I’d recommend the Catan app to anyone who’s been listening to me rave about the board game for years but hasn’t had a chance to try it, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking to improve his play. I’ll report back on that once I’ve had a chance to play it a few times. The Seafarers app doesn’t seem to have added any new AI players, and the game requires that you play a few of the basic scenarios before unlocking the Seafarer ones, even though I’ve played the First Island numerous times before buying the expansion. But no AI player does much in the way of blocking the human player’s strategy, and they all have a tendency to hold resources too long – I’ve won a few times when the AI players each had 9-13 resources, and there had to be something they could have built with those resources to gain some points. The game comes with a half-dozen or so AI players that vary in overall skill and in style of play, some aggressive, some focused more on building internally. The trade engine screen presents all five resources in a row in the center, and you slide up or down depending on whether you want to give or receive a certain resource in the trade. There’s also an option to decline all trade offers until your next turn, which can be useful when you’re receiving a slew of offers for a resource you know you won’t trade at any likely price. The trading engine is simpler to use, and AI players do make frequent trade offers. Buying a card is simple, but using one requires scrolling to the right until you find the card you already have, at which point the question mark (for a description) changes to a check mark. Building is straightforward, and only items you can build are highlighted, although it would be simpler if it snapped right to the first thing you can buy. On your turn, once the die roll occurs, you click a somewhat-hidden menu buton on the right side of the screen to pull up your options: Build something, buy or use a card, initiate a trade, go to settings, or pass the dice. The map itself is extremely clear even with the colors and textures on the various tiles, and you can zoom as needed. The app provides statistics on dice rolls and resource gains for all players, so you see for yourself that the computer wasn’t cheating when it made you roll a 7 when you had 13 resources and were about to build two cities and win the game. The Catan app itself works well if you fine tune the options to speed up the graphics and reduce the fake chatter from AI players. The developers just released the first in-game expansion, Seafarers, today, and I purchased it but have yet to download it. The app allows you to play two or three AI players, or to play another person who’s sitting with you, but lacks an online play option. The Catan iOS app costs a reasonable $4.99, with colorful and slightly goofy graphics and an AI good enough to help you learn the game or pass the time, but no AI player strong enough to challenge an experienced player on a consistent basis. Settlers of Catan remains the top board game on my rankings, even though it requires at least three players it’s a great game that has simple mechanics, requires players to plan and have a strategy, includes mechanisms to reduce the odds of one player routing the others, and has helped forge a new segment in the U.S. My latest column for mental_floss, a conversation with prolific board game designer Reiner Knizia (the man behind my favorite two-player game, Lost Cities), went up today.
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