements are essentially equal. Paired resources like 9 of wood and 9 of brick will give you an instant road every time a 9 is rolled, and this sort of synergy is powerful.Ħ. Try to get roughly the same number of pips of wood and brick, and similarly for ore and wheat. 2/3 of the time, you will be getting a resource card, and you'll feel involved throughout.ĥ. The dream initial placement is something like 4/6/9 and 5/8/10. This seems a little counter-intuitive, but it is great for experienced players as it keeps them in the game regardless of how the dice shake down. The ideal is to get as many different number placements as possible.

Especially good are ports that match nicely with your best resource-gathering tiles.Ĥ.

Choosing late in the round often leaves you with poor choices, and coastal options may become appealing if they come with a port (though make sure it is one with 2 hexes adjacent, not one!). To maximize pips, you should generally avoid the desert and the coast. Place your settlements looking to maximize your probability of getting resource cards (if you're placing numbers according to the recommended spiral convention, the best you can do is 13 pips, e.g. Each number has pips on it indicating its probability (out of 36) of being rolled on a given throw of the dice. You're going to need all of wood, brick, wheat, sheep, and ore, so why not make sure you have them all at the start? Place your first settlement so you get 3 different resources, and pick up the final 2 with your last placement.Ģ. Good players consider all the factors below, and how much weight should be given to each in a particular game is dependent on the exact layout of the tiles and numbers.ġ. There are different levels of sophistication here, starting with the obvious and moving to the more subtle. It's vastly longer than I initially intended and contains a high level of nerdy overanalysis. It's broken into parts: initial setup of settlements and roads, probabilities, development cards, the robber, five strategies to try ( Commander, Developer, Producer, Explorer, and Queen of Sheep), the mid and late game, troubleshooting, and a few final words. This guide is to help those who know how to play already but want to be more competitive, whether in person, online, or even against those pesky 'bots.

The rules are described very clearly in the game itself and are freely available online. This strategy guide does NOT tell you how to play the game. I've played it off and on for 10 years, and one of my first instructables was a 3D plywood version of the board. It uses a beautiful and endlessly variable but always familiar board. It's probably the most successful of the Euro-style games, and has spawned numerous expansions. Catan (previously called ' Settlers of Catan') is a classic boardgame designed by Klaus Teuber.