Catan is TOO Random
Behind the Scenes
Rough Script & Storyboard
Sometimes Random doesn’t feel that random. It’s not a great feeling when the roll of the dice doesn’t seem be hitting the numbers it’s supposed to or even worse, the randomness seems to be working against you, . Welcome to every game of Settlers of Catan,
where the dice don’t play nice. (typography)
It will give you some comfort to know that you aren’t the only one feeling this way. This video was inspired by a reddit thread talking about this very subject. And this video was inspired by that thread and more importantly, by the super helpful suggestions that were provided to deal with Catan’s random factor. I’ve gathered 7 of the ones I found most useful or interesting and will present them here. I tried to pick ones that had widely different solutions so that you had options to choose from, whatever feels right to you is likely to work best, but if you can’t decide, I’ve included my top picks at the end of the video.
Method #1 - Event cards instead of dice
Let’s start with an official attempt to resolve the random factor. It’s nice to know even the people producing Catan acknowledge the situation. The solution is a little overkill for the problem at hand, but you can be the judge of that.
Here’s the gist of it. Dice are no longer used in the game, instead you are given a deck of cards, 36 cards that represent the 36 dice combinations that could happen with two 6-sided dice. It’s 36 unique ways to distribute resources.
You shuffle the deck and draw a card, and basically do whatever the card says. Here are some examples, pause to read.
That’s the general idea but there are more specifics if you are interested, link to the description below for more info. I’ll also throw in a mention of their other attempt to solve dice inequality, “Helpers of Catan”.
Method #2 - Pre-Balanced Catan Boards
We tend to blame the dice for the unfairness of the game, but quite often it’s a result of the board state. Some boards are definite kingmakers and some allow for an even playing field.
And that’s just what this handy website provides. A well laid out collection of starting setups for hex tiles and numbers. It’s easy to look at and set up and will bring some balance to your Catan world. Link in the description below.
Method #3 - Pity Tokens
Do you ever get super excited as your turn comes around and you can’t wait to make a play with the obviously favourable dice roll you are destined to get and instead get literally zero resources? And as you share your woes with the other players, they look upon you with pity.
Well, this time, that pity serves a function. Whenever a player doesn’t get any resources from a dice roll, no matter who rolls, they get a token. (You can use coins or whatever.)
They can use those tokens on their turn to exchange it for any resource they would like, but here is the balanced part. The exchange rate of token to resource is based on the persons public victory point total. If someone has 3 victory points, then it will cost them 3 tokens to get a resource, meanwhile if someone has 9 victory points, then it will cost them 9 tokens for a resource.
Another suggestion to avoid token hoarding is that if a 7 is rolled, if you have more than 7 tokens, you have to return half to the bank.
Method #4 - The Fairest Dice
Instead of the averaging out of possibilities of a two 6-sided dice, where there is a heavy weighting towards the center numbers on the bell curve, what if you replace the two 6-sided dice with one 12-sided die. This makes all rolls equally possible, amazing right? I mean, it also makes every placement equally favourable which kind of takes away from that part of the game. Note: You would treat 1 and 7 as the Robber roll.
Method #5 - More Dice
Hey, if two dice seem to be giving you problems, maybe you just need another dice to settle disputes and that’s what this solution kind of does. You would instead, roll 3 dice and then choose which two dice you would like as the result. This gives you literally 3 different numbers to choose from and gives you a lot more control of the random nature of the dice. It’s a little more math on the spot and board analysis, but otherwise seems pretty awesome and hey, you wanted more control right?
Method #6 - Crucible
This method is almost it’s own mini-game within the game and introduces a whole new level of strategy and trading tactics. You can get the full explanation on this person’s website, link in description below. But here is the gist of it. Replace the 2-12 number tiles with 2-7 tiles. Deal out Ace to 7 to each player, you’ll need a few decks of cards if you have more than 4 players. I mean, if you are watching this and you are this far in, I would bet a like, comment and subscribe that you mean at least 3 decks of cards.
Anyway, instead of rolling dice, you would be able to choose which card you play from your hand and that is the dice roll. This function allows you to basically allow you to pick what resources you want the board to produce.
However, once you play a card, it stays face up on the table and you cannot play that same number again until you reset your hand. But imagine being able to negotiate saying something like, i’ll play my 5 if you agree to trade me one of the woods you get from it. Really opens up the possibilities right?
There are a few more rules, but if you like this, check out the website for rules AND downloaded assets! How very nice of them.
Method #7 - Real Talk
This is where people are going to start clicking out of the video and spamming the dislike button because I’m about to be super honest with you. Settlers of Catan is perfectly fine as it is. Yes, there is a strong random element to the game which is off putting for a lot of players but there is also a whole lot more to the game to balance out that randomness. There are so many strategies and unique paths to victory, along with the vast amount of creativity and cunning when it comes to trading, and on top of all that, it’s a ‘perfect knowledge’ game, where if you really wanted to, you could keep track of all the cards in circulation and know exactly what is in everyone’s hand. These factors have proven to outperform the effect of the randomness factor rather consistently as demonstrated by the results of Settlers of Catan tournaments. You will often find the same people winning these huge tournaments, here is a list of players who have won at least two Settlers of Catan super tournaments in all of Europe. Which means that they won in their local qualifier tournaments, then moved onto the the country wide tournaments, placed in those, and THEN moved onto the Europe-wide Tournament and placed there at least twice, sometimes thrice. These are names pulled from 2009 to 2019 Settlers European Super Tournaments.
Names of consistent rankers
William Benvenuto (2)
Joe Williams (2)
Erwin Pauëlsen (2)
Michal Májek (2)
Michal Juraszek (2)
Michal Daněk (2)
Ralf Arnold (2)
Ricardo Jorge Gomes(3)
Thijs Metz (2)
Jani Herlevi (3)
Lech Olczak (3)
Richard Gough (3)
Mihail Tzontchev (2)
Nuno Cruz (2)
David Van-Cauter (2)
Andreas Nilsson (2)
Andreas Hainy (2)
Josef Bohumínský (3)
Mauri Sahlberg (2)
Karl Verheyden (3)
Csaba Völgyi (2)
Alexander Spangler (2)
Martin Gaze (2)
Hans-Peter Jauk (2)
Daniel Klaschka (2)
Vincenzo Cavina (2)
Antonio Valerio (2)
Also, since you watched this whole video, the game is obviously important to you and I feel like part of the charm of the game, and what keeps you coming back for more, is that randomness, that feeling of excitement of almost winning but without absolute certainty is part of the thrill of the game.
If Method #7 resonated with you and you want to get better at the game to offset the randomness, let me know by commenting as such and then i’ll put together a similar list of how to improve in the game.
And now I'm going to roll until I get a 7, which should be the most common roll in the game.