"We recommend that playing this game with 4 people is best"

[Evilpotatoe]

Where do such recommendations come from ?
BGG ? Polls ? BGA team choice ? Anything else ?

In that particular case, I must say I was quite surprised to see 4P as the "best" number, since most players I know agree that 4P is terrible because someone usually gets surround-dead after one or two extra colonies have been placed, at most (in fact, sometimes just after start-up placements), which is usually NOT fun for the victim.
Also, when asking, several players from different groups answered me the same "4P Catan ? Sure, as long as you use the 5-6P extension !

From my experience, the players which didn't share this opinion were divided in two groups : ones who don't know or just hate Catan anyway, and ones with no strategic vision, which always end-up with terrible scores on strategy games.

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So, what's players opinions here, and do you know where this recommendation did came from ?

[sorryimlikethis]

As someone who does enjoy the strategy of Catan, I think 4 players is its best player count. It forces you to make sacrifices with your opening settlements, you will rarely get two amazing spots unlike the game at a 3 player count. Part of the strategy is to avoid getting surrounded by anticipating your opponents. There's healthy competition for road and army unlike 3P where one will often go uncontested.

I imagine it's based off BGG where 75% of voters said 4 players was best.

[Stroom]

When you are more skilled, 3p is boringly easy. 4p is where you have to be more strategic in the placement phase.

[Lumin_S]

Not only echoing Stroom and sorryimlikethis to agree 4p is best at higher levels of competition, but I think the most straightforward answer is that:

All official competitions run by the publisher are 4-player. The Catan World Championship, and all official National Championships that I know of use 4-player as the competitive standard.

[Evilpotatoe]

Thank for those quick answers.
I personally consider Catan too random for bothering trying hard at it, but all this seems to make some sense, and was quite informative.

4P games taking too much time is another issue imo, precisely because you can't have good starting colonies and spend a lot of turns producing nothing but... well, I guess I should just play anything else then :p