Cities and Knights of Catan

• Setup
• Turn Sequence
• Details
• Event Die
• Production
• Trading
• Building: City Walls - Knights - Developments
  
• Progress Cards
• Knight Actions
• Barbarian Attacks
• Merchant
  
• Card Notes
• Playing with Seafarers
  

Setup

• Need basic settlers game. Remove:  
• development cards
• construction costs cards
• largest army and longest road cards
• 1 die
• New stuff:
  
• Commodity cards - coins (mountains), paper (woods), and cloth (pasture)
  
• Progress cards - sort into 3 batches, each shuffled:
  
• trade (yellow)
• politics (blue)
• science (green)
• Metropolis tokens (3 yellow structures), with matching cardboard chips
• Merchant (purple cone)
• Dice (2): white event die, red d6
• "Longest trade route" card
• Ship of barbarian army - place on the start field S.
• Each player selects a color and receives:
• 5 settlements, 4 cities, 15 roads
• 6 knights (2 simple, 2 strong, 2 mighty)
• 3 city walls (wooden squares)
  
• 1 city development booklet (start closed, first page showing)
  
• Place of settlements and cities
• Randomly choose starting player
• In clockwise order, players must place a settlement and a road
• Then, counterclockwise, place a city and a road.
• Players receive 1 resource card for each hex bordering the city

Turn Sequence

• Active player may play the Alchemist card. If not, roll all three dice and, in order:
  
• Resolve event die
• Barbarians advance, may attack
  
• Distribute progress cards in turn order (non-active players then discard down to 4 cards)
  
• Produce resources and commodities
• On a roll of 7, check hand size (resources+commodities) and move the robber as in basic game except:
• the robber is not moved until after the barbarians have reached the island and raided Catan at least once
• if playing with Seafarers, the same applies to the Pirate
  
• In any order:
• Trade: with the bank or other players
• Build
• Roads, settlements, cities or city walls
• Simple knights
• Activate knights
  
• Develop cities (using commodity cards)
  
• Play progress cards
  
• Execute actions with knights that were active at start of turn
• First player to 13 victory points wins
  

Details

• Event Die
• Ship
• Advance barbarian ship towards Catan
• If the ship reaches the last field, the barbarians attack
• Town-gate. In the clockwise order, each player may draw the top progress card if:
• they have a city development in the color of gate and
• the number on the red die is shown on their city development booklet.
• Non-active players must discard down to 4 cards.

• Production
• Settlements produce normally
• Cities produce as follows
• Mountains: 1 ore, 1 coins
• Forest: 1 lumber, 1 paper
• Pastures: 1 wool, 1 cloth
• Hills: 2 bricks
• Fields: 2 grain
• Trading
• As in basic game, but building can occur both before and after trading.
• Can also use commodities, e.g., 4:1 (bank) and 3:1 (port) trading
  
• Can trade resources for commodities 4:1 (bank), 3:1 or 2:1 (port)
  
• Building
• City walls
• Paced under a city or metropolis
  
• Each increases the allowable number cards in hand (when 7s are rolled) by 2
• If a player loses a city, he also loses the appropriate city walls.
• Only one wall may be placed under each city (or metropolis).
• A player may have at most 3 city walls.
• Knights
• Wooden disks, colored (gauntlet) side = active
• "Built" (1 ore, 1 wool) inactive on a free intersection with at least one of that player's roads
• Interrupts an opponent's road, prevents building of an opposing road at this intersection
• 1 grain to activate - may not use this knight in the same turn for other knight actions
• Promoted up to once per turn (1 ore, 1 wool) to strong knight, then mighty knight (if Fortress built). Maintain previous active/inactive status.
• Players are limited to 2 knights of each strength.
• City Development
  
• Use commodity cards; costs increase 1-->5 (shown on development booklet)
• Stage 3 development: bonus abilities:
• Guild (yellow): You can exchange commodities in the 2:1 ratio for resources or other commodities.
  
