Note on style/Style Note

When I want to indicate how many victory points, number of victory points, I write 9 VP. This means that
I have 9 victory points. This is compared to writing 1 VP and 2VPs. For consistency, I write VP without the
s for 1 or more than 1.

CK is used to indicate Cities and Knights/ Catan Cities and Knights/C&K.

CW is city wall.

TB is used to indicate Traders and Barbarians.

LC and LOC is legend of the conquerors.

KP means Knight point/knight points. These are fleshed out in CK and Legend of the Conquerors.
Common values are basic knight is 1 KP, strong knight is 2 KP, mighty knight is 3 KP. Mighty knight with
cannoneer is 4 KP. Conquerors are up to 6 KP with 5 and 6 KP conquerors seen. Cannoneer adds 1 KP.

K means knight.

DCP means defender of Catan point

Face up knight card means FUKC

Face up knight card point means FUKCP

LA is largest army

ES is easy start as in easy start variant for CK.

LR is longest road.

PVP is production victory point.

RB is road building card.

S means Seafarers.

FR means friendly robber.

NV means nasty variant for CK.

Catan Universe is CU.

KAP means knight activation point. You can activate a knight for 1 KAP. 1 KAP costs 1 grain.

C1 means Catan 1, aka Catan base game. Often there is confusion if you mean Catan the game or Catan
in general when you say catan. Similar, you could have
Number Version Form
C1 Catan base game C1
C2 Seafarers S
C3 Cities and Knights CK
C4 Traders and Barbarians TB
C5 Explorers and Pirates EP
There are no expansions after that.

If you see an abbreviation and you don’t know what it means, look at this list at the top and you should
figure out what it means and find what you need.

Note. I use 3.1 instead of 3:1 when referring to port(s)/harbor(s).

LR means longest road. LTR means longest trade route.

LA means largest army.

DCP means Defender of Catan point.

When I want to indicate how many victory points, number of victory points, I write 9 VP. This means that
I have 9 victory points. This is compared to writing 1 VP and 2VPs. For consistency, I write VP without the
s for 1 or more than 1.

I recommend changing Catan rules and playing this way.

BGA is board game arena. BGA offers C1 and CK.

Set. Means settlement.

KE variant means knight-errant variant with CK.

TPC is trade progress card, PPC is politics progress card, SPC is science progress card.

PC is progress card.

RM is resource monopoly.

TM is trade monopoly.

MF is merchant fleet.

MM is master merchant.

CH is commercial harbor.

TUP is trade upgrade point, PUP is politics upgrade point, and SUP is science upgrade point. For
example, the aqueduct requires 3 SUP. Upgrade point is UP and means in any area. Like you say a
metropolis requires 4 UP. Stealing a metropolis requires 5 UP.
Psychologically, you are more likely to get robbed on 6 or 8 because its red than the others—5, 9, etc.
Therefore, I recommend making all black or brown (brown in 5-6) to avoid any biases. That way the
robber doesn’t spend the whole time on 6 or 8. I bet if you did an experiment comparing one group with
black 6 and 8 and one group with red 6 and 8 there would be a difference in behavior between the 2 and
there would be more robbing of 6 and 8 in the second group and the robbing would be more balanced
in the first group. I understand that the intention of this is to help you out and see 6 or 8 have the
highest non-7 probability, but it was a bad decision. Therefore I recommend if you are able, to play with
black 6 and 8. Sometimes Catan comes with some spare circles for if you lose a number token so you can
write 6 or 8 on those in black pen and use those for 6 and 8. Unfortunately, I do not that. You could cut
out a piece or paper and write 6 or 8 on top. Make sure it blends in so I advise against blue ink. You
could also affix the paper to a disc of cardboard if need be for more sturdy and durability because paper
is flimsy. This isn’t really a problem on the computer in which case you can choose whatever you want.

