Catan Classic Reviews

The AI loves to hammer you with the robber even if you don’t have the lead. I get in a game you can pick on someone who’s building towards what you want or just got the resource you need but a lot of the time it’s who has the lead. The AI doesn’t care even if you're down 3 points and on the other side of the map you’ll still get slammed with the robber 3/4 the time. Also there is only 2 monopoly cards in the deck and I’ve played standard games where they have been used 3 times. I get in the different scenarios that rules and limits vary (although none note more monopoly cards) so I won’t pick on how in those games, but I’ve seen as many as 4 used in a game. Overall CatanClassic allows me to play my favorite game whenever and wherever but it does need some tweaks.

Originally gave it 3 stars but after playing the “scenarios” I had to drop it to 1. Literally every game if you get 2 or more points ahead it will constantly roll the 2 numbers you don’t have and you’ll get hit by the robber with every 7 rolled and knight played by the AI players. Even after you lose the lead and if you have one card when every one else has multiple you’ll get hit and the AI will steal your one card.

The AI always put the robber on my spaces even when it doesn’t make sense. Yes you can still win but have to get quite creative but it also can be frustrating. That needs to be fixed. Just like everyone says! Frustrating as the AI trade constantly but rarely with me. I can be way ahead then go five rounds not gain a resource and have the robber constantly bounce on my spaces and take all of my resources. Then the AI will come from behind and win. No way the dice is random, nor does the game match real play. It needs some fixes for sure then could be a 5 star! Update- played a bit more even when AI is winning will still throw robber on my spots even without resources and won’t throw my numbers on dice. Definitely not random like they claim. Please make the dice roll random…you say it is but it is not. I am tired of getting up to 11 points only to not get resources for multiple rounds while the AI PLAYERS get 14 and up…. Would not recommend this game until fixed. There are too many other games that are fun, fair and challenging.

Wasn’t gonna write a review because I have mixed feelings. I love this game, but I can’t ever play with real ppl because I either get kicked out or someone decides they want to quit and then it’s just dumb. There should be some kind of rule around quitting in the middle of a game. Like you can’t do it too many times, or if you do then the next game you play you’re last. Idk SOMETHING. As far as playing with the computer, it’s fun… but especially if you’re on hard mode with a character that has a lot of “skill”, they just role 7s constantly, their numbers are rolled but yours aren’t, etc. It’s not actually “skill”. I’ve figured out how to beat them for the most part but if I can’t get good numbers on ore & wheat, I know I don’t have a chance because they will role a 7 and then use a knight, over and over and over. I had amazing numbers during a recent game and ended up with 2 POINTS because we rolled the same numbers over and over (like literally 10 times in a row), and they had knights and just stole all of my resources. It was the stupidest thing ever.

Anyway. Wasn’t gonna write a review because I do enjoy the game but I just got kicked out 3 times in a row and it kept prompting me to write a review so… here you go.

I left a one star review a month ago and it didn't get posted so consider this 2 one star reviews. This review is completely unrelated to my last review. This game is either cheap or buggy. I've had my resource cards disappear out of nowhere. Didn't trade them, didn't get robbed. They literally just leave my hand. The computer players work together against you. AI knows what cards you have. They only offer you resources you already have, never offer anything you need. AI almost never accepts offers for resources that you need in exchange for resources they have in abundance. AI almost exclusively puts the robber on your tiles. Every card they steal from you is a resource you need for your next turn. Any card you rob from them is a resource you either don't need or have a lot of already. Anytime they place the robber on your tile, that number becomes the "hot" number to roll. As soon as the robber is moved elsewhere, that number goes cold and doesn't get rolled. I paid $5 for CatanClassic and I'm deleting it for my own sanity. The $5 doesn't matter at this point. Even if you have the patience of a saint, this game will severely test your patience to the max. Good luck if you do decide to play it.

Game is not worth $5 by any stretch of anyones imagination. Terrible layout. 40% of the game screen is water/unused surface, but for some reason they lay the ridiculous emojis over ur opponents running score. The game selection menu is junk. Worse than junk. Hot, sweaty, junky junk. If someone does not accept to join game, all players are reshuffled per each not acceptance and have to accept each time a new player even enters the screen. Makes no sense. Worst part is people not playing. There is apparently no time limit on turns, which is obnoxious, and when someone quits mid game, instead of just switching over to AI player seamlessly, all players are logged out to menu screen and have to re-accept playing a game that they are already playing. The game freezes constantly. Like 60% of the time. It’s like the have one server. You are likely to complete about 20% of games started because either the game freezes, someone else quits mid game and it just idles endlessly, or you quit yourself out of frustration. Whoever designed this game should have an immediate reduction in pay, or at minimum should have to spend the months of June-August scrubbing the Oakland Coliseum mens room latrines….. if u have never been there, it is a community urinal…… sooooo….. u know…… gross…… just like this game layout and functions. Yuck. THIS GAME IS FRIGGIN GARBAGE!!! I want my money back.

