Fire up those replicators and get to work!

Concerning the other game situations, they are indeed hard to analyze without actually sitting in front of your screen. Which benefits or lack or such are involved when the algorithms decide where to put a robber is sometimes less than obvious. All I can say is that strong human players have played against the AIs and have never accused them of playing unfair or of cheating.

Don’t get me wrong: If there are bugs, then they need to be fixed. In such a case, I’d like you to document the situation as good as possible and send it in to us.

I’m quite sure that the dice are fair, but the AI’s aren’t.

I’m calling Klauss out on this. there must be a way of demonstrating the AI’s programming (get a dev on this blog or something).

Looking at this naively, one would expect that among 36 dice rolls there should be exactly one “2″ (1/2), exactly one “12″ (6/6), five times “6″ (1/5, 2/4, 3/3, 4/2, 5/1), six times “7″ (1/6, 2/5, 3/4, 4/3, 5/2, 6/1), etc. But this simply isn’t true: This ideal probability distribution works only according to the “law of the large numbers” — that is: when rolling two dice for a near indefinite (!) number of times, 1/36 or the outcomes should be “2″, 1/36 or the outcomes should be “12″, 5/36 of the outcomes should be “6″, 1/6 of the outcomes should be “7″, etc.

72 dice rolls is far from “near indefinite”. With such a small number of dice rolls, anything can happen — and will happen, as you have clearly shown. Having no settlements close to a “5″, and then a lot of “5″s being rolled is no different from having no settlements to a “5″ and almost no “5″s being rolled: It’s both as likely or unlikely, as there are “just” 72 dice rolls.

About the AI cheating: The decision of who wants to trade with whom is not cheating. This could happen at table game with real humans as well. It probably won’t, as human players might see things less serious as a computer algorithm — except when being in a tournament situation. I have seen a lot of bare-knuckle game practice on different occasions.

This strongly underlines the point that Klaus has given in his blog post: How strong should a (non-cheating) AI be? As good as possible to be a tough match for the best human players? Or (quoting) “As good as required for an occasional Catan player to win against a computer opponent.” I can only assume that the AI plays too strong for your taste, and thus it’s no fun. I am really sorry for that.

In case it’s too small to see, here are the frequencies for numbers two through ten:

Two: 3
Three: 6
Four: 5
Five: 14
Six: 7
Seven: 19
Eight: 8
Nine: 4
Ten: 6

That’s right, a Five was rolled 14 times, while Six and Eight combined was rolled 15 times. Of the remaining resource numbers, none was rolled more than 6 times.

Guess which was ONLY number between Two and Ten that I didn’t control? Yep, Five.

I also rolled only 2 Sevens. The rest of the AIs combined rolled 17. At least half of the AI rolls were used against me (i.e., stealing my cards), plus at least 4 Knights, even though Jean had a hefty lead throughout almost the entire game.

The AI cheats. This might be a subtler way of doing it, but it does. This doesn’t even address the more blatant cheating:
- They can see your Victory Point cards
- They will Robber you and steal your cards with higher probability than each other unless you’re very far behind
- They refuse to trade with you at 7+ VPs – not even a 3:1 ratio works – but they will happily trade 1:1 with each other even if they have 9 points

It’s not fun.

I try to support indy book and game stores whenever possible,

Thanks again!

Ayumi

Star Trek: Catan™ previews at Gen Con, Indianapolis in August 2012 (www.gencon.com) and sold exclusively through U.S.A. based Target® stores beginning in the autumn. Hobby exclusive Star Trek: Catan™ products are also planned. http://mayfairgames.com/news.php?id=175

When will it be released to stores and how can I get a copy?

I read in a recent blog that it will be marketed through Target ::gasp:: Say it ain’t so!

Very cleverly thought up; I had given up on the idea of having sea tiles, and you guys manage it!

Curious to see what the Cannon symbol means, perhaps a means to beat back Pirate Attack events?

Cheers.

PS: Is there a release date for this expansion yet?

Do you plan to soon release the game in France ? My friends doesn’t read well english… Und ich spreche kein deutsch

Awesome, thanks for the 1000s of hrs of enjoyment and hehe frustration you have given me

May you proper for the amount of work I see in your efforts,

I guessed that for the next Expansion we’d get an Era of Luxury, an Era of Exploration (which was confirmed), now if only we get an Era of Industry I will officially become a Time Lord.

Cheers!