One problem is if you get a 3.1 port, then another 3.1 port, you don’t get an advantage. There is a
variant strong 3.1 port. This says

Strong 3:1 Harbors

By Dr. Reiner Düren
In the base game, there is generally no benefit to controlling more than one 3:1 harbor outside of
denying another
player a 3:1 harbor for doing so. This variant introduces a concept of a “strong harbor” as a benefit for
having
control of multiple 3:1 harbors.
Variant Rules
• A player with settlements or cities controlling at least two 3:1 harbors may trade in any three
resources for
a single resource.
• As per normal trading rules, the resource being traded must be different from the three that are
traded in.
The following additional rules are in effect when playing with rules from Seafarers. Consult with the
Seafarers
section of the guide for more information on the mechanics found therein.
• A player may not use the “strong harbor” privilege if the pirate occupies an ocean hex such that a
player
has fewer than two 3:1 harbors located on ocean hexes that are not occupied by the pirate.

I would play like this.

# of 3.1 harbors Benefit Example

1 Trade at 3 for 1 3 lumber for 1
rate brick
2 Trade 2 cards and 2 lumber 1 wool
1 card of another for 1 brick
 type, say PPQ for
target card Z.
3 Trade 3 cards of 1 lumber 1 wool 1
different type like grain for 1 brick.
PQR for Z.
You could also have a limited harbor like instead of you trade at 3.1 rate for any resource, you get a deal
ilke 2.5.1 or 5.2 but it only works for certain resources. So you are giving up how many resources you
can use as input for a more favorable exchange rate. On the far end, you have only 1 resource and trade
at 2 for 1 rate. So the options could be 3.1 any, 2.5 for 3 resources as input, you pick, or 2 for 1 resource.

For example, here I have settled a 3.1 harbor in the top right and bottom right. It would be neat to get a
benefit for having 2 3.1 harbors.

The concept of production VP. The following settlement(s) city(s)

Nonproduction VP includes following LR, LTR, LA, DCP, metropolis +2, VP cards, printer, constitution

Only production VP are counted toward friendly robber threshold. The intent of the friendly robber is to
enable you to get off the ground so you aren’t blocked at the beginning of the game and the start and
not producing resources and you don’t get anywhere.

So if I have 2 settlements and I build 5 roads and take longest road, although I have 4 VP, I cannot be
blocked or robbed. The reason is that I have 2 production VP and 2 non production VP. Not until I
increase production VP can I be robbed. So maybe I build a third settlement and get 5 VP. At this point, I
may be robbed because I have 2+1=3 production VP from three settlements.

An important concept with Catan games is the baseline and the ending condition.

Common baselines
Game Baseline VP
Catan 2 set., 2 road 2
CK 1 set, 1 city, 2 road 3
LC chapter 1 2 set, 1 city, 1 CW, 4
1 inactive KP
LC chapter 1 2 set, 1 city, 1 CW, 4
second try 1 inactive 2 KP
knight, politics
level 1, science
level 1, random
politics card
There are probably other baselines but the important point is that you have to exceed the baseline in
production VP to get friendly robber protection removed. You could also add LC chapter 2 and chapter
3.

I think PVP should be the basis for deciding who’s ahead. The problem is often you get robbed a lot
because you are at the front, and I think a better question is to ask who has the most PVP? Who has the
most PVP and go there and rob them.

Another tip—play as a color that slips under the radar like white. Don’t play as red. You don’t want to
attract attention. Blue is also good (I think). If you’re playing with a computer it doesn’t make any
difference, but if you are playing with humans psychologically you get robbed more as red.

One benefit of playing online is there is a timer so you can’t take forever.

Here is how I set my preferences for board game arena.

Catan expansions to play
Scenario 2 The 4 islands S

Scenario 6 cloth for Catan S

Scenario 8 the wonders of Catan S

Cities and Knights

Fun game mechanics in Catan

Neat artwork in Catan

Catan expansions that I want to play that I don’t know very well that I
haven’t played
SCK—Seafarers of Catan variant—combine CK with S

Nasty variant—NV you choose what knights to commit and what knights not to commit.

CK Knight Errant Variant (KE) where you move robber before you roll
Easy start variant--ES

Scenario 7 the pirate islands S

Things to do with Catan

Create my own custom board, experiment with Catan with scenario 9 new world S

I want to implement online

Board game arena FR CK. They have C1 FR, but not FR CK. Colonist.io does have FR CK and FR CK because
friendly robber is a setting for Catan games.

