mdlake.net

Even though my friends are now thoroughly acquainted with Settlers of Catan, I continue to win way more than my fair share of games—maybe half of them, and even then, my losses are usually due to some third party doing something crazy and taking me down with them than to superior play by the winner. So it seems I understand some principles of Catan which aren’t so obvious. I intend to spend the week covering them. This advice is intended for the intermediate player, familiar enough with the game to know that sheep tend to be less valuable than other goods, to recognize the impact of three hill tiles and four forest tiles, and to gang up on the leader. Today: broad strategies.

It is essential that you have a game plan, that you choose starting locations fitting that game plan, and that you trade resources to further that game plan. Simply building and trading in the hopes that your particular combination reaches 10 before anyone else is insufficient, and inefficient. Before I place my second village (and sometimes even before my first), I try to gauge which strategies the board will support, and take one of those.

There are two basic strategies: the village strategy and the city strategy. In addition, three specialized strategies might be viable, depending on the board and what parts of it you can get with your starter settlements.

1. The village strategy relies on spreading settlements quickly, seizing enough space to get your ten victory points, probably supplemented by the longest road. It relies on a steady income of brick and wood to lay down all the necessary roads as well as the settlements. Establishing a brick-wood income usually means giving up a lot of ore, which means you can have a hard time building a city, especially if ore income generally is low across the board, forcing players to hoard it for themselves—a port is vital in such a case. Buying cards is a dangerous distraction, and a luxury you can’t afford: you need that ore for cities. If you can get past the mid-game hump when everyone begins looking in earnest to improve their own villages into cities, this strategy can work very well. The final tally is likely to look like: 2 cities (4 points), 4 settlements (4), and the longest road (2).

2. The city strategy relies on a rapid push toward cities. Starter villages bring in ore and wheat, and, once they are upgraded, the doubled production is a big leg up. This strategy is cheaper than the village strategy: improving a village to a city takes 5 cards, while expanding to a new settlement site takes at least 6 cards (counting a minimum of one road), and a new site is rarely if ever as productive as the locations chosen in the setup. As the game progresses, extra ore and wheat can be funneled into card purchases, so VP buildings and the largest army are distinct possibilities. The city strategy has a weakness, however—two, really. Taking locations rich in ore and wheat production leaves you strapped for the bricks and wood you need to expand. A city player risks getting choked off by enemy roads. If this happens, he may be forced to choose between paying through the nose for road-building material, sharing his hard-won double income with the less civilized players, and taking whatever miserable locations nobody else wants for their expansion. It’s often a good idea to grab a third site early, just to avoid this trap, before building cities in earnest. If you can get a third, mediocre site and a fourth (regardless of quality), your chances are good. The final tally is likely to look like: 4 cities (8) and either the largest army or two VP cards (2); alternately, three cities (6), a village (1), the largest army (2), and a VP card (1).

3. The monopoly strategy aims to monopolize a vital commodity, even if it means taking less productive starting locations, then make your opponents trade richly for that resource. Obviously, this won’t work on all board layouts; all, or nearly all, of one resource type must come from one hex, which you usually pinch off by placing settlements on opposing corners. Bricks and ore, which come from only three tiles each, are your most likely opportunity; wool, which is used for little in the game, is a lousy choice. If, for example, the three ore spaces pay off on a 2, an 11, and a 6, then, depending on other players’ moves, you might be able to hog the 6 space all to yourself, at which point, any player who wants ore is going to have to reach a port…or go through you. Do not go overboard pursuing a monopoly strategy; if the other spaces you pick up in securing your monopoly are too poor, the deals you can wrangle won’t make up for it. Monopoly alone isn’t enough. And remember players can work around your monopoly by reaching a port. Be shameless in demanding two or even three resources for your rare resource, and be finicky about which cards you get—if you don’t, you’ve taken a mediocre or even poor situation for an advantage you aren’t using.

4. The port strategy, like the monopoly strategy, also depends on a favorable board. Occasionally, you may see a cluster of spaces with high production and the same output—three wheat hexes paying on 5, 9, and 10, for example. If you can plunk one village down in the middle of these three, and a second village at whichever 2:1 port trades for that good, you’ll never want for a particular resource. (You’ll need that port, too; with that much production of your resource of choice, your opponents will be able to pick up what they need from the edges of the mother load/bread basket/whatever, so they won’t see much reason to trade with you.) Alternately, laying a village on two of these tiles and hoping to build a new village at the meeting of another two can work quite well, especially if the outlying tile will help you stretch a road there quickly. Wool and wheat, which come from four hexes and aren’t needed in the same quantities as the other three goods, are particularly good choices for a port strategy, but any resource can work. Like the monopoly strategy as well, the port strategy needs support from decent mid-game building. Turning your first village into a city quickly is vital, but so is reaching a new settlement and bringing at least a trickle of other resources. If you rely too heavily on one good, you will remain terribly vulnerable to the robber before large purchases, like cities…which brings me to the shortcomings of the strategy. Even with a variety of goods coming in, you will often have a fistful of cards you can’t trade away, and you’ll be dismayed at the frequency with which that 7 comes around. The port strategy is high-risk: if you get off to a good start, you’ll be almost unstoppable, but if you don’t, your opponents will quickly move into mid-quality locations and enjoy an income as large as your own…and they won’t have to trade it away at half value. Man does not live by bread (or sheep) alone; nor does he win at Catan.

5. The card strategy is something of a “hail mary,” unlikely to pay off, but when it does, it pays off big. The card player limps along placing cities and settlements when he can, but buys cards whenever he has the means, instead of saving up for buildings. Those development cards are very cheap for what they do. A monopoly card, for instance, should net you at least six cards if played at the right moment, for a cost of the three you paid for the card in the first place, and all those extra resources come from your poor fellow players, instead of the bank. The VP cards are a bargain. The knights might seem a little wimpy, but the effects add up: steal a card, spare yourself the loss of income to an inconveniently placed robber, and hope for 2 VPs for the largest army. The problem is, you can’t expect to get the cards you want when you want them, and the wrong card at the wrong time can be almost worthless. Road-building can be a killer at the right time, cutting off an opponent after he buys a road or two, but before those roads blossom into a new settlement; at the wrong time, it’s merely more detritus on the board. Don’t forget, too, that you may only play one card per turn. You will need to augment those cards with buildings if you want to be more than a nuisance to your opponents. The card strategy demands an intimate understanding of the game, in order to use those cards to maximum effect, and requires a more flexible style than any other strategy, letting the cards decide where you go next as opportunities present themselves.

I scored a lot of early victories with a village strategy. That cost me in the long run, as I had to learn some hard lessons about securing some source of ore before getting stuck with five villages and the longest road while someone else sailed to victory. Now I try to find some happy medium between village and city strategies if I can, or take either one if I can’t, with rare forays into the port strategy. I still haven’t learned to use development cards to proper effect; I blame that hard lesson in getting ore, which left me scared to spend it often enough on cards to make them really pay.