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As a semi professional poker player myself, it’s funny hearing you speak about all these concepts and fundamental aspects of the game. I recognise you played poker before haha!
@@danthemaninapan It's hard because a lot of them don't stream or make TH-cam videos, but I would say that joining the discord would be a good start. In general I personally agree with the sentiment that the online player base is better as I have a strong mix of experience of both. My last 5 live tournaments I won 4 out of 5 of them and only losing NYC, my last 5 online tournaments I think I only won 1-2.
There is a very obvious reason for that and that is the availability of games online, not only is your average game shorter, but also you don't need to set up the board and you can easily get exposed to different styles of play and opponents. This leads to both more time spent playing and with a "better" pool of players to learn from(playing with the same people won't get you far usually).
yeah i’d honestly go as far as to say the only person who played well was Bo, and Katie did ok but just got unlucky. overall the players were too complacent and kind of just rolled over and lost to Bo’s aggressive trading
What's interesting is how much the set up forced position 3 and 4 to be non-factors this game. I feel like when I play with my friends I'm always the slowest guy while choosing spots, but I feel like the start is arguably the most important mathematical choice in the game.
I totally agree, what I've tried to improve on is the prediction. It's so tempting to just pick the highest-production points, but the top players can see where others may go and defend accordingly
I wish I left this in the video but in the live stream I talked a lot about different variations that 3rd and 4th could’ve done to make their placements very playable, but in the video it was cut out. On the surface the 3rd and 4th placement looks difficult, but there are a lot of options for better placement combinations for 3rd and 4th.
I really like how you linked that other video that broke down the psychological aspect of this game while you yourself explained the technicalities. After having watched both of them we now have a very in-depth understanding of how and why this game unfolded the way it did.
gr8 video again re content. i recommend u upload heaps of content on this channel and don't worry about the quality of vid too much. this is for ur core fans who want a steady stream of games to watch ur other more broad channel spend more time on quality of video and cpaturing a broad audience.
this is a lot of great insights/analysis packed into 1 video from dylighted, a true beast of a player... huge bonus of getting hakuna's tips also, as he is another excellent player
Dylan I Love watching you content again, it's a fantastic TH-cam Comeback! Are you considering playing Catan Champs League again? The League came a Long way, and div 1 there is a real gem, you get Many Games on a High Level there, I think you competing there would be really Entertaining!
The audio from the video seems to be really quiet for me. Watching it on my phone, I'd have to turn up the volume to hear the other dude, but turn it down when you speak because it ends up being too loud. Other than that, fantastic video
@@youbluethatone1017 It’s very obvious that the video he’s watching is much lower than his volume. I’m having to do the same thing where I have to lower when Dylan is talking and raise it when he’s watching the video.
Because that game was so well done that there's much less to critique. Biggest blunder was someone falling prey to a fools gold first trade proposal into the REAL second trade proposal that landed a city. The lesson to learn was track better which tracking can be extremely difficult. 2022 US nationals was some of the best live catan I've ever seen
This might be a noob question, but why would buying dev cards in the early-mid game (e.g. at 20:25) ever be worthwhile? If I were playing, figuring out any way to trade for an extra ore, even giving up both sheep and a brick, to build a second city would be a better first pass strategy and dev cards a very, very, distant fallback (in fact if I'm not over 7 cards, I might even try to ride out another round looking for the extra ore). The reasoning being that cities and settlements produce extra resources for the entire game, but most dev cards just give you a temporary boost, if that. For example, for knights, half the time a 7 will be rolled by the time it's your turn again, so you lose 2 resources for the price of having a resource hex open for 1-2 rounds on average (and less than that if other people are buying dev cards as well). Maybe you earn back those 2 resources with interest, maybe the person right after you rolls a 7 or plays a knight and you just get absolutely nothing. The net resource value of the knight then seems to be very near zero, maybe even negative. On the other hand, a city, even one that's on the coast, can keep producing resources continuously for another 20-30 turns, making this a compound interest investment with a huge return. Victory point cards are even worse in the early game. Road building gets you a net +1 which can be good if the board has no bricks or something, year of plenty is a net -1 but presumably for something worthwhile, and monopoly can be a jackpot if you're good at tracking cards. But all of them are vanishingly rare - the most common case is a knight, and that's basically throwing away 2 resource cards (since you get one back from robbing). So in my internal cost-benefit calculations, a city cost 2x as much as a dev card, but has a value that's 10x more in the early game, and only declines to roughly be on par as you're in the final quarter of the game jockeying for the last 1-2 VPs. So most games I wind up buying dev cards only 40+ turns in or, with great reluctance, when sitting on 8+ cards with no good trades to reduce the size of my hand. Granted these are home games that are not exactly a high level of competition, but I seem to do better than others who buy dev cards whenever they get a chance, so I treat "never buy dev cards for the first 80% of the game" as a rule of thumb on par with avoiding trades with the leader or finding ports. So I'm confused as to how at higher levels of play buying dev cards this early can be viewed as a gimme strategy where you don't even examine alternatives / trades.
