Critical Play: Settlers of Catan
Is this game balanced?
I played Settlers of Catan designed by Klaus Teuber. It’s one of my all time favorite strategy games. Players take on the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players gain points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of points, typically 10, wins. I have played this game dozens of times with family and friends, and it is still fun to this day. I think this is a testament to the game’s balance, that is, there is no one dominant strategy. There are so many valid paths to victory, so it’s really up to the player to assess the situation dealt to them and adapt to it the best way they can.
Balance in an Asymmetric Game
If you’ve ever played Catan, you know that perhaps the most critical decision a player can make comes before the game even starts, that is, where to place your settlements. Before the game starts, hexagonal resource tiles randomly assemble to form the game board and a number is placed on each. Players take turns placing settlements on the crossroads between these tiles and this determines when a player gets to collect resources during the game. For example, if you place a settlement adjacent to a forest hex with the number 9, you get to pick up one lumber card whenever a 9 is rolled during the game. Per the laws of probability, some dice rolls are more likely than others. Therefore, it’s advantageous to settle next to tiles with commonly rolled numbers like 6 or 8, as opposed to rarer rolls like 2 or 12.
Because players place their settlements sequentially, there is an inevitable asymmetry. On the one hand, the player who places the first settlement has an advantage because they get their first choice of location on the board. On the other hand, players who place their settlement later have more complete information about where other players have already settled (and can try to distance themselves to avoid future conflicts). Additionally, during this initial settling phase, each player gets to place two settlements instead of just one. A snaking order is used so the players who place their first settlement before everyone else places their first have to place their second settlement after everyone else places their second. By and large, there is asymmetry in Catan since the game is sequential and some player has to go first. That being said, the mechanics of Catan make it so that this asymmetry does not doom the game’s balance. I’ve never felt like my game was sunk because I had to be the first or last person to place my settlement.
Balance Between Strategies in a Game
You win Catan by being the first player to reach 10 victory points. There are many ways to acquire victory points in Catan. You can:
- Build a settlement (1 point)
- Upgrade a settlement to a city (2 points)
- Have the longest road (2 points)
- Have the largest army (2 points)
- Draw a VP card from the Development Cards deck (1 point)
There is no one dominant strategy in Catan. It’s not the case where someone would say something like, “you can only win if you upgrade all your cities to settlements” or “don’t bother going for the largest army”. All the ways to acquire victory points have very similar cost/benefit ratios and these ratios dynamically change with the state of the game board and what stage you are at in the game.
Balance Between Game Objects
In Catan, there are five different resource cards: brick, lumber, grain, wool, and ore. You need resources to build different things in the game like additional roads, settlements, and cities.
You collect these resources when the number on a hex you are adjacent to gets rolled. So, it makes sense that you would want to settle near hexes with the resources you want. Luckily, there aren’t any overpowered or useless resources. The building costs for things like roads, settlements, cities, and development cards are distributed in such a way where a player essentially needs all the resources to thrive in the game.
There are some popular strategies that prioritize certain resources during certain phases of the game. For example, many players prioritize brick and lumber at the beginning of the game because those resources are conducive to expansion (i.e. building roads and settlements). Then later in the game, resources like wheat and ore are helpful because you can upgrade your settlements to cities. This is a common strategy, but it is not necessarily the optimal strategy. There is no sure fire way to ensure that you win Catan, and that’s what keeps the game balanced and interesting.
