catan strategy guide - how much does a smart board cost

Catan (
Formerly known as "Settlers of Catan ")
It is a classic board game designed by Klaus Teuber.
This is probably the most successful time for the euro.
The style of the game and spawned a lot of expansion.
It uses a beautiful, constantly changing, but always familiar board.
I played on and off for 10 years and one of my first instructions was the 3D plywood version of the board.
This strategy guide does not tell you how to play the game.
The rules are described very clearly in the game itself and can be obtained online for free (pdf).
This guide is designed to help people who already know how to play but want to be more competitive, whether it's playing in person, online, or even against the annoying bots.
It is divided into several parts: initial setup of settlements and roads, probability, development card, Robber, strategy of five attempts (
Commander, developer, producer, explorer, Queen of sheep)
In the middle and late stages of the game, trouble shooting and the last few words.
It is much longer than I originally expected and contains a high degree of nerd over-analysis.
Welcome feedback.
In Catan, the initial setup is critical.
There are varying degrees of complexity here, from the obvious beginning to the more subtle.
Excellent players will take into account all of the following factors, and in a particular game the weight of each factor depends on the exact layout of the tiles and numbers. 1.
Get everything back.
You need all the wood, bricks, wheat, sheep, and ore, so why make sure they're all there at the beginning, not at all?
Place your first settlement so you can get 3 different resources and get the last 2 in the last location. 2. Maximize pips.
There are points on each number, indicating its probability (out of 36)
Roll on a given roll of dice.
Place your settlement to maximize your probability of getting a resource card (
If you place numbers according to the recommended spiral convention, the best thing you can do is 13. g. 5/6/9).
To maximize points, you should usually avoid the desert and the coast. 3. Ports.
Later selection in the round usually gives you a bad choice if coastal selection is accompanied by a port (
Although make sure it's two Magic's next to each other, not one! ).
Especially good is the port that matches your best resources very wellCollect tiles. 4.
Get a good digital distribution.
The ideal is to get as many different number placements as possible.
It seems a bit counter.
Intuitive, but it's great for experienced players, as it leaves them in the game no matter how the dice shake.
The initial location of the dream is 4/6/9 and 5/8/10. . .
2/3 of the time, you will get a resource card and you will feel that the whole process is involved. 5.
Balance resources.
Try to get roughly the same amount of wood and bricks, as do ore and wheat.
Paired resources, such as 9 Wood and 9 bricks, give you an instant path every time 9 rolls, and this synergy is powerful. 6. Where to next?
You need to consider the option to expand, which may be a good match
If you feel that the two positions are basically equal, then your decision will fail.
Look at the road next. 7.
Iron ore and wheat are preferred.
A highly competitive strategy requires little brick and mortar.
But no strategy can be achieved without ore and wheat, so if you don't start with them, you 'd better have a plan on how to get them. . .
Obviously, the order in which you go will affect your chances.
Going to 1st/2nd/3rd/4 does not have a significant advantage inherent, although players who strongly prefer a particular strategy tend to go earlier.
I personally prefer second or third.
There are usually three good places to start with on the board, but as the board fills up and the selection is late, the selection gets worse, which can give you a bad choice.
You need to point these to where you want to build the next settlement.
This is almost always moving towards the outside of the board.
Don't bother to point it to that empty 5/9/10 intersection-
Someone will definitely take it. That 4/9 port? Perfect.
The location of the road is about the second one.
Guess your opponent: You basically want to be (n+1)
The best position to stay on the board where n = the number of remaining settlements.
This is difficult in the first round of placements for obvious reasons, but as further placements take place, it becomes easier if you place first/later, this should be too much of your placement strategy-
Your second location should be a nice location, which also allows you to point to another nice location, hopefully causing inconvenience to others.
If your strategy does not involve the longest road, try to point your road to two open intersections.
Then you can fork it and build the other two settlements with 2 roads instead of 3.
Resources are not created equally.
