Settlers and Playcatan.com

Well, I usually just use this blog to blog about pictures and travel, I figured it'd be a decent place just to blog about random stuff as well. This time its going to be about the game Settlers and especially, playing it on playcatan.com. Now, settlers is a game of strategy but also has a large luck element to it. However, placements, ports, where to put the robber, and other factors do play a large part in if you win or lose.

First off, if someone is trolling you, its really hard to win. Its really not the fact that they are trolling you that makes it hard, its the fact that if they are trolling you, they aren't trolling the other players which makes it really easy for them to win.

Second, you need to pay attention to the resource diversity at the beginning of the game and situate your strategy to fit it. Many games you will be lacking 1 resource, make sure your strategy does not rely on that resource. The one resource you absolutely do not want to lack is wheat to start(unless you start on a 2:1 port) because you can't do anything without wheat. You can't city, you can't settle, and you can't buy dev cards. In other words, if you don't have wheat and have to trade 4:1 to get it from the beginning, your pretty much screwed right from the start.

Don't always go for the most resource points in the game, look at the board and determine which resources are scarce. Generally Brick and Ore tend to be more scare than the other resources. Its actually a decent idea to have a monopoly on the ore so sometimes I will build on the Ore, Ore, Ore if the numbers are okay, just to prevent other people from getting any ore. If you do this however, make sure your other settlement has both sheep and grain(especially grain) and preferably close to an ore port. If your the third player and there's a decent Ore, Ore, Ore spot and a good sheep, grain spot on the ore port, you take that even if the the resource points are signficantly less than if you went for 2 3-resource spots. Once you city on the ore,ore,ore, your almost unstoppable. You basically will city your 2 first settlements extremely fast, then use the port to build a third settlement somewhere(doesn't really matter where too much) and city it and then buy all the dev cards you can. The strategy is basically to get largest army and 2 victory points, which you can do very quickly. Its a good strategy because buying lots of dev cards usually means you can move the robber and protect your resource points and also since you don't have points showing on the board, people are less likely to rob you. You can easily burst from 6 to 10 or even 5 to 10 points in one turn doing this. I've seen a person burst from 3 to 10 in one turn once, but he got extremely lucky. If your ore-heavy, do not go to a wood-brick heavy spot the second placement no matter how good the numbers are because then you can't settle and you can't city and you can't buy dev cards and your screwed again. Likewise if you settle on a wood, brick heavy spot, don't do Ore heavy the 2nd settlement, go sheep and grain and try to get close to a 3:1 or 2:1 port on the resource your heavy on. The strategy here should be to settle quickly, grab a port so you can either buy dev cards or trade for Ore and city up(so then you can settle more) and get the 2 points for longest road. You really need to watch your road placement and place your settlements where you can join them with a road. Also make sure you build your roads in a way where someone can't ninja in and bisect your road, because if they do, your probably screwed.

The 3rd thing is to be smart with the trading. Settlers is not a team game(although some people play like it is), which means only 1 person can win, the other people are just losers. This means that you winning involves not letting the other players win. I cannot stress this enough. I have seen multiple times where people trade with a players with like 12 cards in their hands who has seven points and then are surprised when that players goes from 7 to 10 points and wins in that turn. Its not that hard, with that many cards, all he needs to do is take longest road and then settle somewhere and he wins. I've also seen people trade with others when they have 4-6 cards in their hand and 2 soldiers out, then are surprised when the person flips over the soldier and builds a settle/city and wins the next turn. It happens way too often. Before you trade with someone later on in the game, you need to make fairly sure that they can't win on that turn. Way too many people forget this and still trade when people already have 8 or even 9 points, this is totally not a way to win. When people are 8-9 points, you don't trade unless its on your turn and you can win that turn. My favorite plays has been having 4 points showing on the board, trade from a brick and a wood and having 2 soldiers on the board. Next play, take longest road, flip a soldier take large army and 2 victory points going from 4-10 in one turn and watching the other players rage. 

Make good use of the robber. Don't always rob the person with the most points. People often make this mistake and it will cost you games. If someone has 5 dev cards while everyone else has only bought 1 or none, that person probably has at least 2 points, probably 3 more than what he's showing and needs to be robbed. Hardly anyone always does this online, which is why soldiers and victory points often determine the game.

Ports are incredibly powerful, this is especially true with ore. Once you city up 3 cities(which you can quickly do if you have control of the ore), they are just trade fodder(most of the time to buy development cards). Being able to trade 2:1 protects you from the robber as you can just trade for that one scarce resource you now don't have and it makes buying dev cards easy so you can soldier and get rid of the robber. Try hard to get close or start on a 2:1 with a resource you are heavy on, even if it means sacrificing a few resource points at the beginning. The ability to trade 2:1 is usually more important and powerful than having 2 or 3 more resource dots. Also if someone is especially resource heavy in one resource and has that port, focus them more with the robber and they can easily streamroll if you don't(I've done this several times when people didn't realize it).

Playcatan's dice system also tends to fall in love with one or 2 numbers a game(its ten or eleven more times than it should be in my experience). Once you pick up on which number it is, just block that number with the robber. I'm not sure why this is. Could be the will of the heavens or their random number generator just sucks, hard to tell.

Paying attention and calculating all these factors when you make your moves will help you greately when playing to win. But don't take too long, I hate indecisive people that think forever before making a play. That just means you suck at thinking quickly and aren't very smart(unless you happen to be a noob at the game, then I'll forgive you for the first game or two).