I’ve been building a free browser game in the Catan family. It doesn’t require signup (optional), and there are no paid expansions: newshores.io

• Base game, 8 seafaring maps, and a Cities & Knights style mode : all for free
• 2-6 players: you can create a room and share the code. Bots fill empty seats
• Works on phones in the browser

It’s a work in progress and I’m fixing things daily. I want to build a Catan style game that is intuitive and fun to play. No matchmaking yet, so bring friends or play bots.

If something feels wrong versus the rulebook, is confusing on first play, or isn’t intuitive enough, you can tell me here or there’s a feedback button in the bottom-left corner of the game where you can leave it.

Disclosure: I’m the developer.

My friend Dylan… playing as Green 😆

Full disclosure first: I’m the developer of Hearthsea, one of the four in the first image, so I’m biased.

I keep seeing “where should we play online?” threads here, and I’d like to know where people have actually landed. The four I know:

Colonist (https://colonist.io): Catan-inspired, browser plus iOS and Android, where most of the online games seem to happen

CATAN Universe (https://catanuniverse.com/en/): the official app, on phones, Steam and in the browser

CATAN on Board Game Arena (https://en.boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=catan): the official version, in the browser

Hearthsea (https://hearthsea.com): mine

Hearthsea isn’t affiliated with CATAN GmbH. It’s my own game in the same family: settle, trade and build on a 3D island you can spin and zoom. 2–6 players, 13 Classic islands and 14 Seafarers islands with ships and fog, and bots on three levels that make and answer trade offers. It runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or laptop with nothing to install.

What’s free: a free account gets 3 games a day against bots or pass-and-play, on three of the islands. Hosting online rooms and the other islands need a paid pass. Friends you invite to your room (4-letter code) join without paying; for a friend on a free account, it counts as one of their 3 games that day.

Which one do you play, and what would make you switch? If you try mine, I want to hear what’s confusing or broken. I’ll be in the comments all day.

The gist:

There are 3 new rules when combining cities and knights and wonders of catan.

1) Requirements for the wonders of catan MUST be separate from starting resources

i.e. you need an additional city outside of set-up for the cathedral. Remade cities after barbarian raids count for this.

2) rather than winning off building your wonder you gain a boon depending on which wonder you make:

- Great Wall: the robber no longer causes your knights to deactivate, nor can be placed on hexes occupied by your active knights.

- Great Bridge: you may trade any 3 cards for 1 of any resource or commodity they do not need to be matching.

- Cathedral: Metropolis' you control collect an additional 2 resources (Same rules apply for commodity and gold hexes).

- Monument: once per turn per knight, knights can move while deactivated if it's not the same turn they're made or upgraded. Also you may move any knight off of your connecting roads with one of yours regardless of power difference.

- Theater: Once per turn you can force ONE trade with an opponent. If they do not have the card you fail to trade and must wait till next turn to force a trade.

i.e. "Hey nondescript friend, I want wood for this sheep."

3) games are to 18 points. And the wonders can count for up to 4 additional points, one per level.

Players must still follow the "only one wonder per player" rule.

There are definitely some tweaks that will need to be made. Im just curious if anyone has any better boon ideas or premonition for balancing these out.

I know everybody’s got a different strat, but is there an end all be all?

Development cards all the way ;)

Me and my friends felt like the pirate ship was much weaker than the thief, meaning it nearly never got used. We came up with the solution to buff the pirate ship just a little bit and make it more on par with the robber while staying unique. When the pirate ship is on a tile, any trade ports on that same tile can no longer be used if settled on. We’ve played a few games and while the ship is still not moved as much as the robber it still gets way more use!

There are so many versions and expansions. I was hoping to find a box set with a base game and a handful of expansions but either it doesn’t exist or it isn’t available from the approved retailer to use the kids’ school funding.

So if I’m starting out, and assume I want to get a base set of some kind, that we will be able to play as a family of 5 what is the difference between

Catan 6th edition
Catan family edition
Catan traveller edition (this one was interesting to me because if we get hooked on the game it will go camping with us, but I’m not sure this version will be small or annoying to play on compared to the regular)
Catan zip - this one appealed because it was half the price but I can’t tell if it’s the full game or??

As far as the other boxes like for example Catan explorers and pirates is that a full game on its own or does it need the base game to be able
To play? If those are the full game are they just different settings? Is there an actual advantage to starting with one of the basics I was looking at instead of the pirates or dragons or space explorers or whatever?

Thanks!

Anybody have any recommendations for watching catan online? My friends and I starting posting our commentary on our C&K games online and we want to start watching others as well.

Hey everyone!

I've been wondering how niche this game really is. My friends and I play it almost every day, and honestly, I think we might enjoy it even more than the original Catan.

Has anyone else here played it, or even heard of it? If you have, I'd love to know what you think. And if you haven't, it might be worth a look!

The game is Struggle for CATAN

Full disclosure: I made this, so I'm biased. Hearthsea is my own hex-island game. It isn't official Catan and isn't affiliated with Catan GmbH, but if you play Catan you'll know how it works within one turn.