AIs get an unfair advantage when the player takes any sort of lead. And they maintain this advantage even after they've caught up. They even trade amongst each other to take down the player in ways no human would because it hurts their own chances. For instance, the blue AI had caught up to me in victory points in one game and was 3 away from winning. Red traded with Blue three times in one turn even though Red was losing by at least 6 points. Yellow's turn came and they also traded with Blue, allowing Blue to win. Why on Earth would that happen? It makes no sense and is very frustrating to watch the AI collaborate against you in ways no human player would ever do. Especially when this turns a calculated win into an incredibly improbable (bordering on mathematically impossible) loss. As other players have noted, this behavior extends to the robber and even seems to affect dice rolls. This is at the very least a poor decision and in my eyes is even unethical (although very minor on the ethics scale, admittedly). Please fix this, I love Catan but this game barely counts as Catan.

Wow, where to begin, the free version is better, plain and simple, not with 4.99 by any stretch of the imagination, super 2D graphics with barely the element of a 3-D interaction I was very disappointed to say the least for a 30 year old game you think they would give a little bit more love to the development now had they charged a dollar for the game like a $.99 game maybe I could see that before 99 it’s just completely out of the question I was kind of gypped on the original game that I downloaded for free got one game and then they wanted to charge me $1.99 to play the game I was just honest I said well I might as well get the other game that I can play endlessly well turns out this game is even worse than that game when it comes to graphics and how to play and all that stuff now the game is miles ahead and that one’s not even that good so Catan you really need to put this game on sale and the other game you need to give other people a chance to play it not just one every 24 hours y’all are ripping people off

This is a decent game (I’m playing free version), but every few games the AI will hammer you regardless if the other AI player is sitting at one VP from victory and you’re down 2+ points and have no resource cards, robber will still be played on you.

I would have rated this as a 3 star game, however the recent update for iPhone X devices made the game glitchy. Choosing resources for Monopoly cards or trading, the selected resource will get stuck halfway between up/down, the resources and several options are at the very bottom of the screen now so when making a selection I invariably close the game and have to reopen it, and the text and graphics are much smaller (presumably to fit on the smaller screen, but there was no problem before the update). If they can fix this recent update then I would say it could get back to a mediocre 3 star rating. If they could fix the AI to be realistic and less “Kill All Humans,” it could easily be a 4-5 star app (just playing free, so I can’t speak to scenarios or anything else exclusive to the paid version).

First thing this game pays no attention to odds of a number being rolled. Normally, mid-range numbers are the best, for example 6 and 8. This developer has some lunatic system where 12 & 2 will be rolled frequently if the AI needs those resources, and if you are on 6 & 8 those numbers become infrequent. 7s will be rolled several times in a row to beat you down if you are ahead. I have played many games where I’m ahead and the next 3 rolls are 7, and on top of that, 3 robber cards get played on you. You literally get beaten to a pulp and are helpless. Now one might argue that it is a good idea to buy development cards, except the game cheats here to. I’ve played games where by turn 3 or 4, each of the AI players have multiple dev cards, when a resource used to buy them has only been rolled maybe once up to that point, for example sheep. I just finished a game where one of the AI players had pretty bad board position with no stone and a “3” grain. They had 3 cities and what seemed to be a constant supply of dev cards. They also had no ports, so it’s very fishy and didn’t seem possible. Basically the developer ignores dice odds and just cheats when they need to bash you out of the lead. Otherwise it not a bad game.

I would absolutely rate CatanClassic 5 stars it’s so good. There is 1 bug on online games that bothers me enough and happens enough to be very annoying and happen very often so brings my review to 3. It’s SO annoying when it happens. Also super fixable i think so I’m hoping this review can help patch the bug, make it better. If you are in the game and it crashes or if an opponent crashes, it sometimes is not a big deal. Everyone loads back in to a screen that says “match recovered” And if everyone selects yes to reconnect, you just reload in and continue where you left off. Awesome.