There are 19 tiles: the last 4 photos show what you need to build roads, settlements, cities and development cards.
Wheat is a unique part of three different buildings and a resource that everyone should be sure to have.
Wheat is always needed to play with ore.
The use of wood and bricks is always equal, so try to balance.
If you end up getting a lot of resources on what it's paired with, your plan is best to include a port.
In fact, the same amount of bricks and wood is needed for each game, but the muwa is one more than the brick, which means that the brick is more valuable due to scarcity.
There are leftover sheep in the basic game, so this is the easiest to trade.
Ore is the most powerful resource and it is difficult to win without a decent supply of ore;
Try to get at least as much wheat with it.
Six shots two
Side dice produce one of 36 different results, but since Catan uses the sum, from 2-
As shown in the above figure, there are different probability of occurrence.
There is only one way to scroll a 2, but there are 5 different ways to scroll a 6.
In the game, there are one to five points on the numbers that represent the opportunity for 36 specific resources to be produced in a given volume.
However, a typical game involves a limited number of volumes and the distribution does not exactly match the above.
Sometimes players get angry with the average.
12 seconds in the game is more than 6 seconds?
Is there no 5S for the whole game?
You will see these worse.
The second picture shows 9 simulations of 72 volumes (
A fairly average number of games)
, The red point shows the distribution of the forecast, and the blue bar shows the observed value (
Use the RANDBETWEEN and count tif functions to make with Excel.
If you want to play with this simple spreadsheet, it will be attached to the end of this step;
If you want a new release, just click save ").
See all kinds of deviations;
For example, the "game" feature 2 in the upper left corner often scrolls to more than 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 12.
One in the lower right corner has 10 rolled together more than 6 and 8.
The robber in the middle only appeared 6 times throughout the game.
Small sample size deviations like this are typical.
Your job is to minimize luck as much as possible and you can do that by playing odds (
Maximize points and get good digital distribution)
Do what you can when you take your settlement.
Development card (25)
Distribution is as follows :-14 Knights (56%)-
5 points of victory (20%)-2 Monopoly (8%)-
Building 2 (8%)-
Sufficient 2 years (8%)
Whatever you draw, it's a good idea to portray a Knight as a Knight when he sits in front of you.
You don't want the robber to sit on your tile and it would be better if you could stop it with the victory point card.
Knight: The Knight is strong
They protect your most valuable tiles, block the most valuable tiles from other players, and give you a free card (
So you actually only spent two cards and denied the opponent one! )
Let you play in the biggest army.
If the robber is on one of your tiles, unless you have 7 cards (
Robbing someone will give you 8 cards, so if you roll 7 more, you will lose half of the cards).
The next step is the suggestion of placing robbers;
Whether you move it with a 7 roll or play Knight, they will follow you.
Victory point: there are many people who have not played the development card in front of them. they are a dangerous opponent --
They either have a lot of firepower or are closer to winning than they seem to be.
Monopoly: here it becomes more important to keep track of the cards played.
Catan is an almost perfect information game.
It is possible to know exactly what cards are out there, if not exactly who gets what --
But there's only real cards.
A few sharks can do this.
But when you have a monopoly card, you should pay special attention to roll the dice.
Or, check the stack of the resource card-
If one gets lower and lower, hit that one.
A cunning trick is to swap cards that you intend to monopolize when it's your turn.
In the final game, monopoly cards may be more important than getting available resources, so play them accordingly.
Road construction: try to play this when you have a solution ready.
My favorite hands are 2 w, 2B, 1Wh, 1 s and RB cards --
Building 3 roads and then laying a settlement at the end is a very surprising way to destroy another player's elaborate expansion plan.
Many years: This card is a bit of an original transaction (
It took you 3 resource cards to get 2! )
, But in early games, this can be handy when certain resources are hard to get.
When you can add two wildcard characters to it, any hand can be built and you can effectively hold 9 players safely with it.
It's good to have the first city make you a production leader.
There is less to use later, but you can always use it to help buy another development card.
