5 ms·

I once read an article somewhere about how he spent huge amounts of time thoroughly playtesting the entire game with his children. This is what made the game ba

I once read an article somewhere about how he spent huge amounts of time thoroughly playtesting the entire game with his children. This is what made the game balanced and easy to grasp. My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention. You only come up with mechanics like this if you put in the time playtesting. [*] RIP

SkyPuncher 4y ago
> My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention. We've actually found this to be very off-putting. It often ends up with certain players remaining stuck in long droughts, often unable to do anything. As a result, we tend to play with "welfare". Essentially, a secondary currency system that can be exchanged for any resource. Cost scales with the amount of victory points you have, so it becomes less valuable as you advanced closer to victory. We've found this helps create a bit of balance and ensure that everyone has a chance to stay engaged.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thefringthing 4y ago
  Some people play by drawing from a deck of dice rolls without replacement in order to reduce the variance.
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    I actually have that deck. However, I can't get my group to play it. They say that the actual process of rolling the dice is fun. I tend to agree.
    - Rebelgecko 4y ago
      What I'do you laid all the cards out face down on the table, rolled the dice, and chose whichever card was closest?
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    It seems like if you have a good memory, you could be a lot more strategic with the robber when doing this (assuming you mean a deck of 36 cards, you know that a recently drawn "roll" won't come up until the next reshuffle).
    - thefringthing 4y ago
      Indeed! You may reasonably regard this to be a bug or a feature.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  Check out https://www.thegamemaster.nl/nl/spellen-ontembare-stad.htm https://www.thegamemaster.nl/nl/spellen-ontembare-stad.htm Not sure if there’s an English version. It’s similar to catan, but you have a bit more control over your course
  - woolion 4y ago
    NL/DE only with English translation as pdf. The reviews I read also state that the luck factor is overpowering though. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13542/de-ontembare-stad https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13542/de-ontembare-stad
- FalconSensei 4y ago
  > We've actually found this to be very off-putting. It often ends up with certain players remaining stuck in long droughts, often unable to do anything. same here. There were (online/zoom) games where I spent like 15~20 minutes on twitter, and just clicking 'roll' on my turn because I could never do anything I prefer ticket-to-ride, where I can always buy a card or two, and always (after buying enough), put some trains on the board.
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    Yes! Ticket To Ride has become our go to. We also play a lot of Pan-Am recently.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      Power Grid and Puerto Rico! https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico
- coryfklein 4y ago
  This is indeed frustrating, and it's the reason that when I play with newer players I strongly recommend to them not to place their 2 initial settlements on the same numbers! If you put those initial settlements on 2 intersections that happen to restrict you to only rolls of 3, 6, and 9 you're in for a world of hurt even though 6 and 9 aren't "bad" numbers per se.
  - totetsu 4y ago
    Could be a good strategy for those looking for an excuse to never play catan again.
- WA 4y ago
  Interesting. I never considered this. Looked it up and found specific rules and an interesting discussion on BoardGameGeek. Well worth reading, especially if you are an advanced player: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/150443/famous-welfare-variant https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/150443/famous-welfare-varia...
- BayesianDice 4y ago
  I used to play a lot of Catan and loved the game but then stopped for a few years over COVID (while I played other games online). When I tried it again, that's when I noticed this "drought" problem more obviously. (But that's just a niggle in an otherwise great game!)
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  It needs a unfair-fair dice, as is used for random in many games. True random can produce really unfair results, so in any game there is a counter in the background, counting "misses" and gives you a win every third or fourth dice roll. That way it feels more "fair".
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    Oh. That's a good system. Basically, if your turn comes back around and you haven't gained a resource, you can pick any resource up.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  If you get stuck like that in Catan you really have nobody but yourself to blame. Sure, if you put your villages on the 2 and 12 you’ll have a really hard time ever getting anything. If you’re anywhere in the 5-9 range you’ll almost always have something every round.
