Catan: Cities & Knights - Tips & Strategies

This house rule came from a misread of the rules (as many great house rules do), but I still like playing this way.

Basically, a city wall doesn’t just increase your max hand size for when a 7 is rolled, it also prevents the robber from stealing a card from you if he lands on a hex next to that city. He can still show up and prevent a hex from producing, but you can discourage the shutdown of your most important cities by making the robbery less worth it.

If you have another settlement or city next to where the robber lands that is not protected, he can still steal a card from you. You are only protected if every city you’ve got bordering the hex where he lands has a city wall.

In my gaming group, the aqueduct is often the most sought after city improvement since it allows you to pick any resource card (not commodities) if the roll means you wouldn’t otherwise get anything. It’s the third improvement on the science (green) branch, so you’ll need six papers to activate it.

Initial placement: Try and build your first city or settlement on the best possible wood supply so that you will actually harvest paper! (If its a settlement you’ll need to upgrade first – but at least you stopped someone else going there). Bear in mind to still try and get the best possible spread of other resources in the process. If other players get there first… try another strategy 😛

Limit your numbers: If you’re doing well at collecting paper, or have already acquired the aqueduct, then consider the effect on the aqueduct when building new settlements. e.g. if you already have a 5,6,9,10 and 11 … then its preferable to build on intersections that provide the same/similar numbers – this will mean you yield more on the numbers you already have, and you still get your card of choice on the numbers you don’t. The ‘Inventor’ card is especially useful for this since you get to swap numbers around. (However, be careful not to get caught out having too many cards when a seven is rolled, since you’ll be picking up maybe 4 or more cards at a time sometimes.)

Remember the aqueduct: It can be very easy to get the aqueduct and then forget to use it… don’t do that!

Go for the metropolis: Since you’re already majoring on paper… try and get to the science metropolis before anyone else. When possible try and trade for (or steal) paper to stay ahead of the competition.

Obviously, this strategy alone won’t win you the game… you still need to remember and work on other aspects of the game… knights, other commodities, etc… but this is something I will always steer towards if possible.

Hope you found this helpful!

Similar to the popular Catan house rule of going the first 1 or 2 rounds where 7’s get rerolled, this one gives players a bit more time to get 4+ knights activated. There’s nothing quite as devastating in this game as losing your only city before your 3rd turn. In order to not encourage too much city-building during this early “safe” time, we award a Defender of Catan victory point to the player with the most active knight defense (1 or more strength) when the barbarians attack even if the island would not have normally won.

We’ve found this rule helps keep the game more consistently fun and competitive by removing a major negative game experience – the player with the early city loss has never won the game and rarely enjoys the remaining 90+ minutes. Especially true for 5+ players.

You may now purchase a Village Wall for the cost of 2 Lumber.

Place one of your City Wall pieces underneath one of your Settlements.

A Village Wall acts in the same way as a City Wall in that it allows a player to increase his hand of Resource/Commodity cards by +2 whenever a 7 is rolled on the production dice.

The Village Wall is automatically destroyed as soon as the Settlement in question is upgraded into a City.

This is a House Rule which allows players to perform a two turn move whereby they use their Knights to attack and take control of enemy Settlements.

Only Strong or Mighty Knights may perform a Conflagration attack; Basic Knights may not, although they may aid in the defence of a Settlement under attack. This rule affects ONLY Settlements; Cities may NOT be attacked.

In order to be able to attempt this move, you must have one or two of your Roads connecting to an enemy Settlement. Then either your Strong or Mighty Knight may be eligible to perform a Conflagration. However, they must first be within ‘attack range’ which is one space away from the target Settlement. (This is always possible due to the ‘two space rule’ which is standard in all Catan board games.)

So, supposing you have an enemy Settlement connected to one (or two) of your Roads, and you have an ACTIVE Strong or Mighty Knight(s) within one Road space away from the Settlement (attack range), you may now perform this attack – but only if your Knights are ACTIVE.