It is essential to make good use of robbers.
On average, the robber appears every six rolls, and it is also moved when playing the Knight. -
Use it on someone in the strongest position (
Not necessarily a split leader).
Count unplayed development cards in someone's hands as points.
People who walk the longest road early are rarely a threat in the long run. -
Use robbers only for your strongest opponent.
Avoid seeking revenge by motivating more than one of your opponents! -
Stop what opponents need, not the highest tiles they produce.
Their city on the 8 th has just been hit twice.
The goal is tempting, right? Wrong.
Instead, they blocked four of their wheat. -
If all your opponents are in the same position, hit the person on your right (
On the tiles they only benefit from)
Will ensure that robbers sit there as long as possible without retaliation.
You may reply immediately if they try to get you back. -
If you lack resources, don't put the robbers on it.
You want a lot of this in the game so people will sell it to you.
Instead, put it on the resources you have a lot of so that you can increase the probability of you trading what you need.
The goal of this strategy is to build two cities before attempting to build roads or settlements.
Players who love this strategy will look for rich locations on ore and wheat without worrying too much about bricks and wood.
They have collected many development cards, and the typical winning combination will include 3 cities, 2 Victory Points cards and the largest army.
Road construction is usually done with appropriate development cards.
In the whole game, you can win this way without producing a brick or wood (
Get the wood bricks needed for additional settlement by using a large number of cards for the transaction and/or road building/year (s)).
Good when at least one of the following is true :-board is ore-rich-
You monopolize the ore. i. e.
The ore is gathered together and you have the maximum supply)-
You have a lot of ore, wheat and sheep.
Everyone else is working on another strategy :-
Everything you can get to your first city.
Trade sheep/bricks/wood freely to do this. -
Other players are encouraged to compete for the longest road. -
Make sure you leave at least one vacancy for the settlement.
It is possible to win with two cities, the largest army and 4 victory points cards, but you have to play well and be very lucky. -
Don't be distracted by that road. and settlement-building.
Get those cities out. -hog the ore.
Your strategy depends on you owning the city, and the best way is to slow down the ore supply for other players. -
The number of wheat and ore is about twice that of sheep, and the number of sheep is twice that of wood or bricks. -
Stay in the biggest army game.
This strategy focuses on developing cards and only puts other things aside when developing cards and resource cards decide to develop cards.
They usually end up with the biggest share of the biggest army card and the victory point card, usually causing huge trouble to themselves.
It's a good strategy if you have good ore/wheat/sheep balance, but it's always fun to play, especially since you throw robbers all over the place, but your board position will appear weak enough that you are not always the most obvious target yourself.
It's not uncommon for developers to pick up 3 to 4 Victory Points cards and the largest army at all, so they usually only need to build a few settlements/cities to get out.
This is very easy for road construction, monopoly and/or a lot of cards for a year.
Good when the following is true :-
Your starting position provides you with a uniform supply of wheat, ore and sheep --
You like to play in a style that really disturbs your opponent --
Everyone else is working on another strategy :-
Open choice.
There is only a subtle difference between this strategy and the commander, and if you have 3 ore, 2 wheat and 2 sheep, you may just want to build that city instead of buying two open card issuers. -
About the same amount of ore was obtained with 2/3 of wheat and this number of sheep.
You really don't need any bricks or wood to talk about when you play this strategy-
You will get everything you need from development cards and robbing other players.
This strategy is designed to collect more resources than anyone else and use the huge weight of production to overwhelm competitors.
It doesn't have a special attempt in the longest road or the largest army until one is based on 6-
Eight cities and settlements are in place, and resources are rolling in at an extremely fast pace at this time, and you will be heading for victory.
However, a more targeted strategy may exclude you from these two reward cards, unless you really crush them with production, it is impossible for your opponent to ignore your wealth, you are often hit by robbers.
Another problem with this strategy is balance.
In the final game, you may get a lot of cards, but if they don't come together well, you will be trading with the bank very inefficient.
