
How much of Settlers of Catan is Luck? - malcolmong
http://www.malcolmong.com/post/17327971818/settlers-of-catan
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gte910h
If you like Catan, try these games:

<http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35677/le-havre> <= economic engine
building game set in a costal french port

[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43111/chaos-in-the-old-
wo...](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43111/chaos-in-the-old-world) <=
Point scoring game where doing a faction specific objective gets yours further
ahead. Very balanced, but via active player action (like refusing to trade
with a guy at 8-9 points in Catan)

<http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68448/7-wonders> <= civ building game with
small military elements

<http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34635/stone-age> <= stone age building/civ
game

Yspahan <http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22345/yspahan> <= point scoring
game about running shops in an "idealized" arabian bazar.

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scarmig
Luck is a factor, but interpersonal dynamics and alliances are most important,
in my experience.

How to win: always be a moderate second while limiting the routes for first to
win, concurrently reserve at least two separate routes to victory for
yourself, and don't let the game get too lopsided. Then as the end draws near,
finish it in a turn.

It would be interesting to have a Catan-AI competition. Does the Catan server
allow bots?

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SomeCallMeTim
What bugs me about Settlers isn't that it's got too much luck, it's that I can
pretty much tell who is going to win (or at least one of two) based on the
initial settlement placement. Or at least who's going to lose. And it's pretty
much completely no fun to play a game where the result is preordained that
you'll lose.

Speaking of settlement placement: There aren't enough rolls in a game of Catan
for the distribution of rolls to come out as you'd expect them. I've played a
game where more 12s were rolled than 6s (though OMG were there a lot of 8s).
It's not bad dice -- it's just the normal result of a "random" distribution
when you're not generating that many results.

So a HUGE part of the strategy that the article misses is to maximize your
DISTRIBUTION of numbers. I don't care if there's an 8/9/10 combo available for
your second settlement; if you already have 8 & 9, you're much better off with
a 3/4/5 combo (assuming you have none of those). Otherwise you're stuck with a
feast or famine situation; sure you might be lucky, but you might instead be
resource-starved for large parts of the game.

I actually picked up a "Deck of Dice" [1] to use with Catan, which is 36 cards
that have a regular distribution of results of rolling two dice, but haven't
given it a try yet to see if it makes Catan feel different. It seems like it
might play a lot different; I really should give that a try... :)

[1] <http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5460/the-deck-of-dice>

~~~
Someone
I disagree. Going for the low-variance option is a good idea if you do not
want to lose, but not one if you want to win.

Consider a game where one player gets two items for every roll above 7,
another two items for every roll below 7, and a third one item for every roll
that is not 7. With any not perfectly even distribution of rolls, one of the
first two players will have the highest production, and the other of the two
the lowest. There is no set of throws that will give the last player the most
produce.

~~~
anthonyb
Except that rolling high vs. low vs. a balance of both all have equal
probabilities.

~~~
gte910h
A good distribution of numbers is a dominent strategy in catan due to the
robber taking half your goods if you have more than 7 cards when a robber is
rolled.

Late game overclustering (aka, being on too few numbers) is very brittle to
rolls of 7 and additionally to the robber stopping production there as well.

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JeffJenkins
I've played a lot of games of Catan against the computer on the Xbox 360,
which gives stats, and I found that is almost all cases the player who had the
most resources (produced - lost/stolen) won. To some extent this makes sense
since a better economy will produce more resources, but it didn't seem to
matter what the resources were or whether they were used directly or
4-crunched into something else.

What I took from that is if you're choosing settlement spots or robber targets
you'll do pretty well just maximizing the number of resources you produce or
block (which, for the robber, means multiplying the number of pips by the
number of resource gained if the number rolls)

~~~
nimblegorilla
It's true that the person with the most resources will probably win, but a key
factor getting to that point is ability to best ramp up production to produce
those resources.

Early in the game it is important to try to get that next settlement or city.
If you can place a robber to block important sheep or whatever is in short
supply then that can be better than just blocking a high number of pips. When
placing a settlement sometimes it is better to spread out rather than circling
around one hex with high pips (and being vulnerable to a robber knocking out
your entire production chain).

