Catan Strategy: Gameplay & Commentary (20150511)

How do you stop a player with strong ore/wheat production? Watch to find out!

[@BradleyFlood7]

Hi, When you are deciding where to place a settlement and you say a certain combination of hexes is worth 10 points where as another is worth 9 points what does that mean and how is that calculated? I gather it has to do with the number on the hex right? I can only seem to find information about Victory Points and not these points you are referring to? Thank you, great videos.

[@NeonateGaming]

+Bradley Flood Thanks Bradley. I do a better job explaining this in my more recent videos. To answer your question, in the physical board game, the number tiles have pips beneath them that represent the frequency that number will be rolled (e.g. 6 and 8 have 5 pips under each representing a 5/36th probability of rolling that number). If you add up all the pips of an intersection, that is the productive value of that intersection. For example a 5/8/10, would be worth 12 points. 5 = 4 pips, 8 = 5 pips, 10 = 3 pips. 12 pips = 12/36 cards per turn, or 1 card every 3 turns. If you upgrade that intersection to a city, you would get 2 cards every 3 turns. I recommend memorizing the pips of each number to quickly recognize the best producing spots on the board. It also helps when you play craps! Thanks for watching!

[@eqatox8047]

Are you still making videos?

[@Jesse1997Earth]

At 29:42, you could have given up all your stone and all but one of your sheep and hay when the 7 was rolled, then played a monopoly on wood. If you got 3 wood from the monopoly then you could have built two roads and a settlement to win the game.

[@luigiofthebakery]

Do you ever upload any games where you don't win? I'd love to watch some of those.

[@NeonateGaming]

I will deliver (losses)!

[@Kyle-lh3yx]

Nice game, it did seem like you took a lot of risks with the 7+ cards in hand though. I liked the strategy a lot, appearing weaker. Losing games due to being too strong sucks :p

[@NeonateGaming]

Kyle Lancaster Thanks for watching and for your comment. I totally agree appearing weak is very important! I also took another look at the game - I don't think I ended a turn with over 7 cards.

[@Kyle-lh3yx]

Oh my bad thought you did :p

[@magnuslh84]

A question: Say you've got 9 points, and you need to build 1 settlement to get 10 points. When you do that, you accidentally cut the "longest" road of another player, causing a third player to get "the longest" road. If that third player (who has 8 points) then get the 2 road-points, and subsequently 10 points - who would win the game? You (10 points through the settlement) or the third player (10 points because of the longest road)? - both of these players reach their 10 points at the same moment...

[@NeonateGaming]

+magnuslh84 You can only win on your turn so the first player would win as you described it. What's interesting is if the first player only got to 9 points, the second player would still get a turn, and theoretically could take long road before the third player's turn/win, thereby continuing the game.

[@magnuslh84]

Ok, thanks!!! Some house rules say that "you have to keep the longest road for another round after you've gotten it" in order to win... but I don't think that makes the game more interesting... it just drags it out.. what do you think?

[@murillok913]

magnuslh84 official rules is if you reach total victory points you must wait until your turn to win. Even if you received longest road (in a situation like yours) a turn after yours you have to wait for the entire rotation to come back to you. Then you roll, if roll doesn’t effect win (which it almost never will), then you win.

[@LaGGSBD]

Which site/app is that?

[@NeonateGaming]

It's playcatan.com but I believe the site has stopped accepting new registrations :-(

[@TheThriftingTree]

Great videos! I did notice one relatively large mistake made at the very end, that luckily turned around because you drew a victory point. On your last turn you rolled a 6. This gave red two woods. You should have used Monopoly here to get wood and then trade in your 3 ores to get another (giving you a minimum of 3 wood assuming monopoly only takes 2 wood). You had plenty of brick and could have just taken longest road. At this time the longest was 9 and you were at 7, with space to expand to 10. This would not have left it up to chance, but I like said it didn't matter ultimately!

[@DyLightedCatan]

Good catch, but you can only play one development card per turn and he already played a knight to get Largest army which is a 2 point swing. This is about the most amount of points he could've gotten on his turn.

[@Catanimal720]

@@DyLightedCatan An easier way to win would've been to steal from blue with the last knight use to get either a wheat or sheep, then convert brick and ore 3-1 for the other 2 settlement resources to build on the 5-wheat. The last 3 rolls after blue's turn where he converted brick for ore to upgrade were 5-6-6, so at least 8/9 of blue's cards were sheep and wheat, and likely the 9th card was a wheat/sheep as well... But there's a lot going on at the end there, with all the banter and everything, and he obviously just wanted to go for the swaggy win with the VP pull... So I never question the NeoNate... It's always a lot easier to spot things after the fact... Also your videos are really good too... You seem to emphasize hand tracking quite a bit so this would apply to that.

[@DyLightedCatan]

Thank you! I appreciate that. Tracking is essential, which is why I emphasize it. It can help in Scenarios like this. I made this comment when I was still very bad at tracking, which is why I didn’t say anything about it.