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Comment by YokoZar | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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).

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