Need a restart/undo feature on Catan

[Cos-]

I was going to open a new feature request, but I found one that's kind of similar so added a comment to it.

Here's the request: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=65428

And here is what I wrote:

Currently Catan has a "confirm" after every individual action, but once you confirm you can't undo it. This is pretty terrible: One the one hand, it means a lot more clicks, but on the other hand, it's mostly useless since you're most likely to change your mind later, not immediately when you took some action.

Catan should work like many other games on BGA, with a more general restart/undo feature available at all times during your turn that lets you go back to either the beginning of your turn or just after you took an irreversible action. An irreversible action would be
- drawing a card (since you found out what the card is),
- completing a trade _with another person_ (maritime trades should be reversible)
- placing the robber if and only if another player had to discard some resources
- robbing (because you found out what resource you got

Everything else in the game should be undoable.

Only irreversible actions (listed above) and passing at the end of the turn should require a "confirm". Everything else just happens as soon as you click to do it, but you can unwind all of it if you want.

As it is now, it's very very frustrating to lose games frequently because of the inability to change your mind about what to do on your turn.

[Norm Z]

I agree. I have the "confirm" option disabled because it takes way to many clicks to confirm every single action. But then there's the occasion where, especially when playing on a phone, that you accidentally click on the wrong thing then there's no way to undo it. For example, wanting to build a settlement but then accidentally clicking to build the neighboring road.

[Cos-]

Even with the confirm button, this happens a lot. When it asks me to confirm a simple action, it's the action I _just_ did, so unless it was a mis-click, it's the action I thought I wanted to do, so I will always confirm. It's only when thinking about what action to take _next_ that I usually realize, oh oops, I should've done something else.

One common example: I move the robber, without noticing that the person I put it next to has no resources. By the time I find that out, I've already confirmed where to put the robber, so it's too late.

Another common example: I have enough resources to build a road plus something else (another road, or a settlement). I place the road, then when it really comes time to pick the place to build the next thing, I realize it would've been better to put somewhere else.

Maritime trades are another case where this can be really really frustrating. When I have a lot of resources, sometimes I mis-count in my mind what I need to trade to have the right resources after two trades in a row. After I do the first maritime trade, and I have fewer resources, the discrepancy in my counting becomes clearer. In a real in person game, it would be no problem to take back a maritime trade when it's still my turn and I haven't built anything with it. But in the BGA version, too bad, I'm stuck knowing I made the wrong move and I know what the right move should be.

Overall this can really ruin a game, knowing I did poorly because of a mistake like one of the above, where I had a much better move available to me and I **saw** what that move was, on my turn, but I couldn't do it.

[ChiefPointThief]

I made one very costly mistake several games ago that triggered me enabling the confirm button. Haven’t made another since but it’s worth it to me

[Cos-]

Although I also play with the confirm button enabled, in my experience it does not actually prevent most mistakes. If you literally did not mean to click, then yes, confirm can save you from that. But if you meant to click something and you maybe placed it in the wrong location or realize just after you do it that it'd be better to do something better, I think you'll find you will have already clicked confirm before it's too late. The problem with confirm is that because you have to do it after **every** action, and because 99% of the time you want to confirm, it becomes an ingrained reflex - to take an action, you do the action and click confirm, without thinking about it. So it's mostly useless.

[Cos-]

Someone else just posted a new thread here asking for the same thing: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31898

[Cos-]

Just messed up another game in a new-to-me way: I accidentally clicked the maritime trade button when I meant to click the trade button. The interface looks the same, so I quickly clicked on the things I wanted to give and receive, and didn't notice the resource in the give column said 3 rather than 1 until after I clicked. Now the maritime trade is done and irreversible, and I lost my change to build what I wanted to build on this turn. How does it make any sense at all to make a maritime trade irreversible? Extremely frustrating.

Please vote for the feature request linked at the top of this thread.

[Cos-]

Another way this comes up from time to time: You roll 7, pick a spot to move the robber to, and only then realize that oops that player has no resources. You should be allowed to undo and pick a different place for the robber, but you can't. In a real in person game, if you haven't robbed anyone, of course you could change your mind about where to put the robber if you haven't actually robbed someone yet.

[Mathew5000]

In a real in person game, if you haven't robbed anyone, of course you could change your mind about where to put the robber if you haven't actually robbed someone yet.

Well, that depends how lenient your friends are! Some people play Catan as if it were chess ("no take-backs").

But I agree that for Catan on BGA the confirmation system could be improved, for a more extensive "undo" feature. The specific point about rolling a 7 is similar to this suggestion concerning playing a knight: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=61903

[Cos-]

But I agree that for Catan on BGA the confirmation system could be improved, for a more extensive "undo" feature. The specific point about rolling a 7 is similar to this suggestion concerning playing a knight: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=61903

I don't quite get that suggestion, I think it's written confusingly. First of all, it states "if we have an undo" - but we **don't** and that's the whole problem. We should, but we don't. Please vote for https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=65428 to request that feature. But then it talks about an undo on the "last irreversible stage" which... I think may not be what they actually meant to write? Because it doesn't make sense.

In any case, this isn't a robber-specific issue. We need a restart & undo option for every thing you do that should be undo-able (so, anything other than robbing, or drawing a card), and we then only need confirm at the end of the turn, not at every step. That's what my suggestion asks for, but in general, not specifically just for when you move the robber.