Catan: Settle Down!
Written: Nov 02 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: hot seat mode, decent graphics and sound, pretty good AI, decent zoom controls
Cons: no online multiplayer, no expansions or scenarios, some control issues
The Bottom Line: This is a good version of Catan and the $5 price tag makes it worth it.
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| kjell1979's Full Review: Catan for iPhone |
I'm a big fan of the Settlers of Catan board game. It's quite an engaging game that has elements of luck and skill but can also be completed in a short amount of time. As my kids get older they also are beginning to grow past the and Trouble games and onto games with more substance. Having played the DS import , it piqued my interest to see that the same development group was making an iPhone version of the same game available in North American markets. As soon as it hit the iPhone App Store, I downloaded it.
Gameplay
Catan is the iPhone adaptation of the board game The Settlers of Catan. Catan reminds me a lot of the beginning phase of a small Civilization map. Settlers have arrived on an island and they must colonize it. The goal of the game is to score 10 victory points before your opponent can. Victory points can be achieved by creating settlements, upgrading your settlements into cities, creating the longest road on the island, deploying more knight cards than your opponent, or by simply drawing a victory point cards from the deck of development cards.
Catan is a game intended for 3 or 4 players. Any less or more than that range and the game becomes unbalanced or just plain boring. The map in Catan is one hexagonal grid of smaller hexagonal tiles. Each player starts out by claiming a settlement at one of the 3 way intersections of a hexagonal tile. Then a road is built connecting that settlement to another hexagonal point along one side of the tile. Many settlements will border one, two, or three different hexagonal tiles. These tiles represent one of 5 different resources (and a desert card worth nothing): ore, wheat, wool, lumber, and brick. These resources are used to purchase things in the game. For instance, a road can be built for one brick and one lumber resource; a settlement for one wool, one lumber, one brick, and one wheat; an upgrade of a settlement to a city for three ore and two wheat, and a development card can be drawn for one wool, one wheat, and one ore.
Each hexagonal tile is also given a number value from 2 to 12. Players take turns rolling a pair of dice, where the number rolled during someone's turn will correspond to a tile and therefore pay out that resource to whoever has a settlement or city bordering a tile of that type. Settlements pay out one resource per match, while cities pay out two resources per match. If a seven is rolled, a series of special events happen. First any player that has more than seven resource cards must discard half of them rounding down. Then the player who rolled the seven gets to move the robber piece to a tile of his choosing. What that does is prevent any player from getting resources from that particular tile. In addition if any opponent has a settlement bordering it, he or she can choose one opponent to blindly draw a resource card from his or her hand.
Development cards play a huge role in Catan. There are a few different cards that appear in the deck: a Knight card allows you to move the robber to a tile of your choosing at any point during your turn, even before your dice roll. It acts as if you had just rolled a 7 without the need to discard resources for people with more than seven cards. There are also victory point cards as well as cards that grant you two resources of your choosing or monopoly cards that allow you to claim all cards of a given type which exist in the hands of your opponents.
Trading is an essential part of Catan. You can trade resources with other players, or with the bank. Trading with the bank is at a 4:1 ratio, meaning you must trade four of one type of resource for another of your choosing. By placing a settlement at a port space on the edge of the tiles, you can trade with the bank at either a reduced rate of 3:1 or even 2:1 for a given resource. So even though these settlements aren't bordering 3 different resource tiles, they can still be just as valuable in the right scenarios.
The strategy behind Catan is your ability to collect victory points while limiting your opponents from doing the same. In most games a single player might have a superior position and the other players will attempt to gang up on that opponent to prevent him or her from winning the game. Other times, it's trying to figure out who is going for the longest road or figuring out what resources allow you to collect the victory points you need to win the game. The beauty of Catan is players can gang up on the perceived leader in order to keep the game closer. This doesn't always work, but it certainly makes the game more competitive and memorable. Another great aspect of Catan is the fact that you can't win just by doing one thing better than your opponents. That is, you can only place 5 total settlements and 4 total cities, and there are only 4 victory point cards in the deck. So you have to be able to accomplish multiple goals in order to get your 10 victory points.
There's really one mode of play in Catan for the iPhone, but that mode of play has lots of little setup options. You can setup a game with either computer or human opponents. When playing against human players it's more of a local hot seat multiplayer. This is where the players pass the iPhone or iPod Touch around when the turn changes. This enables each player to keep their resource cards and development cards secret. The bad part is other players cannot see actions performed like traded resources, dice rolls, or other actions they otherwise would see in a given game. This gives the computer an advantage when planning on playing monopoly cards or choosing where to place the robber. There are also a few different options when playing the game. You can randomize the turn order or the resources and ports on the board. You can play with standard dice or a dice deck of cards where all numbers will be "rolled" eventually based on their probability. You can also play with a friendly robber, resource bonuses, and determine the starting parameters and number of victory points required to win. I usually play with a particular setup and rarely deviate from it.