Great video, love the graphics and animation! Definitely can tell that you put alot of time into this video. Can you also analyze the 2022 Catan USA Championship?
Do you play poker Dylan? The way you talk about sims and solvers at the beginning makes me think about poker. I guess the skills from both games are probably pretty translatable
You should upload this content on your main channel! I only found this because I was looking through my subscriptions and saw your main channel! I would have watched it earlier if you uploaded there. Anyways great content as always!
Early Game Observations in no particular order 1/ The rarest resource is likely brick. 2/ I think orange made a mistake -- should have taken (red's 2nd placement of) 8/9/12. That forces red to have to pick between two places with good wheat (6-10-3 to brick port, 4-9-8 to wheat port) and 8/3/10. 3/ Whoever placed on 4/9/8 should have thought carefully what nice spots were left (any of the 6/2 are unsavory, 5/9 first turn road isn't bad, 5/3/11 is a bit better than 4/3/11, and then 4/10 wheat port). The moment blue cut off orange, orange was hurting, a lot. (Limited rock for cities, no wood for roads/settlements, and need two roads to make any new settlements.) Red was in a world of hurt missing two resources (sheep, ore***) and IMHO being out of ore is one of the hardest to overcome for victory. Plus longest road is limited on the southern side.
When you play in Nationals later this year, will you be allowed to offer insurance despite the "ILLEGAL TRADE" controversy? And did you try offering insurance at the Regional you won? Great vid btw!
Hey Dy! I am a big Catan fan from Chile in South America, this sunday I will be playing nationals for the third time, would love to have the chance to chat and play a game with you someday, hope that can ever happen haha been following you for a while now :D
Very good analysis. Idk might be mean but the fact Mary couldn’t pull off the win with over 10 production on Bo and 20 over the others, and its not like her hands were that stuck ether
There's no theoretically optimal strategy in this game. The fact that it is infinite means that it is impossible to reach any sort of Nash equilibrium.
Do you think nerves played a big part in some of the decisions? Is there a big difference between the online & IRL meta? I'm not an expert player, but in Caleb's position I would never solo block the 9 brick when he used the knight. Both because they have another brick source and they have a weak/slow setup.
I remember watching the game on the super long turn when they pulled out the timer, Bo wanted to do some trades that resulted in basically a 1:0 trade, and the judge ruled it as not allowed. Is that just a house rule people play with then? I see you offering these a lot during your live games/tourneys
I was the judge that made that ruling! (and the banker in the video) At the time, it wasn't 100% clear, and while I feel good about my ruling, I respect people who feel differently (Dylighted and I exchanged a few hundred texts about it, and I love his passion on the subject). That being said, going forwards it is now an official Catan tournament rule that you can not make such trades, even if they span multiple turns. But also, that being said, any games played that are not official Catan tournaments are welcome to enforce whatever rules they like, and in online play it's especially difficult to enforce such things. When Catan did their official online championship, they conceded that you can do a number of such things that normally wouldn't be allowed at an in-person Catan tournament.
The actions and places where these players place their villages makes me suspect that these are beginners. The fact that they have a construction card reinforces that feeling.
