What follows is a note I wrote a year ago about Settlers of Catan. I am re-posting it here for completeness and as a future building block.
So I bought Settlers of Catan over break to play with my family. Just the base game. The crazy thing is one of my little brothers ended up with nearly a 50% win rate across the break. We played around 15 games in all, so it isn't some stroke of luck by winning a few of a small total. He had never played the game before, and was consistently threatening me a few games in. I was thinking about his plan and how it compares to what I used to try today and realized that there is an interesting analogy to be made with specialization.
The strategy that I was using initially could be called expansionist. I would go for a diversification of resources and numbers. The initial focus is on building roads and then settlements to access new resource hexes. So initial placement favored clay and wood. Ports are not focused on. In some sense this strategy attempts to enter autarky through self sufficient production. The longest road tends to go hand-in-hand with this strategy. But cities come a bit later and fewer development cards are purchased.
My brother adopted a more focused approach. His goal is fast cities and development cards through concentrating on a few valuable hexes to maximize production of one or two resources. It is not uncommon for him to surround a hex with three cities/settlements. This strategy builds minimal roads and tries to capture the port associated with a resource being heavily produced. The focus is on stone and wheat, but almost any resource that the map allows for intensive production of will work. Clay is the only exception due to fewer hexes and it is not valuable for cities or development cards. Early trade is generally necessary for this approach due to shorting oneself in a resource or two. Even late game trade is a big component whether it be with other players or through the appropriate port.
To me comparing these to strategies gives an example for why specialization and international trade are beneficial. Those that try to be self-sufficient end up being slower producers and require larger empires to be at the same level. The specialize and trade approach enables the user to have a more compact empire, reducing resource expenditures for travel (roads). It also tends to produce larger quantities due to having specialized production facilities (cities & Hex focus). Finally, using the port or other players give the specialist access to resources not produced at home. This enriches him and his trade partners because he has a much larger and consistent supply of a resource and can hence get a better trade rate (ports).
I know the analogy is not perfect, or that detailed at the moment. But I thought it was interesting enough to share.
So I bought Settlers of Catan over break to play with my family. Just the base game. The crazy thing is one of my little brothers ended up with nearly a 50% win rate across the break. We played around 15 games in all, so it isn't some stroke of luck by winning a few of a small total. He had never played the game before, and was consistently threatening me a few games in. I was thinking about his plan and how it compares to what I used to try today and realized that there is an interesting analogy to be made with specialization.
The strategy that I was using initially could be called expansionist. I would go for a diversification of resources and numbers. The initial focus is on building roads and then settlements to access new resource hexes. So initial placement favored clay and wood. Ports are not focused on. In some sense this strategy attempts to enter autarky through self sufficient production. The longest road tends to go hand-in-hand with this strategy. But cities come a bit later and fewer development cards are purchased.
My brother adopted a more focused approach. His goal is fast cities and development cards through concentrating on a few valuable hexes to maximize production of one or two resources. It is not uncommon for him to surround a hex with three cities/settlements. This strategy builds minimal roads and tries to capture the port associated with a resource being heavily produced. The focus is on stone and wheat, but almost any resource that the map allows for intensive production of will work. Clay is the only exception due to fewer hexes and it is not valuable for cities or development cards. Early trade is generally necessary for this approach due to shorting oneself in a resource or two. Even late game trade is a big component whether it be with other players or through the appropriate port.
To me comparing these to strategies gives an example for why specialization and international trade are beneficial. Those that try to be self-sufficient end up being slower producers and require larger empires to be at the same level. The specialize and trade approach enables the user to have a more compact empire, reducing resource expenditures for travel (roads). It also tends to produce larger quantities due to having specialized production facilities (cities & Hex focus). Finally, using the port or other players give the specialist access to resources not produced at home. This enriches him and his trade partners because he has a much larger and consistent supply of a resource and can hence get a better trade rate (ports).
I know the analogy is not perfect, or that detailed at the moment. But I thought it was interesting enough to share.
