Introduction
Like many, my introduction to modern “European Style” board gaming was through Settlers of Catan. I grew up playing board games, but besides a few exceptions, these games were pretty mainstream like Sorry, Monopoly, Stratego, and Axis and Allies. Settlers of Catan was my true “gateway” into boardgaming as a hobby. Over time, I have found games that I prefer to play, but Settlers remains one of my favorites and I consider it to be a true classic along with the likes of Risk, Stratego, Diplomacy, etc. I have played Settlers over 200 times, which is far more than any other boardgame that I own.

Because of my appreciation for the basic Settlers formula, I have not been a fan of either the Seafarers or the 5-6 player expansion. My personal belief about boardgaming is that the best games are those that use simple rules to offer players difficult (but fun!) choices. The Seafarers expansion adds a few rules that slightly increases the basic game’s complexity, but in my opinion doesn’t really provide a proportional increase in fun choices. The 5-6 player expansion merely adds “more of the same” gameplay, resulting in long, drawn out games that certainly don’t feel any more fun than the original.

Cities and Knights of Catan significantly differs from these previous expansions in that it dramatically increases the complexity of the core Settlers product. The changes in Cities and Knights are so significant that they even change the weight of Settlers from a medium-light game to a medium (or arguably even a medium-heavy) game. With this increase in complexity comes a ton of new strategies, new things to buy, and new difficult choices. The question then is this; do these changes make Settlers of Catan a better game?

I am reviewing the Mayfair Games edition of this game.

Presentation

The Cities and Knights expansion includes a wide variety of new components that add to or replace almost every element of the game. There are new pieces, cards, tiles, dice, rules, and even a small spiral bound notebook for each player to help keep track of the game’s numerous new upgrades. If one were to judge Cities and Knights based solely on the volume of components that you get for the price, it would definitely be rated very highly. As an expansion, the quality of these components is of very similar quality as the basic Settlers of Catan game.

The most noticeable of the new components are the many new wooden pieces. As one would hope from an expansion, all of these pieces seem to be of identical quality to the original game’s pieces. Like the robber in the original game, the purpose of a few of the new pieces isn’t immediately obvious (especially the purple cone that represents the Merchant) but once players learn what these pieces represent they aren’t distracting. My only real complaint with the new pieces is that several of them must be stacked together and they are not that stable.

All of the new cards in Cities and Knights are of the same high quality materials as the original game’s cards, and many feature artwork that is superior to the base game’s cards. At the same time, all of these cards retain the same artistic style that was found in the previous game so despite the slight improvement in quality, nothing seems out of place.

The remaining components are of reasonable quality, but I did have a few complaints. The game includes a “frame” similar to the edges of a puzzle that players can place their tiles in. I would assume that the objective of this frame was to keep the tiles from shifting away from each other. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that the frame helped much; my pieces slipped from out of the frame and still separated from each other. After a few attempts, I just gave up and ignored the frame entirely. I also wasn’t overly impressed with the spiral bound notebooks that players track their upgrades with. The notebooks aren’t exactly unattractive (in fact, the printed artwork is pretty decent), they just feel very cheap. Because I was so pleased with the game’s cards, I would have preferred to use cards to track these upgrades.

Despite these very minor critiques, the overall presentation of the game is very positive. The sheer volume of components helps to provide a sense of value to the expansion and the components are of equal or slightly superior quality as the core Settlers game. Most important, the expansion manages to maintain the overall look and feel of the original game despite adding well over a hundred new components. While the expansion doesn’t approach the quality of a Days of Wonder or Fantasy Flight Games release, Cities and Knights has its own charm and its presentation is very consistent with the game that it expands.


Game Box and Components.

