I came into Catan with low expectations – a lot of board games that I’ve played have struggled to hold my attention for long periods of time, and compared to some of the more high octane action games I had grown accustomed to, it seemed relatively less interesting. And for my first 45 minutes of playing with two others who also had no Catan experience, my expectations were met. It took a while for things to get started, as we awkwardly fumbled with the online version and figured out the rules, and since none of us could really plan ahead, we all worked with each other in the most cooperative way possible without much thought for the win condition. However, once things began to make more sense, the interpersonal dynamics began to shift – I formed a tag team with another player, offering to not target them with adverse effects in exchange for better deals on our trades, which would evolve into refusing to trade with the other player (this would later prove to be the wrong move, as that player would win). And though I know for a fact we all played suboptimally, my experience of the game wasn’t worsened just because I was bad. The win condition was still at the forefront of my mind, but also acting as the “Tycoon of the Rocks” and creating as much chaos as possible was something that I began to take into consideration as well. It was more fun to create banter between friends than it was to spend mental effort calculating the best rates or the best strategy.
Later on my own while I was sick, I ended up playing a few games of Catan with bots of colonist.io, but this experience was fundamentally different. Without a great understanding of the optimal state of play and no desire to really get into the nitty gritty of it, I couldn’t really engage with the game in the same way I had previously.
(These are not my friends)
I was no longer the Tycoon of the Rocks, I was just a single player that would occasionally get requested for a trade of 1 wood for 1 wool even though I already had 5 wool and didn’t need any more. There were no alliances, no bartering, no conversations about how a player was acting like a snake or how another player was being excessively rude by refusing to trade. Compared to my first time playing with real people, my additional playthroughs of Catan were lifeless and boring. While I knew that playing solo would be an opportunity to hone my strategies and skills, I just didn’t feel the same drive to perfect my play as I would for other games, and I think that’s perfectly fine. I’ll stay collecting my rocks.
