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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

My friends and I just got into Catan and it's really great. We used to play a ton of FIFA and Madden when we were together, now it's always "who wants to settle?". It really is a great game because it can't be completely beaten like Monopoly can and there is no best strategy that we've found. I play totally differently than my friends and we all win sometimes.

I also love the social aspects of trading and the robber. We have a LOT of table talk when we play, and it's hilarious to see what people will say to convince someone to put the robber on a spot they don't own. Also the desperate trades we get into "I'll give 5 wool for a grain! 6 wool for a grain!". It's really the best board game I have ever played by far.

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Catan got really popular when I was in college, and I noticed a distinctly different playstyle among the "normal" groups of friends I had and the ones that came from the Economics department.

A lot of people never think to do things like: - Pay the robber to rob someone else - Ask the robber what card he wants to take from you, and if it's something you're willing to give up just show him which card it is in your hand - Trade away all of a scarce resource you have, then use the monopoly card to get them back, then trade them away again - Paying someone to build roads to cut someone else off - Paying to "rent" someone's port for a turn to get a better exchange rate

We like to use a house rule that requires all trades to "clear" within a turn (ie no arguments over enforceable/conflicting trades taking place on future turns).

Interestingly the "clear within a turn" rule would mean that you could only rent a port from the player who's turn it is (unless you allow all players to use their ports at any time).

I also assume by paying you mean making an undesirable trade, unless you allow gifting through another house rule.

In some games I've seen the following: Player A (current turn) wants to trade wheat for a brick through Player B's port. Player A will trade 2 wheat and a bonus resource to Player B for x arbitrary resource. On Player B's turn they move the wheat through their harbour for a brick and trade this back to Player A for their x arbitrary resource back. Player B keeps the bonus resource as payment, and Player A gets usage of Player B's harbour. This couldn't happen in one turn as only the current player can use their harbour.

Right, it basically becomes a form of "I'll give you 2 wheat and one other card if you immediately port the 2 wheat for the one thing I want and give it back".

It's not strictly a discrete trade, as there are two steps for the player to take, but it does resolve within a turn (provided the active player has the port).

Yeah my coworkers and I used to spend a lot of time negotiating derivatives and the like.

> Trade away all of a scarce resource you have, then use the monopoly card to get them back, then trade them away again

Yeah that's one of the moves where I just refuse to trade and say "I don't negotiate with terrorists."

We allow people to trade futures i.e. the next of a particular resource they get must be handed over. This means that they don't clear within a turn, but leads to interesting economics - you can trade away risk, usually at a significant cost. Its easy to avoid conflicts - if you've already traded your next wheat, you can't trade it again until you get one (but you could, for instance, trade your 2nd future wheat).

It's gotten to the point where my friends and I started trading futures contract for the resources. "I will trade you a wood and two future bricks for two ores…"

Note that in order to comply with the rules, every trade must have at least one card exchanged on either side of the transaction.

We haven't done futures yet because there's too much trust there, and we get pretty competitive. Also futures may never pay ... that's interesting.

If you want to add a little RPG-ish "upgrading" to the game, I recommend the "Cities and Knights" expansion. It adds a lot of complexity to the game but adds some fun "level up" mechanics and a bit more conflict and brutality to the game.

I remember reading that the game was originally designed to be cities and knight, but was simplified for it's initial release.

It took us a while to work up to cities and knights, but I really have trouble playing the vanilla game anymore.

They should trade into the bank! 4 for 1 =)

Yeah I was exaggerating, but people do 5 cards for one if they really need it (just mixed element).

Is trading actually a good thing? I see people play and they seem open to trading for trades sake. Unless your opponents are making pointless trades to confuse, doesn't it just help their position?

Catan's alright, but it's too random to be really enjoyable. The strategy seems outweighed by getting lucky on rolls or draws.

Trading is definitely a good thing. I find that when placing settlements at the beginning it's crazy to try to get exposure to all 5 elements, but if you get really strong exposure to 3 of them you can trade for what you lack. Then you don't have to spread yourself too thin. Plus you know what people will do with what you trade them ... don't give up wood if you don't want people building roads.

Trading is good to increase own resources (I almost never trade 1:1, mostly 1:2, depending on how badly the other person needs my resources) or doing the inverse: getting down to 7 resources during another player's turn to prevent having to dump half of it if a 7 is rolled.

2 people who trade with each other will usually beat 2 players who don't trade.

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