Great UI, Hilariously Flawed AI

I have had this App for years. And have played a lot. I love Catan and the app is pretty good, but as seen in other reviews there is both silly and frustrating AI behavior. They definitely team up on you when you’re about to win, but not each other. The probability of 7’s being rolled when you’re about to win is comically probable. The AI definitely play knight cards when they don’t even have development cards. The trading with AI is tilted toward the human player—basically because you can always keep asking them over and over what they would give to maximize your gain, which no human would put up with. The AI will sometimes build roads in directions that have no value whatsoever. And while I believe that the dice roll may match the bell curve, there is definitely a high probability of your numbers being rolled while it’s blocked by the robber. And also a higher likelihood than normal that all your numbers will get rolled in sequence followed by a seven. I think the AI’s weren’t smart enough initially to challenge human players, so they added all of these strange handicaps.

Terrible design and layout. DO NOT PAY FOR THIS GAME

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.

5 stars minus bugs

I would absolutely rate this app 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!

Developer is terrible

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.

Fun Game, Unfair A.I.

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!!

Love game

I really enjoy this app. 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.

Keeps kicking me out

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.

Faithful Recreation for Mobile

There’s not much to say, if you like the game, you’ll likely enjoy the app 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.

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