The Weasel guide to Settlers of Catan part one - The Strategies
In which I describe the various types of Settlers strategies, and their strong and weak points.
This guide was first written in late 2002/early 2003, while I was playing Settlers semi-regularly with friends in Perth. It’s tempting to try and change it, but I haven’t played much Settlers of late, so I’m somewhat rusty and it’s hard to know which bits are right and seem wrong, or wrong but seem right. So I’ll just write it out straight - I lost the original electronic copy, but recently found a long-forgotten hard copy, so I’m retyping it. I also unfortunately lost the original weasel graphic, and have had to improvise using Google images.
Thanks go to Lee Taylor and Jason Funnell, who helped review earlier drafts and provided extra weasel tricks, way back in 2003.
Strategies
There are several basic strategies that can be used to win a game of Settlers. Most of the time you’ll use a couple of them together, but sometimes you can win just using one. Quite often the particular strategy that you play will be dictated by chance. Rather than being able to pick and choose, you might only have one clear strategy that’ll work. A good player will recognise when this is the case, and will be able to play many different strategies as circumstances permit.
City Builder (aka. “The Dwarf”)
This is the normal uber-strategy. For best effect, try and get a balance of stone, wheat and sheep, perhaps with an easy run to a port. Dwarves tend to grow slowly at first, but if they get a few good numbers in the middle game, they can streak for a win with blinding speed. All they need are three cities, largest army and a couple of victory points, and they’re home and hosed.
Sub-type: “Run to the hills!”
Dwarves are really, really good at battering down the hatches, and making trouble for players that try to stop them from winning, since they usually have cards in the right proportions for churning out development cards. Attacking an established dwarf often takes the combined efforts of the rest of the players.
How to play a Dwarf
The main criteria for being a dwarf is stone. Lots of stone. If you can get some grain and sheep too, so much the better, and if you can get to a port of some description that’s pretty much the win. Early on, you’ll be hoarding stone and grain to build up your cities. Once you’ve done that, you need at least one extra settlement, preferably two, followed by victory point cards and the largest army.
An evil trick (if you’re a Nibellung, or dark dwarf) is to buy a development card early on and use the baron to nobble the person who looks like they’re coming second. Naturally you’ll be coming first, and this will allow you to increase your lead before those pesky overlanders grow too powerful.
How to annoy Dwarves
Dwarves need space in the middle game, once they’ve built up their two initial settlements into cities, and start trying for their third city. If you can deny them this, particularly if their third spot is good, they will stagnate. So, build around them in the early-middle game, and they’re as good as toast. Of course, you need to see it coming, but dwarves are usually pretty obvious.
The only other ways to beat dwarves are to take largest army away from them (hard to do, since they usually have the better stone numbers) and/or starve them of cards by hitting them with the robber baron (again, hard to do).
Settlement Builder
This is a more spread out way of playing than the dwarf. It usually involves building settlements as quickly as possible in order to increase your production, often focusing more on quantity than quality. There are a couple of sub-types, the octopus and the road builder.
The octopus
The octopus is similar to the settlement builder, but a bit more choosy over where his settlements are placed. You’ll usually see settlements at the end of long roads, or ‘arms’, where they’ve snuck around to a dwarves’ ore hex.
The road builder
Sometimes one player will have too much wood and clay, and very little grain or sheep. Instead of trying to scrape together enough grain to build a settlement, the road builder often drives over other players can’t get to them. This can be dangerous, since a road doesn’t increase your production capacity, and you can stall if your numbers don’t get rolled for a while.
How to play a Settlement Builder
When placing your initial settlements, try and focus just as much on the balance of resources as how good your numbers are. You should try for a mix of three clay, three timber, a sheep and a grain, so that you don’t have to trade too much to build your settlements. In the early game, you should be able to build out to a couple of ports, to smooth over any wrinkles in the resources that you get. At your third or fourth settlement (depending on how the game’s going) you should start thinking about building your first city, followed by a couple more settlements if you have the room. After this, it’s a case of who gets to the longest road or largest army first.
How to annoy settlement builders
Two words: No Clay. If you can nobble their clay resources early, often the settlement builder doesn’t have the knight card necessary to free themselves. If you can make them stagnate in the early game, there’s a good chance they might no recover in time. If you can’t catch them in the early game, try and stifle their ore or grain supplies so that they can’t build cities. Five settlements plus longest road only gives you seven points, which makes the settlement player unhappy.
Merchant Princes
These players will typically try to get a good supply of a rare and/or valuable resource, usually grain, clay or wood, in the hope that they can trade it for other resources that they need.
The Monopolist
A Monopolist is a Merchant Prince with the only good number for a resource, which forces all of the other players to either trade with the Monopolist, trade for it at a port, or steal it. Whichever way they choose though, they’ll be at a disadvantage.
