Each time a settlement is founded or upgraded you gain victory points. Reach a certain amount of victory points to win the game. We may use cookies to help customize your experience, including performing analytics and serving ads.
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Points are awarded in a few ways, towns, cities, VP cards, the longest road, and the largest army. Choosing which combination of these you will be using to win the game is the key to success. Understanding the value of the resources, the dice rolls and the positioning can go a long way in winning a game of Catan. In a typical game of Catan most of the points are awarded through building settlements and cities.
Everyone begins the game with 2 victory points for their 2 starting settlements. So really each player just needs to earn 8 points. The simplest way to do this is by expanding roads and building new settlements and building cities. Trying to draw victory points from the development card deck can be unreliable. A key component of understanding which spaces are better in Catan is knowing which dice rolls come up more often.
Understanding which numbers are more valuable can give you the edge over your opponent. In Catan this moves the thief, so you can expect that to happen a lot. The most common numbers to be rolled that are on the game board however are the 6 and the 8 5 combinations each. So placing your towns and cities next to those numbers are valuable. On the other end of the spectrum, both 2 and 12 are very rare. Each of those numbers only have one combination double ones and double sixes, respectively.
A typical winning combination will involve 2 cities, 4 settlements and longest road. Do: - build settlements along your road. Nothing worse than having the longest road as the lynch pin of your strategy, only to have someone build a settlement in the middle of it! This is the weakest and most set-up dependent strategy but can lead to glorious victory on the right board.
Basically, you throw all thoughts of balance out the window and gamble on a single resource for which you also have the matching port. Any time I've seen a pure port strategy of this type win has been for sheep, because the other resources are valued more highly and you won't be able to sweep them all up in the same way. Also, who's going to rob you when they know they'll just get a sheep? Amongst the people I game with, this strategy is known as "The Queen of Sheep", the title self-awarded to the person who first pulled this off.
Do: - haplessly try to trade sheep all the time " Someone must have wood for my sheep! Your opponents might actually fall for it occasionally especially if you've done a good job of monopolizing sheep , and when they don't, grumble loudly about how unreasonable they are and trade away quietly at with your port.
Obviously, you will never have to trade unfavorably, because you can always use your port. You want more sheep so cities are a good idea. If you have to trade for more than one or two resources you're probably going to lose. It very much depends on the board and on how your opponents are playing.
The figure above sums the cards needed in the following example situations:. Commander : buys 6 development cards to get Largest Army and a victory point, builds 2 roads, 2 settlements and 3 cities. Developer : buys 12 development cards to get Largest Army and 2 victory points, builds 1 settlement and 3 cities. Producer : builds 6 roads, 4 settlements and 4 cities. Explorer : builds 10 roads to get Longest Road, 4 settlements, and 2 cities. Queen of Sheep : replaces all ore needs with sheep, plays Commander, buys 6 development cards to get Largest Army and a victory point, builds 2 roads, 2 settlements and 3 cities.
Commander is unquestionably strong, but what if the board is ore-poor? Or someone else is playing Developer and locks up Largest Army? Or the ore-rich spots are taken before you get to place your settlement s? Or the Producer gets the Longest Road? Or the Explorer grabs all the lucrative spots? Or the highest probability tiles are sheep? Better have a back-up plan for when your opportunities don't match your favorite strategy Note that Producer needs a lot of resources but they also collect the most, so it's more competitive than it looks.
It's fair to say that Queen of Sheep is uncompetitive except when no one else has much ore. If you play against the Catan AI I only have experience with the iOS app, but I suspect it is similar on other platforms on the hardest level, games often finish with the development cards sold out. If this never happens in your games, you're probably playing a relatively friendly style of game and no one is playing Developer.
Try it! Your overall strategy will dictate what your goals are, but there are some more general things you can be looking to do:. The ports are more valuable than they may appear, because with one you can always build something with any hand of 8 cards or more. This is critical to dodge the robber and to stay productive. Card tracking will allow you to target the robber most effectively.
