CATAN: Cities & Knights is a major, highly strategic expansion that adds significant depth, complexity, and warfare to the base CATAN game. Designed for 3-4 players (ages 12+), it shifts the focus from simple trading to city-building, defense, and long-term planning, increasing the winning condition to 13 Victory Points.
Core Gameplay Additions
Barbarian Invasions: A collective threat! A custom event die moves a barbarian fleet closer to Catan. If the barbarians outnumber the total strength of all players' knights, they attack, and the player with the weakest knight army loses a city, which is downgraded to a settlement.
Knights for Defense: Players must spend ore and sheep to build, promote, and activate knights. These knights are placed on the roads and actively defend the island, block opponents, and thwart barbarian attacks.
City Improvements: Cities can be upgraded by spending new trade commodities: Coin, Paper, and Cloth. These commodities are earned when players roll resource numbers corresponding to forests, mountains, and pastures with city structures.
Progress Cards: As you upgrade your cities, you draw Progress Cards (Trade, Politics, and Science). These replace the base game's simple Development Cards and provide powerful abilities like moving the Robber, taking resources, or securing roads.
Metropolises: Fully upgrading a city improvement track turns it into a Metropolis. Metropolises are worth 2 Victory Points and are immune to Barbarian attacks.
City Walls: Players can spend brick to build city walls, which increase the maximum number of resource cards you can hold in your hand before the Robber activates.
Main Components
1 wooden barbarian ship and 1 track tile
24 wooden knights (6 per color) and 12 city walls
36 Commodity cards and 54 Progress cards
4 City Improvement Flip-Charts
3 Metropolis pieces and 1 wooden merchant figure
Note: This is not a standalone game; a CATAN base game is required to play. Additionally, a 5-6 Player Extension can be purchased to play with larger groups.
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