Which is better seafarers and cities and knights

Building along these rivers gives you coins. Coins can be cashed in for resources, but there are bonus points for the wealthiest player and negative points for the poorest, so spend wisely. The Caravans: Attempt to have your roads and settlements become part of the caravans that slowly spread across Catan.

Each time a settlement is built, players bid resources to determine where camels are placed. If you can surround your settlements with camels they are worth more points.

Barbarian Attack: Barbarians begin to attack Catan by conquering resource hexes and settlements, rendering them useless. Train knights to ward off the invaders and take them prisoner. Connect your roads to these locations to make travel quicker and easier.

There are new mechanics as well, but most of them will feel familiar. Using a development flipchart, players can improve their cities in trade, politics and science using commodities.

Each area of improvement has five levels of increasing cost. As you reach higher levels of improvement, you will unlock special abilities and will be able to earn progress cards that give you all sorts of powerful benefits.

Should you be the first to build the fourth or fifth level in any area, you construct a metropolis that provides additional resources and points. In addition to opportunities for advancement and expansion, you must always keep an eye on invading barbarians.

In the event of a failed barbarian attack and there is a tie among the greatest contributors, none of the tied players earn a Defender of Catan card, with each of the tied players drawing a progress card of the type of their choosing instead. City walls are a minor addition to Cities and Knights that increase the number of resource and commodity cards a player is allowed in their hand before having to discard on a roll of 7. However, they do not protect the player from the robber, he still may not produce resources or commodities from a hex on which the robber has been placed.

Only cities and metropolises may have walls, and each city or metropolis can only have one wall, up to a total of three walls per player. If the barbarians pillage your city i. You must remove the city wall from the board. The merchant is another addition to Cities and Knights. Like the robber, the merchant is placed on a single land hex.

Unlike the robber, the merchant has a beneficial effect. The merchant can only be deployed through the use of a Merchant progress card of which there are six , on a land hex near a city or a settlement.

The player with the control of the merchant can trade the resource not commodity of that type at a two-to-one rate, as if the player had a control of a corresponding two-to-one harbor. The player with the control of the merchant also earns a victory point. Both the victory point and the trade privilege are lost if another player takes control of the merchant. The rules are ambiguous whether the merchant and the robber can be placed on the same hex, and if so, whether having the robber on the same hex as the merchant disables the trading privilege or the victory point.

When played with Seafarers, the rules are also ambiguous whether the merchant can be played on a Gold River hex, and if so, whether two resources of different types may be traded.

Some of these links to the Catan website are now dead. See my newly-posted answer; the Catan website now officially supports the "add 2 victory points to the scenario" option.

Toon Krijthe BradC BradC 4 4 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges. I would say The reason is we use the rule to increase the amount by 3 for each expansion. Aaron Aaron 1. Do you have a source for this answer? Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password.

Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. There is still enough time to prepare for confronting the intruders, though. The strength of the hostile barbarian army always corresponds to the number of cities on Catan.

In order to successfully defend Catan, the knights of all players combined must be at least as strong as the barbarian army. Knights are not used in the form of cards; instead, they are represented by wooden tokens that are placed on unoccupied intersections. A knight can only fight after he is activated; activation costs one grain. After paying the grain, you turn the knight token over so that its active side is face up.

Each ring on the token counts as one strength point. If the knights of all players combined have enough strength points to defeat the barbarian army, the danger is averted for the moment. However, if the Catanian knights are too weak, a city will be raided and downgraded to a settlement. This unfortunate event always affects the player who had the lowest total strength of active knights when the barbarians attacked. When you are not busy defending Catan, you are competing for the metropolises, which represent two additional victory points.

In order to establish a metropolis which is placed on top of a city , you first need to improve your cities. The construction of city buildings, such as the Library, Market, Abbey, or Town Hall, is indicated on development flip-charts. You pay for city improvements with commodities such as coins, cloth, or books.

How do you get commodities? Instead of two resources, cities adjacent to mountains, pasture, and forest hexes produce only one resource but also one commodity derived from the respective type of resource. With increasing city improvements, the odds to obtain new progress cards become more favorable. Get used to a tougher life on Catan — and a longer but also more exciting game. The first player to reach 13 victory points is the winner.

Considering this circumstance, it may take only 3 or 4 turns until the barbarian ship lands on Catan. Therefore, it is important to start building knights early in the game and to activate them. Such preparation will help you avoid being the target of the barbarian army, i.

Grain is very important for defending Catan.