Another aspect of placing the robber on an opponent's "high pip" space is that
they become motivated to play soldiers and possibly move the robber to your
own high pip space. If you instead place the robber on a ho-hum tile you might
not block as many potential resources, but the robber will stay away from your
tiles for a longer period.

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biot
Meta-question: board games like chess and go are entirely based upon skill,
but are there board games similar to Monopoly or Catan where you have the
board, pieces, cards that grant abilities, etc. which are based entirely upon
skill?

You'd have to eliminate dice entirely and make movement solely the choice of
the player, within a defined set of rules. Cards wouldn't come up randomly but
would be earned based on objective criteria. Conflicts for
position/status/etc. need to be settled objectively as well.

I can think of a number of computer games which might fit the criteria, but
I'm unaware of what's out there in the physical board game world.

~~~
mtm
The closest one I've run into is Agricola: it's almost pure skill ('almost'
because there is an optional set of 'occupation' cards that get randomly
distributed at the beginning of the game). The theme is building out the best
farm by the end of a set number of turns.

The main thrust of the game is for players to take turns choosing actions from
a limited common pool that is reset at the beginning of each turn. One of the
actions is 'go first next turn'. Everyone ends up competing for actions. The
game seems complicated at first but is actually fairly simple. Great fun!

~~~
gte910h
If you like Agricola, try La Havre. Same guy, better game, similar amounts of
luck. <http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35677/le-havre>

------
gte910h
Settlers of Catan has _piles_ of luck compared to many other games that only
get uncertainty from the chaos of a bunch of other players moves.

The die rolls, especially using the wooden dice that come with the game, are
very likely to come out very biased and not very even for a given game, as
well as the very rare powerful cards buried in a sea of knights in the dev
card deck.

 _Luck is not bad_. Luck is merely a thing you can put in a game or not, just
like 'it is played on a field' or 'do you wager real money on the outcome'.

Games with too little luck make unskilled players unwilling to play them with
skilled players (such as chess).

Does Catan have more luck than many other designer/german board games? More so
than many ones originally published in Europe and a few of the US ones
(Princes of Florence, Power Grid, Automobile, Chaos in the Old World all have
far less luck), but many other games, especially "Classic" board games, have
far more luck, such as Diplomacy (chaos based uncertainty is still something
uncertain), Monopoly, Scrabble, and Risk.

If you gasp at catan having lots of luck, think of this tidbit: When's the
last time you have seen people who _know how to play texas holdem_ play
straight up 5-card draw with no wilds? Other than a brief interlude, probably
not often: The game is too skill based. Whereas the much closer odds for texas
holdem have MANY people willing to play a round, even drop 10k play against
the pros in the WSOP.

If you're looking for more games in the vein of Catan, check out this list
(some good wargames in there as well, read the description before buying):

<http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame>

~~~
Tossrock
Could you explain how 5 card draw is more skill based than Hold 'em? This is
not in a combative tone, I really want to know.

~~~
gte910h
Starting hand strengths are MUCH further apart in holdem and 5CD.

You can start with the nuts (Straight flush to the Ace) in 5CD, but in holdem,
AA is only about 450:1 better than a random disconnected offsuit (2s 8h).

Tight play is overwhelmingly rewarded (you can start with a hand thousands of
times better than your opponent). So in a 5CD game against bad players, the
good players fold repeatedly until they get a strong hand, and take all the
money, repeatedly.

Against people of similar skill, draw (with the antes most people play with)
is more of an actual game, and less of a horrible train-wreck of watching bad
players getting fleeced. But in a similar holdem game, a guy can sit down,
play every hand, and will often turn out okay.

