Cities and Knights for the two of us again

I was kind of tired yesterday evening. But Richard wanted a game, and chose - once again - Cities and Knights of Catan. We'd played a couple of games of Carcassonne as a change last week; but he thought that if I were that tired, he might have a better chance of winning Cities and Knights. I was quite sure it was his turn to win, and didn't feel remotely competitive.

We set it up pretty quickly, and made our initial placements. It seemed like quite an even board, with no resources clumped together too much, and plenty of reasonable starting spots. Richard, who placed first, was thinking about potential for city improvements, so opted for a good supply of both ore and wood. He was rather lacking in sheep potential, though, and not great for clay. He had a great set of numbers: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and an extra 4. I had better access to all the resources, but my numbers weren't quite so good: I didn't have any 4s at all; but then I had two 5s and two 10s.


I wasn't really strategising at all - I simply opted for the best spread of resources I could, noting that the sheep harbour was near a good spot for sheep. Both of us, where possible, tend to build our initial settlements/cities as close as possible to harbours in this game.

As we started the game, I seemed to be quite lucky with the rolls of the dice, as so often happens. We were both picking up cards most of the time, but mine were more useful. I was quickly able to build my first city improvements in both cloth and books, meaning I started picking up progress cards, since the event die rolled colours quite often. Moreover, I picked up a reasonable number of sheep, ore and wheat, meaning I could buy knights to protect Catan as well as increasing my points with buildings. I still wasn't strategising at all - just buying whatever I could each time my turn came.

By the time the barbarians first attacked, I had three knight strengths (meaning we were victorious), and had also built a settlement on a 3:1 harbour, and had also upgraded one of my original settlements to a city. I built inland too, and took a 2-4-6 intersection since I was lacking 4s up to that point. Richard had built three streets and two settlements - on the clay and ore harbours - but was having to trade very heavily for any sheep.


So I won a victory point card as the first Defender of Catan. I don't usually push for knights, and rather hoped Richard would get some for the future - I prefer to expand and build.

And, indeed, by the time the barbarians managed their second attack, his knight force was superior - partly through good use of 'coins' progress cards, since he'd started those city improvements - so he won the card. I had a third city by that stage, and another settlement; I also had the 'merchant' on wheat, giving me useful 2:1 trading. Oh, and I had fortified two of my cities, using extra clay, which enabled me to have extra cards in my hand when the robber attacked.


Richard was still having a hard time with wheat and sheep, and still hadn't built any new cities. So at this stage, he had 8 points (including his Defender of Catan card) and I had 12 (including my Defender of Catan card, and control of the Merchant). Not that I was counting points, particularly.

Richard picked up a couple of 'activate all your knights for free (sic)" cards, and also an 'upgrade up to two of your knights free', which meant I didn't need to worry about knights at all. I was more than happy for him to defend Catan when the time came. So at the third barbarian attack, he won another victory point. He'd been slowly working on city improvements too, but hadn't done much building - just one upgrade to a city.

I had the card allowing me to change two numbers on the board (other than 2, 12, 6 or 8) so I finally played that, switching the 9 on wood (for Richard) with the 3 on sheep (for both of us). This gave Richard better access to sheep, but he was now much worse off for wood.


So after the third attack he had 10 points (with two Defender of Catan cards), whereas I'd built another settlement and upgraded it to a city since the previous attack, giving me 14 in all. Not that I had realised it at the time. I was concentrating on city improvements in both cloth and books, rather hampered by the robber sitting on my 6-wood hex for several rounds.

Then in the depths of my foggy brain, it occurred to me that I could build a knight next to that wood hex, activate it, and then finally kick the robber elsewhere. So I did that. Then I achieved my first metropolis, with a fair amount of trading for commodities. Then I looked for a suitable building spot, expanded outwards, and built another settlement. I realised, as I did it, that I had also - rather by accident - developed the longest street. What didn't occur to me was that I had 19 points - indeed, I had technically won the game just by building two more street pieces, without my final settlement.

But as I wasn't bothering to count points, I didn't realise until I collected sufficient commodities for my second metropolis. Then, dimly aware that I'd placed all my buildings (13 points) and had two metropolises and the longest street, I realised I must have 18 points. So we stopped and counted:


It turned out that I had 21 points - three more than necessary. Richard had 11.

We tried to analyse why I was SO far ahead - unusually so - given that I hadn't been planning, I hadn't bothered with knights after the first few rounds, and I didn't have much access to ore until the end, at which point I didn't need it. We could only assume it was Richard's lack of sheep in the early rounds, and wood in the later ones. He didn't have a great amount of wheat, either, but sufficient, along with the blue cards he picked up, that he had no problem activating his knights.