When comparing Kingdom Builder vs Catan, the Slant community recommends Catan for most people. In the question“What are the best strategy board games?” Catan is ranked 2nd while Kingdom Builder is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Catan is:
This is a game that promotes casual conversation during gameplay. You can haggle for resources with other players. You can create drama by intervening in your opponents plans, for example, by breaking their chain of roads, or building a town in their way to the port. You can also make alliances with other players and then betray them when a better offer comes along.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Starts simple and then grows more complex over time
At the beginning of the game, you'll be pretty limited to placing your settlements based on the terrain cards you draw. At this stage it's very simple - draw a desert card, place a settlement on a desert tile. However, after a few turns, the coverage of your settlements on the board will allow for more strategic plays. You'll have more options for placing adjacent settlements and expanding towards key points on the map like castles that award bonus gold.
Pro Random win conditions encourage you to adjust your strategy every game
There are builder cards that represent various win conditions, and before each game, three are chosen at random. These cards give you specific goals to work for when building your kingdom, and award gold each time you successfully meet one of their conditions. For example, the fisherman card awards one gold for each settlement you place next to a body of water. The knight card gives you one gold for each settlement you have in a horizontal line at the end of the game. There are ten of these total, and three in play per gaming session, meaning each time you play you will be trying to build your kingdom in new ways.
Pro The game board allows for vast replayability
You can set up a unique board, so the terrain on which you're building your kingdom will be different every time you play. In total, there are eight interlocking game board pieces with varying amounts of mountains, lakes, forests, deserts, etc. At the start of the game, you choose four of these pieces and then place them together in a 2x2 grid layout. Each piece not only has two sides to choose from, but they can also be rotated however you wish.
Pro Great for quick gaming sessions
Setup is minimal and the game itself only takes about 45 minutes to play from start to finish.
Pro Easy to understand
The rules are very simple and easy to grasp, allowing you to jump right into the game with very minimal instruction.
Before the game begins, three cards are randomly selected from the builder deck. These builder cards give you goals to work for such as building the most settlements in a forest, next to a body of water, or in a horizontal row. For each one of these conditions met, you earn gold.
Each turn, you place three settlements on the game board. Where you can place your settlements is determined by a randomly drawn terrain card. For example, if you draw the desert card on your turn, your settlements may be placed on a desert tile anywhere on the map. The only rule is all settlements must be placed adjacent to other settlements.
There are also castles on the map that award bonus gold when you are able to build a settlement adjacent to one. These come into play as your kingdom begins to expand and you have more options for placing settlements.
At the end of the game, the gold is tallied up based on win conditions satisfied, and the player with the most gold wins.
Pro Fun social experience
This is a game that promotes casual conversation during gameplay. You can haggle for resources with other players. You can create drama by intervening in your opponents plans, for example, by breaking their chain of roads, or building a town in their way to the port. You can also make alliances with other players and then betray them when a better offer comes along.
Pro Teaches you about basic economic principles
This game teaches how to bargain, the meaning of scarcity, and how free markets work by forcing players to experience these firsthand. You can play without bargaining, but it is more fun to embrace the economy aspect of this game as it's a great learning tool.
Pro An intellectually rewarding strategy game
This game allows you to try different, rewarding strategies. For example, you can create a monopoly over one resource, use the ports to trade with the bank for cheaper or try to buy the majority of victory points using the special abilities cards. There are a lot of options, and you can adapt and switch things up as the game goes on.
You also have to think ahead and pay attention to what your opponents are up to. For example, if you've decided to go for the 2 victory points for having built the longest road, you have to watch if anyone else is doing the same thing, because there can only be one longest road.
Pro Players have control over the pace of the game
A game of Catan can take around 2 hours in a 4-player game. It's not a frantic game, there is no penalty for taking a while to figure out how you want to play your cards. You can keep it leisurely, or speed it up if you want to.
Pro You can increase replayability with different expansions
There are expansions for Catan such as Explorers & Pirates, Cities & Knights, Seafarers, and many more. Each one expands on the base game by adding extra mechanics. For example, the expansion Cities & Knights introduces city improvements that give various benefits to the player, and knights that protect them from invading barbarians. Expansion packs usually add game length and tactical complexity, which in turn greatly improves replayability.
Pro Allows for multiple strategies in a single game
There are distinct stages in the game (early, middle and end-game), which have different strategies. For example, when the game has just started out, you won't have much other options except rolling the dice to gather more resources. In contrast, the end-game is a lot more alert, because multiple players at a time can be just 1 or 2 points away from victory. The game changes between these stages fluidly, and you have to be present and engaged at all times to stay ahead.
Pro Suitable for 2-6 players
Catan is relatively flexible in terms of the amount of players. It's recommended to be played with at least 3 players, but it is possible to work around that. There are no official rules for a 2 player game, but you can go around that by each playing two colors. The base game has 4 player slots, but people can team up, thereby increasing the number of possible players. There is also an expansion pack available, which allows for two more players to join the game without having to team up.
Cons
Con A little too luck based
Where you can place your settlements each turn relies on which terrain card you draw. For example if you keep getting forest cards, you will have to continually build in forests which is very limiting and makes it hard to expand out to other areas of the map or satisfy the various win conditions.
Con A rough start can be overly punishing
The game usually lasts only about 10 rounds, so if you get some unlucky terrain card draws early in the game, it makes recovering in the endgame almost impossible. For example, you may want to build settlements around a castle for bonus points, but that castle is in a desert and you keep drawing forest cards. There's simply not enough rounds to outplay the luck of the draw.
Con Not a good game for a younger audience
Success is heavily dependent on thinking ahead and planning. Even though the recommended age is 10+, it is not a good game for children who may lack the skills needed to get the most out of the game.
Con Chaotic expansions
Due to the game's popularity, there have been quite a lot of expansions over the years. While you can combine some of them easily, others not so much. It can be quite messy to figure it all out by yourself. There is a guide on the Catan website containing rules for combining expansions.
Con Constant haggling
One of the more prominent characteristics of Settlers of Catan is haggling, which can get tiresome if you're not into that sort of thing. You can expect to be bargaining for resources throughout the whole game, since your placement of villages does not guarantee getting a constant supply of a particular resource.
Con No official two-player rules
There are no official two- player rules thought there are some two-player rules that users have created and can be found online.