Strategies for Settlers of Catan

I’ll assume that you are familiar with game and are just looking for ways to maximize your winning chances. First and foremost, let’s think about a method of evaluating positions.

Win Condition (10 VP’s)

- 3 cities + 2 Victory points+ Largest Army

- 4 settlements + 2 cities + Longest Road

- 2 settlement + 3 cities + 2 Victory Points

All of the above conditions give you the win but not all of them are equally easy to obtain. To win, getting either the longest road or the longest army is very important as it is extremely hard to have production to build something like 3 cities and 4 settlements before anyone else reaches 10 points.

Resource Value

• Food/Wheat: Also referred to as grain or wheat, food is the most critical resource in the game. No VP can be gained without food. If possible have two tiles of food in your initial settlements. The only way to counter low food is insanely high resource production.
• Ore: Ore is the most valuable resource in the game if you can combine it with food and sheep. The hardest part of catan is creating cities and it’s almost impossible to win without any cities.
• Wood & Brick: As evident from the resource chart, both are equal in terms of value but brick has only 3 tiles compared to 4 tiles of wood in the standard map. And remember, one of them is useless without the other.
• Sheep: Sheep is often considered a low value but it’s value can skyrocket if you have adequate ore and food.

Placement Strategy: Easily the most important part of the game

1] Ore-Wheat-Sheep game (City/ Development Card)

Often beginners value brick as the most valuable resource which is just not true. If you can, always take the best ore/food spot along with decent sheep.

Ideally you should target 7–8 points of ore, 6–7 points of food and 4–5 points of sheep with maybe a 2–3 points of wood/brick (you’ll need it just once:P).

This strategy heavily relies on doubling your production quickly by converting your initial settlements into cities.

Development card is the cheapest thing to buy in terms of resources used. This is the most superior strategy because -

• Easiest Win condition :(3 cities, 2 VP, largest army)/(1 settlement, 3 cities, 1 VP, largest army).
• Knights Army: With an abundance of development cards, you won’t remain blocked for long but your direct competitors will be.
• No Roads : Can win easily even with zero production of wood & brick. You only need one road and one settlement the whole game if you have insane development card buying power. Having all 5 resources is great but definitely not necessary.
• City Machine/Production: Your initial settlements are arguably the best spots (that you could get) and multiplying production on these is always superior than moving to a new settlement. And remember once your high producing ore tile is doubled, making more cities would be a lot simpler.
• Looks Inferior: Think about it, other players are expanding like crazy, having 4–5 settlements and there you are with a bunch of dev cards and unable to build roads. This makes you less of a target for the untrained especially in the end game when everyone combines to stop the player in the lead.

Q] What if I don’t get the 2 VP’s even after buying 8–10 dev cards?

=> Even if you don’t get the VP’s, you’ll get something like a road builder or monopoly which will help you build another settlement. Worst Case, you rob 10 cards which can easily lead to an extra settlement.

Disadvantages/Points to consider :

• Largest Army is almost a necessity: You’ll be buying a lots of dev cards throughout the game and the only way this makes sense is if they directly contribute to your points. Think of having a largest army of 5 knights as 2/5 points gained for every knight bought.

Losing Largest Army would mean building an extra city: Possible but not preferable

• Frustrating : Not gonna lie, this strategy if often very frustrating because you don’t seem to be making any progress after two initial cities. Building that 3rd settlement is a huge hassle and would require you to do some forced trading. It’s unlikely but a very much a possibility that players with high road building capabilities block out all your settlement spots and you’ll be stuck with no place to expand.
• Low Ore/Food Board: Sacrificing too much production for this strategy would be a disaster as other players would match your ore/food production by expanding quickly and getting to ports for making favourable trades.

High Ore/Food Board: If there is Ore/Wheat sheep enough for 2–3 players, then perhaps look at getting the advantage by acquiring road material and not competing for the longest army. Basically cities and settlements/longest road instead of cities and dev cards/largest army.

2] Production is King

If you can’t get to that high ore spot, what do you do ? Easy, you pick the highest producing spots/ and expand quickly to ports to get the required ore/food.

3] Resource Coordination

Often players hold 8–9 cards but can’t do anything useful without some unfavourable trades. So here are a few tips to follow:

• Resource Requirement: A good rule of thumb is that ore is the most required resource and sheep is the least required resource. Try to get the resources production in the ratio of their requirements. Usually for dev card game and even in general ore is required more than food and food is required more than sheep. And Remember, you can’t do anything without food.

-> Ore : Wheat : Sheep :: 5: 4: 3

-> Wood: Brick :: 1: 1 (Equal value)

• Diversity of Numbers : A good idea but not a must if to get on as many different numbers are possible. If you have tiles on 8,6,5 & 9, you’ll never be starved for too long in the game. For example if you already have settlement on a 5 ore, it’s better to pick the 9 ore for the second settlement instead of doubling on the same 5 ore given all other things are equal. This reduces your dependence on certain numbers and makes you less vulnerable to a robber. Also your cards grow at a consistent pace rather than randomly which makes it less likely that a 7 roll(dropping half of cards when holding >7 cards) will affect you.
• Co-ordinated Wood/Brick: While it is good to select as many numbers as possible, it’s best to have wood & brick on the same number because they are always required at the same time, and one is useless without the other. Eg: Having a Wood and brick on a 5 tile would ensure you make tons of roads and longest road is easy to get.
• Tradability: It’s always good to hold a scarce/in demand resource in plenty to make trading easy if at all you can’t get the resource coordination right.

4] Port Strategy:

As the name suggest, this strategy involves piling on high production of a single resource and having a port for the same. This is usually a bad strategy on it’s own but may work on weird maps where same resources are clustered and you are locked out of critical resource.

Food Clustered at the top right corner (6–9–5)

• Trades: If you find yourself considering this strategy, try to skyrocket the value of your dominant resource by occupying most of its production on board. And use this monopoly to get good trades.
• Expansion: Keep a decent scope of expansion as having you cannot rely on port to drag you on for the whole game, you need to have production on most resources eventually.

Conclusion: It is not as much luck based as you may be initially led to believe. However, you can still lose despite a perfect placement/strategy. And always remember to have fun, happy colonizing!

Credits: Sahil Khare