Gameplay
In my experience, the base game of Settlers offers fast, simple gameplay with about three to four easily repeatable strategic paths to reach the VPs needed for victory. Because of the requirement for players to reach 10 points to win the game, players tend to use some pretty predictable combinations of cities, settlements, and/or the longest road/largest army bonuses to win the game. The VPs from the development card deck add a slight wild card into the mix (and is one of my favorite ways to win the game), but generally players need at least 4 settlements, plus some combination of cities, additional settlements, or bonuses to win the game. I love this simplicity and the tension created by the fact that there are so few ways to win the game. To me, a game of basic Settlers with expert players becomes a very strategic game with players not only seeking to accomplish their own goals, but also keeping their opponents from accomplishing theirs.

Cities and Knights turns the gameplay style of the base game on its head by dramatically increasing the ways that players can win the game. First of all, players must now score 13 points in order to win the game, rather than 10. Besides the obvious result of lengthening the game, the increased VP requirement also forces players to use new strategies to win the game. Players can no longer easily with the game with 4 settlements as they could in the basic game. Sure, it’s still *possible* to win with this amount of settlements, however, you’ll now need to get an extra 5 “bonus” VPs somehow, and because Cities and Knights also modifies how resources are collected, it can be quite difficult to win this way. Additionally, in a 4 player game of Cities and Knights the tendency for multiple players to build more than 4 settlements means that there usually aren’t enough “good” spots for every player to build on and as a result, the game’s map feels much more crowded. Fortunately, Cities and Knights also provides new ways for players to gain victory points, meaning that for the most part, the old strategies must be set aside. At times, Cities and Knights feels like a completely different game.

Commodities

Besides the increased VP requirements, the largest change to the base game’s gameplay is the addition of commodities. Essentially, a secondary resource type, commodities influence the game in several ways. In the basic game of Settlers, players with a city take two resources when their hex produces, rather than one. In Cities and Knights, cities on a wheat or brick hex produce two resources like normal, but cities on wood, sheep, and ore hexes produce one resource and one commodity. Like resources, commodities are associated with a specific type of terrain. Wood hexes produce the paper commodity; sheep hexes produce cloth, and ore hexes produce coins. Because City Improvements are powerful, commodities are potentially valuable, but they also make it much more difficult to get the wood, sheep, and ore that you need to use several of the more traditional strategies used in the base game of Settlers.


The three types of Commodity cards

It took around five plays of Cities and Knights before I could really begin wrap my head around the impact commodities have on the strategy of the game. Those five games were quite frustrating as I would try to use a strategy from the basic game (for example, winning by upgrading all of my settlements to Cities), only to find that I simply could not get the resources I needed to accomplish my goals. Commodities provide several new paths to victory, but these paths are not immediately obvious to most new players of Cities and Knights. Just as new players of Settlers might easily understand the mechanics of the game, but not understand how to effectively use those mechanics to win, players that are familiar with how commodities fit into the strategy of Cities and Knights have a tremendous advantage. Additionally, even though it’s a pretty simple change to the mechanics of the game, production in Cities and Knights does feel a bit more complicated as the simple “cities produce two resources” rule is now modified by which terrain type the city is touching. When I’ve introduced the expansion to new players, some players easily adapt to this rule, others tend to get a somewhat glassy look and need to be constantly reminded that only certain hexes produce two resources. They eventually pick up on it, but it can be a point of frustration when learning the game.

City Improvements

While commodities probably have more impact on the overall gameplay of Cities and Knights, City Improvements provide the most new strategic choices. City Improvements are divided into three different categories, each which corresponds with a specific commodity type. The yellow category corresponds with the cloth commodity, blue with coin, and green with paper. Each category can be upgraded by spending the appropriate commodity cards. For example, spending one paper commodity will upgrade a player to level 1 on the “green” city improvement track. After reaching this level, the same player could upgrade to level 2 on the “green” improvement track by spending 2 paper commodities, and so on. There are a total of 5 levels in each track, and each track is upgraded independently from each other.



