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I'd like to do some statistical analysis on Catan games, but to do that I need data. Does anyone know of a place I can find empirical data on Catan play? The stronger the players, the better.

Awesome datasets include:

  • Records of tournament play
  • Log files from electronic Catan games, with preference for strong human play

Analyses I'd like to do include:

  • Empirical win percentages as a function of seat
  • Total resources-spent by the winning player, by type
  • Final assets of winning player, including all settlements, cities, roads, and development cards
  • Total quantity of trading by the winning player

Really, I'd be happy if I could perform even one of those analyses.

Also, I can code, and I was a quant at an energy trading firm, so I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty if necessary.

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    what kind of "data"? Resources gained? Trade histories? Game lengths? How would it be collected? Are there people who sit around writing-down everything about the game they're currently playing for analysis later? And how do you capture board layout, since it changes game-to-game? Catan is not chess (where recording move histories is fairly common - even requierd in tournaments).
    – warren
    Commented Mar 10, 2011 at 14:46
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    I know you can record a play on Board Game Geek But I canseem to find where to access them. If someone knows how to get stats out of that site, please post an answer!
    – AncientSwordRage
    Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 16:05
  • I forget the source, but my recollection is that the seat win breakdowns were something like second seat, 27%; first seat, 26%; fourth seat, 24%; third seat, 23%.
    – Tom Au
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 23:16

3 Answers 3

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I have a couple of friends who used to play a lot of settlers online. Apparently there was once a site that had a lot of settlers data, but it went down. You can see some of the archived data at the settlers 3d web.archive.org page.

There is now a forum in its place. Maybe some of the posters there have a backup of the data?

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    Alas, it appears the last straw for the site was a crash that wiped out all the data.
    – warbaker
    Commented Mar 10, 2011 at 22:23
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There are a few problems with finding data. The first is finding any data. I would recommending emailing/contacting sites that offer Catan or Catan-esque games for play to see if they keep records of games played. I found a short list of potential sites with a little searching via Google. (Do note that I have not verified any of those sites.)

The second problem is that even after you find the data it isn't likely to be what you need. Catan has a lot of information being passed around. The more details you can give someone about the data you need the more likely they will be able to find it for you. These details include what information you need (board layouts, resources gained/traded, positions of the robber) and the format you want the data (text logs of a server, CSV, XML.)

It is also possible someone else has already done the analysis. What problem are you specifically trying to solve/analyze?

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    Yeah, I see now that my post wasn't too specific. Hope my changes help.
    – warbaker
    Commented Mar 10, 2011 at 21:54
  • Awesome. The clarifications totally help. :)
    – MrHen
    Commented Mar 10, 2011 at 23:30
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While the World Boardgaming Championships have Puerto Rico data posted online, I couldn't find the same stats for Settlers, BUT I think you could get ahold of the gamemaster and he probably has them. Settlers link here.

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