Official Settlers of Catan out now on App Store

I'm so stoked about this new app. I'm gonna get it as soon as possible. I don't care about the negative reviews from people here, because this is my favorite board game of all time.

Best day ever = playing this game on my Touch and wearing the "Yes We Catan" Tshirt:

http://tshirtgroove.com/yes-we-catan-tshirt/

It's waaay too slow paced. I could probably play an actual game of Settlers in less time.

The XBOX Live version of Catan sure is pretty, but the single-player mode is embarrassingly flawed.

If you play with random dice rolls, difficulty is controlled by making sure that the AI characters get their numbers and you don't. If you set the game to use the "deck" method of insuring that every combination of the dice appears (as their devs recommended to me when I exposed their crutch), the app lamely forces all of the AI rolls to appear early, only hitting your numbers at the very end of the deck.

Think I'm wearing a tinfoil hat? It's not hard to reproduce the pattern I'm describing above: set the game on its hardest single-player setting, use the "deck" method of rolling the dice and don't shuffle the deck until all the cards are used, and play. You'll notice that unless you share all the most common numbers (6,8) with multiple AI players, your numbers will not come up until late in the deck. If you're good enough, you can actually time your strategy around the incredible onslaught of resources you get every five or six turns.

I had quite an argument with the devs about this flaw, which practically ruins the single-player mode of the game for anyone of an advanced enough level. They refuse to admit that's how they gave their AIs an advantage. I'm all for setting the AI players to plot against you (through refusing to trade and placing the robber only on your resources), but lame coding is lame coding.

I can only hope the iPhone version is more robust, but I've given up hope of finding a decent single-player version of this game... I'll stick to playing it live with friends I guess.

Kolonists stopped working for me shortly after being pulled from the app store. Figured it was disabled from the mother ship. But it still works for you?

I got the game the other day. It's OK, but has some issues - the biggest one is that it's just so slow-paced. After playing the XBox 360 game, I'm used to the computer turns going by fairly quick. Games take f-o-r-e-v-e-r because of that.

Inteview with Jay Tummelson (riograndegames.com Publisher of Dominion)
8:10 in the video http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2407649
Are you looking into video game markets, Xbox Live, Playstation?

I'm currently negotiating or at least looking at the business from several companies to license Dominion and Race for the Galaxy on 'multiple platforms.' Expectation is that stuff will be out sometime in the ?????

I've been playing Kolonists. Does the official version offer anything than Kolonists doesn't?

Wow. I just played through a game. This is actually not too shabby, just make sure to look at some of the options (fast animations and turn off the "chit chat").

WIN!

Hmmm, I wonder if there is any hopes of having the various expansion packs. I haven't learned anything other than the basic Catan because they never had any expansions on the Xbox version. I bought all of the variants, but all the extra types of things to purchase seemed daunting.

I'll trade you one ore for a brick and a wood.