Complete rules

The island

The board has 19 hexagonal tiles: 4 forests (wood), 4 pastures (wool), 4 fields (grain), 3 hills (brick), 3 mountains (ore) and 1 desert, which produces nothing. The island is shuffled for every game.

Each producing tile carries a number from 2 to 12 (except 7). The 6 and 8, the most frequent, are shown in red and are never next to each other. The small dots under each number show how likely it is: the more dots, the more often it comes up.

Nine harbors line the coast: four 3:1 harbors (three identical cards for one of your choice) and five 2:1 harbors, each tied to one resource.

Setup

Each player places a settlement and an adjacent road, then the order reverses and everyone places a second settlement and a second road. The second settlement immediately gives one card for each tile it touches.

Distance rule: a settlement can never be placed next to another one (at least one empty intersection must separate two settlements, whoever owns them). The game only highlights legal spots.

A turn

1. Roll the dice (automatically or by hand, depending on the room settings). Every tile showing the rolled number produces: each adjacent settlement receives 1 card of that resource, each city receives 2. Everyone collects, not just the active player.

2. Trade and build, in any order, as much as your resources allow.

3. End your turn: play passes to the next player.

If the bank doesn't have enough of a resource for everyone, nobody receives it; if only one player is due some, they take what is left.

Building

• Road: 1 wood + 1 brick. Placed on an edge, connected to your network. Worth 0 points, but it opens new spots.
• Settlement: 1 wood + 1 brick + 1 wool + 1 grain. On an intersection connected to one of your roads, following the distance rule. 1 point.
• City: 2 grain + 3 ore. It replaces one of your settlements and produces double. 2 points.
• Development card: 1 wool + 1 grain + 1 ore. Drawn at random from the deck.
• Each player has 15 roads, 5 settlements and 4 cities. A settlement upgraded to a city becomes available again.

Trading

During your turn you can trade with the bank: 4 identical cards for 1 card of your choice, 3 for 1 if you have a settlement or city on a 3:1 harbor, and 2 for 1 for the resource of a 2:1 harbor you occupy.

You can also make an offer to the other players: what you give for what you want. Each of them can accept, decline or send a counter-offer, and you choose who to close the deal with. AIs negotiate too, according to their personality.

The 7 and the robber

A 7 produces nothing. Every player holding more than 7 cards must discard half of them (rounded down).

The active player then moves the robber to another tile: it stops producing while the robber stays there. They steal a random card from one of the players settled around that tile. At the start of the game, the robber sits on the desert.

Development cards

The deck holds 25 cards: 14 knights, 5 victory points, 2 road building, 2 year of plenty and 2 monopoly. You can play only one card per turn, and never a card bought during that same turn. A knight can be played before rolling the dice.

• Knight: move the robber and steal a card, just like on a 7.
• Road Building: build 2 roads for free.
• Year of Plenty: take 2 resources of your choice from the bank.
• Monopoly: name a resource; all other players give you every card of that resource.
• Victory Point: 1 point, kept secret until you win.

Victory points

• Settlement: 1 point. City: 2 points.
• Longest Road: 2 points for the first player with an unbroken chain of at least 5 roads. It changes hands as soon as an opponent builds a strictly longer one.
• Largest Army: 2 points for the first player who has played at least 3 knights. It changes hands as soon as an opponent has played strictly more.
• Victory Point card: 1 point.

Time limits

To keep the game moving, each phase is timed (40 seconds by default, adjustable from 20 seconds to unlimited in a private room). Each action adds 5 seconds. If time runs out, the AI finishes your turn; after two turns without any action, it takes over until you come back, and a button lets you take back control.

Modes and settings

• Classic: 10 points to win, the reference game.
• Blitz: 7 points to win and one card of each resource to start, for a short game.
• Epic: 13 points to win, for long games.
• Map: Revealed (everything visible), Mist (resources hidden during setup, numbers and harbors visible) or Terra Incognita (everything hidden during setup, then the island is revealed).
• AI: Easy, Normal, Hard or Expert level, and each AI gets a personality (Trader, Aggressor, Builder, Expansionist or Opportunist).