How difficult is Cities & Knights?

[desertman]

I’ve been playing Catan for over 25 years with friends. My board game still has wooden pieces. It was fun then (and it never occurred to any of us that we should spare someone from being robbed right at the beginning of the game), and it is fun now. I’m impressed by how well BGA has implemented this online version of this game.

Now I have the impression that most people want to play with the Cities & Knights extension - and that seems to be a completely different game. By completely I mean: completely, and I agree with those who think it should be offered here on BGA as a separate game.

How difficult is it to play with the Cities & Knight extension? Is it more fun than plain old pure Catan? Does it take much more time?

Do I have to study the 20 pages of instructions for a couple of days or weeks, or can I just play it and trust that I will make my way through it without being only frustrated?

Thanks for your replies.

[euklid314]

I own C&K as a board game in wooden pieces. I bought it right after it was released.

C&K is 50%-100% more complex than Catan, keeps 95% of the old rules and adds about the same amount of new rules. If you play base Catan a lot you probably realize that its rules are quite simple (roll dice, distribute ressources, build/trade). The same is true for the C&K expansion. If you have played it 5 times you will call the rules simple. But the game mechanics hold more variety - the new complexity gives you more things to think about.

The game length is approx 50% longer than base Catan. In my opinion it is more than worth it to learn the expansion.

If you want to start a new game I heavily recommend to read the 12 pages of rules (i.e., without the pages describing the progress cards in detail) and only then play your first game. Reading the rules should cost you not more than 30 minutes (you can read fast since you dont have to remember all the details to have fun for a first game).

If you find somebody who will explain the basics to you, you can start your first game even without reading the rules at all - but such a game must be frustrating, imho. I had several opponents who did not know the rules at all but played and finished a whole game (with some explanations by me). Most were interested in the variant afterwards - but they were making moves all the time without knowing if their moves were good or bad.

[desertman]

Thank you! I will dig into it.

[Loebas86]

You should probably know that you can lose your city when the barbarians attack. It happens sooner than you think. You can protect your city by building a knight and activating it. This should be your first priority.

The other stuff like building city improvements and playing progress cards you will find out along the way.