Settlers of Catan play takes hours

Question

I was under the impression that the play time in Settlers of Catan was more modest than say, Risk. However it seems almost as long. This is often due to a lot of trading and talk which drags on for a lot of time as people propose variations on a declined trade. Have any of you found similar problems? How would you solve this?

Answer 1

First, make sure you're following the rule that the person who's turn it is must be involved in all trades during that turn. If you let everyone trade during the trading phase, discussions could take a while.

Assuming you're following that rule, it really shouldn't take that person very long to figure out all of the available trades. If you start out by saying "I'm looking for sheep and ore. Is anyone willing to trade those to me?", you can very quickly get a sense of whether any trades will be possible. If anyone says "yes", you say "I have wood or brick that I'm willing to trade, are you interested in either of those?" Now you allow them to propose the precise details of the trade, or you let them say "I'm interested in brick" and you propose a precise trade. There really shouldn't be much of a back and forth; either there's a trade that both of you are interested in, or there isn't, and it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to figure that out. Yes, occasionally you will have a back-and-forth negotiation, but it shouldn't happen in the majority of trades.

It can take some practice to get into the habit of trading quickly and efficiently. I'd recommend trying out Bohnanza^{(bgg|wikipedia)} with the group; it's a fairly quick and easy game that consists almost entirely of trading, so if you play it, you will get in the habit of trading quickly and efficiently or else the game will drag on forever.

Beyond that, it's really a matter of being disciplined while you play. In almost any game, if you allow people to take too long making up their minds or getting distracted by something trivial, it will take a while. Try and set a reasonable pace for the trading by example and by encouraging other players to trade efficiently, and it should speed up after a little while.

Answer 2

If analysis-paralysis is your issue see here. Some minor encouragement to speed things up usually helps, and if not you can think about imposing a turn timer if you think its necessary. Its tempting to figure out every possible trade you could make, but its rarely beneficial or a good use of time.

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If you've played the game a few times, solved your long trades issue, and still want quicker game there's a few other tricks you can try. Granted these will change the strategy of the game in minor ways.

• play to 9 victory points.
• use cards instead of dice. I just combine two decks to simulate a dice roll. Having one player do all the card picking can make things go a bit faster.
• give the beginning of the game a little jump-start.
• roll the dice twice before each player's turn in a 2 or 3 player game.

Answer 3

At Oxcon, games have a 1-minute timer available. If you think someone is taking too long, you can force them to conclude their turn within a minute. This works well, and games rarely take longer than an hour.

Alternatively, get a DGT cube or equivalent smartphone app.

Answer 4

You can also use the accelerated start: instead of placing two towns and two roads, you start placing (with the usual order): 1 town + 1 road, 1 city + 1 road, 1 road.

This rules made the game notably faster in my usual gaming group.