Thanks

I really am not sure if I am addressing the right person or even the right post. i can see it’s been posted last year already.
My name is Sarah Chogsom, I am from Mongolia and also a freelance translator (English Mongolian). In fact, I and my husband, we are board game fans. Some of our friends from England and the States happened to bring and that’s how we’ve been ADDICTED to it. Our family, as well as other mongolian families enjoy it! I think it’s great game, and the number of people interested are still increasing. We happened to fall in love with the game that we were tempted buy it over from the States. Of course we had to pay twice as much for the game. Cos, we live on the other side of the world!
Mongolia is a developing country. I do not know what knowledge you have of the country. but it definitely seems that our people here are desperate for some good games. The only board games we have is the mongolized, maybe almost a “pirated bad copy” of the Monopoly. even though the game seemed to cost expensive. People are still buying it. We
have one., And we know that it is not-comparable to Catan of course!
Therefore, I am wondering if you look forward to expanding Catan and the other games into mongolian market. Since we only have a population of maximum 3 million ppl. I know this might not be lucrative. However, if you want to be the first to enter and establish this game sector into the society. I believe there is a chance flourish.
I would gladly help in all the processes if you want, or at least translate the materials. Actually, what I was wondering is to have the similar Catan, but Mongolized like the CHinggis Khan era, etc.
Thank you very much for your concern, if you took the patience to read through this.

Yours,
Sarah

Mr. Teuber can I ask you a question when Polish language version of this new card game will be available to buy in Poland? I know that you are not the publisher but maybe you can ask some questions at your friends in Kosmos?

Cheers
Michal

[...]The Vikings and Catan | Catanism[...]…

Any news on an online version of Traders and Barbarians?

-perception of ‘ganging up’ by the computer. The AI sometimes sends the robber to you even when you do not posses the most points.

-true randomness of the dice. Because the dice are truly random there will be sequences where the most common roles are in fact not rolled. Combine that with rolls which benefit the AI and it appears unfair.

Overall, it is an excellent implementation of a great board game.

I’m a huge Catan fan, and I just recently picked up the Rivals of Catan card game, which by the way is AWESOME. I was playing with my girlfriend but we came into a question about the face-up stack of Era of Gold cards. The rule book states that each card with a 1x by it (Moneylender, Merchant Guild (x2) should be in this stack. This however makes the 2 card stacks uneven. You just stated at the end of your blog however that it should just be the 2 Merchant Guilds. What is it?

P.S. Thanks again so much for creating a wonderful game series, I’ve enjoyed so many hundreds of hours playing with friends and family alike!!!

In the Duell of the Princes there’s no Face-Up Expansion Card stack and the Merchant Guild, Hedge Tavern and University go into their appropriate draw stacks.

The strength or trade advantages are also lost in the case of draw. The sentence in the rule book is a wrong translation.

très bon , votre blog modèle est véritablement merveilleux , je suis cherchant pour la nouveau modèle pour mon moncler doudoune personnel blog , j’aime vôtre, maintenant Je vais à aller chercher le même modèle !…

At a later point, you might want to enrich your game experience. The blue “Seafarers” Expansion add ships and the exploration in the sea to the gameplay. Again: If you buy the regular box, you’re good to go with 3-4 players. If you want to play with 5-6 players, also get the smaller blue box. — At this point, you might have four game boxes (big red, small red, big blue, small blue), and you can play “The Settlers of Catan” together with “Seafarers” with up to 5-6 players.

Another Expansion would be “Cities & Knights” in the green box – it will give you more achievements to be built on the regular island, more resources – in short a lot of more game tactics to be tried out with 3-4 players. To play with 5-6 players, add the smaller green box as well.

You can combine “Seafarers” with “Cities & Knights”, but you don’t have to. You must start with the Basic Game in the red box, but you could go either way to “Seafarers” or “Cities & Knights” first and add the other one later. You can of course combine the Basic Game with both expansions and extensions for 5-6 players, leading you to six game boxes (big red, small red, big blue, small blue, big green, small green).

The third expansion is called “Traders & Barbarians” and it comes in purple box — again, to be added to the Basic Game. It contains various variants and scenarios. It is the third Expansion we made, but you can of course start with this in addition to the Basic Game. Again: Big box for 3-4 players, for 5-6 player add the small box as well. You can start with the Basic Game and add “Traders & Barbarians” first, and continue later with “Seafarers” and/or “Cities & Knights” — or in any other order you like. You can combine all Expansions with each other, find our more about this on above mentioned web page.

