Settlers

From Fozzee.net

This page refers to Settlers of Catan, published in the US by Mayfair Games. It's published by someone else in Europe. Settlers of Catan is a "European Style" tile-based game; The board is randomized with every new game. Two expansions exist, Seafarers of Catan and Cities and Knights of Catan. Seafarers is alright, but Knights is a bit over-involved. They added too many new mechanics, that don't fit in well with the core game.

I'm fully aware that this page could use some serious design work, but that isn't the point right now. I'm just trying to get some ideas and information out on the web of things our playgroup is trying.

Contents 1 Rule Variants 2 Random Map Generator

Rule Variants

Below, you can find some of the different rules variants we've tried. Some of the rules are better for large groups, some for smaller groups. See the associated comments for details.

• Empowering your turn
  • +1 resources
    • On your turn (when you roll for resources), your cities generate 3 resources, and settlements two.
    • This rule has no effect on initial resources.
    • This variant makes the game much more volatile, and a bit faster.
  • Random Resource
    • On your turn, before rolling for resources, roll 1d6.
    • On a 1-5, take one of the corresponding resource cards from the bank.
    • On a 6, re-roll. If you roll 2 6's in a row, take a development card from the bank and do not roll any further.
• Misc
  • Random Bandit
    • In this variant, the bank moves the bandit each round (at the top of the order, before the first player takes their turn.
    • The bandit does NOT move at the start of the game.
    • The bandit may move only to an adjacent square NOT occupied by the bandit on the previous turn.
    • Use whatever method you prefer to determine where to randomly move the bandit. 1d6 might work well, re-rolling if the previous hex is rolled...
    • When the bandit is moved by the bank, no resource cards are confiscated from any player.

Random Map Generator

Our group had a problem for a while where we felt that the maps we were making were skewed towards a particular players style of play. To help solve that problem, I hacked up an Excel workbook that used a VBA macro to shuffle the board on demand.

Download the Workbook