Without a good port, it's hard to win as a producer.
Good when the following is true :-
Your starting position gives you a good range of resources with a high probability
You can choose to build a good settlement.
You can use a useful port-
Everyone else is working on another strategy :-
Start the road, settlement, road, settlement.
One of the settlements should be a port, preferably 3:1.
These 4 settlements will be your production engine.
Now look at upgrading to the city (
Unless otherwise specified by manual management and/or other opportunities).
If your settlement location is safe, upgrade to the city before building the settlement. -
For producers, stealing the longest road from explorers is often easier than stealing the biggest army from commanders or developers. -
If you want to win the production Battle, win the ones that lead to the juicy crossroads. -
Ensuring resource balance, the requirements for wood, bricks, wheat and ore are quite similar (
At least some sheep).
The focus of this strategy is to expand across the board, take a long way along this road and build settlements.
Players who love this strategy are looking for lots of wood and bricks in their original locations.
The typical winning mix will include 2 cities, 4 Settlements and the longest roads.
This strategy looks stronger than it is now, because it usually gives you 7 points (
Longest road)
But when you desperately need ore and everyone is banging on you with robbers and refusing to trade with you because you are ahead of points, the game will end up with catastrophic stagnation.
Good when the following is true :-
You can ensure a lot of brick and wood supply
You can find a way to get the city ore you need later in the game
You can go to the port later-
Game ore/wheat when Wood/brick is not too valuable-
Everyone else is working on another strategy :-
Build settlements along your road.
There's nothing worse than having the longest road as a lynch pin for your strategy, only someone to build a settlement in the middle! -
The amount of wood and bricks is about twice that of wheat, and the amount of wheat is about twice that of sheep and ore.
This is the weakest and most fixed-
Relying on strategy, but can achieve a brilliant victory on the right board.
Basically, you throw all the balanced ideas out the window and bet on a single resource where you also have matching ports.
Whenever I see this type of pure port strategy, the victory is on the sheep, because the value of other resources is higher and you can't clean them all in the same way.
Also, who will rob you when they know they will get a sheep?
Among the people who play with me, this strategy is called "Queen of sheep" with the title "self"
Give the first successful person.
It will only be good if all of the following is true :-
The board is sheep rich-
Sheep can be monopolized when they get together-
You have port of sheep-
Everyone else is taking another strategy.
The board is ore.
Poverty and/or serious imbalance between ore/wheat and wood/brick (
This will slow others down and give you the time to win the game)Do:-
Haplessly has been trying to trade sheep, "someone has to prepare wood for my sheep! ".
Your opponent may fall in love with it once in a while (
Especially if you do a good job of monopolizing sheep)
, When they don't do this, complain loudly about how unreasonable they are and quietly trade with your port at a price of 2:1.
It is clear that you will never have to make a bad deal because you can use your port at any time. -
Go to the commander as your secondary strategy.
You want more sheep so the city is a good idea. -
Ensure the maximum share of the sheep and some of at least 4 remaining resources.
You may lose if you have to trade more than one or two resources.
It depends to a large extent on how the board matches with your opponent.
The above figure summarizes the cards needed in the following example cases: Commander: buy 6 open deals, get the largest army and victory points, build 2 roads, 2 settlements and 3 cities
Developer: buy 12 open cards, get the largest army and 2 victory points, build 1 settlement and 3 cities.
There are 6 roads, 4 settlements and 4 cities.
Explorer: build 10 roads to get the longest roads, 4 settlements and 2 cities.
Queen of sheep: Replace all ore needs with sheep, act as commander, buy 6 open card cards to get the largest army and victory points, build 2 roads, 2 settlements and 3 cities.
I'm assuming 6 open card will give you 3 Knights, a point of victory, and 6 Knight year/road construction/Monopoly cards and subtract these from the required production. YMMV.
The commander is certainly strong, but if the Commission is an ore-poor?
