The Settlers of Catan® (“Settlers” to its friends) is one of the most popular international games of the past decade, with the game and its expansions selling over eleven million copies worldwide. Players are recent immigrants to the newly populated island of Catan. Expand Catan through the building of settlements, roads, and villages by harvesting commodities from the land around you. Trade goods with other players, or at local seaports to get the resources you need. The first player to achieve 10 points from a combination of roads, settlements, and special cards wins.

The game is enjoyed as a fun pastime, but for children (and adults willing to learn), the game offers the opportunity to learn and practice many valuable skills. Here are seven skills that The Settlers of Catan® emphasizes, both for younger and older children.

For younger children (ages 10-14), here are four skills that the game helps develop:

• Probability: There are games that require you to roll two dice, but Settlers teaches why there is a difference between a 2 and an 8 when you roll those dice. At the beginning of the game, players must choose among a variety of starting locations, all displaying values that must be rolled on two dice to be productive. The number chips actually show the distribution of dice rolls as dots for each number, so younger children can simply add up the dots to find the most attractive locations. As the game progresses, players must decide where they want to expand to on the board, and determining which locations have a higher probability of producing is very important.

And, of course, there is the concurrent lesson that just because a number is SUPPOSED to occur more often than another, doesn’t mean that it will. It’s a lesson that may not seem relevant to them now, but, with luck, they will remember their most frustrating games of Settlers decades later as their plane lands in Las Vegas for the first time.

• Negotiation: Anyone who has spent time in a school cafeteria knows that children understand the basics of trading. Settlers features both a wide variety of possible trades and the opportunity to barter from different positions of power. All of the resources start as equal in value, making the decision of what to trade a balance of what resources will benefit you versus how much your opponent will gain from the trade. There will also be moments when the scarcity of a resource will put a player with said resource in a position of power. A particularly effective trade can make a huge difference in a player’s position in the game.

The Settlers of Catan®, like many games, is a social activity. But, the necessity of negotiation to success during the game means that a player must be involved with others. The game necessitates socialization during every turn throughout the game, either by creating the absence of a resource that another player has, or obtaining a surplus that others are eager to tap into.

• Planning: On the surface, everyone has the same way to win a game of Settlers—obtain ten victory points. However, there are multiple ways to reach ten points. Do you start upgrading settlements, or extend your roads for new settlements? Do you take a chance and buy a development card, not knowing if you’ll get another ore resource soon? Players must assess their current position throughout the game in order to decide how best to collect that next victory point.

• Decision Making: There are few “this or that” decisions to be made during a game of Settlers. Players have a steady stream of decisions to make, changing turn-by-turn based on the resources they gain, the trades that they make, and the situations created by the other players. The decisions are complex, but not life-or-death; poor decisions or bad gambles can be overcome with future play. The number and variety of decisions strengthen the techniques players use to sort through their options to find the best solution.

Younger players will enjoy the game, and the skills above will serve them well in the process. Furthermore, these skills connect to many US state educational standards (scarcity, natural resources, data analysis and probability, and more).

For older children (ages 14-18), there are three more complex skills that the game encourages, to provide a greater challenge to themselves and their fellow players.

• Competitive Problem-Solving: It’s one thing to decide the best path to earning 10 victory points, and quite another when your fellow players are either passively trying to do better than you or actively trying to prevent your success. The longest road and largest army bonuses are examples of a game advantage that others are often trying to take from the player who currently has it. Players must make decisions planning on players trying to stop them. Keeping track of their clever play may both improve their position and downgrade another’s.

One subplot to the competition in the game, however, is that the island and its resources are shared by all players. Using the robber to stop a resource’s production may hurt one player in the short-term, but could hurt all players if the resource is necessary for everyone’s development plans. Because other players are a source of necessary goods, players must make decisions based on both their short-term and long-term effects on the game.

• Value Assessment: Resource cards, the basic unit of currency in the game, are equal in value when they are produced. Once in play, however, each player values a resource differently based on their goals and other players’ needs. Over time, successful Settlers players develop an understanding of what a resource is worth, based on their current goals and the demand at the table. Settlers’ active trading gives players frequent opportunities to test their understanding of the current value of resources.

• Risk Assessment: While younger Settlers players have many decisions to make, and although they quickly learn the difference between a good and a bad trade, their play is often regulated by their short-term goals. For older players, their decision-making must be tempered by a variety of random events. Will the necessary resources be produced by the dice roll, or should they work towards obtaining a port (allowing them to convert one resource to another)? If another player is perceived as being close to victory, should they try and prevent their victory (possibly abandoning their own path to victory), or do they try and race to add victory points of your own? The Settlers of Catan® provides a mix of hidden and open information, and fixed and random events. Successful players are willing to take a chance when necessary to improve their chances at victory.

The Settlers of Catan® can be used to demonstrate and strengthen a variety of skills necessary for success both in and out of the classroom. Best of all, it teaches those skills in a highly interactive and structured social setting that can be enjoyed by people of all ages!

Download the PDF version:
Using The Settlers of Catan in the Classroom

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catan_in_the_classroom.pdf