Board Game Arena

The end-game scoring was Settlements. The rules state that "A Settlement is a cluster of directly adjacent Structures of one color." That means shipping does not come into play as that is non-adjacent. In the original rules regarding bridges, it says "When founding a Town, all Structures directly adjacent to one another form that Town (Bridges are key here), even if there are more than the required number of Structures."

I think it is pretty clear that adding a bridge makes a structure Adjacent. Therefore, to figure out the Settlements bonus, it should consider any cluster of buildings including any connected via a bridge, as one settlement. Any separated by water is a second settlement. However, that is not the way BGA is counting the end game points.

In our game, 18 points were awards to the player with 4 settlements if you count those connected with a bridge as part of the bigger one, or 6 if you count settlements connected by a bridge separately. Either way, that player (me) was going to be awarded the 18 points. However, there was a tie between the second and third placed players in terms of settlements. One of them only had 2 in total,3 if you count one bridged Dwelling. The other player had 3 distinct settlement with zero bridges.

Is this the correct way to count Settlements?

Thanks!!

You are correct, a bridge connects 2 "settlements" into 1

You may have found a bug in the BGA implementation, but I would also advise checking the endgame situation to make sure you are not missing something. I would look myself if you gave a link to the game.

All endgame scorings also needs to be connected (via shipping)

That's it! You are entirely correct, I didn't know they also needed to be connected! IT IS NOT A BUG! I took a screen shot of the completed game, and the recount when you also consider shipping makes it 3 to 2 to 2. Therefore the points were awarded correctly. My biggest region cannot be connected via Shipping to the other more remote regions, and one of the other two players is equally split apart.

Thanks for posting, that resolved the issue.

From the rulebook: "Each player counts the number of his Settlements. A Settlement is a cluster of directly adjacent Structures of one color. Single Structures that are not directly adjacent to any other Structures of the same color are also considered Settlements. Scored Settlements must be connected as well."