Settlers of Catan Essay

[Jacob Williams]

Here is an essay I wrote for my english class last semester over my favorite board game. If any of you guys are Settlers fans then I hope you enjoy this and find it useful.

I’ve Got Wood for Sheep!

Settlers of Catan only has three basic strategies. Understanding how they work together is the key to being a better player. My goal is to briefly describe to you the advantages, set up, and disadvantages of each strategy. These three strategies are: manifest destiny, urbanization, and aggressive development.
A manifest destiny strategy is one where a player finds his path to victory by building Roads and Settlements to increase his presence on the board. This goal has several advantages. First of all, it allows you, the reader, to benefit from different numbers on Tiles so that you are getting more resources on each roll of the dice. A side benefit to increase board presence is that it’s harder for other players to ruin your game with the Robber. The more Tiles you have the less dependent you become on anyone. Another advantage with manifest destiny is that you make it more difficult for opponents to block you while simultaneously blocking opponents.
To set up a manifest destiny you are going to have secure a good supply of Wood and Brick. Also, you will need to be able to produce Wheat and Sheep on your own as well. Ore will not be as important to your strategy. During the Set Up Phase in the beginning of the game, you can ignore placing your initial Settlements on Ore Tiles, but place them close enough to expand to an Ore Tile.
Enthusiastic new players should find manifest destiny most useful, but they need to be aware of the disadvantages in this strategy. The biggest draw back is that Wood and Brick, which are critical to your set up, lose value in trades over time. In the end game, players are trying to acquire as much Ore and Wheat as possible because they’ve already built their Roads and Settlements, so it’s incredibly difficult to trade among players. Ultimately, you can’t win on Roads and Settlements alone. If you build all five of your Settlements and secure Longest Road, then you only have seven points. To get your other three Victory Points consider urbanization.
Urbanization is a strategy where a player concentrates on upgrading his Settlements to Cities. The advantage to this route is that it allows you to maximize the production of the Tiles you already have since Cities produce twice as many resources as Settlements. Another advantage to urbanization is that you can still have a chance at victory once someone has blocked you in. Building Cities also allows you to get Settlements back once you’ve built them all. Also, the resources, Ore and Wheat, increase in value in trades as the game progresses.
If you want to set up an urbanization strategy, then it’s critical to place your initial Settlements on the best Ore and Wheat numbers on the board. Keep in mind that Ore, unlike most resources, only has three instead of four Tiles, so automatically there is a shortage in supply. However, you can’t ignore any of the other resources since you need to initially build Roads and Settlements to make more Cities.
This resource intensity is the biggest disadvantage to urbanization. You have to build two Roads and then a Settlement before upgrading to a City. This means that Cities cost you three Wood, three Brick, one Wheat, and one Sheep on top of the three Ore and two Wheat. Speed, or lack there of, is also a disadvantage to this strategy. If the dice don’t roll the way you need them to, then you will find yourself losing really fast. This speed issue is further complicated because Tiles with Cities are juicy targets for the Robber. And just like with manifest destiny, you can’t win on building Cities alone. There are only four of them available to you, and if you build them all, then you will only have eight points. To get your other two Victory Points you will have to go back to manifest destiny or switch over to aggressive development.
Aggressive development is the strategy where a player builds a lot of Development Cards to win. Robber control is the greatest benefit with this choice since over half of the cards in the deck are Soldiers. Constantly moving the Robber with Soldiers allows you to steal multiple resources from opponents. This ability to decrease your opponents’ resources while increasing your own is further enhanced with the Monopoly card since it allows you to simultaneously steal all of one resource from all your opponents. Development Cards also give you Victory Points which can be concealed from other players by not playing them until you are about to win. Concealing points makes you less of a target for the Robber. And just like with urbanization, the resources used for aggressive development, Ore, Wheat and Sheep, increase in value as the game plays out.
The set up for aggressive development is very similar to urbanization. During the Set Up Phase you will have to place your initial Settlements on a healthy supply of Ore, Wheat, and Sheep. You can over look Wood or Brick, but don’t over look both because it can cause you to be dependent on trading. If you can’t place on either of those, then place close enough to build to them quickly.
When you are using aggressive development, keep in mind that your biggest disadvantage is that you will not be increasing your production from Tiles. Also, you are very limited by speed since you can only play one Non-victory Point Development Card per turn. Even though you can win with Victory Points provided through cards, it’s very improbable. To help move along your game you will need to do some urbanization or manifest destiny.
New players are often asking me which of these strategies is the best. For me, being a very experienced player, urbanization heavy games seems to work best for me. However, I don’t want to say one particular strategy is better in all instances. My advice to new players is to be flexible. Certain strategies will work in certain games and some won’t. What is most important is to learn when those happen and how to counter them. I’m confident that after reading this guide that you are ahead of the curve, and you will know how to handle these problems as you play.