Catan Strategy Research: Results From 719 Games

Beat your friends, family and online masters at Catan with the strategies from this Settlers of Catan data research. Subscribe so you will catch the upcoming video next week!
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Edited by Cody Davis | [e-mail]
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[@damir_plays_ctn]

Thanks for putting all this together, great work!

[@I_am_Itay]

I am a bit disappointed because it had so much potential and your previous was great but as a data scientist I thin it is really hard to get many takeaways from thia becuase the data contains just the winning player view and positioning. If you would include also data entries of people that lost and how much points they got plus maybe a date it would be wonderful and make a huge difference in my opinion

[@Treeckosaurus]

I get your concern, and thanks for your sharing them. Finding a balance between doing the best research possible and not asking too much from the community was a tough task. The previous data research video suffers the same drawback.

[@I_am_Itay]

@@Treeckosaurus Yes I do understand the fact that it would be harder to get data on games that player lost because if that. Maybe an automation tool can help. For example exporting the ending board position if it is possible

[@Treeckosaurus]

That would be brilliant! However I don't know how to create/get such a tool yet - would you happen to know how I could get started?

[@Paraninja]

Great presentation. The problem with analyses such as these is they focus too much on a single data point. For example, of the percentage that won with road we can't really comment on whether pursuing road is an effective "strategy" without knowing how it was won. If it was taken by building a fifth continuous road on the final turn of the game, by playing a road builder, by using a mono or year of plenty may suggest different things to us. I admire your attempts to bring some sort of data to the table when it comes to understanding Catan strategies but really until we have some sort of portable notation for games similar to chess and the software to analyse that it's impossible to interpret the data in a meaningful manner.

[@Treeckosaurus]

I agree, and I believe these researches help us get closer to this point

[@taromilktea7104]

Bro came back with a beard

[@surfbort]

I've only played a few Catan games but I teach data analysis at uni and this is such a beautiful presentation, the effort you put in is really fantastic!

[@Treeckosaurus]

Thank you so much, I've recently hired an editor and he does a fantastic job

[@geopiglet]

Great video as always.

[@Treeckosaurus]

Thanks Pig!

[@hevinkart6321]

Great research and presentation. Would have loved actual analysis of the data and something to takeaway though

[@Treeckosaurus]

I wish it was more clear-cut, partially the reason why I waited a few years to publish the research

[@RC.13]

Cool video but I'm not really sure what to take away from the data? The video seemed to end rather abruptly

[@Treeckosaurus]

My take-aways come mainly from comparing what results have been presented and how do they compare against my experience in-game. Abrupt endings are the upcoming standard on KZbin, because viewers tend to click away after the content portion of the video. So making the video longer than necessary hurts its performance.

[@Treeckosaurus]

What are your take-aways?

[@gressorialNanites]

Is the Unknown strategy just literally try to settle the highest pips, regardless of yield? (and then possibly get a 3:1, they got quite an amount of 3:1s, to trade for the others) Because that WOULD see wood, sheep, wheat overrepresented since there are just more of those tiles.

[@Treeckosaurus]

No, there's also OWS-strategies in there that don't qualify for the criteria. like when they have a 10-ore instead of a 9-ore

[@Treeckosaurus]

The graph simply wasn't finished, but it's the one I find most interesting

[@Siggerou1993]

For me: - winning strategies are mainly situational - flexibility is key - high production, 3:1 ports, and largest army seem to be in the winning team more often than other strategies All in all, I would practice 3-4 different playstyles (OWS - WB - hybrid variations) and my main objective would be to improve when and how I use them, to optimise results. Also, to practice how I can win vs players than obviosuly have better setups than mine. This is perhaps where TABLETALK is the X factor that can't be quantified in your analysis and, combined with a bit of luck, can turn games around.

[@kessi7761]

Thank you

[@Treeckosaurus]

You're welcome!

[@adamstewart247]

Can you do a study of Cities and Knights as well?

[@Treeckosaurus]

You bet!

[@adamstewart247]

@@Treeckosaurus Can't wait man! There's a serious gap in C&K content. You and 1 other dude are the only people that have made content. There was 1 streamer on Twitch doing C&K but I think he only has like 3 videos on there.

[@lucidman420]

Your secret is still safe 🤔

[@Dent185]

Let’s go

[@user-nq9ee6vh9d]

Monopoly being played by 31% winners does not prove it is stronger than any other development card. Just from the data presented we can't even know if monopoly is above average. People who have monopoly are more likely to have knights, roadbuilding, YoP and VP. (players with high production or OWS have more of all of the development cards) Therefore it is possible that monopoly is the weakest development card and players who got it won just because they also got the other development cards. Monopoly might not be better than a knight as far as we know, but it sure is better than having low production and getting nothing at all. Instead of focusing on the number of monopolies, you should calculate how many percentages of cards they got were monopolies.

[@adammoore7994]

A 7 is rolled every 6 turns 😂😢😅

[@Treeckosaurus]

Well, yeah, in theory 😂

[@tehspeleengpolise]

omg hi treecko

[@Treeckosaurus]

Hi Tsp, didn't expect to see you here. Hope you're doing well!

[@tehspeleengpolise]

@@Treeckosaurus Doing pretty well, thank you! How's mark doing?

[@Treeckosaurus]

He's good, living in Paris atm