The Cartel
It’s quite hard for a player to lock down a resource completely by themselves, but it’s possible for two players to place on opposite sides of a hex and lock the resource up between them. This has the advantage that two people are now defending against the robber baron, but the disadvantage is that they are also competing against the other member of the cartel.
The Port Munchkin
The port munchkin is a player who has managed to gain a large amount of a resource, on good numbers, along with that resource’s two for one port. It gives the player a large advantage in terms of gaining rare resources, and is also immune to the aging of resources such as clay. It works particularly well with resources that other players don’t want, such as sheep.
How to play a Merchant Prince
Basically, grab a resource and hawk it for all it’s worth. Hawking it to other players one for one (or one for two if you can) is the best, but you need to be prepared to sell it at a port if necessary. In the early game, clay and grain are usually the most important, but it will vary depending on the specific board that you’re playing on. Always look to expand your coverage to other hexes, since normally you’ll be missing a few in your rush to cover the rare resources.
How to annoy a Merchant Prince
Usually the best method is to fight fire with fire. If you have a resource that they need, then you can swap one for one with them. Typically though, there’s no one strategy that will work exclusively, so be prepared to try a mixture if one strategy fails. If their hex is a clay hex, try a robber baron as early in the game as you can manage. If they don’t have anything to trade, they’ll usually stall. Usually a combination of the robber baron, a trade embargo and building close to them will be enough to finish them off. Watch out for the other players who want the resource so badly that they’re prepared to help out the besieged Merchant - you may find yourself fighting a battle on two fronts.
Machiavelli
Generally this strategy will work in close games where you only need a very slight advantage in order to win. It involves either turning the other players against each other in order to gain advantage, or befriending a player so that they will instead attack other players. Quite often, supporting a player who is competing for longest road is enough to set both them and their competitor at odds, allowing you to concentrate on building cities and consolidating your largest army.
How to play as Machiavelli
Try not to annoy the other players directly. Instead, concentrate on pointing out things that are in your favour, and don’t mention things that are bad for you. Encourage players when they’re doing things that you like, and make frowny faces likes this >B-( when they’re doing something bad. Of course, you’re doing this for their own good - you wouldn’t like to see them being taken advantage of. Take great care to encourage those players who seem particularly malleable. You may sometimes need to put spin on your actions to avoid political fallout.
Of particular note is the devious scheme of ‘propping up’ one of the other players, so that they are dependent on you, while remaining relatively harmless (Letting them have the longest road is good for this). Now you can let them take the lead, cop the flak for you and harass other players while you grow, and then yank the rug out from under them in the end or middle game by withholding key resources.
You might find the other players suspecting you of being a weasel. They’re probably right, but to throw them off the scent you might like to throw out phrases like “enlightened self-interest”.
How to annoy a Machiavellian player
Simply point out to the other players that Mr Machiavelli is a snivelling weasel. Most of his tricks rely on hoodwinking the other players, and playing fast and loose with the truth. Pay particular attention to the facts, including things like how many points the players have, how close each of them are to winning, and resources that the weasel has picked up. I fthis fails, you might try pointing out how reliant the player is on the weasel’s good will - nobody likes being a patsy.
The Generalist
The Generalist will try for a balance of most of the strategies. This is a good way to hedge your bets, particularly in a close game. If two or more of the other players are competing with the same strategy, then the generalist can usually switch to an easier strategy with little trouble.
How to play as a generalist
Put your finger in a lot of pies. You’ll probably want to start with a reasonably balanced distribution of resources, and work out from there: a bit of stone here, some roads there, a couple of cards, maybe a port, all the while maintaining enough diversity to be able to switch from one strategy to another as necessary.
How to annoy a generalist
Most generalists will use a smattering of each strategy. It makes them weaker individually than the more specialised strategies like the dwarf or the merchant. If they look like they’re trying to compete, usually the best defence is to specialise even more, trying to pull ahead on your ‘natural’ talents.
The Producer
The Producer will try and overcome the other players by the sheer weight of cards that they can produce. They’ll typically produce large numbers of cards and trade them in however they can. Their strategy is centred around getting enough cards that they can trade four for one until they can get to a port. Quite often they’ll be general enough that they’ll want this port to be a three for one port.
How to play a producer
Count how likely each resource is to give you cards. Get as many fives, sixes, eights and nines as you can, always concentrating on maximising the number of cards that you’ll get. If you can, place yourself within easy reach of either a three for one port, or a port for your most common resource.
How to annoy a producer
The producer gets lots of cards, but his key weakness is that they’re usually in the wrong combinations to do anything useful. They’ll have to either trade away for what they need, or get to a useful port. If you can block them from getting to a three for one port, they’ll usually wallow for quite a while.
Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode, where I’ll give you some tips on how to annoy people with your initial placements, and crush people in the early game.
