Game: Die Siedler von Catan - Die große Karawane

Thread: 5 or 6 players requires 2 new decisions

Luk Van Baelen — 2008-01-03T15:02:06+00:00

When we played it, we had to make 2 decisions as with 5 or 6 players an additional building round is included where a.o. settlements and cities can be build.

Decision 1: if the active player has build a settlement/city a new caravan tile must be added. What is done first: the additional building round or the bidding/negotiating for the placement of the caravan tile?
We decided to do the caravan extension first as that adds another decision: do I invest in deciding where the new caravan piece will be placed OR do I keep my resources for the additional building round?

Decision 2: if another-than-the-active player builds a settlement/city in the additional building round, will that result in yet another piece of the caravan to be added?
We decided that this would NOT be the case.
Again a new decision is added: do I build now in the additional scoring round knowing I am sure I can build giving up on the additional caravn tile OR do I wait until it's my turn with the risk that something nasty happens that prevents me from building then [eg robber, other player taking that spot, ...] but where a] a new caravan tile will be placed and b] the odds of me influencing where the caravan tile is placed are better.

I noticed that this additional complexity was appreciated and added depth and more choice to the game.

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diehard4life — 2007-08-20T03:32:31+00:00

My homemade version of the tile, a bit on the abstract side...

Thread: Re: seagoing caravans?

Great Dane — 2007-05-05T17:04:17+00:00

NateStraight wrote:
I'd say "no," simply because camels can't walk on water.

... but, if you want magical water-walking camels, go for it.

I doubt there's an "official" ruling on this question, though.

Well, there 'almost' is!

According to Sebastian Rapp from Kosmos does "even water count as a space" when placing Caravan arrows.
http://www.siedeln.de/faq/595_1219_de.html

the problem is that he was answering this question:
"Is it allowed to place arrows along the coast?"

But the question is actually answered by the rules as each Camel arrow must point towards a fork in the road leading from the road where the last Camel arrow was placed.

Thread: Re: seagoing caravans?

NateStraight — 2007-05-05T15:22:34+00:00

jeRm! wrote:
I like the idea of this expansion, especially since I read the review by Nate Straight. I have a copy of Oasis and never play with five players and looking at the pictures I think that it does have a very nice look (keeping with the wooden theme).

The question that I have is if the caravan can go over the sea? And if so does it have to go through a port first? I can't find anything addressing this in the rules so I am curious to others thoughts. I see how it could still work with the "longest road" with the ships and all.

I personally don't think it would need to go through a port, but I haven't had a chance to try it either way yet. Shoot me some ideas and why and why nots for both. Thanks.

I'd say "no," simply because camels can't walk on water.

... but, if you want magical water-walking camels, go for it.

I doubt there's an "official" ruling on this question, though.

Thread: seagoing caravans?

jeRm! — 2007-05-05T14:46:23+00:00

I like the idea of this expansion, especially since I read the review by Nate Straight. I have a copy of Oasis and never play with five players and looking at the pictures I think that it does have a very nice look (keeping with the wooden theme).

The question that I have is if the caravan can go over the sea? And if so does it have to go through a port first? I can't find anything addressing this in the rules so I am curious to others thoughts. I see how it could still work with the "longest road" with the ships and all.

I personally don't think it would need to go through a port, but I haven't had a chance to try it either way yet. Shoot me some ideas and why and why nots for both. Thanks.

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NateStraight — 2007-04-16T20:41:05+00:00

The expansion has a dramatic effect on gameplay. Blue and White each have one road next to the caravan that will count double toward the longest road. All three players have one settlement along the caravan route which will count as one additional VP. (Th

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NateStraight — 2007-04-16T20:38:22+00:00

Using the black camels from Alan Moon's Oasis instead of the real components, here's a sample of a gameplay scenario. The little wooden camels roaming around the isle of Catan look great.

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NateStraight — 2007-04-16T20:36:30+00:00

The black camels from Alan Moon's Oasis make a great substitute for this hard-to-find expansion's actual components. As an added bonus, they look really spiffy next to the robber in the desert.

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NateStraight — 2007-04-16T20:34:59+00:00

Using the black camels from Alan Moon's Oasis and the standard desert tile from Catan, you can cook up your own version of this expansion fairly easily. Here's mine, all setup and ready to play!

Thread: Review of expansion, though not of components

NateStraight — 2007-04-13T01:21:05+00:00

Caveat

This review is based on my playing the game without the real components included in the expansion. I stole some black camels from Oasis (to match the robber and other evil "NPCs") and just used a desert tile in place of the "oasis." The expansion components seem completely superfluous, and I have a feeling the wooden camels marching around Catan look better than the little arrow tiles would anyway.