Or is someone else playing developer games and locking in the biggest army? Or the ore-
There will be plenty of attractions before you reach your settlement (s)?
Or the longest way for a producer?
Or did the explorer catch all the money-making places?
Or is tile the highest probability of sheep?
It's better to have a back.
Make a plan when your chances don't match your favorite strategy. . .
If you and Catan AI (
I only have experience with iOS apps but I suspect it is similar on other platforms)
In the most difficult cases, the game usually ends when the development card is sold out.
If this has never happened in your game, you may play a relatively friendly style of play.
Your overall strategy will determine what your goals are, but there are some more general things you can do :-go for a port.
3: 1 ports are more valuable than they might be, because with it you can always build something with 8 or more cards.
It is essential to avoid robbers and maintain productivity. -
If you lack resources, keep an eye on who has the most.
Card tracking will allow you to target the robbers most effectively. -
Trade before you set up.
If you need roads with wood, need sheep to settle, trade both before laying the roads
When your opponents see where you are going to put the settlement, they may not be very willing to trade that sheep to you! -
Try to avoid trading only a few cards with the bank and not being able to establish them.
Chances are, you're doing this for a resource that you're having a hard time getting, so other players will know that if they steal a robber, they're going to hurt you out of proportion. -
Save juicy settlement sites through a sensible road layout.
Lock in the ports that are critical to your strategy as early as possible.
There's nothing more furious than letting your opponent beat you. -
Consider using a less efficient site in places close to your opponent, rather than a better place to stay away from everyone, especially if they don't have a good choice elsewhere.
Then, when their plans are badly damaged, you can go to another place at your leisure. -
Strive to achieve self-
By diversifying your resources and/or securing a useful port before the end of the game, be sure to be adequate.
Trading between players slows down a lot at the end of the game, and clear leaders will be completely blacklisted. -
If you have more than seven cards in your hand at the end of the round, there is a 52% (1 -
5/6*5/6)
The chance of you being robbed before you play cards again.
If playing with 3 players instead of 4, the chance is 42%. Buy something! -be flexible.
Your hands may develop in such a way that you have the opportunity to acquire territory, ports, defense or urban construction, even if it deviates from your main goal. -
The commander is an ore prostitute and the best way to stop them is to stop these tiles and refuse to trade what they desire, thus rejecting their early cities. -
Encroaching on developers and killing their productivity.
Try not to trade them with ore/wheat/sheep
If you ask them to buy a card every turn, they will win. -
Ruthlessly steal from the producers and balance their hands with clever blocking.
This may seem pointless as they get so many cards, but if you can stop the flow of key resources, you can have them burn many cards to robbers and banks and try to get it done. -
The explorer strategy is the easiest to get blocked, but unless the board is ready for them, it's a weak strategy anyway.
Be careful that building a settlement in the middle of their longest road will not give victory to others!
Normally you want the explorer to keep the longest road
This is a great way to get other players under control and force them out of the woods. -
The Queen of sheep usually ends up with a crazy tile, shipped with 5 Sheep (
Where = development card with its own sheep port)when rolled.
You have to turn it off. -
Catan is not a multiplayer solitaire game, many jokes around the table include strategies to dissect other players, why are they a wolf in sheepskin and you barely hang there, it is not a threat to anyone and should be treated fairly.
Doing ass all the time is a good way to be defeated. -
Having two opponents pursue the same strategy for each other usually leaves both players out of the competition.
You can encourage this in a variety of ways, from manipulating jokes to strategic cards --trading.
At the end of the game, when everyone has multiple cities/Settlements/Roads/cards, various strategies are integrated, and the transaction occurs mainly at the bank/port, because of the fear of letting others take turns, the battle for bonus cards will be fierce and the development cards are disappearing at a very fast speed.
Don't emphasize settlement positioning later in the game-
You can put them anywhere, they are the point of victory, not the source of production.
Obvious clues will make you a target.
The longest road in particular should go as late as possible.
