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The Man Who Built Catan

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Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#61

Post by ntaso »

chimeracoder wrote: post #3

Catan was my first German-style board game[0]. I've since "graduated" on to more complicated games, so I rarely play it anymore, but I find that it's an effective "gateway" German-style board game. Almost all of my friends who have played it love it, and have gone on to try (and enjoy) other German-style games. Catan is nice because it's sufficiently more complex (and well-designed) than Monopoly so as to be interest…

If you like Catan, check out one of the apps for Android/iPhone that uses an algorithm to make the basic setup more fair. I tried one for Android a few times and it was always a close call. The game was much more engaging for players that have a bad start than if you set up the game in the proposed fashion.

Usually, the algorithms do stuff like:

  - if there's a 6 and 8 next to each other, the third field is always a 2 or 12
  - there's always wood next to clay
  - a 2:1 harbor is never next to a huge field of one type of resource (say, 2-3 grassland)
  - etc.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#62

Post by ntaso »

MichaelGG wrote: post #22
habosa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was exaggerating, but people do 5 cards for one if they really need it (just mixed element).

Is trading actually a good thing? I see people play and they seem open to trading for trades sake. Unless your opponents are making pointless trades to confuse, doesn't it just help their position? Catan's alright, but it's too random to be really enjoyable. The strategy seems outweighed by getting lucky on rolls or draws.

Trading is good to increase own resources (I almost never trade 1:1, mostly 1:2, depending on how badly the other person needs my resources) or doing the inverse: getting down to 7 resources during another player's turn to prevent having to dump half of it if a 7 is rolled.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#63

Post by dredmorbius »

philwelch wrote: post #32
mdmarra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly only drags on for hours if you play by silly house rules like $400 for landing on Go, money for landing on Free Parking, or not requiring an auction when passing on purchasing a property. All of these common house rules artificially extend the game by either injecting cash into the game or slowing the acquisition of property. A vanilla game of 4 player monopoly should take no more than an hour.

To me the problem with Monopoly isn't just that it takes forever, but that you can get into a commanding position early and spend most of the game slowly bleeding your opponents to death one by one. Monopoly is a game to resent people over.

Quite. When played with children (of any age) it frequently ends in tears.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#64

Post by nnnnni »

chimeracoder wrote: post #3

Catan was my first German-style board game[0]. I've since "graduated" on to more complicated games, so I rarely play it anymore, but I find that it's an effective "gateway" German-style board game. Almost all of my friends who have played it love it, and have gone on to try (and enjoy) other German-style games. Catan is nice because it's sufficiently more complex (and well-designed) than Monopoly so as to be interest…

The problem with Puerto Rico is that there is often only one optimal move -- and sometimes that optimal move doesn't do anything for you, it only spoils someone else's strategy.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#65

Post by mseebach »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #36
derefr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand at all why monopoly is the universal board game that every kid learns. It's a horrible game that drags on for hours. Well, inasmuch as it does that, it's teaching the correct economic lesson: when you allow for monopolies, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and social mobility (what a game designer would term "avoiding lame-duck scenarios") is nowhere to be found. I'd say Monopoly is actua…

That might be valid if most modern monopolies weren't the product of government intervention.

In the game this is exemplified by forcing you to progress through life on a preset course and force you to pay rents to the incumbents that you come across on that narrow path.

The dice roll of course represents that life is unpredictable. But I struggle to find the real world analogy where I go bankrupt because I randomly end up in a hotel in Park Avenue.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#67

Post by AdrianRossouw »

Pxtl wrote: post #16
habosa wrote: post #10

My friends and I just got into Catan and it's really great. We used to play a ton of FIFA and Madden when we were together, now it's always "who wants to settle?". It really is a great game because it can't be completely beaten like Monopoly can and there is no best strategy that we've found. I play totally differently than my friends and we all win sometimes. I also love the social aspects of trading and the robber.…

If you want to add a little RPG-ish "upgrading" to the game, I recommend the "Cities and Knights" expansion. It adds a lot of complexity to the game but adds some fun "level up" mechanics and a bit more conflict and brutality to the game.

I remember reading that the game was originally designed to be cities and knight, but was simplified for it's initial release.

It took us a while to work up to cities and knights, but I really have trouble playing the vanilla game anymore.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#68

Post by twoodfin »

nl wrote: post #56
twoodfin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience Monopoly games played by the official rules with experienced players would drag endlessly due to trade negotiations. Typically, whenever a player was clearly in an advantageous position, the remaining players would form a loose alliance, shuffling properties and cash in an attempt to stymie the leader. The leader would fall back into the pack, a new leader would emerge, and the whole process would re…

*In my experience Monopoly games played by the official rules... Any thoughts on what we were doing wrong?" I'm guessing you weren't actually following the rules[1]. If you do follow the rules you'll find liquidity gets sucked out of the game by continual reselling because you are only allowed to sell unimproved properties, and have to sell houses & hotels back to the bank at half price. [1] http://richard_wilding.tr…

That rule was followed. Given that we were playing with 3-4 experienced players, monopolies were rare (everyone bought essentially every available property landed on that was still potentially monopolized) and most targeted the sweet spot of three houses. Monopolied properties weren't traded often, but even then that's not a lot of liquidity to sacrifice with ~$800/board cycle going into the game via passing Go.

Once a few monopolies did crop up, it was the remaining unimproved properties that would be swapped most often for ludicrous amounts of money to allow, say, a cash-poor player to build a few houses in the path of the current leader.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#69

Post by VLM »

graylights wrote: post #9
chimeracoder wrote: post #3

Catan was my first German-style board game[0]. I've since "graduated" on to more complicated games, so I rarely play it anymore, but I find that it's an effective "gateway" German-style board game. Almost all of my friends who have played it love it, and have gone on to try (and enjoy) other German-style games. Catan is nice because it's sufficiently more complex (and well-designed) than Monopoly so as to be interest…

I'd argue that Catan is much less complex monopoly. Just that most people learn monopoly at a very young age so they never notice the complexity. Monopoly's rules are 6 pages of pure text. Catan's rules are 4 pages with some illustration. I don't understand at all why monopoly is the universal board game that every kid learns. It's a horrible game that drags on for hours. Even though I don't particular care for Catan…

Sorry for the late post, but its a very stereotypical american board game vs eurogame difference that all the complexity in American board games is in the rules, not in the resulting gameplay, but in eurogames ideally the rules are as short as possible and all the complexity is in the gameplay. The ultimate extreme american game would have something like the entire code of federal regulations for rules, but gameplay would boil down to each player rolls dice and highest wins. The ultimate extreme eurogame would have two printed rules "1) each player flips over one card per turn and follows instructions. 2) First player to 100 points wins" and would come with 50 cardboard playing mats, an entire carpentry shop worth of brightly colored wooden counters, and probably a cuckoo clock.

Whats more complicated, Chess, or Go?

Its not the only categorization rule, of course. I think "Chutes 'n Ladders" would technically qualify as a eurogame solely under the "simple rules" rule, but it fails as having no social interaction, no strategy element, extreme influence of randomness, being designed and marketed extremely strongly toward the 5 yr old mind, etc.

Re: The Man Who Built Catan

#70

Post by yen223 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #22
habosa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was exaggerating, but people do 5 cards for one if they really need it (just mixed element).

Is trading actually a good thing? I see people play and they seem open to trading for trades sake. Unless your opponents are making pointless trades to confuse, doesn't it just help their position? Catan's alright, but it's too random to be really enjoyable. The strategy seems outweighed by getting lucky on rolls or draws.

2 people who trade with each other will usually beat 2 players who don't trade.
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