Overview

The expansion is one in a series of mini-expansions for the ever-popular Settlers of Catan game. To me, all of the Catan expansions (both main expansions and minis) integrate well with the game regardless of how you combine them. Thus far, we've only used the caravan expansion with the base game and with Catan: Seafarers, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work well with other expansions thrown in the mix.

That all said, this expansion does seem to have been designed to combat some of the main "problems" with the vanilla Settlers version, namely that: sheep are next to useless; it's too hard to take over the longest road since there are only three brick tiles; and, you're screwed if you get poor initial placements for your settlements. This expansion really hits all three of those complaints hard, and very well.

Gameplay

As I said in the overview, this expansion does a great job of tackling some of the classic gripes heard whilst playing Settlers. Your extra sheep (and wheat... yeah right) now serve a purpose. It's now easier to overtake the longest road, even if you don't have the brick monopoly. Finally, you can make up for poor initial placement by cleverly steering the camels toward your settlements.

The expansion works as follows: After any turn in which a settlement or city is constructed, there is a special ~~"voting"~~ bribing round, in which all players will attempt to persuade the roving camel caravan to come their way. Each player, starting with the player whose turn just ended, lays down as many sheep or grain cards (any combination) as they like, and this bidding process goes once (and only once) around the table.

After the bidding is done, the players must negotiate with each other to determine where the caravan will go next. This isn't done blindly, though. Each sheep or grain card that a player laid down counts as one "vote" for bribing the caravan. If one player has the absolute majority of the votes, they'll obviously get to choose where the caravan goes. If there is no majority and no agreement can be reached, the player with the most cards laid down decides. If two players tie in that regard, the player who just finished their turn starts (you might want to try simply going by seating order, starting from the active player, to break the tie amongst players who laid down the most cards, rather than letting the active player decide, when they might not have laid down any cards at all). If there is no majority and no special tie-breaker rules need to be applied, then all bets are off and the players negotiate and haggle their votes until an agreement is reached.

Once an agreement is reached, one way or another, concerning the direction in which the caravan will traverse away from the desert, a new camel (or arrow tile) is played onto the board. They are played exactly like roads, along the intersection of two hex-sides and connected to a previously played ~~road~~ camel. The game starts with a few camels (arrow tiles) already on the desert to get things rolling along. Unlike roads, however, camels can go on hex-sides where "other players" (i.e. any player) have already built a road. Just set the camel up next to (or the arrow tile underneath) the road that's already built there. This is actually really really important, and I'll explain why next.

Impact

The expansion of the camel caravan has a dramatic impact on the game, and that is one of the things I like best about this expansion. There are two things that happen when the caravan happens to run into one of the players' principalities. First, any roads that lay alongside a camel in the caravan count double toward fulfilling the longest road condition. Second, any settlements or cities that lay in between two camels in the caravan (as if the camels were two roads branching off in two directions from the settlement or city) count one additional VP toward winning the game.

As you can probably already see, the potential impact of the caravan's travel throughout the land of Catan is huge. Camels get added to the caravan on any turn where a settlement or city is built, not just on a particular player's turn, so it's possible (given enough wheat and sheep and enough turns ahead of you) to steer the caravan alongside a stretch of your road and overtake the longest road before it even gets back around to your turn. Five roads with camels alongside each one count as ten total roads, so (potentially) you could overtake the longest road (by a mile, pun intended) with five worthless sheep instead of five wood and five precious brick, without even taking a turn!

In addition, the camel caravan provides incentive for players to make placements near the previously worthless desert and provides a way for players stuck with poor initial placements to overcome that fate. If you're stuck at the beginning of the game with no good places to begin, you can always stick both of your settlements near the desert and bank on the caravan passing through one, or both, of them, and probably also through any additional settlements you happen to build. You may not even have to use your own wheat or sheep to move the caravan in that direction, if you're clever and the other players need the caravan to go through your settlements in order to fulfill their own schemes. With an additional VP for every settlement or city that the camel caravan passes through, you can quickly make up for poor or unproductive placements by using the caravan wisely.

Summary

All in all, I really like this expansion, especially when played with just the basic Settlers game. It directly counteracts some of the "flaws" of the original gameplay (that sheep are too common, that bricks are not common enough to make the race for the longest road exciting enough, and that you can get really really screwed with poor initial placements) and offers a way for players to overcome all of them and use them to their advantage. In addition, the negotiation aspect of "bribing" the caravan adds a nice counterpart to the wheeling-and-dealing type of trading that is already present in the game. This is one of my favorite Settlers mini-expansions.

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Kyellan — 2007-03-21T01:04:41+00:00

close-up of the back of the unpunched shrinkwrapped package

Thread: Camel arrows? Meh. Shipping from Europe? Double meh.