Sometimes one person doesn’t reconnect and or leaves for whatever reason maybe on accident / unable to or maybe on purpose if they have a bad start for example. Well if they don’t load in, the remaining players just sit at that screen and can’t load in to finish the game, don’t even know if the player that is gone is going to reconnect or if they left. And there isn’t anyway for the remaining players to remove that person even if they’ve waited on that reconnecting screen for that person to come back. So eventually, you just get tired of waiting and players will leave and can’t finish their game.

Aside from that, game is very easy to use, fun and enjoyable!

Great base game, but the programmers have not taken the time to implement proper A.I. Instead of the computer using strategy and cunning, it will manipulate the outcome so the robber is constantly thrown against you, rolls on your settlements are then thrown while robber occupied. As well, even when using the Stack dice roll option, if the computer can’t outthink you, it will devolve into ignoring the Stack rule and give your numbers less roll chance (I have screenshots proving this). Lastly, and the most obvious and annoying cheap tactic is that when playing against three A.I. opponents, one of them always seems to relegated itself as the sacrificial lamb in order to trade whatever the other two A.I. players need at any given time. Again, the base game is great, the different modes are super fun, but the unfair A.I. curbs the excitement. An important note- I’m not saying this out of frustration because I’m losing, I probably win 65%+ of the time, but I want to win against an A.I. with more fine-tuned programming. Lastly, I hope the devs aren’t saving all their programming efforts for the always online, less awesome version of Catan. PLEASE just perfect this one! Thank you!!

I love Catan in all its forms and so I enjoy CatanClassic, but I do have some complaints. I don’t know if it’s just the current version, but I’m experiencing a lot of bugs, especially with the Grand Canal variant. The game spontaneously quits all the time, which isn’t too bad since it does save well, but it’s annoying. Weird things keep happening in Grand Canal, like the canal finishing before all hexes have been dug, accruing or losing victory points with no obvious cause (that I could see), treasure islands not generating on the proper dice rolls, and once even shifting game mode to Seafarers + C&K in the middle of the match. (The board remained Canal, but the pirate was active and knights no longer functioned as merchants or diggers) I don’t know where else to submit feedback. Please fix this!

In general the dice rolls also definitely aren’t simple random number generation. I can understand controlling them a little to have a balanced experience, but I wish there was a way to just make it revert to pure random.

I have had to develop a whole new strategy to pivot from real life strategy. The dice and subsequently the robber will almost certainly fall out of your favor after you earn a single additional victory point. The AI is hyper fueled to gain development cards and the robber is constantly working against you. If you try to acquire a dev card, it is almost never a knight card. ANYTIME you have over 7 resources someone rolls a 7. EVERYTIME. There have been games where the robber has been thrown 4-5 times in a row and then knight card are tossed around. I had 6 resources go down to zero after the robber was tossed back and forth on my hexes in tandem by AI. This would very rarely happen in real life. Unless I stole someone’s dog and the table responded John Wick style to my aggression. My strategy has been basically to clear my hand every turn. AI also never trades, ever. Have to rely soupy on ports. If you can get over the fact this doesn’t play life real life, then it does get fun. You still have that same sense of accomplishment when you see “Lord of Catan” populate.

I love how seamless CatanClassic is when transitioning from the board game to CatanClassic . It's so much easier than you think it would be and it is a really good use of spare time. Quite frankly, for the catan enthusiast, it's great, especially when you fork out the 12 bucks for the whole package.

After playing countless games against the AI Bots in this game, my only beef is that the game clearly tries to equalize itself too much. I can't tell you how many times I've been ahead by 5 victory points only to have the game roll a ridiculous amount of 7s and other nonsensical numbers just to try to equalize things. Just got done playing a game where I was a staggering 6 victory points ahead with one to go for the win, only to have CatanClassic roll an ungodly amount of 7s, 3s, 11s, and 2s until the computer finally caught up to 'give me a run for my money'. It's honestly frustrating and blatantly obvious the game tries to equalize. Game should've been over in two turns, stretched the game out to 12 more turns

I loved the board game and truly excited and have enjoyed the creation of CatanClassic; however, the Artificial Intelligence is clearly calculated against you and to an unrealistic degree.

