I'm 99% sure you can.  The rule simply states that you can trade any 4 of one resource for any 1 resource the bank has.

It's  a little unorthodox, but I may keep that in mind for future games.  I think it falls under the category of weird/questionable brilliant moves.

I have a question for anyone out there. We were playing Settlers last night and an interesting situation came up. I had four ore, and I wanted to downsize the amount of cards in my hand, but I needed one of the ore in my hand at the time. Is it legal to trade in foru ore for 1 ore?

I think it is because it is 4:1 of ANY card you want to trade for.

Paul Blair

There are a lot of great tips here.

I especially like that someone agrees with me that Yellow is better than Green.  I've been trying to convince people of that for years. 

I think this is a very metagame issue.  All things being equal, seating has no bearing on the game.  In a way seating is auto corrected by the order of the highest dice role and the offset advantage of picking first.

If you have more experinced players playing with noobs then maybe a seating order could change things.

It must be 4 of one resource or commodity.  So 4 Sheep or 4 Cloth


No.  commodities can only be used for your development chart.  However, you can trade 4 of any one commodity for a resource.


Yes.


Yes.


You're welcome.

My opening strategy is always to look for the best Ore placement, as I feel it's crucial in all stages of the game.  After that I try to make sure I can produce any resource.  Nothing sucks worse than having to trade for any particular resource.  I also try to place on a corner that borders 3 different resources.  Placing on the coast tends to be tactically unsound in my opinion.  If possible I like to only be 1 or 2 segments away from a port.

As far as numbers goes, I try to scoop up 5,6,8, and 9s, but it's more important to have a good spread (different numbers).  You'll be surprised how fast you can win if you produce something EVERY dice roll (except 7s of cource).  To me there isn't much more you can do at the set up phase.

The Economics of Settlers of Catan

By Jake Williams


   
Before we can discuss this further there are some things that have to be assumed.  Any resource mentioned is assumed to be on an ideal number.  Obviously, bad numbers on a certain hex will depreciate its value, but for the purposes of good analysis we have to use optimal conditions.  This also discounts any particular strategy that is dependent on board set up (i.e. building to a port when you have red numbers to a resource that the port trades favorably for).  The main two factors that go into this commentary are supply (the number of hex tiles available) and demand (the amount of a resource needed to build a structure).

This is my ranking of the resources in order of best to worse:

1. Ore
2. Wheat
3. Brick
4. Wood
5. Wool

Ore

A lot of people initially disagree with me when I tell them that Ore is the most important resource in the game.  The majority of these players tend to be new or have never looked closer at the board.  Ore only has 3 hexes.  Automatically this takes away the amount of possible places to produce Ore.  In layman’s terms the supply is low.
People that disagree with this quickly counter with “Well, Brick only has 3 hexes as well, and you need it more in the start of the game.”  This is flawed.  First of all, if you buy into this logic you are missing the other part of the logic that makes Ore more valuable than Brick, demand.  Every structure that requires Brick only requires 1 resource card.  The amount of structures that require either resource is the same (2) so that’s a wash.  But look at the Ore required to build its structures.  A City requires 3 Ore cards, and a Development Card requires 1.  Cities require 3 times as much Ore as a Settlement requires Brick.  This is a huge demand.
Let’s look at the strategic value of Ore over Brick, and the argument that Brick is better at the start of the game.  A City increases you production on your resource tiles.  Card advantage (having more cards in your hand than anyone else) is the key to winning.  Also, City is worth more points than a Settlement, and you don’t have to build a road to build a City (it is worth noting that by saying this I must concede that the effect cost of a Settlement now becomes 3 Wood, 3 Brick, 1 Wheat, and 1 Wool).
A beginning game value of Brick over Ore is skewed and will cause you to lose games if you aren’t careful.  At the end of the day you cannot possibly win a game with only the structures Brick can produce.  You will cap out at 7 points (5 Settlements and Longest Road).  However, you can win with only structures that can be built with Ore (2 Cities, Largest Army, and VPs via Development Cards).

Wheat

   It was tough decision ranking Wheat over Brick.  Brick certainly has the supply factor over Wheat.  One of the things that made me rank it above the other is usefulness.  3 out of the 4 structures require at least 1 Wheat, and of these 3 structures all over them are capable of producing VPs that aren’t transient.  This segways to the demand section.  Cities, which are the game ending structures, require twice the amount of Wheat that Brick needs to build a Settlement.  It could be argued that the effect cost of a City versus a Settlement slightly favors Brick because while 3 of each resource card is needed for either, there are only 3 Brick hexes.  I’m not sure if the usefulness of Wheat quite out weighs that fact, but again this was a hard ranking. But at the end of the day, you can win the game with the structures that Wheat can build whereas you’ll always cap out at 7 VPs with ones that require Brick.

Brick

   I think we’ve examined Brick enough by now to know its importance and why it ranks third.  Brick places higher over Wood simply because there are less hex tiles producing Brick over Wood.  Both resources are needed for all the structures they can build.  All other things being equal, Brick wins over Wood!

Wood

   Wood ranks near the bottom, but don’t let that take away from its role in the game.  It’s need in half of the structures, and you’ll go no where fast if you don’t have it. 

Wool

   Wool took a back seat to Wood simply because of effective costs.  All structures Wool can build effectively cost 1 Wool.  Settlements effectively cost you 3 Wood, but a Road is only 1 Wood.  Supply is both equal for the two resources. Note that you can win the game solely on structures Wool can build (This is highly improbable though, but you could get both Road Building cards and get Longest Road with 5 links.  So your score would look like: 2 Settlements, Longest Road, Largest Army, and 4 VPs in Development Cards).  I had to remove that scenario from my ranking because of its improbability. 

 

Here are some questions I have:

1. When trading 4 of a kind can you trade a mixture of resources and commodities (such as 3 sheep and 1 cloth), or does it have to be 4 sheep or 4 cloth?

2. When purchasing standard things such as roads, settlements, cities, etc., can you use the corresponding commodities to make your purchase?

3. When no one has cities left, does the barbarian still move?

4. If yes to the above, and the barbarian attacks, is a victory point still awarded to the one with the highest knight strength?

Thanks,

-Kojow

This has become a big source of debate with my settlers group.  Do you think who you sit by has an effect on the game?  We now draw cards for seats.  I think sitting to the left of your biggest competition so you play after them has an advantage.  Whenever the pirate ship is quickly approaching playing after someone means you have the ability to react to their amount of knights.  Meaning if they are in a position to lose a city you can chose not to activate a knight or if they have put themselves in a place to be the defender of catan you can foil their efforts and steal their victory point.  Most likely if the ship is very close they won't have a chance to react to your move before the barbarians attack.  Now on the flip side if there is a race for a placement this seating position has a disadvantage, but that happens far less frequently so I still stand by the thought that you should want your biggest competition to play before you and the worst player to be immediately after you.  Now if you have 4-6 players all on a very equal skill level this may not be as big of a factor, but in a group where there is an obviously strong or weak player I think this can be huge. What do you think?
 

I am interested in starting a Settlers and/or Cities and Knights of Catan meetup group. Do we have other people out this way interested as well ? Let me know