Connect two separate sections with a large road
The build push and unveiling of the 2 Victory Points card allows you to win from 6 points.
On the other hand, because of this game, the biggest army needs to compete more openly. only-one-development-card-per-turn rule.
The points of victory cards are great because they bring uncertainty to your opponent (
Is it a VP or a monopoly card? ).
Catan's best game gives all players a chance to win later in the game, and if this guide can help you get to that position more often, it's done its job. Have fun!
Because: 1, you lost a lot.
No one trades with you, you have to trade in Catan, especially early in the slow roll of the card, it's hard to get what you want.
Worry less about others taking advantage of you and focusing on what you need.
So what if the bad sheep cost you 3 bricks?
If it lets you solve the problem ahead of time, you're still ahead
Much better than waiting for another round, risking the same or getting robbed.
In general, the person who benefits from a transaction is two related people, so you can accumulate net income by trading more frequently than your opponent.
Neutral trading can generate goodwill, so it's usually worth it if you feel the player is in a weak position.
They may rob someone, not you. . . 2.
Dice hate you and you may settle without considering getting good distribution and/or high probability numberse.
When you expand, you ignore the setup guidelines instead of practicing them.
Or, you're just the kind of person who remembers more than success.
If the best players always win, Catan won't be that fun and dice will inject some popular mess into the game without getting into blind luck --fest. 3.
You are always burned by robots. The simple answer is to build more and trade more.
The more careful you are, the easier you are to overload.
You may need to do better in order to balance.
Maybe you are harvesting a lot of wheat, but there is no ore or there is no port to use. 4.
You will always encounter difficulties, you did not point your path in a smart direction at first, you built your settlement too close, or you did not build the road fast enough.
It is also possible that you play all the people who like Explorer strategy, in which case you should try commander or developer.
You will crush them. 5.
You are close, but no one is paying attention to what other players need to win.
Does anyone launch a Knight or 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 about to go out, even if it's great for you --
No one remembers who is in second place.
Someone squeezed in, but still strong?
Compete with them for the biggest army.
Is anyone going out with the longest road?
Exchange wood and bricks in favor of people who can be removed from wood and bricks (
Assuming, of course, that's not going to get them out! ).
You may also fail due to a basically weaker strategy (
Explorer is particularly prone to early leads and painful slow end)
Or because your resources are not balanced, you can easily get stuck where you need to go out.
In particular, make sure there are multiple sources of wheat because being blocked later in the game will keep you off. 6.
Everyone is on you if you are a leader, so they should do so.
If not, you must have a reputation (a)good (b)dirty or (c)both.
Enjoy the challenge;
The victory will be sweeter. 7.
Others have an unbeatable strategy that works forever and others have a strategy that you let them get away.
Determine what is the key to their playing style and deny that.
Or beat them in their own game!
However, if their matchless strategy changes the game, they may perform much better in Catan than you do. . . 8.
Everyone is mean and maybe you play slowly and in this case you should get it.
But seriously: Yes. Yes they are.
There are a lot of great games out there, in which the mean stuff is hidden better.
Test ticket (
Route building with train), Carcassonne (tile-laying), Agricola (
Placement of workers), 7 Wonders (deck building)
Or one of many other great modern board games.
There are many extensions to Scatsionscatan-one enables 5-
6 players including seafarers, cities and Knights, merchants and barbarians.
Most of the advice I give is still working to a large extent, although many subtleties are spreading and interesting additional mechanisms are working.
However, you should master the basic game before proceeding
These extensions are for those who really like the game and want it to last (often much)
For a longer period of time, provide more in-depth games.
If you're willing to trade two lithium instead of sheep, there's even a Star Trek Catan. . .
Background this guide is based on the combination of my own observations and reading around.
Boardgamegeek is a useful material.
While writing this guide, I also found a website created by a senior player who lists 10 "categories" and a gold rule (
"Not blocked ").
Special thanks to F & B friends for introducing this game to me and for criticizing and improving this guide.