Cities and Knights

Science cards
Alchemist
Make sure you play the alchemist! I often have the alchemist but I forget to play it. One thing I like about
BGA CK is that BGA will say play alchemist or roll dice so you don’t forget to play alchemist, compared to
colonist.io where I have forgotten to play alchemist multiple times because it has just roll dice, not roll
dice or play alchemist. I keep rolling the dice and each time after I roll I think oh I forgot to play
alchemist. This is especially painful when your roll ends with you end up getting not and you not getting
anything.

Ideally with alchemist, you want to use it more for rarer numbers with big payoff then numbers like 6
and 8 because they will roll anyway. One weakness of Alchemist is that you can’t control the event die.
We have to wait until Legend of the Conquerors to see functionality like this where the battle progress
card Aegis says Immediately after rolling the

barbarian ship: Do not move the

barbarian ship. Take 1 “Defender of

Catan” card. Each opponent takes 1 wine

or 1 amber.

You must play “Aegis” immediately after

anyone rolls a “ship” symbol on the die. You

may use the card during your turn or an

opponent’s turn.

If you play the card, you receive a “Defender of Catan” victory

point card but no wine token or amber token. Each of your

opponents can choose whether to take 1 wine token or 1 amber

token from the supply.

So you can’t choose to get green for science, but you can avert losing the city to the barbarians for one
turn.

There is more strategy for the alchemist card that you could go into

Crane
Crane is useful for getting your initial level city improvement. You want to at least have level 1 trade,
level 1 politics, and level 1 science. You can use crane so you do 1-1=0 and you get the first improvement
for free if you don’t produce that commodity say your city is not on a mountains hex that produces ore
and coins, you can use crane to get level 1 politics. Alternatively, crane can be useful for reaching level 3
trade for 2.1 trading with commodities, level 3 politics for building mighty knights, level 3 science the
aqueduct for guaranteeing reliable resource production and income and a steady flow of resources
where you get a resource as long as it’s not a 7. Crane can also be useful for obtaining a metropolis. You
could even use crane to take another opponents metropolis by reaching level 5. Crane is also useful for
just advancing in general, like from level 1 to level 2 in your journey to upgrade. Crane is more flexible
with lower ones where the cost is 1 or 2 commodities and less flexible where the cost is 3,4, or 5
commodities. There are 2 crane cards in a 3-4 player game so the max discount you could get would be -
2. Wait actually, no you can’t-- You can build a city improvement

(abbey, town hall, etc.) for

1 commodity less than normal.

The Crane can only be used to

reduce the cost of building one

city improvement (turning over

a page of your flip-chart). If you

build a city, you must pay the

normal resource costs. You may

use a Crane to reduce the cost

of a first-level improvement (to

nothing). You may not combine

2 Crane cards for the same

improvement.

So when you use crane it has to be for different improvements

Engineer
Building a city wall increases your discard limit. Don’t overlook the importance of city walls. They do
nothing, but save you later when your production is strong where instead of having to discard half
rounded down, you keep your cards. This card is less flexible when you don’t have a city, or all your
cities on the board already have city walls (that you built), or if you have 4 cities and you already have 3
city walls and you can’t put a city wall on the 4th city because you’ve used all your city walls. It might be
worth waiting to build your last city wall in case you get engineer. So leave one city without a city wall in
case you get engineer. Then you can play it.

Inventor
This is a very powerful card. This is kind of nerfed in 2 ways—you cant take 6 or 8, and you can’t give an
opponent a 2 or a 12. There are some interesting things that can happen with the inventor, which
include sometimes I have played it and then the number that I gave an opponent like a 3 or an 11 rolls
and I’m like did I really get the better end of the deal with the inventor. I have seen this occur on CU and
BGA CK. Another thing about the inventor is you ideally want to swap low—3 or 11 with upper-middle—
5 or 9. Don’t swap with 4 or 10. I’ve seen a lot of people swap 4 or 10 with inventor. Don’t do that! Make
maximum use of the inventor. 5 or 9 is better than 4 or 10. Another thing to watch out for with the
inventor is there are 2 of them. So, you might move something, and then later on someone moves it
back. One problem with the inventor is sometimes there isn’t a great way to play it. Maybe all of your
spots are ideal and you have no 11 or 3.