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    This is statistically not true. While dice rolls follow predictable distribution, in aggregate, they do not do so in the micro environment. You can end up on droughts on "statistically common" numbers. We've found this is further compounded by the fact that some resources will naturally end up with poor numbers on them. You might have a game where there's only one good "brick" hex, but two people have commandeered it. That resource becomes so valuable, that you can never acquire it. While you can technically trade to the bank, the 7 rule means it's hard to acquire enough cards to make the trade.
  - igravious 4y ago
    I agree. Complaining that the intentionally random dice-rolling element in Catan is unfair is just … words fail me …
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
> My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention. I find the variance here way too high. Coupled with being a long game, this essentially bums out a few of the players who end up missing out in resources in early or mid-game and then just stagnating and getting bored. When I'm forced to play the game, I've played by taking the average of a set of dice rolls (essentially shaping your result into a distribution that approaches normal as you have more rolls) but honestly I just don't bother playing Catan when given the choice. I certainly credit Catan for being my cohort's gateway into the world of board games, a lifelong hobby, and for that Mr. Teuber has my eternal gratitude.
- jahsome 4y ago
  And here I thought _I_ was an elitest for looking down at the Parker Bros. catalog et al from the Catanian peaks. I guess maybe I'm not so sophisticated after all ;) Curious - what is your go-to board game?
  - Zircom 4y ago
    Not OP but I'm very fond of Bang!, the card based version not the dice version though. And now that I'm reading the Wikipedia page I'm seeing there's actually multiple options for playing online, which is great because all my friends hate it haha. Very cool. No sleep for me tonight :)
    - jahsome 4y ago
      Thanks for sharing! I've learned the fun of social deception games with friends fades rather fast, as in the replayability feels low. At least in my case, that is. I don't have a regular group, and so I play with mostly casual players. The intricacies of role-based play is somewhat lost. IME, at best, it's fun the first time or two, but at worst, it's frustrating to be deceived and can become emotionally taxing.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    I’ve been sucked into Wingspan a lot lately. I also like Carcassone (including the Hunters & Gatherers variant) and Azul. boardgamearena.com is a great way to try out lots of games.
furyofantares 4y ago
The famous and much maligned, but actually good game, Monopoly of course has the characteristic that the best stuff happens to you on opponents' turns. It's a great characteristic for a lot of groups. It's also a fairly rare characteristic despite two of the largest tabletop games ever, Catan and Monopoly, having versions of it. Machi Koro is an excellent more modern game with the same characteristic.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  I wasn’t aware of anything good ever happening with a game of monopoly. It’s a slow grind of hell. Settlers is like a gateway drug to so many good games.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    If a monopoly game takes longer than 30 minutes, you're not following the rules.
    - TheCycoONE 4y ago
      It can easily take forever following the rules if everyone plays conservatively and refuses to trade.
coffeeaddicted 4y ago
Not just with his family. He actually wrote himself an AI with some 60 page Excel monster which could play the game quite well. I worked with him for a short time around end of the nineties and he was incredibly dedicated to his game. He experimented a lot with different game scenarios, for example there is a quite fun Catan card game out there. And he came up with a bunch of scenarios for the PC game we were doing back then. He was also was a super friendly, down to earth person who showed up at game fairs talking to his player base.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  This is what I was hoping for because I only remember reading something about him and how important proper player testing was to him.
rvba 4y ago
The game is very poorly balanced for current standards. If you choose the start location poorly you automatically lose. Then due to the 'robber' mechanic you cannot follow any strategy, since you randomly lose resources. To add more: trade is almost never worth it. I think some expansion introduced small currency coins to try to facilitate more trade. After 2-3 hours the game ends since somoene managed to buy the cards that give victory points. This didnt happen due to any grand strategy, they were just lucky not to lose their resources to the robber. Those cards are a built in timer. Cathan could have been good in 1995, but now mechanically the game is very outdated and there are much better 'gateway' games. For example Carcassonne, which has very elegant mechanics. Cathan has this problem that your decision options are very limited: trade is often worth it only for one side - so the common strategy is to never trade; then you cannot do any long term strategy, since if you try to accumulate resources you randomly lose them to the robber.
- igravious 4y ago
  > If you choose the start location poorly you automatically lose. Yes, if you play badly initially it effects your entire game and you'll probably lose but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that is true for a lot of games. Catan is an excellent game; it's nicely balanced between luck, persuasion when it comes to trading, territorial maneuvering, resource acquisition, and so on …