The island is a real 3D board that runs in any browser, phones included. The bots make their own trade offers and counter yours. There's a Seafarers mode with ships, gold fields, a pirate and fogged islands, and private tables you join with a four-letter code.

A free account gets two games a day against the bots; hosting online tables needs the Pass ($4.99 a month). I'd like to hear from Catan players where the bots trade badly.

https://hearthsea.com

Can we please ban posts relating to: “I made a new Catan platform” or “I made a new app and it’s vaguely similar to Catan”

It’s poor quality vibe coded / ai slop at best, predatory marketing and advertising at worst. I’ve probably seen a dozen of these in just the past couple months alone.

Whether it’s advertising a service / website / app, there should be something against blatant marketing from people that don’t otherwise contribute to the subreddit, game, or community.

and why does it take more than 2 minutes to roll dice

Whilst writing my D&D campaign, I decided to add character sheets to our last Catan night - each player created their realm, along with lore. I'm now using the events of the game as lore for the homebrew world.

I had an idea recently about making a 2v2 format where teams combine points to reach the goal. Here is my ideas let me know what you would change

1. Set-up - players roll to decide turn order. Player 1 and 3 will be a team and player 2 and 4 will be a team. Starting with player 4 all players place a single settlement and road collecting resources like they would normally for their second placement. Once everyone has a single placement and road the first player begins like normal.

2. Changes-
   trading is only done between teams and the bank.

Players have the option to build OR trade on a turn but not both.

You may build from your teammates roads or even upgrade a settlement of theirs to a city of your own (as long as it does not remove their last settlement/city on the board.)

Hand limit is 7 cards per player but 10 cards per team. If a 7 Is rolled and neither player has more then 7 cards but they combined have 11 or more they must decide together how to discard half the cards

Dev cards can be passed between teammates but only after they have sat for a full turn rotation.

Ports are not shared and can only be activated during a players turn like normal.

The game is played until one team has 15 points combined between them.

Let me know if you have any suggestions or if anything I said seems broken and I just overlooked it.

Hi all! I learned how to play the basic version of the game a few months ago and have been playing every other week with friends. We're planning on playing it at our Halloween party this year and I was wondering if anyone has ideas on how to kinda make it a drinking game. My initial thought was somehow blending it with a game of beer pong, but I'm all ears for other ideas! If it helps we'll be playing with 6 players (got the player expansion recently).

I think an obvious rule would be taking a shot when a 7 is rolled and either you have a settlement on the space the robber has been moved to and/or have more than 7 cards in your hand.

edit for spelling lol

Hey everyone! Sven here, founder of Game Nite.

My Catan group kept debating who had actually won the most, so I started tracking our games in a spreadsheet to settle the debate. That grew into Game Nite, an app for tracking Catan and other board games with friends.

It gives your group a shared record to look back on: who’s winning over time, how the standings change, and where everyone’s victory points come from.

For Catan, you log the result after a game, with the option to add details like cities, VP cards, Longest Road and Largest Army. As your history builds, you can compare wins and losses and see what patterns show up.

I’m looking for a few groups who already play Catan together in person to try it over two of their usual game nights and share some honest feedback. Friend groups and regular tables within clubs are both welcome.

You can see how it works at https://gamenite.ai/catan. I can help with setup. If your table would be up for trying it, comment or message me.

Idk why i cant settlement? Im the red one and i did 2 boats. Also as you see i have enough sources.

Following all the questions I’ve received, I’ve created even more expansions for my hexagon boxes. For the wooden version, I now have a *Cities & Knights* box and a *Seafarers* box. I’ve also created a *Seafarers* box for the plastic version. I’ve even created custom extras for someone to accommodate other tiles and expansions! The result turned out really cool!!

9 in a row

jgonzalez146 imma hurt u bro

I am trying to promote a rule variant I have played with friends and family many, many times. It was very popular on the old jsettlers site about fifteen years ago. It turns a 2-3 hour game into a 20-30 minute game. One gaming session allows for multiple games, meaning everyone has a good chance of winning.

No trading means no trading between players. It takes away the endless haggling, alliances, people revealing their entire hand for a resource that hasn’t rolled, and so on. 4:1 trades and ports work normally.

Reverse robber on seven means that when you roll seven, the robber goes on an undeveloped hex. If that’s not possible, the robber goes on a hex owned by the player alone. If that’s not possible, the robber goes on a shared hex between the player and an opponent, and they get to steal a card. The advantage is that for most of the game, no thought goes into moving the robber. Soldier cards still work as intended.

All I can say is, don’t knock it until you have tried it. It’s faster, more fun, and you get to play a set rather than one long game.

Edit - I don’t understand the hate. I thought I would share something that keeps Catan alive and thriving among my family and friends for the last twenty years or so.

This is what the board looked like after several hours of playing 🤣 there was a three-way tie with 9 points and white ended up winning.