Die Sieders Von Cataan
David Roe
Has anyone psted a review of the above, p[ossibly misspelled
game? I had a bit of a flick through it in Just Games in London
last weekend, but bought Manhattan instead. Now I'm beginning
to wonder if I might just try to buy it mail order anyway, as it
looked so good. Opinions anyone?
Dave Roe
Dirk Bock
: Has anyone psted a review of the above, p[ossibly misspelled
: Dave Roe
Well,
one thing is obvious, you indeed misspelled it: it's called "Die Siedler von
Catan", whicvh means "The Settlers of Catan". I had posted a review in
de.rec.games.misc, but that's written in German...
This one will be a rather short description. One remark: there are lots of
people who absolutely *love* this game and the upright few who notice design
flaws in it. I'm one of the second group...
In die Siedler you try to build a civilization on an island faster than two or
three other cultures. The island consists of hex-tiles, each of which can
produce one commodity. This may be wood, clay, wool, stones or grain. Each
tile is also equipped with a chit giving it a production number. These numbers
run fropm 2 to 6 and from 8 to 12. On your turn you roll 2d6 to determine
which tiles produce. Any player who owns a settlement or town at that tile -
the settlements are build on the corners of the hexes - revceives one or two
units of said commodity. Via this mechanism and the possibility to trade
commodities with other players you try to gather commodities to do anything of
the following, costs in parantheses: build a road along a side of a hex (1
clay, 1 wood) build a settlement (1 clay, 1 wood, one grain), provided it is
situated at least two hex-sides away from the nearest neighbouring settlement
or town and the site is connected to another settlement or town of yours with
a road. Furthermore you may upgrade a settlement to a town (3 stones) or
"build" a civilization advances (1 stone, 1 wool, 1 grain), drawing a card,
which may give you a victory point (parliament, university, ...), a knight,
which in turn may influence the "robber", explained within a few lines.
Rolling a 7 you control the robber and no tile produces any commodity. The
robber is located on another tile of your choice and you steal a commodity
from another player, drawn at random. Your goal is to gain 10 points according
to the following list: one point for each settlement, two points for each
town, two points for the longest road (*not* the largest number of roads),
two points for for the greatest "army", number of knights that is, and finally
points gained from advances.
I've not covered aspect of the rules, but the preceeding description
should give you an idea of the game. The flaw in its design is, IMHO, that you
do not have any control which tiles produce what, when, and for which
player(s). This doesn't seem too bad at a glance, but due to the fact, that
you may be excluded from the "valuable" parts of the board by not being able
to build roads in the beginning, a player may become cut off from the race
for victory quite early. In that case your only chance is going for advances
and hoping for the correct ones to be drawn from the deck. In our games such a
situation, a single player losing after about half an hour and just waiting
for the rest of the game (up to two hours), occurs in about half of the
games.
I would describe the situation something like: you need skill to win "die
Siedler", but you've got to have luck in the first stages not to lose it.
But apart from that flaw, which could, again IMHO, tolerated in a game lasting
less than one one hour, Die Siedler von Catan *is* fun and satisfying to play.
---Dirk
P.s.: Hey, that's definitely the *best* opinion of the game I've yet expressed
by text or word of mouth... Becoming soft in my old days? :-)
---Dirk
Moo
: Siedler", but you've got to have luck in the first stages not to lose it.
: But apart from that flaw, which could, again IMHO, tolerated in a game lasting
: less than one one hour, Die Siedler von Catan *is* fun and satisfying to play.
Interesting observation. The game defintely has a strong luck factor.
However, the game is flexible enough in its trading to allow an awful lot of
leeway to lessen your civilization's weaknesses.
Example: In my first game, I was pretty heavily crippled in the beginning,
having decent access to a Sheep-6, and an Ore-10 as my primary production
centers, with NO brick or lumber. However, I both villages were on the sheep
hex. I built both to cities, then expanded my civilization straight toward
the nearest 3:1 port so I could trade the obscene number of sheep I was
producing in for bricks and lumber. (We were using sheep as paving and
building material :)
And I won by finishing out all of my 4 villages into cities after a 6 was
rolled twice in a row. Mild luck, but not entirely out of hand.
Moo
Frank
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Norm Stewart
it?
From the descriptions in this thread, it sounds interesting.
Norm
Brian Bankler
Settlers of Catan was the big game at the Gathering Of Friends. Ray
Pfeifer bought 5-10 copies and sold them the last withing an hour or two
of the official start of GoF. I suspect my set saw over 25 games in the
5 days it was there (I played in 3-4 of them).
Settlers does have the design flaw Dirk Bock mentioned, and I've
seen people who have been hosed early. 50% seems a little steep, but that
also depends on the initial setup. If you don't like this, the rules do
include a 'non-random' setup that is supposedly balanced, but I'm sure
that even then you can lose if you get unlucky with the dice. (The dice
that come with the set did not, after watching a few games, seem fair.
But after a few more games with different dice, we just decided that the
game itself takes a sadistic joy in tormenting certain people. But that
is neither here nor there).
However, even the people who get placed in the losers seat typically
want to play again in a few days. I suspect the reasons for it are
1) Settlers is a fast game. 2 hours is a really long game (it occasionally
happens, usually when a commodity is very scarce, ie Lumber is only produced
on a 2,4 or 12 or something like that). 1-1.5 hours is typical. Unlike
Germany, most games made in the US (at least, those discussed here) take
much longer. 1830, Civ, A&A, etc, are all 4+ hours. Being in a losing
situation for 1 hour is relatively painless. 2) Someone in a losing
situation can often get trades. I will trade with someone who is losing
before someone ahead of me, all other things being equal. I might even
make a mildly more painful trade. 3) The losing player (unless he monopolizes
a commodity....very rare to do that and be losing) won't often be the target
of robber attacks.
So, yes, Settlers does have the possibility of an early lose through no
fault of your own. But most games that anyone plays have that chance,
although perhaps not as large. (German games tend to be a bit better on
this that most US games...but then again, there tend to be less dice in
German games).
Brian Bankler
PS This account will be terminated June 10th.
PPS Can anyone send me a translation of Auf Achse (and card translations)
before then?