For some, its enough to play a game and enjoy it; others have an urge to dig a little deeper. Settlers of Catan is heralded as a great game. Today, I ask the question: WHY is it such good game? – Lets take a quick look at six specific features that make it one of the great games of all time.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Settlers of Catan challenges players to build up their small thriving economy on an island game board that is different every time the game is played. For an overview of how the game is played, you can find a review of the board game here. The basic game goal is to obtain resources, trade away those you can’t use for some you can, and then build structures on the board that allow you to gain victory points and often help you gain more resources. There are five different resources, and they are generated for everyone by a roll of the dice on each player’s turn. If you occupy a spot next to a winning hex tile, you gain resources even if its not your turn. However, you can only build during your turn and can only trade with the active player.

Just why is Settlers of Catan such a good game? There are many reasons, but today we will take a look at five that are particularly compelling:
1) Controlled randomness
2) Chance
3) Continuous participation
4) Safe kingdom building
5) Multiple ways to win
Settlers was probably not the first game to use each of these features, but they combine to make a great game for everyone almost every time the game is played.

Controlled Randomness
Since the game board is constructed from scratch every time the game is played, it is never the same game twice. A strategy that works in one game may not be very good in the next. Compare it to chess. Chess is a deep game, but the game starts in the exact same position each time. The first series of moves often have names associated with them because there are only a few optimal moves and responses. Consider a chess game where each side has a random set up of pieces in the back row, perhaps mirrors of each other to keep it fair. In this situation, a chess player would have to give up on memorizing set openings and instead evaluate each starting position to calculate out a new best opening move.

Each hexagon tile can produce one type of item and it produces when its number is rolled. Since both tiles and number tokens are placed semi randomly, each game with have different scarcities of resources. Plan on building lots of cities and buying cards in a brick-poor game, whereas a game with very little ore will usually have a lot of road and settlement building.

A truly random game may have limitless variations and but unrestrained randomness can cause severe problems, generating overpowering board locations that can be swept up by the first few players. For instance, because two dice roll the numbers 6 and 8 more frequently than almost any other number, a spot in the middle of three hexagons each with a 6 or an 8 would undoubtedly out produce any other spot on the board. Any player with a settlement or city on that spot would an unreasonable advantage over the other players. To rectify this, although the hexagons are placed randomly, the number tokens placed on top of the tiles are always placed in a set pattern. This pattern guarantees that no number 6 or 8 will ever be placed next to another 6 or 8. Most of the starting locations on the board will produce roughly the same number of resources. What changes in every game is the type and thus the overall scarcity of those resources. The number tokens serve as a control to prevent the random nature of the board from unbalancing the game.

Chance
Some board games, such as chess or Diplomacy, do not involve dice at all. There is no “luck” factor involved, so the skill in playing these games lies in knowing the best strategies and how to deal with the other players. Interpersonal skills aside, those who know the best strategies will almost always win. This can be a good attribute in a game, but is not always desirable. For a family strategy game, it is nice to have a small element of luck. This keeps the game from being a constant optimization problem and lets players of lesser experience or skill feel like they have a shot at winning the game.

In Settlers of Catan, chance comes into play in the form of the dice rolled for production. Here the designer found a pleasant middle ground. Sure, hex tiles that have numbers near 6 or 8 are far more likely to produce resources, but they aren’t guaranteed to do so. There can be long dry spells where it seems like almost anything but an 8 is rolled. This serves as a way to level the playing field. Good planning based on the odds of the dice is usually rewarded, but a run of good or bad luck can turn the tide of the game without overwhelming it. Chance plays a part, but not an overwhelming part of the game. This means the best players won’t win all the time. Compare this to chess, where the better player has a very high probability of winning the game. This element of chance helps strong strategy game players recruit other willing players. Folks are far more reluctant to play a game if they know they will almost certainly lose.

Participation
One of the groundbreaking aspects of Settlers of Catan for new players is the level of participation within the game. Everyone has the potential for something to happen on everyone else’s turn. This greatly reduces the downtime for each player in the game. Each roll of the dice, on your turn or not, offers you a chance to collect resources. During the trading phase of the game, everyone needs to keep an eye open for a good deal. While trades can only be negotiated and performed with the active player, it is very much a group activity. It offers plenty of chances for each player to offer their opinions on particularly good or bad trades. This concept of keeping everyone involved in the game, even if its not your turn, is repeated in many of the best German style board games of the past few years. While it is a simple idea to describe, it is probably one of the best attributes of the game.