SkyPuncher 4y ago

> My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention. We've actually found this to be very off-putting. It often ends up with certain players remaining stuck in long droughts, often unable to do anything. As a result, we tend to play with "welfare". Essentially, a secondary currency system that can be exchanged for any resource. Cost scales with the amount of victory points you have, so it becomes less valuable as you advanced closer to victory. We've found this helps create a bit of balance and ensure that everyone has a chance to stay engaged.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thefringthing 4y ago
Some people play by drawing from a deck of dice rolls without replacement in order to reduce the variance.
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  I actually have that deck. However, I can't get my group to play it. They say that the actual process of rolling the dice is fun. I tend to agree.
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    What I'do you laid all the cards out face down on the table, rolled the dice, and chose whichever card was closest?
- aidenn0 4y ago
  It seems like if you have a good memory, you could be a lot more strategic with the robber when doing this (assuming you mean a deck of 36 cards, you know that a recently drawn "roll" won't come up until the next reshuffle).
  - thefringthing 4y ago
    Indeed! You may reasonably regard this to be a bug or a feature.
jbverschoor 4y ago
Check out https://www.thegamemaster.nl/nl/spellen-ontembare-stad.htm https://www.thegamemaster.nl/nl/spellen-ontembare-stad.htm Not sure if there’s an English version. It’s similar to catan, but you have a bit more control over your course
- woolion 4y ago
  NL/DE only with English translation as pdf. The reviews I read also state that the luck factor is overpowering though. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13542/de-ontembare-stad https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13542/de-ontembare-stad
FalconSensei 4y ago
> We've actually found this to be very off-putting. It often ends up with certain players remaining stuck in long droughts, often unable to do anything. same here. There were (online/zoom) games where I spent like 15~20 minutes on twitter, and just clicking 'roll' on my turn because I could never do anything I prefer ticket-to-ride, where I can always buy a card or two, and always (after buying enough), put some trains on the board.
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  Yes! Ticket To Ride has become our go to. We also play a lot of Pan-Am recently.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Power Grid and Puerto Rico! https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico
coryfklein 4y ago
This is indeed frustrating, and it's the reason that when I play with newer players I strongly recommend to them not to place their 2 initial settlements on the same numbers! If you put those initial settlements on 2 intersections that happen to restrict you to only rolls of 3, 6, and 9 you're in for a world of hurt even though 6 and 9 aren't "bad" numbers per se.
- totetsu 4y ago
  Could be a good strategy for those looking for an excuse to never play catan again.
WA 4y ago
Interesting. I never considered this. Looked it up and found specific rules and an interesting discussion on BoardGameGeek. Well worth reading, especially if you are an advanced player: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/150443/famous-welfare-variant https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/150443/famous-welfare-varia...
BayesianDice 4y ago
I used to play a lot of Catan and loved the game but then stopped for a few years over COVID (while I played other games online). When I tried it again, that's when I noticed this "drought" problem more obviously. (But that's just a niggle in an otherwise great game!)
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
It needs a unfair-fair dice, as is used for random in many games. True random can produce really unfair results, so in any game there is a counter in the background, counting "misses" and gives you a win every third or fourth dice roll. That way it feels more "fair".
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  Oh. That's a good system. Basically, if your turn comes back around and you haven't gained a resource, you can pick any resource up.
Aeolun 4y ago
If you get stuck like that in Catan you really have nobody but yourself to blame. Sure, if you put your villages on the 2 and 12 you’ll have a really hard time ever getting anything. If you’re anywhere in the 5-9 range you’ll almost always have something every round.
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  This is statistically not true. While dice rolls follow predictable distribution, in aggregate, they do not do so in the micro environment. You can end up on droughts on "statistically common" numbers. We've found this is further compounded by the fact that some resources will naturally end up with poor numbers on them. You might have a game where there's only one good "brick" hex, but two people have commandeered it. That resource becomes so valuable, that you can never acquire it. While you can technically trade to the bank, the 7 rule means it's hard to acquire enough cards to make the trade.
- igravious 4y ago
  I agree. Complaining that the intentionally random dice-rolling element in Catan is unfair is just … words fail me …

