Winning Strategies for the Settlers of Catan

The Settlers of Catan is a challenging board game that will often require players to implement a strategy from early in the game to end up winning. There are a number of different ways to get enough victory points to win, and players who try to do too many things at once will end up not doing any of them well enough. The two main strategies are longest road and cities/army, but either strategy can be combined with the secondary strategy of ports.

The Settlers of Catan: Basic Premise

The basic premise of The Settlers of Catan is that you are a settler building on the island of Catan. Your settlements are placed on the edges of different types of terrain, and each terrain piece produces a specific resource when a specific number is rolled. Resources are used to build more roads, settlements, cities, and buy development cards. The winner of the game is the person who gets to 10 victory points first, through a combination of settlements, cities, longest road, largest army, and victory point development cards.

The Settlers of Catan Strategy: Longest Road

One good strategy that can be employed in The Settlers of Catan is the road-building strategy. With 2 victory points available for the longest road, this will make you far more likely to get to 10 points first. For this strategy, place your initial settlements on the edges of terrain that produces wood and bricks, as those are needed for roads. Then build away, trying to cut off other players from building roads. This will also prevent other players from settling, as they need roads to build settlements.

As you build your longest road, make sure to build settlements along it as you can. These will not only get you more resources, but they will also protect your road, because if another player builds a settlement on your road, it breaks your longest road. Do keep in mind that you can build a maximum of 5 settlements, so to win, you will also need to get 3 victory points by making a city or two, or getting victory point development cards or the largest army.

The Settlers of Catan Strategy: Cities and Largest Army

Another strategy to win in The Settlers of Catan is to try to get the largest army card. This is won by buying development cards and playing enough knights to get the largest army. In the meantime, you can be turning your settlements into cities, as that uses the same resources as development cards. To use this strategy, build your first settlements in locations that will produce ore, wool, and wheat, and as soon as you can build cities there, do so.

As you buy development cards, you will have the added benefit of being able to use your knights to move the robber off your best locations, and you will likely get a number of other good development cards. Use the monopoly at a time when you know people have a lot of the resource you want, and you might even be lucky enough to get a couple victory points through the development cards.

The Settlers of Catan Strategy: Ports

This last strategy for the Settlers of Catan is probably not viable on its own, but can work well when combined with one of the above strategies. If there is a location on the board that will produce a lot of a specific resource, and especially if one of those resource-heavy locations is on a 2:1 port for that resource, build there. It will give you a lot of flexibility with being able to trade your abundance of that resource for whatever you may need to help you win.