Kingdom Building
Different people play games for different reasons. Some like to roll dice, some like to think deeply about strategy, and others enjoy building order out of chaos. Computer games like SimCity or Civilization are attractive to “builder” players because they enjoy building up a small little fiefdom or a thriving community. Settlers offers these people a bonus because nothing built in Settlers can ever be taken away. If a player wants to build a really long road and a couple of cities, there is no game mechanic that would cause that player to lose possession of their cities or their roads. Everyone knows the agony of seeing something you carefully constructed, like a hotel on Boardwalk, being taken away after all the effort spent on getting it there. In this way, Settlers has its competition set as less of a direct conflict and more of a race to a finish. Those that crave more direct conflict can feel free to stir things up during general game conversation and during the trading phases of the game.

Multiple Ways to Win
The board changes every game. There is never one strategy that is guaranteed to work. Depending on the placement of the number tokens or the whim of the dice, sometimes forsaking road and settlement expansion and just building cities is a good direction to take. Other times there are plenty of road building materials and since roads can’t overlap or cross one another, it’s a race to see who can section off and claim the most territory. There are usually several possible “good” strategies available on the game board, resulting in some nice decision making opportunities as those first few settlements are chosen.

This diversity is helped along by the balanced Victory Point (VP) system making possible several viable strategies. To win the game with 10 VPs players need to dabble a bit in everything. Players start with two settlements worth 1 VP each, but a strategy of just upgrading settlements to cities will only garner a total of 4 VPs, 2 for each of your starting settlements. On the other hand, no one can build more than 5 settlements, so sooner or later almost everyone needs to scrounge enough materials to build at least one city. A typical game winner might have three cities, maybe a longest road card, and a spare settlement or two. Because the VPs are balanced, players are forced to diversify. A player who may have become a city-specialist able to upgrade almost any number of cities will still struggle to build new roads and settlements that he can then upgrade. While that player works to build more settlements, others can try to catch up on their own city building.

When one game is not enough
For those who already know and love the game, the popularity of Settlers of Catan spawned a number of expansions and follow-up games. A game does not need to have expansions to be great, and many great games have some poorly designed expansions. In this case, Settlers of Catan has several high-quality expansions and variations that can add to the game. The simplest variation requires no additional resources, just shuffle the water and land tiles together and create an “Islands of Catan” game. Of the expansions for the core game, the 5-6 player expansion is highly recommended, since you might not always have only 3 or 4 people who want to play. Two expansions actually add new units, tiles, and other rules: Cities and Knights of Catan and Seafarers of Catan. The Cities and Knights expansion focuses on expanding the options available to building, allowing cities to upgrade in various ways. The Seafarers expansion focuses more on exploring outward providing rules for discovering and using land tiles forming small islands. Both expansions add slightly to the length of the game and have the appropriate 5-6 player expansion available. Kingdom builder type players might particularly enjoy the Cities and Knights expansion. I enjoy the Seafarers since I like the thrill of discovering new land to see what it might produce.

In addition to the expansions, there are other styles of entire Catan games if you don’t like the island theme or just can’t get enough of all things Catan. There’s Spacefarers of Catan, Settlers of Caanan (which has a sort of mild religious tie-in), Settlers of the Stone Age, and even a travel version of the original game for those on the go. A Settlers of Catan 2 player card game is a fairly good two player game. The rules are a bit complex at first if you’re unfamiliar with the board game, but it has a good replay value and gives strategy-minded gamers some depth in a two player game. The card game also has an expansion (surprise) if your tastes run to the more complex side of things. For those with young kids a kinder, gentler Kids of Catan version is also available.

How is it for kids?
Settlers of Catan is in the fairly new category of board games called family strategy. They are typically designed to have a bit of strategic depth, but not be so complex that it would alienate younger kids or strategy-adverse adults. This is a great family game for kids in middle school or above. The rules are simple enough for most kids to learn at this age, although older kids will be able to develop some deeper strategies. The trading aspect of the game is particularly great to help kids learn how to make good trades. Parents who aren’t necessarily seeking to win the game can often arrange a trade or two to subtly give a little boost to kids who might feel like they’re falling behind. With no violence, real or abstracted, it should be a wholesome enough game for just about anyone. I hope to soon check out the “Kids of Catan” version in the future and report back on it. It’s marketed for kids 4 and up.

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