There are five resources in Catan:
- Wheat, produced from plains (appearing as green tiles with straight rows in zee map)
- Sheep [wool], produced from pastures (appearing as sheep)
- Bricks, produced from hills (appearing as off-orange mountain thingies)
- Iron, produced from mountains (appearing as gray with mines)
- Wood, produced from forests (appearing as dark green with forests) on the map
You use these resources to buy buildings, roads, walls, settlements, cities, development cards, and so on.
Resources are gained principally through your cities and settlements, which are placed on vertices rather than in hexes. Each turn, two dice are rolled. If you have a settlement adjacent to a tile with the rolled number on it, you get the appropriate resources. If you have a city adjacent, you get two resources instead. How much resources you have is public knowledge in this version of the game.
IE: Suppose you have a settlement on a vertex that borders on a pasture (which produces sheep). The pasture has a big number 4 on it. If a 4 is rolled, you get 1 sheep from this pasture. If you had a city, you'd get 2 sheep instead.
There is a unique unit called the Thief that blocks production.
You can also get resources by trading. On your turn you can trade with any other player or trade in 4 of any one kind of resource to the bank for one of any other. If you control a port, you can get more favorable trading rates. A port with no resource can trade in 3 of any resource for 1 of any other. A port with a specific resource can trade 2 of only that resource for 1 of any other. You control a port if you have a settlement or city on one of the port's two vertices. (I have denoted these in red where there is ambiguity.)
IE: If you have 4 wheat, you can trade them in for 1 sheep. If you had a general port, you can trade 3 wheat for 1 sheep instead. If you had a wheat port, you could trade 2 wheat for 1 sheep, or 4 wheat for 2 sheep.
You can use resources to build stuff on your turn. Stuff you build must be connected to your road network. Roads are built on the edges of a vertex. I have eliminated road ownership in this version of Catan. Instead, a vertex/point is connected to your road network if it connected to one of your settlements by road without any opposing cities, settlements, walls, towers, or anything in the way. A road must be connected to a previous road in your road network.
Roads can be built over water ("bridges"). No other buildings can be built this way.
You can also buy development cards, which you can play for various benefits.
As mentioned, dice are rolled every turn. For most numbers, this generates resources for players. However, if you roll a 7 on your turn, you get to move the Thief. The Thief is a tricky unit that stops anything from being produced in a hex tile as long as he's in that hex. If you roll 7, when you move the Thief, if you move him to some other player's hex, you get to steal a card from that player. The Thief can't be moved into a hex with an army in it.
Also, if you have more than 7 resources when a 7 is rolled (by any player), you have to discard down to 7 cards.
You have 48 hours (increased from original 24) to take your turn. After that I'll skip you. All turns must be taken in thread. I'll tell you at the start of your turn what number you rolled and if you get to move the thief.
Other Tiles:
- Deserts appear as sandy yellow and have no number. They produce nothing.
- Seas appear as light or dark blue and have no number. They produce nothing.
- The muddy-colored tiles with stacks of coins are gold mines. If their number is rolled they produce a resource of any type, of the beneficiary's choosing.