C&K includes a booklet to track City Improvements


The motivation for purchasing these upgrades is threefold. First, in Cities and Knights players do not purchase development cards as in the base game. Instead, development cards have been replaced with three different “progress card” decks. Each deck of progress cards corresponds with a city improvement track, so there are yellow cards, blue cards, and green cards. Progress cards are collected via a die roll (see the section on “event die” for more details), and the higher a player’s level on a specific city improvement track, the higher odds he has of gaining a progress card from that track. These new progress cards have much more impact on the game than the development cards in the base game and allow players to do everything from gaining VPs to stealing resources from each other, removing each other’s roads, and disabling each other’s cities. Second, after reaching the third level on an improvement track, you gain a special ability. For example, the special ability for upgrading to the 3rd level on the “Green” track is that players can gain a resource of their choice any time one of their cities or settlements does not produce. These special abilities are incredibly powerful, and can greatly impact what tactics a player will use to accomplish their strategic goals. Finally, the first player to reach the 4th level in any improvement track will gain a “Metropolis” which is added to one of their cities. This “Metropolis” is worth a 2 VP bonus. Each track can provide its own “Metropolis” bonus, so there are a total of 6 bonus VPs up for grabs for players who concentrate on upgrading their City Improvements. Considering the fact that players need at least 13 VPs to win the game and in a 4 player game, space tends to be tight, it is very rare to see someone win the game without at least one Metropolis.

At first I viewed city improvements as a modification of the “development card” strategy in the basic Settlers game. After additional plays I am convinced that this is not accurate. While it is true that the production cards work similarly to the “non-soldier” development cards, the real motivation behind the City Improvements is not the progress cards, but rather, the special abilities and bonus VPs. The special abilities in particular will influence what tactics a player will use. For example, the special ability for the yellow city improvement track is that you may exchange commodities at a 2:1 ratio. This means that by upgrading this track, it becomes easier to not only get the extra bonus points for this track, but it also becomes easier to get the commodities you need to upgrade the other tracks as well. On the other hand, the green track’s ability of producing a resource of your choice any time that you do not produce greatly decreases the impact having hexes with low probability numbers has on your game, and can make it much easier to upgrade to cities and expand to new settlements. The player with the “green” special ability might not need as many bonus points from City Improvements in order to win, because it will be easier for this player to get his points by upgrading and expanding. To me, City Improvements represent the best element of Cities and Knights; there are lots of new, difficult but meaningful choices. The problem is that with these choices comes a significant increase in complexity. Not only do you need to manage event die, choose from three different upgrade paths and corresponding progress cards, and keep track of how close players are to gaining those important bonus VP points, you must also remember the modifications to the core rules that the special abilities provide. Additionally, there are some very clunky rules like not being able to upgrade past level 3 in more than one track if you have less than 2 cities, etc. Overall, I feel that I enjoy the City Improvements, but they also feel like they take a lot of work to manage.

Event Die

Cities and Knights adds a 3rd die that is thrown each turn called the “event die.” It also replaces one of the white die from the base game with a red die which is used to modify the results of the new event die. The event die is a six sided die with the symbol of a yellow, blue, or green “gate” and a black “barbarian” ship. Based on the symbol that is rolled, a different event will take place each turn. If the “black ship” symbol is rolled, players must move the Barbarian token (more on this later). If a Yellow, Blue, or Green “gate” symbol is rolled, players check to see if they may take a progress card. Players are allowed to take a progress card if they have a City Improvement that matches the color of the symbol on the event die (for example, if a yellow gate is rolled, they must have a yellow city improvement in order to take a card) and the number shown on the red die is also shown on their city improvement chart. For example, if a player is at level 2 on the “green” improvement track, he may only take a progress card if the green gate symbol was rolled on the event die, and the result of the red die was a one or a two. If he upgraded to level three on the green improvement track, he would be able to take a progress card whenever the green gate was shown on the event die, and the red die showed a one, two, or three.