32:25 Don't you just love how 5s and 9s are more frequent than 8 and even 3s and 4s are more frequent than 6. You can analyse all you want, but in the end of the day, the outcome will be decided by RNG.
haven't watched yet. i watched the national game. from memory, the woman leading most the game got good rolls. i was surprised that players weren't better apart from the winner it's also funny how results biased we get. (e.g. as catan players know, that asian guy doesn't win every one of those games). and how it is to evaluate how impactful lucky breaks are. e.g. it's not just that ur number may have rolled lots. it's that you may have got two of your numbers at the perfect time to complete a city/settlement, and have huge compounding effects from there. as nate silver saif about poker, it's easy to fool urself u'r a lot better than u are
Around 33 minutes you mention "inactionable dev cards" a lot, and generalize it down to being VPs. I usually through Monopoly into the same pool (yes it's an actionable card), but most of the time it just idles in your hand, turning into 1 or more victory points at some point hopefully. In conclusion, I consider Monopoly to be an "inactionable" card on most turns due to the nature of when to actually make proper use of it. TLDR: If a person sits on devs forever it's either a VP/Mono - almost every time.
I would disagree slightly. I agree they're like a VP in terms of an inactionable card but they're worth more than a VP to the player. The best monos are actually getting you a VP while also negating or delaying other players from a VP. If you're good at tracking you can potentially use a mono to cripple another player by taking cards they had to 3:1 or trade hard for. Monos can set up other players to get ploughed which means they're permanently denied a VP because they lose an expansion spot. There are many creative uses of Monos than just building a City or a settlement. [Edit] I guess you could say that a VP card in your hand is denying that VP from another player, but that same thinking applies for the Monopoly card, so Mono is clearly worth more than whatever value you place on a VP card.
@@Funglutton hence why I said a mono is generally worth 1-2 Victory points, depending on what you can build with the cards you got. An average Monopoly should net you at least something like City / Road Settle + a fresh Dev card. A good Mono can give you multiple of any of these, hence why I specified Victory point instead of the VP(short for the dev card usually). If you have to use a mono defensively to try and deny the point leader potentially finishing on the next orbit , you are generally in a terrible spot. I shudder remembering when I had to mono like 6 sheep or wood just so I could empty someone's hand who was sitting on 9 points. It sucks. And usually, they'll have a hand full of their common resource in an orbit or 2, unless someone ends the game before they get the refill.
@@Illidandavid Firstly I wasn't replying to you specifically. I was replying to what Dylan said. Second, you discount the situation where you have a board where e.g. Wheat is scarce. A Mono to deny a scarce resource in this situation is not a bad play at all and doesn't mean you're losing.
So funny how you use so many poker terms in your gameplay and analysis. Sounds like me and my buddies recapping tournament runs. Snap, gto, equity, blocking, exploitative. Lol you can probably wreck most live and online games in the u.s..
I hope someone has a copy of the (now deleted) video in which you showed your true identity of being absolutely impossible to trust, for your word means nothing and your honour is none-existant.
@@DDavid-ty2on Thats probably why he deleted the vid. Its not like he had questionable moves in the past, like "forgetting" a certain agreement for a few turns and sum such. For me, he is out as a deceiver from now on. You destroy your honor and believabiltiy in a single instance - so he did.
As a semi professional poker player myself, it’s funny hearing you speak about all these concepts and fundamental aspects of the game. I recognise you played poker before haha!
I think online Catan surpassed the Skill of the Reallife players, Id say div1 Games From the Catan Champs are on a Higher Level than This finale
Is there a good place to watch these games?
@@danthemaninapan It's hard because a lot of them don't stream or make TH-cam videos, but I would say that joining the discord would be a good start. In general I personally agree with the sentiment that the online player base is better as I have a strong mix of experience of both. My last 5 live tournaments I won 4 out of 5 of them and only losing NYC, my last 5 online tournaments I think I only won 1-2.
@@DyLightedPlaysCatan Thank you! Just joined :D
There is a very obvious reason for that and that is the availability of games online, not only is your average game shorter, but also you don't need to set up the board and you can easily get exposed to different styles of play and opponents. This leads to both more time spent playing and with a "better" pool of players to learn from(playing with the same people won't get you far usually).
yeah i’d honestly go as far as to say the only person who played well was Bo, and Katie did ok but just got unlucky. overall the players were too complacent and kind of just rolled over and lost to Bo’s aggressive trading
What's interesting is how much the set up forced position 3 and 4 to be non-factors this game. I feel like when I play with my friends I'm always the slowest guy while choosing spots, but I feel like the start is arguably the most important mathematical choice in the game.
