Board Game Arena

casual player here. tried this game 7 wonders about two games. I believe catan should be here in this spot regarding popularity and number of available players. I think catan is the better game. Trading in catan makes more sense. You give away a wood to get a brick for example. In 7 wonders the stack magically doesn't shrink.

lynx7 wrote: ↑25 June 2021, 00:09 casual player here. tried this game 7 wonders about two games. I believe catan should be here in this spot regarding popularity and number of available players. I think catan is the better game. Trading in catan makes more sense. You give away a wood to get a brick for example. In 7 wonders the stack magically doesn't shrink.

The resources in 7 Wonders represent purchasing power, not a pile of resources that is consumed. There is no need for it to diminish and there is no "magic" behind it not diminishing. Purchasing power (as opposed to an enumerated pile of resources) is a mechanic used in many games besides 7 Wonders. Maybe you'll hate all of those, too, but perhaps you can be more open to other mechanics.

I'll let you use your search engine of choice to find the numerous discussions about perceived flaws in Catan. You may still prefer it to 7 Wonders, as is your choice, but if you are new to the hobby I would encourage you to read up on how experienced players evaluate games.

lynx7 wrote: ↑25 June 2021, 00:09 casual player here. tried this game 7 wonders about two games. I believe catan should be here in this spot regarding popularity and number of available players. I think catan is the better game. Trading in catan makes more sense. You give away a wood to get a brick for example. In 7 wonders the stack magically doesn't shrink.

Games have different rules because they want to achieve different "kinds of fun".
Catan's trading of resources make it a negotiation game. You can buy your game toward victory by being a perfect diplomat, getting good trade while convincing others while sabotaging the trades of some other players by pointing out how the trade is unfair for one of the two. Some players love this, others hate it and are quite glad it is absent from 7 Wonder, and most somewhat like it but might prefer to not have negotiations in each and everyone of their boardgames.

In 7 Wonders, by having "simpler" resources management (if you need a resource, you look around you and you pay 2 gold to your neighbour, no negotiation, no limitation, etc), the game can afford to be more "complex" on other points: resources costs are much more varied than in Catan, and so are the effects of all the cards, and the ways to score points. While resources are at the core of Catan, they are a secondary point of 7 Wonder, which is much more focussed on picking the good cards. In fact, in some games, you can win with almost no resource cards in front of you.

No idea why you're framing it as a competition in which 7 Wonders is somehow "stealing" Catan's spot, while the game isn't even on the site to begin with.

Catan might come eventually, and if it does, it will also be popular. To each their own.

Catan is surely very hard to program- how to you program everyone discussing a trade?!

I don’t expect it’s possible on BGA