How to Make Settlers of Catan More Balanced
Settlers of Catan is one of the world’s most popular German-style board games. It was designed by Klaus Tauber and debuted in 1995 as a thematic and non-abstract strategy game. The game relies on resource consumption and trading; with the player getting 10 points first being the winner of the game.
It is no doubt a really interesting game. Yet, many people dislike it for various reasons, especially the overly large role that luck can play. Before you start playing the game, you can follow some tips mentioned in this article, which will help you in making the game more balanced for each player.
Instructions
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1
Do not accept the random layout and standard procedure for determining starting positions, as this can give one player a huge advantage (or disadvantage) right from the beginning of the game.
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2
Lay out the tiles and dots in letter order as shown in the instructions and place all the settlements such as to give each player the same number of pips, and access to the same resources. If every player participating in the game is not happy with a particular colour, then you should consider distributing things more fairly.
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3
If you feel that it is really time-consuming to follow the instructions in the previous step, then you should create the board and allow all the players to place settlements as normal, but then randomize which player gets which colour.
This will force players not to get advantage of any one colour. As an alternative to randomizing, give each player last choice at their own colour. -
4
You can also consider setting up settlements randomly, and then allowing players to bid in auction-style for the colour start they want. This will balance out any inequality in starting position with fewer starting resources.
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5
Replace the dice with a deck of 36 cards which model the standard probability on two 6-sided dice.
There should be one 2 and 12, two 3s and 11s, three 4s and 10s, four 5s and 9s, five 6s and 8s, and six 7s.
This ensures that every number comes up as often as it should, and that a bizarre streak of 12s or lack of 6s does not completely change the game.