• Fortress (blue): You can promote strong knights to mighty knights.
• Aqueduct (green): If you produce nothing on any roll (except 7), take a resource of your choice.
• Metropolises (yellow town-gate)
• First player to build stage 4 building (Bank, Cathedral, Theater) puts a metropolis figure on one of his cities and a metropolis marker on the appropriate page of his city development booklet.. 
• Can lose this metropolis only if another player builds the stage 5 building of this color. A metropolis is safe if the owner reaches stage 5 of development
• If a player possesses only one city, which has already developed into a metropolis, he can make city developments within the two other colors only up to the stage 3.
• Worth 2 VP each
• Progress cards:
• Received when event die is rolled
• Played during player's own turn, except victory points (uncovered immediately after receipt; they cannot be stolen by the Spy)
• May be played on the turn they are received.
• May not be traded
• May not use cards to move robber/pirate until after the barbarians have reached the island and raided Catan at least once
• Maximum of 4 in hand (do not count victory point cards). If you receive a 5th card on another player's turn, choose and discard one.
• Used/discarded cards are placed face down at bottom of appropriate deck
• Knight Actions
• Active knights can execute actions; then, turn to the inactive side
• Can immediately reactivate the knight (1 grain), but no further actions allowed with that knight
  
• Movement: Move along player's own road to new intersection (max 1 knight/intersection)
• Moving and Displacing
• Move own knight to an intersection with another player's knight
  
• Only weaker knights can be displaced
• Displaced knight is moved by its owner to a free intersection along their own road. If none available, knight is removed from board.
• Displacing the Robber
• Knight strength irrelevant
• Can displace knight in any of the 3 adjacent hexes
• Played same as soldier card from basic game
• Exception: May not displace the robber until after the barbarians have reached the island and raided Catan at least once
• Barbarians Attack
  
• Occurs when the barbarian ship is moved to the space showing the axe (assault)
• The Fight
• Barbarian strength = # of cities/metropolises on the board
  
• Catan strength = sum of strengths (number of gauntlets) of active knights
• Higher total wins; Catan wins ties
• After a fight, all knights become inactive and the barbarian ship moves back to beginning.
  
• Barbarians Win
• The player(s) who contributed the lowest knight strength lose 1 city (becomes a settlement)
  
• Settlements and metropolises are unaffected. However, if need to convert a city and no settlement available (all 5 settlements already built), player loses city completely!
• If a city with city walls is reduced to the settlement, then city walls are also lost
• Players without a city keeps their city developments. However, may only build new city developments again when have a city
• Knights of Catan Win
• The player who contributed most knight strength receives a "Hero of Catan" Victory point card (if you run out of cards, keep a separate tally)
  
• If two or more players tied for most, all receive a progress card of their choice in turn order
• Merchant
• Comes into the play with the "Merchant" progress card
• Player puts the figure on a landscape beside one of his settlements or cities, and may then exchange that resource 2:1
• Worth 1 VP

Card Notes

• If a player affected by the Wedding card has only one card in their hand, they just give the one card. Similarly a player affected by Resource Monopoly with only one of the requested resource just gives that one card.
• If you play the Deserter card and the victim loses a mighty knight, you may place a mighty knight even if you have not built the Fortress (level 3 blue development).
• A city flipped by the Saboteur card cannot be upgraded to a metropolis. (But aside from this restriction, even if all of your cities are flipped, you can still improve your city developments.)
• Small variant: The new German version of Cities and Knights has changed the Saboteur. It now makes all players with at least as many victory points as the Saboteur’s user discard half their hand of

Playing with Seafarers of Catan

• Knights can be moved over the sea, along ship trade route.
• Knights may be played on a pure sea crossing, if one of his ships borders on this sea crossing - the knight is on the ship
• If a knight is on a crossing on which the last ship of a ship line borders, the ship line is closed. In other words: The connection of a knight to a equivalent settlement may never be interrupted.
• May use active knight to move neighboring Pirate (knight becomes inactive)