I started, and chose what looked like a good spot for my first settlement, on the clay-ore-wheat intersection, giving me 8, 4 and 10 as my numbers. It looked as if wheat and clay would be the most difficult resources to get hold of, so I thought I'd make sure of some - unless the dice behaved very erratically - and also some good ore.
Richard then played his two settlements roughly where I expected him to, the first one on an intersection that would make a nice upgrade to a city (since city improvement commodities come with sheep, ore and wood), and the other in the place where I'd have liked my second settlement, with the other resources and some more useful numbers.
With no useful way to access the 6-clay hex, I placed my second settlement on one that bordered two clay tiles - 9 and 10 - and a sheep, and my city then went on a border with two sheep and a wood; more numbers, and immediate access to some commodities. Richard was slightly surprised I hadn't taken the other intersection with all three potential commodities available - however I was put off by the 2 on ore. So he took that one for his city.
I forgot to take a photo until we'd played a round of the game and had both built an extra street, so here's what it looked like at that point:
The game moved fairly swiftly. I expanded fairly easily, building settlements and cities, but didn't gain commodity cards as quickly as Richard did. He reached metropolis level on coins surprisingly early in the game. I did manage to buy knights, and activate them; so the first two times the barbarians attacked, I won another victory point as 'defender of Catan'.
He continued being able to improve his cities. He picked up four instances of the 'merchant' card, enabling him to trade 2:1 on different resources, as appropriate (and an extra point for that). And he managed to achieve two more metropolises. Since I was still at the third level for most of the city improvements, and thought there was little chance of overtaking Richard, I did deliberately build my roads so as to take the longest street card, albeit with only six.
For some reason, we decided to count up our points when I'd built my last settlement. I had 13 points on the board, 2 for the street and 2 extra defender points. 17 in all.
Richard had only three cities and three settlements... 9 points, plus three metropolises giving him an extra 6. He controlled the merchant - throughout the game - and also picked up a victory point progress card. 17 in all. We were playing to 18 points, so whoever gained one more point would be the winner...
My only hope was picking up a victory point, or possibly being Defender of Catan again. All Richard needed to do was to join his two sections of roads, to take the card from me. Which is precisely what he did:
So he won the game with 19 points, to my 15.
Except that we decided we'd just play a few more rounds until the barbarians attacked again....
But by that stage, I'd managed to build yet more roads, and had taken the longest street card once more.
What's more, although it can't really be made out with the smaller size of photos I've uploaded, we had exactly the same number of knights. We each had one 'mighty' knight and one 'strong' knight on the board. Meaning that neither of us gained a victory point; instead we both picked up a progress card. So we were back at 17 points each.
Which meant that we had to play another few rounds until the barbarians attacked once more....
So Richard built more roads, to take the longest street card back. And I built my last few, and took it again...
... and since I'd now built everything I could, I concentrated instead on commodities. I was lucky, and was able to build one to the fifth level, meaning I took one of Richard's metropolises.
So I had 19 points, and he had 16 points (since had had by that stage built another settlement) - so our positions were reversed. But the barbarians hadn't yet attacked for the last time, so we kept playing...
He built his last city. He built more streets to take the card back from me. Now he had 19 points, and I had 17.
He collected sufficient commodity cards to upgrade his city improvements to the last levels, meaning that his two remaining metropolises were secure. And he built his last two settlements. He also managed to have more knights than I did, giving him one final victory point when the barbarians attacked for the last time:
So he won resoundingly, with 22 points (13 for regular buildings, 4 metropolis points, 2 for the street card, 1 victory point, 1 defender point, 1 merchant point). I was still on 17. The last few rounds were actually a bit dull; by that stage I had nothing left to buy other than knights. I continued improving my cities so I'd be able to pick up more progress cards, but most of those weren't a lot of use either. The only ones that would have helped me are victory point cards, and I didn't get any of those.
Once again, we made a decision - as we had before! - that we would stop when one player reaches 18 points. It does feel as if the game should continue when that happens... but if we keep playing, it gets rather tedious. 18 is a good number for two-player Cities and Knights.
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