But that's a fortnight ago. Since then we'd rather put off the idea of playing it again in evenings, since it's so much more complicated than either the basic Settlers of Catan or Seafarers. However, we were worried that we might forget altogether... so last night, feeling a little more wide awake than usual, we set out a Cities and Knights game, deciding to play with our basic two-player Settlers house rules. I had the rule booklet open next to me, and referred to it frequently.
As we took the pieces from the box, our memories were slightly refreshed. Knights - white for non-active, yellow for active - are the little round pieces. City fortifications are the square blocks. The barbarian is in a black ship, and sails on a little track towards Catan. When he attacks - after the third die has shown black sufficient times - there must be at least as many active knight forces as cities.
Then there are the little booklets that replace the building cards, and allow us to improve our cities to gain additional benefits. And the little yellow things, only partly showing on the photo, are the metropolis pieces... but they don't come into the game until later on, so we didn't really think about them. A mistake, as it turned out...
In our usual two-player game of either Settlers or Seafarers, we start with three settlements rather than two. In the regular Cities and Knights game, players start with one settlement and one city. So we decided we would begin with two settlements, and then a city. That seemed to work well. However, both of us had forgotten that the balance of resources is rather different in Cities and Knights. Both sheep and wheat become more important: a knight requires a sheep and an ore resource to be bought, and then a wheat to activate. Every time the barbarian ship attacks, or the knight kicks the robber out of the way, he becomes deactivated and another wheat must be paid to feed him, to make him active again.
I forgot to take a photo immediately after our initial placement, then remembered after a couple of rounds, by which time I'd managed to buy a knight (playing orange, as usual), but nothing much else had happened. As can be seen from this photo, Richard had considerably better access to wheat than I had. More by luck than judgement... had I remembered how vital it as as a resource, I would definitely have chosen my initial settlements differently.
The dice, for once, decided - so to speak - to play ball, and follow expected statistics. A huge number of 8s and 6s were rolled in this game, and an even greater number of 7s. We decided fairly quickly that whereas in our usual two-player games, the robber is controlled by whoever has fewer victory points (when a 7 is rolled), this time we would play as in the normal game, with the robber controlled by whoever rolled the 7. It made life a bit easier. However, rather than taking a random resource from the bank, we decided it would be more interesting to take from the bank whatever resource matched the new landing place of the robber. We may well adopt that into our regular house rules for two-player games.
Although our placement of initial cities was somewhat random, we did both happen to put them on places where there were the commodity cards - ore, sheep and wood - meaning that instead of two resource cards, we received one resource and one matching commodity card. Commodity cards are needed to build the improvements to cities... and it's only after building city improvements that one has a chance to pick up the progress cards which replace Catan development cards.
Richard was lucky enough to pick up a 'merchant' card fairly early in the game, which enabled him to trade 2:1 with a resource of his choice for as long as he held it. He put it on wheat, which he was receiving - if I can exaggerate slightly - by the bushelful. Player-to-player trading would have been quite nice in this game since I was so very short of wheat, but I did eventually manage to extend towards the 8-wheat hex, and build first a settlement, then a city there, which helped my wheat production significantly.
We couldn't quite decide how many points to play to. The booklet says 13, and we usually go at least 2 points ahead of that with a regular game, and maybe two or three more for two players. Richard suggested 23... we thought perhaps 17 or 18 would work. While there aren't Victory Point development cards, there are extra points given for whoever has the stronger knight force after every successful defeat of barbarians. I had a couple of those early in the game, and Richard had one later on.
So we reached the stage where we both all my cities and settlements built. We still hadn't decided how many points to play to, so thought we'd simply continue until 10pm and then count up. I had the longest street card at one point, but Richard took it after a few rounds, and I realised I couldn't take it back. That meant he had 16 points, and I had 15. The barbarians attacked again, and Richard had the strongest knight force once more, so it took him to 17 points. Not that we were really counting.
Ten o'clock came, and we finished the round. I looked in the rule book and discovered that whoever controls the merchant gets an extra victory point for that. So Richard actually had 18, and a resounding win.
It wasn't until we'd started putting the pieces away, and realised we hadn't used any of the metrolopolis blocks. I had vaguely thought they were used when one had finished improving the city - ie the fifth level in the flip chart. I was wrong: when we checked, we discovered that they should have been used after the fourth level. Richard had reached the third level in all three of his kinds of city, but I had reached the fourth level in two of them. I should thus have built two metropolises (or is it metropoloi?) which would have given me an extra two victory points each. So, had I only known it, I really had not 15 but 19 to Richard's 18.
Still, something similar happened the other way around when we played 'the lost tribe' (Seafarers) - I was declared the winner, only to realise that Richard should have won a few rounds previously. Perhaps when we get more used to these games we'll think to count points more carefully, and be a little more competitive, but at present we just enjoy the process of playing.
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