Irrigation
Great for KAP, city, settlement. Max is 8 grain from 4 hexes. Also pairs well with grain port. If grain is in
high demand also very useful for trading.

Medicine
Similar to Vincent/Gregor. Very useful.

Mining
Max is 6 ore from 3 hexes. Useful for KP, city, and cannoneer.

Printer
Not much strategy here. Similar to constitution and the 5 VP cards from C1. Non production VP point.

Road Building (RB)

Useful for building settlement, taking LR, cutting opponent off, controlling space, reaching port, reaching
high production desirable settlement spot, reaching important resource like brick wool lumber grain ore,
building roads to place knights for defense, building roads so your knight doesn’t get displaced by
intrigue, building a road you can displace an opponent’s knight with your knight. Also great for a sudden
surprise like a sprint that nobody saw coming.
Smith
Most useful for upgrading 2 1KP K to 2 2 KP K. Often you will get stuck where you have 1 2 KP K and 1 KP
K and you don’t have level 3 politics, so you can upgrade 1 KP K to 2 KP K, but you can’t upgrade 2 KP K
to 3 KP K. so has limited usefulness. Useful for DCP.

Ranking science cards

Strong--Inventor, RB, Smith, Medicine, Alchemist

Okay—Crane, Engineer, Irrigation

Not great—Printer, mining

Politics cards
Bishop
Rob multiple people. Most effective where you rob 3 different people/players on one hex, thought ath is
rare. You will probably get 2 cards because 3 is rare.

Constitution
Similar to printer.

Deserter
Very powerful in 2 ways—you take an opponents knight, and you get a knight. You could potentially get
a 4 KP knight—a 3 KP K with cannoneer. Usually, however, you will get 1 KP K or 2 KP K though 2 KP K is
nothing to sneeze at. To defend against this, build 1 1 KP K to avoid someone taking your stronger 2 KP K
or 3 KP K. You will probably get a 1 KP K because they will choose their weakest K on the board.

Deserter (2)

Choose 1 opponent. They must

remove 1 knight of their choice

from the board. You may then place

1 of your own knights, on the board.

Its strength must equal to the

knight removed (the normal rules

for placing knights apply).

When you play this card, your

opponent chooses which of their

own knights to remove from the

board. If they choose a knight that

you do not have available (for

example, a “strong” knight and

both of your “strong” knights are

already on the board), you may

place a basic knight instead. If

you cannot place any knights,

your opponent must still remove

one of their own knights. You just

lose the opportunity to place a

knight for free. If your opponent removes a “mighty” knight,

you may place one of your “mighty” knights even if you have

not yet built the “Fortress” city improvement (politics—blue).

The knight you place has the same status (active or inactive)

as the knight your opponent removed.

I think Deserter is the most powerful politics card, even more so than the spy. One thing to be careful
about is sometimes you don’t have space to put a knight so leave one of your starting spots open so you
can put a deserter knight there if you get deserter. What would be bad is you get deserter, and you
could get a 2 KP K but you can’t take it because you have a 2 KP K and a 1 KP K and you have no space
for a 2 KP K. I have waited before and it did work out in my favor. I have played this where right before
the barbarians landed, I had no knights, I played deserter, took an opponents knight, and he lost a city
and I kept my city. You could also get DCP with this. This is a very powerful card and very dangerous.
Similar to bribery in LOC. Bribery is like nerfed deserter because you place 1 KP K and there is no
potential to place a 2 or 3 KP K.

Diplomat
Okay power. Useful for removing an opponents road. Usually won’t stop them slow them down in the
long run, they will rebuild and get what they want. However, does set them back temporarily so they
have to get the resources to build that road back and then do what they wanted to do (build another
road, build a settlement, etc.). related to LR. Diplomat is stronger than William. Both William and
diplomat allow you to move your road. Only diplomat allows you to remove an opponents road.
Intrigue
One of the weakest cards. Why does this card exist? Well, I think the reason it exists if you got into a
situation where you wanted to break longest road or something, but both players had 3 KP K with a
cannoneer for 4 KP in LOC or a 3 KP K in CK, then there would be a standoff. Neither one would be able
to displace the other. The reason intrigue is there is so the knight breaking LR can be displaced.
Unfortunately, LR is often used to take other peoples K off the board so you have to watch out for it.
Build 1 more road so your knight has a place to go if someone plays intrigue. Some people play without
intrigue and take it out of the deck because it is a highly situational and weak card. Maybe one day a
better version of the card will appear.