NateStraight — 2007-03-18T05:15:13+00:00

I stole some black wooden camels from my copy of Oasis and tried this expansion out tonight, using the desert as the "oasis" that the expansion "requires." The wooden camels fit nicely with the overall look of the Settlers game, especially with the black robber pawn that, like the camels, also starts in the desert.

It worked just fine. We just stuck three camels right along three edges of the desert hex to start the game (as opposed to using the pre-drawn camel arrows on the oasis hex) and went from there (yeah, I guess those three camels we started with might have had a negligible impact on gameplay; they might have doubled some roads that the starting camel arrows on the oasis tile would not have allowed for... oh well). It was great seeing the little wooden camels roaming around Catan; I imagine the effect is just not quite the same with the little camel arrow tiles.

If you've got Oasis, try this "quick fix" for yourself. The variant is actually quite a bit of fun. We only had 3 players, so the "each card you play counts as one vote for bribing the camel caravan" rule didn't really have that much of an effect (in terms of players negotiating with each other); pretty much whoever played the most cards and was seated closest to the active player got to control the camels (because there weren't enough other players with enough votes when put together to "outbid" the person who simply had the most cards). Still, it was fun and added quite a bit to the game experience; I can imagine the negotiation and bribery aspects of the expansion would be a lot more robust with more players.

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Verkisto — 2007-03-14T02:31:45+00:00

Signed by Herr Teuber himself!

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ludosophicus — 2006-12-30T23:07:40+00:00

Klaus Teuber's confidential oasis

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godongi — 2006-12-06T12:45:07+00:00

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godongi — 2006-12-06T12:24:49+00:00

Thread: Re: Will this be coming to the US?

Salt-Man Z — 2006-11-15T05:11:23+00:00

I subscribed to GQM specifically for the Settlers expansions, and then I find out they're ones I already have (Great River, and Fishermen.) So I hope that The Great Caravan makes it to GQM, if for nothing else than to get a Settlers expansion I don't already have.

Thread: Re: Will this be coming to the US?

zefquaavius — 2006-11-10T13:14:25+00:00

I'm guessing that The Great Caravan will be one of the expansions included with some future Games Quarterly issue, since the first one they included was The Great River, previously published in German, on a single-punchboard, rather like Caravan.

On the other hand, since the components are utterly language-independent, and I have provided an illustrated translation of the instructions at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=19972, you might want to jump on the auctions on BGG - if you have the for them, that is - if you don't want to find out the hard way.

Thread: Will this be coming to the US?

subversive — 2006-11-10T02:35:32+00:00

Or do we have to pay high shipping prices in Euros to get it from a foreign Ebay seller who doesn't speak English, now before they are all gone?

Thread: Re: looking for an English Translation

zefquaavius — 2006-11-04T05:25:43+00:00

My English rules with illustrations just got approved by the BGG admins, and it can be found at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=19972 - though by now, I see that you have several options for English rules, including Grzegorz' here.

Thread: Re: looking for an English Translation

Ponton — 2006-10-25T00:57:53+00:00

The rules are simple:

1. Preparation

Replace desert hex with oasis hex. Place oasis hex in the center of the board. The oasis hex shows arrows pointing to the starting points of caravan routes symbolized by the arrow markers.

2. Placing arrows

Arrows are placed on the edges of the hexes (like roads). They have to be placed at the end of previously placed arrow markers or at the end of the arrows on the oasis hex. This way there will be exactly three caravan routes during the game, except you join twi routes. Then there will be less, as you may not place more than one arrow on each edge. If all the 22 arrows are used, all routes are finished and you play on as usual.

Important: The first arrow of a route (not counting that on the oasis hex) may not be placed on the edge of the oasis hex. If you turn a route back to the oasis hex, you then are allowed to place an arrow on its edge. Only the first ones may not be placed there.

3. When place arrows?

Whenever a player has either built settlements or cities during his turn, at the end of it, there will be a bidding starting with this player. Every player plays as many wool and grain cards as he wishes to. Then the players decide together, where to place an arrow. Each player has therefore as many votes as he played wool or grain cards. If there is a tie, the player who has alone the most votes decides, where to place the arrow. If there is no player having alone the majority of votes, the current player decides. All played resource cards return to the bank.

Important: There is only one bidding turn. You may not add cards to your bid later on.

4. What are the routes for?

All roads on edges containing an arrow count as two roads for longest trade route. This way you can get the 2 extra vp card for longest road by having only 3 roads instead of 5 if two of them are placed on edges with arrows, for example. Furthermore, settlements and cities placed between two arrows count an additional vp. Game ends with a player having 12 vp.

Thread: looking for an English Translation

lorna — 2006-10-24T23:37:23+00:00

Anyone translate this one yet?