The computer AI is for the most part pretty good. In 3 player games they play very competitively and actively try to play to win at all costs. Despite the level of aggression and competence, there are a few quirks which bug me a little bit. First, when the scores are close I can't figure out why a player chooses to go after another with the robber. It's not because of score and it's not because of resource cards held because I've seen counter examples to both. Another issue is that the computer players seem to go after certain methods of obtaining victory points at all costs. For instance, I saw a computer player go after my largest army achievement with zero knight cards played compared to my 5. Five knight cards played is very high, yet the same player was one road segment away from claiming the longest road yet decided to go for development cards instead of that one resource. In 4 player games, I found that you can easily fly under the radar of your opponents and come out victorious. This exploits their ability to change tactics on the fly based on resources available and resource scarcity. The computer AI also has 8 different profiles that have different levels of expansion, aggression, and skill. While I did notice some difference between an expansive AI profile and an aggressive one, each player seems to be very competent in playing the game. Therefore there are few easy victories.
There are a few modes I wish they would have included in the iPhone version of Catan. The first one is online multiplayer. While I do have people I can play with here, the Xbox Live Arcade version of Catan allows you to play with people over the internet. The capability is available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but it just wasn't implemented. The other feature I would have liked to see are more scenarios and expansions. The DS version of Catan: Die Erste Insel had the Seafarer's expansion complete with all the custom scenarios accompanying it. This created a nice addition to the standard game of Catan. I kind of expected this to be in there because this game was made by the same developer. Unfortunately this version is very light on the features.
Overall Catan is very faithful to its board game counterpart and offers quite a challenge from the AI. However, my biggest complaint is in the content. Without any expansions or scenarios, or even online multiplayer this version fails to standout among all the other Catan games out there.
Controls
The controls are pretty solid but have a few annoying quirks. The touch controls are pretty basic in that you can place settlements, roads, and cities by selecting the open spaces available to place them.
The biggest issue with the controls is the responsiveness relating to the dialog boxes. Often I try pressing the green check button in the various dialog boxes only to not have it register. I press it over and over and only after a half dozen presses does it work. It's a minor gripe but it's really annoying. Some of these should simply be a touch anywhere on the screen to continue rather than a single small green check circle.
Graphics
The way Catan is setup it has to accomplish only a few things well graphically. First, you must be able to tell where settlements, cities, and roads are on the map and who they belong to in addition to being able to see the entire board. Secondly, you have to clearly be able to identify different resource types by not only color but by a uniquely identifyable icon along with the port locations on the map. Finally, you really need to know certain information about your opponents like how many points they have, how many resource cards they're holding, and how many development cards they're holding. It also helps to know how many knight cards they've played.
Catan accomplishes these graphical goals by allowing you to zoom in and out on the map using the iPhone's built-in zooming tools. You can also rotate the map if you want to see things from a better perspective. Catan also does an auto-zoom when placing settlements, roads, or cities, as well as zooming in on resources. There isn't much in the way of gorgeous graphics or animations; and it certainly looks nothing like the Xbox Live Arcade version of Catan graphically, but the graphics are colorful and the windows show useful information all without having to dig around for it. I consider the graphics to be a success while not going above and beyond.
One important aspect about the animations to take note of: turning them on by default really slows the game down. They're kind of neat at first, but once you get the hang of the game you really want to speed up your opponents' moves. Having this option is great though I can't imagine why anyone would want this enabled for any length of time. It turns a 15 minute game into a 30 minute game easily.
Sound
Like the graphics, the audio in Catan is relatively non-descript. There are a few different themes that cycle throughout the game. All the musical themes fit in well with a 1600's type atmosphere. Given the character avatars are all out of that era, this is a good fit for the game.
The sound effects are also ambient as well as useful to see what's going on. For instance, you'll hear the dice roll, and a rooster crow whenever someone builds a settlement, other sounds accompany different actions like road building, or city placements. These sound effects fit in well with the game but also serve to alert you if you missed where the action took place on the map. Overall the sound effects do a good job of not only immersing you into the game, but also in their utility as well.
Replay Value
Settlers of Catan is a great board game and that's what drives the replay value of this game. Catan is setup with random tiles and ports, the game takes on a life of its own. What makes the game even stronger is that the AI is pretty decent and competitive. There are a few quirks in there which make long term play against the AI boring. Still if I were going on a plane trip with my wife or kids, I would definitely load this into my iPod and play it because of the hot seat mode. The lack of online multiplayer, expansions, and scenarios does hurt the game's replay value significantly because once you play the basic Settlers of Catan; you want to move onto the expansions. But beyond that I probably will find myself playing at least a few games of Catan every once in a while and won't be removed from my iPod for quite some time.
Overall Catan is a game that should be purchased by fans of the board game and in board games in general. Another reason to purchase this game is if you enjoy playing Settlers of Catan but do not have 3-4 people to play with. The AI is strong enough to give you quite a few memorable games and the hot seat multiplayer allows you to play with other people without having to clean up the board. However the biggest issue as seen by fans of the series would be the vanilla nature of the game. Catan offers no custom scenarios, no expansions, and only a few gameplay options that really help to keep things fresh. Despite all this, I find myself playing Catan quite often and I think that should be the case for many other gamers as well.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kjell1979
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Location: Oxford, Mass
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