Event die and replacement “Red” die

When I first started playing Cities and Knights, I was frustrated with the randomness of the event die. I could never seem to get the progress cards that I wanted. After more plays I’ve come to realize that like the random resource production in the base game, there is some strategy in managing the randomness of the event die. For example, players who heavily invest in a specific City Improvement track and exclude the others will probably have higher odds of getting a progress card from that corresponding deck. If they are trying to get a specific color of progress card, they will have a much better chance of getting it with this strategy. However, by focusing on multiple city improvement tracks, a player will have more opportunities to gain an event card. It might not be from the color of deck that he was hoping for, but these progress cards might provide new tactical options that he would not otherwise have. Depending on the strategy a player is using, each choice is a viable option. Unfortunately, despite my increased understanding of how to manage the odds in Cities and Knights, I still feel that the random event dice are a little too random for my tastes. I play lots of games that use dice, so I am used to managing odds. In fact, I quite like the randomness in the base Settlers game as I feel it provides just enough randomness to keep things interesting, but not so much that the game’s outcome is ever determined by the results of the die. The randomness in Cities and Knights seems pretty balanced as well. However, unlike the base game the sheer volume of things that are influenced by die rolls is so large that it sometimes feels like the players aren’t really in charge of what is going on. This is especially frustrating for newer players who haven’t even identified ways to manage the randomness yet. I honestly feel that I would enjoy Cities and Knights more if the event die was replaced with a less random element (probably something more similar to the development cards in the base game).

The Barbarian

The Barbarian brings abstract combat to the game of Settlers. At the start of the game, a black ship figure is placed at the start of a special “barbarian” track. Any time the black ship symbol is rolled on the event die, the black ship figure is moved one field along the barbarian track, representing the growing threat of a barbarian attack on the island. When the black ship is moved onto the final field on the track, Barbarians “attack” the island. Players may defend these attacks by building “knights” (more on this later), and the player who contributes the most knights to the defense of the island gains 1 bonus VP. If there are not enough knights to defend the island, the player who contributed the least amount f knights to the attack will lose one of their cities. After the barbarians attack, the threat track is reset to its original position and the process begins again.



The Barbarian and the Barbarian Threat Track


The Barbarian attacks act as a timer of sorts. Each time the players successfully defend the island from the Barbarians, there is an opportunity to win a free VP. Because it is so difficult to gain 13 VPs through building settlements and cities alone (even with the bonus VPs from the Metropolises), the bonus points from defending the island can be very useful. Additionally, they make knights much more interesting parts of the game. I really like how the Barbarian was implemented in Cities and Knights, and although it does increase the game’s complexity a bit, it is a pretty minimal increase and I feel the choices that the Barbarian provides are definitely worth the added complexity.

Knights


The Knight components

In the basic game of Settlers, soldiers are used very abstractly to move the Robber and to gain bonus points from having the Largest Army. Cities and Knights eliminates the soldier cards and the largest army bonus; instead players may purchase knights who are placed on the game board like a Settlement or a City. The only catch is that players must pay a “maintenance fee” of sorts in order to use the knights; before a knight can be used, you must pay a wheat resource to activate it. Activated Knights may chase away the robber, defend against the barbarian, interrupt enemy roads, and even keep opponents from building on potential settlement sites. However, as soon as a Knight has taken an action, you must pay another wheat resource in order to use them again. Knights can be upgraded, which helps make them more powerful against Barbarian attacks, and enables them to attack weaker enemy knights!