Saboteur
This is discard on command. Wait until players have 18 cards, then play this. Most effective at large
scales. Also, notable that it affects players with the same number of VP as you, not just more (like
Master merchant and wedding). Also, one weakness is you have to be behind. If no one is ahead of you,
this card is useless.

Spy
Spy is said by many to be the most powerful card in the game. You could play a spy to steal to a spy to
steal a spy. Then you could play that spy to steal some other good card like the inventor or deserter or
merchant. However, the spy is not always that useful. The reason is that often people don’t have good
progress cards. They might have 1 or 2 but sometimes I play it (on another player) and they don’t have a
good card. So I would actually argue deserter is more all-around powerful than spy. Also, spy has to be
well-played to be effective. You have to think how many cards of each type does a player have. You can
see how many trade progress cards, politics progress cards, and science progress cards they have. If they
have SPC and PPC they might be worth playing spy on. The problem with PC is that there is no way to
track them. Unlike resource production where you can work out what cards someone has to a
reasonable degree of certainty with the game log and whatnot, the only way to guess what PC someone
has is by observing what has been played before so far.

Warlord
A simple useful card. Sometimes not useful because you have already activated your knights. Most
useful when you have 4, 5, 6 K.

Wedding
Notable because they might have to give you commodities.

Ranking politics cards

Most Powerful—deserter,spy

Powerful--warlord,saboteur

Medium—wedding

Okay—bishop,diplomat
Weak—intrigue

I would say wedding is stronger than bishop because bishop you might get 2 cards, whereas wedding,
you could get 4 cards. Bishop does allow you to block, but that’s not as special.

Trade
Commerical harbor (CH)
Commodities are generally worth more than resources, so you get the better end of the deal/trade
when you use commercial harbor. Useless when you don’t have a city.

Master merchant (MM)

Very powerful. 1 you get to see your opponent’s hand 2 you get to take 2 cards. 3 you get to take
commodities. You say you have been master merchanted.

Merchant
Very powerful. 1 you get to trade 2.1. 2 you get 1 VP. You often win the game with the merchant. I won
LOC chapter 1 with Woody and Jack. I went from 12 VP to 13 VP with the merchant. One problem that
arises with the merchant is because there are so many—6, you might end up with 2 or 3 merchant
cards, which is useless. Sometimes you’ll play/place the merchant and then someone else will steal the
merchant, so having the extra merchant card can useful to get it back. Or you could use it to trade 2
different resources like first lumber 2.1 then next wool 2.1. you need to have a hex of the resource next
to you so that is something to consider. Try to get all resource hexes so you can use merchant with any
of them, even if it is a 2 or 12. Powerful because it stays in effect over multiple turns. If you are afraid of
someone taking it away, you might want to wait to play the merchant until you can do a really good
trade like 6 wool for 3 paper.

Merchant fleet (MF)

Powerful because you can trade commodities 2.1. weak because it lasts for only 1 turn.

Resource monopoly (RM)

This requires careful card tracking for what cards/resources you want. Keep a close eye on what people
are getting. This is a nerfed version of monopoly from C1. Whereas C1 monopoly is unlimited, this is 2
cards. You could have it where you could upgrade resource monopoly so you could take 4 cards instead
of 2. And then upgrade that so you could take 6 cards. One weakness is that its 2 cards per player, so
even though their might be one 3 brick in the game, one player has all the brick so you only get 2, and 1
stays in the opponent hand, which is worse than the better situation where 1 player has 2 brick and
another player has 1 brick. This works better when the resource is equally distributed and there is an
equal, as opposed to an unequal, distribution of resources.

Trade monopoly (TM)

Steal 1 commodity of your choice from players. Requires card tracking.