I totally agree, what I've tried to improve on is the prediction. It's so tempting to just pick the highest-production points, but the top players can see where others may go and defend accordingly
I wish I left this in the video but in the live stream I talked a lot about different variations that 3rd and 4th could’ve done to make their placements very playable, but in the video it was cut out. On the surface the 3rd and 4th placement looks difficult, but there are a lot of options for better placement combinations for 3rd and 4th.
I really like how you linked that other video that broke down the psychological aspect of this game while you yourself explained the technicalities. After having watched both of them we now have a very in-depth understanding of how and why this game unfolded the way it did.
The play around 24:00 makes me think there's more luck in ending up in the finals than I hoped...
I enjoy the analysis more than the gameplay videos. Thanks for making this!
Thanks for the shoutout :) Love your analysis
#team8-9-4
thanks for the analysis! I play a lot better against my family now that I've learnt the strats from the best players
gr8 video again
re content. i recommend u upload heaps of content on this channel and don't worry about the quality of vid too much. this is for ur core fans who want a steady stream of games to watch
ur other more broad channel spend more time on quality of video and cpaturing a broad audience.
Will do! That’s the goal!
Im tired af, still im sitting here and watch the vid, cause its just to good.
Keep it up!
The channel 'Lost in Play' did an amazing video about Bo's trading strategy during this game a few days ago.
this is a lot of great insights/analysis packed into 1 video from dylighted, a true beast of a player... huge bonus of getting hakuna's tips also, as he is another excellent player
Dylan I Love watching you content again, it's a fantastic TH-cam Comeback!
Are you considering playing Catan Champs League again? The League came a Long way, and div 1 there is a real gem, you get Many Games on a High Level there, I think you competing there would be really Entertaining!
The audio from the video seems to be really quiet for me. Watching it on my phone, I'd have to turn up the volume to hear the other dude, but turn it down when you speak because it ends up being too loud. Other than that, fantastic video
Thanks! I’ll keep this in mind for future videos.
I share the same sentiment, still great video!
Nah the volume is just fine. Think dude needs a new phone or something
@@youbluethatone1017 It’s very obvious that the video he’s watching is much lower than his volume. I’m having to do the same thing where I have to lower when Dylan is talking and raise it when he’s watching the video.
@@Krispe y’all need better devices
Amazing analysis as always! I was wondering why not on your main channel?
I just didn’t think the content was good enough as it was pulled from a stream.
We still need way more videos though
Why not the 2022 Catan National championship? The official Catan channel has a livestream of the match
Because that game was so well done that there's much less to critique. Biggest blunder was someone falling prey to a fools gold first trade proposal into the REAL second trade proposal that landed a city. The lesson to learn was track better which tracking can be extremely difficult.
2022 US nationals was some of the best live catan I've ever seen
This might be a noob question, but why would buying dev cards in the early-mid game (e.g. at 20:25) ever be worthwhile? If I were playing, figuring out any way to trade for an extra ore, even giving up both sheep and a brick, to build a second city would be a better first pass strategy and dev cards a very, very, distant fallback (in fact if I'm not over 7 cards, I might even try to ride out another round looking for the extra ore).
The reasoning being that cities and settlements produce extra resources for the entire game, but most dev cards just give you a temporary boost, if that. For example, for knights, half the time a 7 will be rolled by the time it's your turn again, so you lose 2 resources for the price of having a resource hex open for 1-2 rounds on average (and less than that if other people are buying dev cards as well). Maybe you earn back those 2 resources with interest, maybe the person right after you rolls a 7 or plays a knight and you just get absolutely nothing. The net resource value of the knight then seems to be very near zero, maybe even negative. On the other hand, a city, even one that's on the coast, can keep producing resources continuously for another 20-30 turns, making this a compound interest investment with a huge return. Victory point cards are even worse in the early game. Road building gets you a net +1 which can be good if the board has no bricks or something, year of plenty is a net -1 but presumably for something worthwhile, and monopoly can be a jackpot if you're good at tracking cards. But all of them are vanishingly rare - the most common case is a knight, and that's basically throwing away 2 resource cards (since you get one back from robbing).