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

> My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention. I find the variance here way too high. Coupled with being a long game, this essentially bums out a few of the players who end up missing out in resources in early or mid-game and then just stagnating and getting bored. When I'm forced to play the game, I've played by taking the average of a set of dice rolls (essentially shaping your result into a distribution that approaches normal as you have more rolls) but honestly I just don't bother playing Catan when given the choice. I certainly credit Catan for being my cohort's gateway into the world of board games, a lifelong hobby, and for that Mr. Teuber has my eternal gratitude.

jahsome 4y ago
And here I thought _I_ was an elitest for looking down at the Parker Bros. catalog et al from the Catanian peaks. I guess maybe I'm not so sophisticated after all ;) Curious - what is your go-to board game?
- Zircom 4y ago
  Not OP but I'm very fond of Bang!, the card based version not the dice version though. And now that I'm reading the Wikipedia page I'm seeing there's actually multiple options for playing online, which is great because all my friends hate it haha. Very cool. No sleep for me tonight :)
  - jahsome 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing! I've learned the fun of social deception games with friends fades rather fast, as in the replayability feels low. At least in my case, that is. I don't have a regular group, and so I play with mostly casual players. The intricacies of role-based play is somewhat lost. IME, at best, it's fun the first time or two, but at worst, it's frustrating to be deceived and can become emotionally taxing.
- dhosek 4y ago
  I’ve been sucked into Wingspan a lot lately. I also like Carcassone (including the Hunters & Gatherers variant) and Azul. boardgamearena.com is a great way to try out lots of games.

furyofantares 4y ago

The famous and much maligned, but actually good game, Monopoly of course has the characteristic that the best stuff happens to you on opponents' turns. It's a great characteristic for a lot of groups. It's also a fairly rare characteristic despite two of the largest tabletop games ever, Catan and Monopoly, having versions of it. Machi Koro is an excellent more modern game with the same characteristic.

lostlogin 4y ago
I wasn’t aware of anything good ever happening with a game of monopoly. It’s a slow grind of hell. Settlers is like a gateway drug to so many good games.
- kuschku 4y ago
  If a monopoly game takes longer than 30 minutes, you're not following the rules.
  - TheCycoONE 4y ago
    It can easily take forever following the rules if everyone plays conservatively and refuses to trade.

coffeeaddicted 4y ago

Not just with his family. He actually wrote himself an AI with some 60 page Excel monster which could play the game quite well. I worked with him for a short time around end of the nineties and he was incredibly dedicated to his game. He experimented a lot with different game scenarios, for example there is a quite fun Catan card game out there. And he came up with a bunch of scenarios for the PC game we were doing back then. He was also was a super friendly, down to earth person who showed up at game fairs talking to his player base.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
This is what I was hoping for because I only remember reading something about him and how important proper player testing was to him.

rvba 4y ago

The game is very poorly balanced for current standards. If you choose the start location poorly you automatically lose. Then due to the 'robber' mechanic you cannot follow any strategy, since you randomly lose resources. To add more: trade is almost never worth it. I think some expansion introduced small currency coins to try to facilitate more trade. After 2-3 hours the game ends since somoene managed to buy the cards that give victory points. This didnt happen due to any grand strategy, they were just lucky not to lose their resources to the robber. Those cards are a built in timer. Cathan could have been good in 1995, but now mechanically the game is very outdated and there are much better 'gateway' games. For example Carcassonne, which has very elegant mechanics. Cathan has this problem that your decision options are very limited: trade is often worth it only for one side - so the common strategy is to never trade; then you cannot do any long term strategy, since if you try to accumulate resources you randomly lose them to the robber.

igravious 4y ago
> If you choose the start location poorly you automatically lose. Yes, if you play badly initially it effects your entire game and you'll probably lose but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that is true for a lot of games. Catan is an excellent game; it's nicely balanced between luck, persuasion when it comes to trading, territorial maneuvering, resource acquisition, and so on …