Ranking trade cards

Powerful—merchant, MM
Medium—RM, TM,MF

Weak--CH

Placing/Placement
Put your city or settlement on ore to get your first KP/K. you also need grain for KAP. You also need wool
for KP, though this is not as high a priority as ore because ore is rarer. Forest hex that produce lumber is
good because you also get paper which leads to science track with the strongest cards and the strongest
bonus—the aqueduct.
Game
Let’s look at some examples of how you apply these in action. We see an example of smith applied well.

I got to place first.

Orange missed a great spot—big mistake. Should have placed on 9 pasture, 5 hills, 6 mountains.

Blue made the right call

I built and activated a knight on my first turn!

I have cloth and coin.

I am racing with orange to 4-4-3.

Blue had no grain so blue lost a city.

Here is an example of a good play with smith where orange upgrades 2 1 KP K to 2 2 KP K.

orange just lost a city.

Blue swung from 12 to 14 by building a politics metropolis, reaching the CK threshold of 13 VP.

Final results
The game link is End of game • CATAN • Board Game Arena.

By the end of the game, I had 1 TUP, 1 PUP, and 1 SUP. I was not able to get 3 SUP for the aqueduct. I
also was not able to get 4 UP for a metropolis. I was able to get the merchant and no one stole it from
me.

Strategy from other people

Get a city on wood for aqueduct and science and SPC.
Here’s an interesting tip. If you are at 7 cards, and someone offers 2 cards for one of your cards, don’t
take it because then you might lose half, like say I have a brick and they say I’ll give you a grain and an
ore, don’t do it because you will be at 7+2-1=8 cards and over your discard limit.

One person recommends locking other people out of a 6 8 hex by using the distance rule, even if you get
a slightly worse 3rd hex.

This is interesting.

1. Early in the game, try to make a plan that improves your situation the most, while scoring
the fewest points. Your priority is usually: 1. Upgrade your first settlement to a city (if
possible--and don't forget that you need to protect it!) 2. Commodity improvements
(including Metropolis) 3. Useful settlements 4. Other cities 5.Defender of Catan. The point
is that you don't want to be targeted by the robber, or by your opponents' "development
cards" that target players with more points than they have. Extra settlements are very
expensive, so don't plan on getting very many of them. Instead, use the commodity cards
to obtain any resources that you are missing.
I kind of agree with that. Now, if you were playing with people who wouldn’t target you because you
were ahead, I would say improve your situation all the time. Unfortunately, because people will target
you envy you gang up on you when you are ahead, you want to stay behind. So if the decision is
between saving an opponents city and getting defender of Catan or they lose a city and you get
defender of Catan, let them loose a city.

This tip is interesting.

2) General productivity -- it is important to pick a spot that will produce a lot of resources for you. Even if they
aren't precisely what you need, maybe you will be able to trade for what you do need. It is often better to take a
6 or an 8 on a resource you don't need more of than a 2, 3, 11, or 12 on one you do.

4) Distribution of resources -- you want to make sure you have an adequate distribution of resources. In reality,
this means that you have good production on at least 4 of the 5 resources. It's also important to make sure that
either wheat is generally plentiful, or you have good access to it -- otherwise, you will be at risk for losing your
city. Likewise, try to position your city so it's on at least two resources that generate commodities. Even if the
commodity only comes up once, flipping that first page is HUGE.

5) Space for expansion / Spread yourself out -- make sure you aren't totally boxed in. In CaK, it's often better to
take two good numbers on the coast than three mediocre ones in the middle -- in fact, with the aquaduct, it's
often better NOT to have any 2s, 3s, 11s, or 12s. Do not put both of your starting settlements on the same hex
-- it's too easy to box you in, and you'll also be susceptible to the robber.

6) Generating Bonus Points -- since you need to get to 13 points to win, it's almost impossible to do without a
metropolis and/or the longest road card. Plan on getting at least one of them.

7) Blocking your opponents -- if you are considering two approximately equal spots, take the one that blocks
your opponent. This is especially fun to do in conjunction with #5 -- take a spot on the coast with 2 good
numbers that your opponent was planning to expand to.

