By: John H.

John H. — Thu, 24 May 2007 01:55:55 +0000

I’ve played a great deal of Catan over a couple of years. This is what I’ve figured out:
- One strategy for placing initial settlements is to count the dots. I don’t know if the dots are in the X-box 360 Live version, but they’re useful in the physical game version. The numbers that determine resources have dots under them that indicates how common those numbers are. 6 and 8 have five dots, 2 and 12 just one. Each dot is a roughly equal measure of a certain amount of resource over the long term. Usually, the most dots you can get surrounding a settlement is 12. A settlement placed on a 12-dot location will be relatively sure to bring in a lot of resources during a game.
- Another strategy is to try to cover as many different numbers as you can. If you can get your starting settlements on 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, you’ll receive resources on nearly every turn, making you less vulnerable to the dice.
- One of the genius things about Catan’s design is that the different resources are worth more to different players generally, and at different times in the game. At the very start wood and brick are extremely important for roads, later on wheat and ore become important for cities. The least useful resource is almost always wool (a.k.a. sheep), but it’s still needed to build settlements and buy development cards. Further, since wool is generally less useful, sometimes the other players ignore it, allowing a canny player to build up a good supply of it and then snag the wool port.
- It is very, very important to expand outward as quickly as possible. At times, even being a single turn behind another player in building your initial settlement can cost you the game. There are two kinds of point sources in Catan, development points (for settlements and cities) and “empty” points (victory point cards, Longest Road and Largest Army). Both are useful in getting to 10 and winning the game, but earlier, you’re much better served going after development points, since in the process of obtaining them, you also get production bonuses. But as soon as you obtain the 10th point you win, so later on the victory often comes down to players trying to top each other’s roads.
- Development cards are an often-ignored aspect of the game. The deck contains 25 (if I remember right) soldier cards, but only five victory point cards, and a smattering of other types. It is hard to win on development cards, but if you’re hopeless behind and with a surplus of sheep, it can deliver a win once in a while.
- When placing the Robber, at the beginning of the game, targeting a player with an early lead can outright cripple him. Because of that, in our group, we generally refuse to target a player with the Robber until someone gets a good lead. I do not think the computer players will respect that reasoning, though, so it’s open season on them!

Comments on: Thoughts on developing a strategy in Catan

By: John H.