This is how it works: After having stated your intention to perform Conflagration, you move one of your active Knights along your Road to the enemy Settlement (you can NEVER move your Knight along an enemy Road). Even if you have two Knights attacking the Settlement (from different Roads), only ONE of them may actually move there in order to conquer it. Place your Knight underneath the target Settlement and de-activate him. You can do no more this turn, except of course to re-activate your Knight.

This Settlement no longer collects Resources for the original owner and is considered to be in a state of chaos. Your Knight underneath the Settlement may still be displaced by an enemy Knight as usual, using the normal rules.

On your next turn, you may then complete the Conflagration by removing both your Knight AND the enemy Settlement, and replacing them with a Settlement of your own – but again, your Knight would have to have been activated first. The Settlement is now considered to be yours and you may collect Resources from it as normal.

Knights may also participate in the defence of a Settlement under Conflagration attack, but only if those Knights are currently activated and if they are within ‘defence range’ (one space away, same as attack range). Basic Knights may take part in the defence. The attacking Knight(s) win if their combined strength is greater than that of the defending Knight(s). The defending Knight(s) win if their combined strength is equal to or greater than that of the attackers – in this case the Conflagration does not take place.

Example 1: An enemy Settlement is connected to ONE of your Roads and you have an active Strong Knight within attack range (one space away from the Settlement). However, the enemy player has TWO Basic Knights within defence range, both active also. Therefore your Knight has a strength of 2 and the two Basic Knights also have a combined strength of 2. Therefore, the Conflagration would not take place – it is a stand-off.

Example 2: An enemy Settlement is connected to TWO of your Roads and you have TWO active Strong Knights within attack range. The enemy player has ONE active Mighty Knight within defence range. This time, however, the Conflagration would place as the defending Knight has a strength of 3 whilst your two Strong Knights have a combined strength of 4.

Most players will be busy using their Knights to aid in the defence of Catan; however, this rule adds a little more spice to an already heated game. Thanks for reading – I hope you enjoyed it.

If you are feeling too rushed early in the game trying to build up soldiers, consider the variant where the first time the barbarians, arrive, they don’t. Thereafter, every time they arrive, they arrive as normally. This gives players a little more time and more breathing room to get their soldiers up and activated.

*I feel stupid cause I posted this on the wrong version of settlers and can’t delete it now >.<*

You can now buy a Castle for the cost of 2 Ore, 2 Lumber & 2 Clay.

You need to have a combined strength of 4 Knights already in play (active or inactive) in order to be eligible to build a Castle. You also need to have 2 City Wall pieces available to use (i.e. not already in play).

Pay the cost to the bank and place the Castle at one of your Road intersections (use 2 of your City Wall pieces and place them one on top of the other). Castles must obey the 2-space rule.

Due to the limited number of City Wall pieces, each player may only build 1 Castle. Castles may not be moved once built; however, they may be demolished at any time during the owning player’s turn (simply remove the two City Walls from play) and then rebuilt elsewhere if desired.

A Castle has many benefits:

It is worth 3 Victory Points.

It contributes 1 permanent defence point when determining the strength of your active Knights against Barbarian attack.

It allows you to hold +2 Resource/Commodity cards when a 7 is rolled (just like a City Wall).

And it also protects your hand of Resource/Commodity cards by 1 Card whenever another player would normally take a card from you, i.e. if the Robber is placed on one of the hexes upon which your Castle sits, you would not have to surrender a card to that player. The same goes for if you ever have to surrender cards to another player for any reason (the Wedding card, the Bishop, Resource Monopoly etc). However, this ability does not protect your hand whenever you would have to discard half to the bank when a 7 was rolled.

Your Knights may also move to/be placed on your Castle (just put your Knight piece on top of the two City Wall pieces). A Knight that is on your Castle cannot be displaced by an enemy Knight, and is not affected by the ‘Deserter’ Progress Card.

If you can’t get a strong city placement on a commodity to be a viable contender, or even if you can but you need an additional edge, use ports to get those valuable commodities!

A lot of people forget that you can trade four resources for a commodity by default and a three-port can give you even greater flexibility, but, far more powerful than that: if you have a city on brick and a brick port (or wheat with a wheat port), that’s an instant commodity of your choosing any time that tile is rolled!