Hey hey, how's it going?
I have been playing Catan for more than a decade now, both in person but also online in Catan Universe, colonist.io, and recently here in boardgame arena. Combine my experience having played and watched thousands of Catan games with my general understanding of statistics, I have a good general idea of how the numbers usually (should) roll. Also, I am a pretty strong Catan player, participating in tournamets, private discord groups, and watching Catan streams almost daily.
Although I was able to easily climb the ladder in the other platforms, boardgame arena has been a struggle. Besides the common leavers/afk/people that don't know or don't want to use the chat, I have seen the most wierd dice behaviour ever, and this happens in almost every game.
The most common scenario is for one number to roll way too much early and one player to get too far of an advantage, while rolling 7s to slow them down is out of the picture.
It's quite often where my 6s or 8s will be outperformed by 3s. Or that I am on 4-5-6-8 only to be destroyed by 9s that rolled early more than all the rest combined. In the last 2 of the 3 games I had heavily invested in one good number (6 and 9) and they ended up rolling insanely low compared to the rest. (I consider 5-6-8-9 the good-rolling numbers). Although I did win by playing very efficiently and swinging the table to my favor, and having very lucky rolls and VP pulls, the final result was very frustrating.
Now, the last game I just played I had a very strong initial setup and I was on 4-6-8-9-10.
The player with the 2nd best setup ended up winning 10-4-4-2, we never stood a chance at all. Got all his numbers rolling and of course mostly the 5, almost no 7s, didn't lose any cards, he was 4:1 his good resources to build (almost) useless roads because he could easily afford it.
By the time the other numbers started rolling he already had a city and he could outporduce us even if we would get our rolls.
Anyway, I am trying to observe as much as I can and minimise cognitive bias as much as possible, but I am constantly getting screwed over in my games and this is something I am not encountering to this extent in any other platform, or real life.
I also recall a game where 2 rolled five times in 6-7 throws. I don't really think this is trully "random" number generator, I believe it usually gets stuck to certain numbers, although I have no idea why/how.
Nothing will change but at least I got it off my chest. Back to grinding where I will have to come up with even more creative strategies to outperform "bad luck" in most of my games.
I have been playing Catan for more than a decade now, both in person but also online in Catan Universe, colonist.io, and recently here in boardgame arena. Combine my experience having played and watched thousands of Catan games with my general understanding of statistics, I have a good general idea of how the numbers usually (should) roll. Also, I am a pretty strong Catan player, participating in tournamets, private discord groups, and watching Catan streams almost daily.
Although I was able to easily climb the ladder in the other platforms, boardgame arena has been a struggle. Besides the common leavers/afk/people that don't know or don't want to use the chat, I have seen the most wierd dice behaviour ever, and this happens in almost every game.
The most common scenario is for one number to roll way too much early and one player to get too far of an advantage, while rolling 7s to slow them down is out of the picture.
It's quite often where my 6s or 8s will be outperformed by 3s. Or that I am on 4-5-6-8 only to be destroyed by 9s that rolled early more than all the rest combined. In the last 2 of the 3 games I had heavily invested in one good number (6 and 9) and they ended up rolling insanely low compared to the rest. (I consider 5-6-8-9 the good-rolling numbers). Although I did win by playing very efficiently and swinging the table to my favor, and having very lucky rolls and VP pulls, the final result was very frustrating.
Now, the last game I just played I had a very strong initial setup and I was on 4-6-8-9-10.
The player with the 2nd best setup ended up winning 10-4-4-2, we never stood a chance at all. Got all his numbers rolling and of course mostly the 5, almost no 7s, didn't lose any cards, he was 4:1 his good resources to build (almost) useless roads because he could easily afford it.
By the time the other numbers started rolling he already had a city and he could outporduce us even if we would get our rolls.
Anyway, I am trying to observe as much as I can and minimise cognitive bias as much as possible, but I am constantly getting screwed over in my games and this is something I am not encountering to this extent in any other platform, or real life.
I also recall a game where 2 rolled five times in 6-7 throws. I don't really think this is trully "random" number generator, I believe it usually gets stuck to certain numbers, although I have no idea why/how.
Nothing will change but at least I got it off my chest. Back to grinding where I will have to come up with even more creative strategies to outperform "bad luck" in most of my games.
)