*My comments are about cash games. For tournaments, the tournament dynamics dwarf a huge quantity of the strategy in the actual game.

~~~
Tossrock
I guess I don't see how that's more skill based. In fact it seems more luck
based to me – your play is dictated more by literal luck of the draw than by
your skill level. You could be the best player in the world, and if you are
continuously dealt trash, lose. In Hold 'em, the skills of bluffing and
reading are much more important than the luck of your hole cards.

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ruedaminute
If you play Cities and Knights (Catan expansion), the contribution of luck to
a victory decreases by quite a bit, methinks. The game is much longer (play to
13 or more points) and involves a heck of a lot more strategy. There are more
ways to win. You can also play with cards instead of dice (or like me, build a
quick web-based cards prototype because I was too lazy to go physically buy
them)

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deweller
Here's a quote from Klaus Teuber, the designer of Catan, that speaks to his
philosophy of luck in games:

"When I play a game, I play intuitively. I don't like games where you have to
think too much, where luck plays no part and the better player always wins.
Chance makes things more exciting. If I know exactly what is going to happen
tomorrow, things get boring. It's the same in a game. I prefer it that way."

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WadeF
What makes Settlers fun is that there is a good deal of randomness (luck), but
you can play the game in such a way that you more often than not luck is on
your side.

For instance, having access to all five resources leaves you in a better
position for trading and buying, having diversity of numbers guarantees more
often than not you'll collect a card, and having access to ports means you can
have favorable trading.

There's also a good deal of diplomacy involved, because if someone decides to
shut down your resources with the robber or refuses to trade with you because
of some ribbing you can really limit your chances to win.

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nekojima
For those interested in playing Settlers of Catan, but don't have the game or
enough players handy, it is available on BSW, a German site that also has an
English interface. The quality of play is generally quite high & competitive,
for this game and many of the others on the site.

<http://brettspielwelt.de/Spiele/Siedler/>

There are also a number of the other card/boardgames mentioned in the rest of
this discussion which are available on BSW.

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ktrgardiner
Short answer: a fair amount. Anecdotal story: The one time i played, having
never even heard of the game before, I learned as I went along and ended up
winning. I'd say my final few plays were the only ones based more upon
strategy and less upon "Is this a fair play? Yes? Well then here's my play."
So a good deal of luck is involved because a novice can't beat pros in a game
based entirely upon skill.

~~~
markyc
apart from chess, I don't know of other games based entirely upon skill :)

~~~
starwed
Chess/Go/Checkers are one category of game where luck plays no part, but not
the only one. The thing they all have in common are 2 players and perfect
information.

Then there are games like Stratego, which have no 'luck' but require you to
make decisions based on imperfect information.

And games like Diplomacy, with no random element but a social dynamic. I'd
assert that this game has no 'luck', but someone else up thread defines luck a
bit differently and says that it does. :)

~~~
gte910h
It has uncertainty, which comes out the same as luck to most players.

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LogicHoleFlaw
I find that, in Settlers of Catan, if you're winning - it's skill. It's only
luck when you're losing ;)

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anthonyb
If the luck element bothers you, just use a deck of 36 cards, numbered from
2-12: 1x2, 2x3, 3x4, etc. (Either draw your own on a deck of cards or use two
decks of playing cards). Shuffle, and deal from the top instead of a dice
roll. When the deck is exhausted, reshuffle.

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twiceaday
How much of it is your friends teaming up to help somebody else win just to
make you lose?

~~~
jules
It can be argued that making sure that you're not that losing player is a
skill as well. There is a game called Family Business that is almost entirely
based on this concept. Each player has a gang of mobsters, and on each turn
you get action cards. The game revolves around the "hit list". You can put
enemy mobsters on the hit list with action cards. When there are 6 or more
mobsters on the hit list, a "mob war" starts, and on each turn the topmost
mobster on the hit list is killed. The mob war continues until the hit list is
empty. There are also action cards for removing a mobster from the hit list,
instantly killing an enemy mobster, blocking a card that puts a mobster on the
hit list, etc. The key to winning this game is convincing your friends to
collectively screw over another friend, and to convince them that it is a bad
idea to kill your mobsters by using the right tit-for-tat strategy and using
intimidation and bluffing about which action cards you have to take revenge.

Similar strategies can work for Settlers of Catan as well. When a player does
something bad like block you with a road and you're playing at a disadvantage,
then you can sacrifice this game for scaremongering and do everything in your
power to make the player that did it lose (block him with roads and always use
the robber on him). Next game people will be more careful ;)

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anthonyb
plug: my Settlers of Catan strategy guide:
[http://blog.oarsum.com/post/263227690/the-weasel-guide-to-
se...](http://blog.oarsum.com/post/263227690/the-weasel-guide-to-settlers-of-
catan-part-one-the)

Might come in handy for some...