6) Don't telegraph your moves too far in advance. For example, many players build a road to where they want
to build a settlement before they have the resources to build the settlement. This is only a good idea if wood or
brick are exceedingly rare and your opponents are likely to steal the resource out of your hand, or if there's no
competition for the spot and you're exceeding your card limit. It's a better idea to build the road and settlement
together if possible. If you can't do that, get your settlement up as soon as possible. Besides collecting more
resources, unscrupulous opponents have been known to play two roads (or a road building card) and build a
settlement on the spot you were wanting to build on!

7) Don't let players know you're close to winning if possible. If realistic, don't grab the longest road until you're
ready to win (road building cards are great for this). It's better if players don't know you're in contention for it. If
you build to the point where you have 12 points, players will embargo you and you will become public enemy
#1. It's better to build to the 11th point, and then get 2 victory points on one turn (build a settlement and/or city,
grab the longest road, flip up a merchant card, steal a metropolis, etc...). You can often catch players unaware
this way.

11) I'm still not sure why, but my observation is that when the desert is near the center of the board, it slows the
game down. I'm not sure if there's any way to work that to your advantage, but whenever I've seen a player
lose his initial city and come back and win, it's always been when the desert is in the middle of the board.

I found where someone says they don’t play with intrigue.

2) We remove the intrigue card from the blue deck. It's so situational as to be useless (in over 40 games, I've
seen it used once).

3) If you draw a victory point, you normally have to flip it up. Because the table is normally scattered with cards
(and food/beverages), it's often hard for players sitting on one end of the table to see if someone draws a
victory point. Accordingly, our house rule is that if you draw a victory point, you have to announce it, and make
sure that you have everybody's attention when you do. That way, table clutter doesn't give some players unfair
advantages over others.

Another person says

Just a couple of notes on the progress card power. I agree that the green cards are the most powerful, but they
also tend to be more useful early in the game with the exception of the alchemist and the inventor. Since many
of them are associated with building, they are less powerful when there are more cards available. Along with
that, the aqueduct becomes less powerful since most people are on most of the numbers anyway.

Along with that, the blue cards become more powerful as the game progresses, especially in the really long
games with everyone at about 10 points. The person who wins these games often does so by stealing cards
and knights from other people, and that is the domain of the blue cards and the yellow cards. These allow you
to slow down whoever is in the lead, and they are often useless for the person who is in the lead since some of
them can only be used on players with more victory points.

Why is the intrigue card in there? I have also only seen it played once, and that was because of poor knight
placement.

As for the desert position, having it in the middle limits the number of good spaces that produce three
resources on good numbers. A similar situation is seen in basic settlers, but it is enhanced in CaK.

First, yellow cards are incredibly powerful in the endgame. "Oh look, this monopoly lets me steal six resources
from you guys. Hey, now this one makes three of your commodity cards mine! There, I just took the merchant
away from you, got it for myself, traded two-to-one to take a metropolis and the longest road and win the game
on a five point swing." Big cards in that deck.

Second, good use of the blue upgrade's special power, mighty knights, is one of the most strategic parts of the
late game stall you discussed. Park a mighty knight in the middle of someone's longest road, and there is just
no way to move it short of being lucky enough to draw that intrigue card (which you removed from the game).
Easy steal of two points, which is a game winner in most situations.

Also, I have gladly sacrificed my first city for awesome placement on several occasions. While everyone else is
freaking out about building their knights, I'm building to a third great spot and plunking down a settlement
before the horde even gets close. Now I'm producing more than them, and if I've got good ore (prob. two
settlements on a number) and can avoid the robber (this is risky, I admit--but usually nobody steals from the
guy who just lost a city to the horde) getting that city back is relatively quick. If I got a couple city upgrades
before the horde came the first time, so much the better.

Walls count. Lots of newbies don't realize how powerful City Walls are in the game. To make my point
dramatically, I'll ask you to do this: the next time you play, count the number of times in one game that you
have to discard from a Robber. City Walls generates that much resources for you by saving them.