I know the roll of the die are left up to “chance,” but your number gets rolled repeatedly once the robber has been placed on that number. Once you are ahead and nearing victory, you will get hit with an onslaught of knight cards, robber rolls, monopoly cards and 12+ rolls with not a single one of your numbers coming up in order to keep you at bay. You could offer the same trade to an AI player that they just offered you and they reject it, to only re-offer it on their subsequent turn.

I don’t want a game where human intellect can easily outthink a simple cyclical algorithm from the Computer, and I genuinely appreciate the cunningness of the AI thwarting you in strategic ways. But, I have often just quit a game when it becomes a relentless calculated attack. I wish the creators could make the adjustment to receive the 5 stars CatanClassic otherwise warrants.

All the “kids” (12 year olds through 32 year olds) would sit around at family gatherings and play Catan. Us old folks (45 to 60) would pretend to know what was going on with the game. CatanClassic has made learning the game easier and it’s a lot of fun. I’ve always enjoyed turn based games that combine strategy, expansion, resource management , and cooperative elements, so Catan is a winner for me. I’d give the game a better score, but the online aspects of the game don’t seem to work.. I’m not a lost Boomer who’s unable to navigate the internet either. I’m the excel, db, computer question go to person at the place where I work. I can reset the PW 100 times, but it still says it’s wrong.. so I’ll just play against the AI for now and when I’m ready, I’ll try another App for online play. We’ll worth $5 too.. I spend more on a double mocha frappewappechinolatte drink down at Starbigsby donuts.. (I think that covers it all)

I really enjoy CatanClassic. I’ve played enough against the computer that I’m able to win about 75% on average. I have a few minor complaints. It is more common than straight probability that when a robber is placed on a space that number comes up quite frequently. I’ve also noticed this happening right after the robber is removed. Notes for players: early in the game the other players almost never play the robber on you but the game makes up for it later in the game. The computer always knows how many resources are out there so monopoly cards are never wasted by them. Solution is don’t hold too many resources, especially just one kind. If you get a lead they will gang up on you. They do it to each other as well, maybe a bit less. A big advantage can be gained by negotiating during trading to get the maximum number of resources gained. Two for one ports are more valuable than three for one ports especially if you had the foresight to pick spaces that produce those resources. Lastly, flexible thinking beats rigid planning every time.

The game is amazing and true to the classic. The ease at which it plays and the pieces move is incredible. Visually, it’s great and I also love all the settings that you can change to make the game you’re own. I also think the prices are in line and had no problem forking over the money to play my favorite board game of all time.

Now the reason for the star deduction. Fix the NBA Jam style AI. It’s almost laughable sometimes. It’s to the point where I can guess dice rolls. Sure, when you’re in the lead, the others will be gunning for you, so I understand, to a point, the knight jumping from your space, to your space, to your space, etc. etc. etc. (the AI always seems to have an endless supply of knight cards when you’re ahead). However, you better not end a turn with over 7 cards when in the lead, because you’ll definitely be missing some cards before your next.

I’ve spent the past year playing this game. I’ve read more than a few reviews about how the game is unfair or it’s impossible to win, etc and that’s not true. Sometimes the game players do make weird decisions but they each have a specific way they’re programmed to play, and just like playing with real people, you can figure out their style and use it against them. When I first started playing the game I think it was about 20 games or more before I finally won. Now? I win a good 75% of the games. So the game isn’t impossible, it just requires critical thinking and strategy planning, learning your opponents weaknesses, etc.

My only complaint is that the latest update made all of the lettering insanely small. Luckily I have an iphone 8 Plus or I’d never be able to see it. So here’s hoping that gets fixed asap. Other than that, I think this game is fantastic because easy games get boring quickly and I’ve played this game for hours on end for a year and still love it.

There’s not much to say, if you like the game, you’ll likely enjoy CatanClassic as it is faithful to the original game. I’ve played 100’s of games and can tell you the dice roll randomly (though you will still lose some games due to them not always following the bell curve), and there’s nothing to back up the game being rigged besides some users feeling cheated that a game had an unusual number of 12’s or 3’s. You can even check the stats at the end of the game to see what numbers were rolled most often.

It’s main fault comes with the AI. The computer players have limited intelligence and will allow you to always fish for a better trade deal or build towards a spot you’ll obviously head them off on. This makes it easier to win, but they are still competitive enough to win if the dice don’t fall your way.

Lastly, the game will occasionally start to crash by not displaying some pop-ups. This is easily solved by backing out of the game and re-entering, but that should ideally Not be needed. Only bug I’ve found.