So in my internal cost-benefit calculations, a city cost 2x as much as a dev card, but has a value that's 10x more in the early game, and only declines to roughly be on par as you're in the final quarter of the game jockeying for the last 1-2 VPs. So most games I wind up buying dev cards only 40+ turns in or, with great reluctance, when sitting on 8+ cards with no good trades to reduce the size of my hand. Granted these are home games that are not exactly a high level of competition, but I seem to do better than others who buy dev cards whenever they get a chance, so I treat "never buy dev cards for the first 80% of the game" as a rule of thumb on par with avoiding trades with the leader or finding ports. So I'm confused as to how at higher levels of play buying dev cards this early can be viewed as a gimme strategy where you don't even examine alternatives / trades.
The only place where Bo could do the city city is the 4-10 whcih is very low production, the 4 is already getting blocked too.
More often than not city is better,
But not always
Great video, love the graphics and animation! Definitely can tell that you put alot of time into this video. Can you also analyze the 2022 Catan USA Championship?
Do you play poker Dylan? The way you talk about sims and solvers at the beginning makes me think about poker. I guess the skills from both games are probably pretty translatable
he used to play it a fair bit, but eventually stuck to catan as his main game
My brother is a pro poker player, and I studied a fair bit 2 years ago but decided my time is better spent learning Catan
You should upload this content on your main channel! I only found this because I was looking through my subscriptions and saw your main channel! I would have watched it earlier if you uploaded there. Anyways great content as always!
Early Game Observations in no particular order
1/ The rarest resource is likely brick.
2/ I think orange made a mistake -- should have taken (red's 2nd placement of) 8/9/12. That forces red to have to pick between two places with good wheat (6-10-3 to brick port, 4-9-8 to wheat port) and 8/3/10.
3/ Whoever placed on 4/9/8 should have thought carefully what nice spots were left (any of the 6/2 are unsavory, 5/9 first turn road isn't bad, 5/3/11 is a bit better than 4/3/11, and then 4/10 wheat port).
The moment blue cut off orange, orange was hurting, a lot. (Limited rock for cities, no wood for roads/settlements, and need two roads to make any new settlements.)
Red was in a world of hurt missing two resources (sheep, ore***) and IMHO being out of ore is one of the hardest to overcome for victory. Plus longest road is limited on the southern side.
When you play in Nationals later this year, will you be allowed to offer insurance despite the "ILLEGAL TRADE" controversy? And did you try offering insurance at the Regional you won? Great vid btw!
Hey Dy! I am a big Catan fan from Chile in South America, this sunday I will be playing nationals for the third time, would love to have the chance to chat and play a game with you someday, hope that can ever happen haha been following you for a while now :D
why couldn't he just go on the 9/4/10 to prevent his wheat port from being stolen?
Very good analysis. Idk might be mean but the fact Mary couldn’t pull off the win with over 10 production on Bo and 20 over the others, and its not like her hands were that stuck ether
Great video. Ive seen that game a couple of times.
There's no theoretically optimal strategy in this game. The fact that it is infinite means that it is impossible to reach any sort of Nash equilibrium.
Do you think nerves played a big part in some of the decisions? Is there a big difference between the online & IRL meta? I'm not an expert player, but in Caleb's position I would never solo block the 9 brick when he used the knight. Both because they have another brick source and they have a weak/slow setup.
I remember watching the game on the super long turn when they pulled out the timer, Bo wanted to do some trades that resulted in basically a 1:0 trade, and the judge ruled it as not allowed. Is that just a house rule people play with then? I see you offering these a lot during your live games/tourneys
I was the judge that made that ruling! (and the banker in the video) At the time, it wasn't 100% clear, and while I feel good about my ruling, I respect people who feel differently (Dylighted and I exchanged a few hundred texts about it, and I love his passion on the subject). That being said, going forwards it is now an official Catan tournament rule that you can not make such trades, even if they span multiple turns. But also, that being said, any games played that are not official Catan tournaments are welcome to enforce whatever rules they like, and in online play it's especially difficult to enforce such things. When Catan did their official online championship, they conceded that you can do a number of such things that normally wouldn't be allowed at an in-person Catan tournament.
