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Catan isn't actually all that great (and I say that as someone who bought his set back in 1995). We have much better games these days. Stripped of its cultural significance, chess isn't that great either for a general audience. It suffers from analysis paralysis. I would only recommend it to a niche audience. I love Diplomacy; I played many games over email, in person and even participated in the German Diplomacy cha…
Catan is merely ok from a serious gaming perspective, but for most people sitting around having fun, it's a go-to. There's value in it looking nice and being easy to understand, and I can see it staying popular 20 years from now. The top listed modern games have only ever come up in niche board game group settings for me, while even chess and Diplomacy have been much more popular. This is only my experience, but I'm…
Catan can be fun, especially the first few dozen times you play it. But it wears thin even for a casual group. We have better casual games these days. And even back then, we did: I found that eg Bohnanza released about the same time as Catan holds up much better to repeated plays; even though it looks much less impressive at first. The big problem with Catan is that the initial settlement placement determines so much of the rest of the game, and there aren't that many meaningful decisions left in the rest of the game.
I did most of my in-person games of Diplomacy when I was working in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. I was working for a startup spun off from the local university, and noticed that the university societies were actually (mostly) open to the general public. So I just joined the Diplomacy society.