Board Game Arena

sdv89052 wrote: ↑05 September 2025, 00:08 Bought the first 3 in a recent game. All knights.

I think this is the most likely scenario..
There are 25 development cards: 14 knight cards, 5 victory point cards, 2 road building, 2 year of plenty, and 2 monopoly

Theana wrote: ↑05 September 2025, 07:59

sdv89052 wrote: ↑05 September 2025, 00:08 Bought the first 3 in a recent game. All knights.

I think this is the most likely scenario..
There are 25 development cards: 14 knight cards, 5 victory point cards, 2 road building, 2 year of plenty, and 2 monopoly

Having 3 knights in succession is 15.8%. Having 1 victory card is 20%. Both very common results.

Thus the answer of the thread title is no ("always a victory card first").

And since the OP probably means 20% as often (he remains vague on purpose, I assume), he might be right that the first card is often a victory card...

[Edit:] The probability that the first card or the very next card is a victory card is 36.7%. The OP defines that as "almost always".

Coleus1 wrote: ↑04 September 2025, 07:27 I feel there's no point on providing data since there will always be a user saying "well the probabily is never 0 of that happening so... it can always occur on the normal distribution curve...". I am also not a pro user so I can't really see the data but the phenomenon occured way too often for me ever since the update not notice.

Since you do not seem to know how to back up your claim with data I used 15-20 minutes to analyze your last 10 games of Catan.

game no.;move no.;player;1st card;move no.;player;2nd card;;
725465814;31;yellow;monopoly;35;blue;road building;;
725421982;85;green;knight;88;yellow;victory card;;
725417485;41;white;victory card;157;white;knight;;
725392849;59;yellow;knight;73;yellow;knight;;
725393570;85;green;monopoly;-;-;-;;
725374819;34;yellow;knight;103;purple;knight;;
725364217;59;white;victory card;60;white;knight;;
725341009;46;white;knight;67;yellow;road building;;
725013198;124;blue;knight;126;blue;knight;;
724983136;23;blue;knight;28;brown;knight;;

In the table you can see the game number, the move number of the first development card buy, the player that bought it, and which type it was.
Since you also mentioned the 2nd bought development card I also added move number, player and the card type.

As you can see, victory cards were appropriately representated (20%) as 1st pick and slightly underrepresentated (11%) as 2nd pick.

This is no proof that your claim of many victory cards is wrong but quite some indication!
Since you give no data at all and my data (I did not handpick the games) shows the opposite of your claim we can safely dismiss your claim till you show us your data. It is not necessary to represent the data nicely - but if you do it is easier to check by others. I tried to represent my data as clear as it was possible for me.

[technical remark]: It is very easy to retrieve above data. Go to a finished game and click on game replay. Do not even start the actual replay, i.e. do not choose which player to watch! You can already see a text version of the replay where all the necessary information is included.

euklid314 wrote: ↑05 September 2025, 13:18

Theana wrote: ↑05 September 2025, 07:59

sdv89052 wrote: ↑05 September 2025, 00:08 Bought the first 3 in a recent game. All knights.

I think this is the most likely scenario..
There are 25 development cards: 14 knight cards, 5 victory point cards, 2 road building, 2 year of plenty, and 2 monopoly

Having 3 knights in succession is 15.8%. Having 1 victory card is 20%. Both very common results.

Thus the answer of the thread title is no ("always a victory card first").

And since the OP probably means 20% as often (he remains vague on purpose, I assume), he might be right that the first card is often a victory card...

[Edit:] The probability that the first card or the very next card is a victory card is 36.7%. The OP defines that as "almost always".

Thanks didn't aim to go into so much details