@@iandembsky Appreciate the answer! Nice to hear an official ruling in case people were ever curious
BEST TH-camR EVER TO DO IT!!!
The actions and places where these players place their villages makes me suspect that these are beginners. The fact that they have a construction card reinforces that feeling.
Thanks for another great video)
32:25
Don't you just love how 5s and 9s are more frequent than 8 and even 3s and 4s are more frequent than 6.
You can analyse all you want, but in the end of the day, the outcome will be decided by RNG.
wow... he built 1 road all game... that's incredible.
haven't watched yet. i watched the national game.
from memory, the woman leading most the game got good rolls. i was surprised that players weren't better apart from the winner
it's also funny how results biased we get. (e.g. as catan players know, that asian guy doesn't win every one of those games). and how it is to evaluate how impactful lucky breaks are.
e.g. it's not just that ur number may have rolled lots. it's that you may have got two of your numbers at the perfect time to complete a city/settlement, and have huge compounding effects from there.
as nate silver saif about poker, it's easy to fool urself u'r a lot better than u are
There's a solver for Catan? Is there a GTO strat yet??
what an analizeee
Is Catan going to be on Xbox anytime soon?
Around 33 minutes you mention "inactionable dev cards" a lot, and generalize it down to being VPs. I usually through Monopoly into the same pool (yes it's an actionable card), but most of the time it just idles in your hand, turning into 1 or more victory points at some point hopefully. In conclusion, I consider Monopoly to be an "inactionable" card on most turns due to the nature of when to actually make proper use of it.
TLDR: If a person sits on devs forever it's either a VP/Mono - almost every time.
Yep! That’s what I meant as in “inactionable”. I like to count monos as a victory point because it essentially gets you another point.
I would disagree slightly. I agree they're like a VP in terms of an inactionable card but they're worth more than a VP to the player. The best monos are actually getting you a VP while also negating or delaying other players from a VP. If you're good at tracking you can potentially use a mono to cripple another player by taking cards they had to 3:1 or trade hard for. Monos can set up other players to get ploughed which means they're permanently denied a VP because they lose an expansion spot. There are many creative uses of Monos than just building a City or a settlement.
[Edit] I guess you could say that a VP card in your hand is denying that VP from another player, but that same thinking applies for the Monopoly card, so Mono is clearly worth more than whatever value you place on a VP card.
@@Funglutton hence why I said a mono is generally worth 1-2 Victory points, depending on what you can build with the cards you got. An average Monopoly should net you at least something like City / Road Settle + a fresh Dev card. A good Mono can give you multiple of any of these, hence why I specified Victory point instead of the VP(short for the dev card usually).
If you have to use a mono defensively to try and deny the point leader potentially finishing on the next orbit , you are generally in a terrible spot. I shudder remembering when I had to mono like 6 sheep or wood just so I could empty someone's hand who was sitting on 9 points. It sucks. And usually, they'll have a hand full of their common resource in an orbit or 2, unless someone ends the game before they get the refill.
@@Illidandavid Firstly I wasn't replying to you specifically. I was replying to what Dylan said. Second, you discount the situation where you have a board where e.g. Wheat is scarce. A Mono to deny a scarce resource in this situation is not a bad play at all and doesn't mean you're losing.
GTO vs Explotative?? You're talking more like a poker coach every vid
So funny how you use so many poker terms in your gameplay and analysis. Sounds like me and my buddies recapping tournament runs. Snap, gto, equity, blocking, exploitative. Lol you can probably wreck most live and online games in the u.s..
I hope someone has a copy of the (now deleted) video in which you showed your true identity of being absolutely impossible to trust, for your word means nothing and your honour is none-existant.
That's not really a fair assessment imo.
Even if it wasn't the most 'honorable' thing to do of Dyl, you can't be serious and judge him on a one-off..
@@DDavid-ty2on Thats probably why he deleted the vid. Its not like he had questionable moves in the past, like "forgetting" a certain agreement for a few turns and sum such. For me, he is out as a deceiver from now on.
You destroy your honor and believabiltiy in a single instance - so he did.
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Cringe comment.