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Comment by SkyPuncher | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

Could be a good strategy for those looking for an excuse to never play catan again.

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!)

> 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.

Yes! Ticket To Ride has become our go to.

We also play a lot of Pan-Am recently.

Power Grid and Puerto Rico!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico

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-varia...

Some people play by drawing from a deck of dice rolls without replacement in order to reduce the variance.

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.

What I'do you laid all the cards out face down on the table, rolled the dice, and chose whichever card was closest?

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).

Indeed! You may reasonably regard this to be a bug or a feature.

Check out 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

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

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.

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.

I agree. Complaining that the intentionally random dice-rolling element in Catan is unfair is just … words fail me …

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".

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.

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