One of several Defender of Catan cards


In theory, Knights should be a vital element in a game of Cities and Knights. They have lots of fun options, and allow a lot more interaction between players than in the basic game. However, my experience has been that Knights are not a strategy that can be used to the exclusion of other strategies, and in some cases might not even be needed at all! They can be a fantastic addition to another strategy, but it is difficult to win by concentrating on knights alone. The reason for this is that only the player with the most Knights will win the bonus VP for defending Catan. This means there is a tendency for two players to end up in an arms race, always seeking to keep their opponent from having the larger army. The natural result of this is that the number of knights (and thus the island’s overall defense) grows at a rapid pace, enabling at least one player to spend significantly less resources on Knights and spend those resources some other way (like expanding, or upgrading their City Improvements). More experienced players tend to avoid the arms race and build similar amounts of knights, but because the bonus VPs from defending Catan come only when the Barbarians have moved all the way down their track, it can be several rounds between each attack. This means that even if a player does not have a lot of competition for the Defender of Catan points, it can take a long time for those points to add up to enough points to win the game. Most of the more experienced players that I’ve seen seem to place just enough resources into knights to keep their opponents from running away with the bonus defender of catan points (in a close game, they can make a big difference), but try to spend as little as possible to accomplish this. If someone does manage to win the bonus VPs, it is usually because they managed to disable or steal one of their opponent’s knights right before the Barbarians attacked. I think the Knights are quite interesting, but I’d really like to see them become a bit more influential on the game. Perhaps if it were easier to remove an enemy knight when attacking, or if there was still a bonus for having the largest army Knights would be a more dominate strategy. As it is, I feel they are fun, but not utilized as much as the Cities and Knights name might imply.

Other Gameplay Elements

Cities and Knights also provides several other relatively minor gameplay elements. For example, players may build walls that will increase the amount of cards they may keep in their hands in the event a 7 is rolled or can play a “merchant” progress card which allows the controlling player to trade a specific resource at a 2:1 rate and gives a bonus VP (I have played several close games in which the outcome was decided by a player getting the extra VP from the merchant progress card). These changes are the sort of changes that tend to frustrate me as they increase the complexity of the game by making players learn more rules, but don’t really add a lot to the overall strategy of the game. There are some minor situational benefits from these upgrades, but they are really just tools at a player’s disposal than essential gameplay elements to build a strategy around. I honestly think these gameplay elements could be eliminated from the game entirely, and most players would not really miss them.


Whoever controls the Merchant gets 1 bonus VP

Game Length

I can play a game of Settlers with a group of experienced players in about 30-45 minutes. With those same players, games of Cities and Knights tend to take somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Unlike the 5-6 player expansion for Settlers in which I feel the length of the game was expanded without keeping players engaged, I usually feel engaged through the entire game of Cities and Knights. There is a considerably larger amount of bookkeeping and components to keep track of which can cause the game to drag at times, but there are also enough new choices to keep people occupied. I rarely feel bored when playing the game, although I do sometimes get frustrated with the bookkeeping.


The end of a long game

Overall Thoughts

So do the changes found in Cities and Knights make Settlers a better game? Absolutely not! The game’s medium to medium-heavy gameplay is random, clunky, and full of rules exceptions. The game’s length is extended, there are several almost meaningless gameplay options, and even a few of the “good” features of the game were not implemented as effectively as they might have been.

At the same time, those players who are willing to look past these shortfalls will find a much deeper game with more player interaction, less impact from bad resource rolls, and most importantly, a wide variety of new strategic options. Yes, the game is longer, but this feels like meaningful length. Yes, there are lots of new rules, but in some cases (in particular, the City Improvements), these new rules are actually quite fun!

Despite the fact that I do not feel that Cities and Knights improves upon the base Settlers game, I am convinced that the two dissimilar experiences can be equally rewarding. The original game of Settlers is a model of game balance, replayability, and efficiency. It is fast, has simple yet meaningful choices, and has enough strategic options to remain tense even after several hundred plays. Cities and Knights feels a bit bloated, seems quite random at times, and is anything but efficient, but provides such a variety of fun strategic choices and player interaction that it can be worth it to overlook the weaknesses.

For me, Cities and Knights will never replace Settlers. It probably isn’t even a game that I’ll suggest to play very often; I believe there are better 3-4 player games with similar complexity. However, when I get tired of the basic Settlers game, or am looking to play a deeper game, I’ll rarely turn down a game of Cities and Knights. With the right group, it really can be a very fun game.

Overall BGG Score: 7.0 out of 10.0