I couldn’t find any numbers on the Internet. We will have to time our next game.

The Catan Generator has a new option to specify how ‘clumped’ or ‘grouped’ you want the land plates to be. So if you only have two players, we have found that a setup that is more spread out provides a very fun game for the two players. When the land gets more clumped together, it is less likely that two players will cross paths on the board, so when we do play with just two players with a medium grouping of land plates, we play up to 12 or 13 points. (Actually our last game went up to 18, superfun!). Then if you have three players, a medium grouping up to 10 points still works out well.

One other tweak we have added (which is an option available on the Catan Generator) is to replace the 2 die tile with a second 12 die tile. Then what happens when a 2 is rolled is that the person who rolls it gets to choose one resource card from the bank. Another thing we are thinking about adding is a single 7 tile! None of us like the fact that rolling a 7 means no resources for anyone, other than one stolen card.

For me the reason we have played so much is the fresh challenge of a new layout each time. But if you like the traditional shape, playing it with the random land and dice tile layouts can be fun as well. I think that the layout outlined above in Chris’ blog would still be fun with four players. The key thing omitted in the analysis above is that this game is played by humans!

When we choose to play, sometimes we have a player who is picky about the board, so we just let her sit at the computer and keep hitting the generate button as many times as she likes until she is happy. When we have players who don’t care, we tell ourselves we will play the 5th board generated, no matter what it turns out to look like. We even like just setting up the new board, it looks like a thing of beauty on the table.

Well if you are a Settlers fan, I hope you give it a go and enjoy.