Four person Cities and Knights of Catan

For the first time, the four of us were at home for an evening together. It was four weeks since the last time Richard and I played Cities and Knights, and we realised we had never played it with four people.

Richard (playing red pieces) rolled highest, and placed first. I didn't think his choice - the 3-4-8 intersection near the top of the board - was all that great. Becky (blue) took what I thought was the best choice from the city-improvement perspective: a 5-9-10 intersection on sheep, ore and wood respectively. All she needed to do was to upgrade to a city, and she would then have a good chance of collecting all three Catan commodities.

Daniel (brown) took another great spot from the number perspective, including a 6 on clay, and also a 4 on wheat. I had already spotted that wheat was likely to be in serious shortage in this game. So when it was my turn to place both my settlement and my city, I chose some reasonable numbers that included that 4-wheat, and access to all five resources. I particularly liked the idea that any time an 8 was rolled, I would collect a street.

I then forgot to take a photo until we'd played our first round, and built some streets. Richard had even bought and activated his first knight. I remembered just as Becky was placing the first new settlement of the game:


My initial plan was to head for the useful 9-10-5 intersection with two sheep and an ore. Unfortunately, Daniel had the same idea. And when he realised that I would get there before he could, he built a settlement on the 2-5-9 intersection, which gave him a building spot (albeit not as useful) and effectively blocked me from the one I wanted. But I shrugged, and built another street, thinking I would take the 9-10-11 intersection with sheep, ore and wheat.

Alas for my plans. Richard built in that direction, and built a settlement on the adjacent 3-10-11... so I was stymied again.

So I decided on my next move I would head towards the coast from my city, towards the 3:1 harbour... only to find that Daniel had picked up a street-building progress card, enabling him to stop me in my tracks from that one too. He picked up the longest street at the same time, putting him in the lead with six points already:


Richard had five points, Becky had four, and I was still on my initial three... and beginning to run out of building spots already.

It wasn't long before the barbarians made their first landing to Catan. Between us, we had sufficient activated knights to stop them: two for Richard, two for Becky, and two for me.


So we each picked up a progress card of our choice since nobody was the outright Defender of Catan.

I had at least managed to build one settlement by that stage, on the wheat harbour. Not that I was getting a lot of wheat (indeed, I don't think I used it for trading in the entire game), but it was a building spot.

Since I was having such a hard time building settlements, I concentrated for a while on city improvements, and before too long was able to gain Metropolis level with wood. Rather a lot of 8s had been rolled, and other people seemed happy to trade with me.


And the barbarians attacked again. This time, Richard had the most knight power, so gained an extra victory point as Defender of Catan.


So Richard was in the lead with 9 points. Daniel right behind with 8 (including the longest street) and I had 7, including my metropolis. Becky, who had picked up a victory point progress card, had 6.. and kept just missing the opportunity to build a settlement, despite having plenty of building spots. She simply wasn't getting wheat, nor many sheep (since 5s came up only rarely). She had managed to build her city in the useful spot with three potential commodities, but none of those numbers were rolled all that frequently.

By the next barbarian attack, I had managed to build another settlement and upgrade it to a city. I'd also built more streets - hoping for (and succeeding in) one more building spot on the 2 - and Daniel pointed out that my longest street was now longer than his. So that gave me two more points.

Richard and Daniel shared the most knights at this next attack, so no more victory points were awarded; but they both had another progress card to pick up.


Suddenly I realised that I was in the lead with 12 points. Richard, with his one Defender of Catan victory point, was close behind with 11. Daniel had 8, and Becky was still on 6. The booklet said that we should play to 13 points, so we decided that 15 was a reasonable number to aim for.

The next excitement was that Richard managed metropolis level on the cloth commodity improvements. So he now had 13 points. And Daniel extended his roads, giving him back the longest street card. He had control of the merchant, too, so he had 11 points. I was back to 10, and Becky - who had had a sudden spate of success in building - had 8.


I was expecting the game to go on for a while longer... then Richard built some more streets. Daniel's longest street had eight pieces, and Richard's had 9. So he had two more points, making him the winner with 15. And then he showed that he had the merchant card, so he took that as well, meaning he had in fact won with 16 points.


It was a pretty strong victory, I was second with 10 points, Becky was close behind with 9, and Daniel was just behind again with 8.

As we were talking about the game and starting to clear away, Daniel took the camera. He switched to sepia to take this rather nice picture of Richard:


.. and a black-and-white picture of the robber:


... and this, showing both the merchant (artistically out of focus, close to the camera) and the robber in the distance: