Settlers of Catan

I've been playing a lot of a board game called 'Settlers Of Catan' recently. I picked it up over Christmas following some recommendations on a thread on The Business of Software. I'm not a big fan of board games usually - most are equivalent to Ludo, with no decisions to make - or others like Monopoly where learning a simple strategy will suffice for the whole game (buy everything you land on, if you really need to know).

Settlers of Catan really allows for some tough strategic decisions. More than that though, it heavily rewards successful trading with other players in the game. It's a zero-sum game in the sense that the're only one winner, but the transactions are truly non-zero sum. There's elements of negotiation, renegotiation, influence, persuasion, concilliation, reconcilliation, trade, co-operation, trust and of course, competition - everything that should exist in a multi-player game and usually doesn't. I mention it here because I think it's truly educational as well as entertaining - it provides an opportunity to practice and hone skills that can usually only be practiced in situations that have bigger consequences than losing a game or two.

Posted by Alexander at February 2, 2006 01:35 AM

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Posted by: felix at February 2, 2006 02:16 AM

Posted by: osc23 at February 2, 2006 03:04 PM