More importantly, City Walls allows you to hoard cards. With 3 City Walls, your maximum hand size increases
to 11. This is hugely important later in the game, as you store three, four, or five commodities in your hand for
upgrading your cities, even while trying to hold onto your "normal" complement of resources. People without
Walls will quickly note in the mid-game how much of an advantage they suffer against someone who invests
wisely in Walls.

Resource supply is important. You will want to secure a reliable sourcing for all 5 resources by mid-game, or
you could be fatally susceptible to embargo. The most common way to accomplish this is with a good major in
the trade arm of city development for the Merchant card and Trading House, or by accessing a port, preferably
of the 2:1 kind if you have major production of one resource, or the 3:1 kind if you don't.

Space is situational. Unlike the basic game, you don't really need a lot of settlements or cities or even the
Longest Road to win. I've won with just 2 cities and 2 settlements. Having less cities and settlements means
you have less points, and thus appear less on the radar and aren't vulnerable to nasty things like Master
Merchant; and you don't invest as much in roads. If you decide to spread out and suffer the point increase,
make sure you have a good plan, since it exposes you to attack.

Non settlement points are big. As a corollary to the above, points that don't come from settlements on the
board are usually pretty big. The most common ones are Defender of Catan, Printing Press, Constitution,
Longest Road and the Metropolises. The main reason why they're huge is because they can be gained with
alacrity, which means that they can be reservoirs of "virtual points" that you only exercise when you're assured
of a steady and sure path to victory.

The most points I've ever seen gained in one turn is 8. One for Constitution, two for Longest Road, two for Blue
Metropolis, two for Green Metropolis, plus one settlement. Yes, he instantly won from a position of 5 points -
two Cities with City Walls, plus one settlement and four connected roads. This is unusual, however. Usually,
people win from a position of between 6 and 11 points, with 7-9 points being the usual winners.

Trading Ports are important. Moreso than in the basic game, Wheat, Brick, Sheep, and Wood ports are
positions of power. Ore is less important. One hardly ever gets to use such a port. The most important reason
why ports are so important (especially starting position ports) is because you can use them to get commodities
you're short of, meaning you can manage with a smaller hand size, and you get progress flips and progress
cards faster. There are many notable situations where an initial City placement on a Port proved to be winning,
in some cases even unstoppable.

Here’s some interesting information. Calculate how many extra points are available.

One person says

I don't know if anyone else addressed this, but your place in the initial turn order has a huge effect on how
devastating it is to lose your starting city. If you went first and therefore have the last placed city it is usually not
as bad to lose your starting city. If you went last, it is crushing.

Commodity spread is often more important than resource spread, or at least on par.
Out of curiosity, what does this mean?
Commodity spread is the difference between the number of commodities different players are
producing. Resource spread is the same for resources.

For example: if player A is getting 3 commodity cards and Player B is getting 1, the commodity
spread is 2.

The statement points out that it is more important to be getting more commodities than the other
players rather than more resources. This is partly because commodities lead to progress cards
which allow you to do other more powerful actions.
Cockblocking versus self-improvement

In general, it is usually better to improve your position than to try to sabotage other players. It is unlikely that
you will win by being great at sabotaging other players. While Catan is a zero-sum game where there is only
one winner, there are usually too many opponents to worry about. If you sabotage one player badly, you still
have other opponents to contend against. One simplistic way of looking at it is that gaining 1 VP for yourself is
equivalent to sabotaging every other opponent for 1 VP. In a 4-player game, gaining 1 VP is equivalent to
sabotaging 3 VP. It is far easier to gain 1 VP than to sabotage 3 VP (e.g. by vying for defender of Catan three
times).

Another reason not to sabotage is if it is likely that other players or the robber will do it for you anyways.

Conversely, other players may spend too much time and effort on sabotaging other players even if this is a
suboptimal strategy. If this is the case, you should aim for VP which can’t be taken away from you. Try to
avoid going for the longest road, defender of Catan, Metropolises, using your merchant card early, etc.

Midgame and endgame

You have to work backwards to figure out the optimal strategy for the current situation. How much competition
will there be for each metropolis? How much competition will there be for defender of Catan? Etc. etc. The
attractiveness of those VP depend on the competition for them.

Yeah good point there go for metropolis that people are not competing for.