… Finally, you might end up with 8 boxes, both big and small ones in red, blue, green, and purple. But again: The first step would be to buy the big red box “Basic Game” and start to play with 3-4 players.

I was thinking, its a shame the card game isn’t a multi-player game. It would be cool if it could be expanded to include more than 2 players. It clearly offers something different than the board game, so its not a matter of card game vs. board game.

The only thing that bothers me are the different rules on the cards, like their functions and the change of commerce points.
Its a good thing though to update the cardgame and give it a new twist.

The point is, I have personally created an expansion for the boardgame, where I remodelled the square developmentcards into the standard development cards from the boardgame and adding additional cards based from the other expansions.

It would be for naught if the rules changes and the card game look totally different with the my own expansion. Its still playable but I hope that others would play this verion as well before the change in the cardgame has been through.

Greetings from the Netherlands,

Best Regards,

Arnd

what’s the right place to give the developers some change to
make some update’s and blowing some BUGS away!!!!

plz anyone ideas???

Thanks again

BrianR

Very interesting progression of Catan games. Its neat to see how these things we enjoy so much come to be.

We have spent a lot of money on the all of the board game expansions (including the 5-6 player expansions) and all well worth it! Sadly though, my wife plays the board game very little. Although she does not join in the games, she does enjoy hosting Catan game nights at our home, and finds them to be lively and entertaining as some of us take our Cataning very seriously…

Recently, I purchased the Catan card game and to my delight, she now plays with me! This is her kind of game, and when we don’t have a group to play… its now my kind of game as well.

Are there any updates on the Princes of Catan game? I am considering purchasing the Catan card game expansion, but will consider waiting if the new one is to be released soon.

Thanks for making the various Catan games so enjoyable…I wish I could convey how much fun it has made for us personally.

Brian R

I was using *****.*******.*** but they somehow closed the registration and wiped all old accounts (mine and my family’s included). Please, anyone with a suggestion please let me know. I’m dying to connect with some family and friends scattered over the world with some non Xbox Catan.

Is there a different term to use?

The concept of the visual landscape made from individual cards is why the Settlers card game is one of my top five all time favorite games. The illustrations by Michael Menzel shown so far for the new Princes game are, in my opinion, going to produce an even richer and more enjoyable landscape. Klaus Teuber’s explanation of game play portends an even better game than the original.

However, I’m not entirely happy with the idea of playing theme decks as isolated “ages” in the history of Catan. I enjoy playing the “original” game incorporating two or more of the theme decks with 16 to 20 VP’s required to win. The size of my principality is limited to eight settlements only by the five foot length of my game table. Looks beautiful against the green felt surface. These games, played solo, last about three hours.

I play a solo variant of my own devising that allows me to leave the game at the end of any turn and resume later, with no loss of information because of the delay. [My memory is not of the type to make much use of information gained in earlier stack searches.] Almost all the player interaction is replicated using two new random event methods and the difficulty of the game is easily adjustable. I doubt many others share my delight in solo tile laying games so I’ve never published it on Board Game Geek or elsewhere.

My preferred game length is partly due to the duration of winters here in Vermont.

One suggestion. A semantic choice that troubles me and may be due to the translation from German to English: The fact that successful games engender the development and sale of “expansions” makes the original card game’s use of the word “expansion” to describe the piles from which cards are drawn somewhat confusing. The theme decks of the original game were expansions. I suggest that the new game use a different word to describe the “draw stacks.”

If you need a native English speaker, well educated, lawyer and former periodicals editor, to review the new game’s rules and other text for grammar and idiom usage, I would be glad to help.

I am looking forward to the new artwork and the new game.

Gretings from Barcelona, Spain.

That said, the changes sound pretty scoped, and I wonder if there will be instructions for existing owners of the game to play with the new rules. Is an “upgrade” being considered for existing customers, or a new set of runes for playing the old game with the new rules?

My “I guess” is that now I have to decide whether to buy a new set for the new, and hopefully, better experience.

Good luck and I am excited to see the results.

(I also purchased a tin-can German Version, for the container and figurines)

For the record, my wife has always loved the card game more, exactly for the intrigue, detail, etc. you blog about in these card game posts. So: thanks for helping me see the light. (And a year of plenty!)

Kudos also posted on my blog: http://dmandle.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/settling-catan/