If you need wood for a road and sheep for a settlement, trade for both before placing the road - your opponents may be less inclined to trade you that sheep when they see where you're going to put the settlement! Chances are, you're doing so for a resource you're finding hard to get and therefore other players will know they can disproportionately hurt you with the robber if they steal it.
Lock up that port that's critical to your strategy early. Nothing more infuriating than having an opponent beat you to it. You can then pick up the other spot at your leisure while their plans are badly damaged.
Trading between players slows a lot in the endgame, and clear leaders will be blacklisted entirely. Buy something! Your hand may develop in such a way that allows you to take advantage of an opportunity to secure territory, grab a port, bolster your defense or build cities, even when that deviates from your primary goals.
It may seem pointless because they get so many cards, but if you can stem the flow of a key resource you can leave them burning many cards to the robber and the bank and struggling to finish. Careful that building a settlement in the middle of their longest road doesn't hand the victory to someone else! Often, you want the Explorer to keep the Longest Road - it is a good way of keeping other players in check and forcing them to go out the hard way.
You need to shut it down. Consistently being an ass is a good way to get beat up on. You can encourage this in various ways, ranging from manipulative banter to strategic card-trading. Don't stress over settlement positioning in the late game - put them anywhere you can, they're victory points rather than production sources. Obvious leads make you a target.
Longest Road in particular should be picked up as late as possible. Joining up two separate road segments with a big road-building push and unveiling 2 victory point cards can give you the win from 6 points. Largest Army on the other hand needs to be more openly competed for, because of the play-only-one-development-card-per-turn rule.
Victory point cards are great to have because they create uncertainty in your opponents is it a VP or a monopoly card? The best games of Catan have all players at the table in with a shot of winning late in the game, and if this guide helps you get to that position more often, it's done its job. Have fun! Worry less about other people taking advantage of you and focus on what you need. So what if it cost you 3 brick for that lousy sheep? If it let you build an early settlement, you're still ahead - far better than waiting another round and risking the same scenario or getting robbed.
Generally, the people benefiting in a trade are the two involved, so you can accumulate net benefit by trading more often than your opponents. Neutral trades can engender goodwill, and are therefore often worth it if you feel that player is in a weak position. They might just rob someone else down the line instead of you Alternatively, you're simply the sort of person who remembers slights more than successes.
C atan would be not be as fun if the best player always won, and the dice inject some welcome chaos into the game without it descending into a mindless luck-fest. You're always getting burned by the robber The simple answer is to build more and to trade more. The more cautious you are, the more susceptible you are to overloading your hand. You may also need to do a better job of building for balance - perhaps you're raking in tons of wheat but have no ore or no port to use it with.
You always get hemmed in Chances are, you're not pointing your roads in smart directions to begin with, you're building your settlements too close together, or you're not building roads soon enough. It's also possible you're playing people who all like the Explorer strategy, in which case you should try the Commander or Developer instead.
You'll crush them. You get close but no cigar Pay attention to what the other players need to win. Someone about to unveil a knight or a victory point card to win the game?
Build a settlement in the middle of their longest road. Don't trade with others when they're close to going out, even if it is great for you - no one remembers who came second. Someone hemmed in but otherwise strong? Compete with them for Largest Army. Someone holding the longest road about to go out? Trade wood and brick favorably with someone who can take it off them assuming that won't put them out, of course! You may also be losing thanks to a fundamentally weaker strategy Explorer is particularly prone to early leads and agonizingly slow finishes or because your resources are unbalanced and you're easily blocked from what you need to go out.
Try in particular to secure multiple sources of wheat, because being blocked on that in the late game will shut you down. Everyone gangs up on you If you are leading, so they should.
If not, you must have a reputation for being a good b dirty or c both. Enjoy the challenge; the wins will be that much sweeter. Someone else has an unbeatable strategy that always works No, someone else has a strategy that you're letting them get away with.
Determine what the key to their playing style is and deny them that. Or beat them at their own game! However, if their unbeatable strategy changes game to game, they're probably just a lot better at Catan than you are Everyone is so mean Maybe you play really slowly, in which case you deserve it. Seriously though: yes. Yes they are. There are tons of great games out there in which the meanness is hidden better.
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