The Placement of Catan

My buddy Anna posted about the Settlers of Catan and I wrote a long comment about my strategies for placing and playing the game but it's too long to be accepted as a comment! So I'm posting it here instead. So probably read her post first!

My strategy for placement depends on when I am placing.

For FIRST placement

1. Placing first I strongly consider placing on a spot that has the highest frequency aggregate. If you play on a board which indicates relative frequency with dots on the tokens you can just count the number of dots and place on a space with the most dots. An exception to this is if that gives me double of one resource and I may sacrifice a dot or two for three different resources rather than doubling up on one.

Another exception would be if one resource is really imbalanced with one good number and two or three really bad numbers. But placing first I would only do that if I get a good frequency on the other numbers.

Relative frequency is the most important factor when placing first because you're second placement is going to be very very restricted and you can't rely on having a good range of resources - go for the numbers because you might need to rely on trading.

Don't worry about where you point your road - everyone's going to muck your plans up anyway. If you're unsure, build a road toward the sea.

2. Placing second is similar to placing first but the first player's placement makes a difference to where you play even if you don't think the first player took the "best" spot.

As you can only place a settlement two vertices away from an existing settlement placing directly opposite another player locks out quite a lot of the board. As there are still FOUR settlements to be placed before you place your second settlement you probably want to make sure you place "on grid" if possible. That way you increase your choices with your second placement.

A major exception to this is if the first player has placed on a rare resource (say one brick has an 8 and the other two bricks are a 2 and a 12. You need to get on that 8 and if you can ensure only two of you are on that 8 you make that resource even more rare and valuable).

But generally, follow rules for placement as the first player but all things being equal try and place on grid.

Don't worry about where you point your road - everyone's going to muck your plans up anyway. If you're unsure, build a road toward the sea.

3. Placing third is, I think, the worst position to be in. But if you're playing with someone who you've played with a lot you may be able to guess where player 4 will place their settlements and work around that (as 4th player my settlements are VERY predictable so someone who plays 3rd player against me might have an advantage for placement because they will be able to guess what I'll do).

As there are only two settlements that will be placed before you place your second settlement it's worth considering what you want from your second settlement. Take a look at the resource combinations on the board - sometimes there will be a LOT of placements that give someone both wheat and sheep, or both wood and ore. If you look at the board and you can see that unless you're very unlucky you'll be able to pick up a wheat/sheep spot on your second placement I think it's worth taking that brick/ore/wood spot even if it's not the highest-frequency spot left.

You can't often predict exactly where your second settlement will go but by looking at the board you should be able to tell what sorts of spaces will be left for you. Try and make sure you can cover most (if not all) resources and I'd even consider placing on a space with a 3 or an 11 (which aren't very frequent numbers) if you think you'll be able to get a full spread on your second placement.

4. Placing fourth is by far my favourite because I heavily favour resource diversity and a large spread of numbers.

If I can place so that I cover all resources and don't double up on any numbers I will do that above almost anything. Of course there are always exceptions and occasionally that isn't possible. In which case my strategy resembles that of placing my second placement as third player.

Don't worry about where you point your road - everyone's going to muck your plans up anyway. If you're unsure, build a road toward the sea.

3. If you placed your first settlement well and fourth player didn't do anything super weird or out there you should be able to take, if not the space you wanted, at least something resembling that space. If you can't cover all the resources you need to consider your resource combinations. You can't use brick without wood and vice versa. Ore requires wheat. Your start game will be pretty crippled if you can't build settlements unassisted but development cards can get you there so if you can't cover brick/wood/wheat/sheep then make sure you have wheat/sheep/ore. If you can't build either of those things on your own then you'll be relying on trading which makes things difficult.

Strategically placing off grid at this point can severely lock up the board. That may be a good or bad thing.

If you can't cover even those resources consider a port for one of the resources you have plenty of!

If you can place your road toward a resource you didn't pick up, go for it. Or you know, build a road to the sea.

2 & 1 Placing your second settlement as second or first player is pretty much the same as third player only you're more restricted in your choices. Try and cover as many resources and numbers as possible or grab a port if you've got something in abundance. Again make sure you can build either settlements or development cards without having to trade with other players.

--

Placement is important and I enjoy introducing new people to the game just so that I can talk to them about where they could place and what benefits and downsides each spot or combination would have (I consider it a personal achievement if a player I coached in starting positions beats me at the game). But I've seen games where terrible starting placements won and sometimes with what I consider to be a "Perfect" starting placement I still don't do well.

Once you've placed that part is done but the game hasn't even started yet! My strategy for playing the game is very simple. It is basically: don't do anything unless it will give you at least one point.

A. Don't trade with another player unless you can do something that gives you a point. Can't build a settlement or a city on your turn with that trade? Don't do it. Just don't. Assume that whenever you trade with another player they will be able to use whatever you trade them to add a point to their score.

B. Don't use a development card unless it gives you at least one point. (Exception: soldier. Use a soldier whenever you're being robbed). Save the monopoly and the year of plenty cards until you can use them to build either a city or a GOOD settlement (one that is actually increasing your ability to bring in resources). Use a monopoly or a year of plenty AS SOON AS doing so will build you a city. If you're holding a monopoly card keep a rough track of how many resources of a certain type you're looking for are out there and use it when that will give you a city. Sure maybe it would have been "better" to save the monopoly until it gave you 10 wood... but if two wheat now will give you a city I say go for that. Sometimes you can get two points out of a monopoly if a couple of big numbers have been rolled and you have a port for that resource or something. Take that opportunity if it comes but don't hold out for it.

In general treat development cards as roughly worth one point each for both the purposes of buying them and for estimating how well other players are doing. Soldiers and road building will often be used without granting the player a point immediately but the benefits of those cards (and the ability for a well used monopoly to give someone two points if used well) mean that 1 card = 1 point is a good estimate.

HabitRPG & Ovia

I've always had a lot of trouble keeping up with routines. It's like a bounce between doing something CONSTANTLY to getting bored and stopping entirely. I can do something consistently for about two weeks... and then I miss a day or get distracted and suddenly it's four months later and I never actually finished that liptember series did I?

I'm not a big one for New Years "resolutions" but I find the end and beginning of a year is as good a time as any to think about what I want from my life and what different things I could focus on to make it more awesome.

I decided that my theme for this year would be diligence. My High School's motto (when I was there - it has changed now) was "Excellence. Initiative. Diligence" and I recognised even when I started there in year seven that diligence was a thing I lacked.

The trouble was, I didn't have enough perseverance or dedication to... acquire any.

But this year I decided that rather than trying to keep up with any one thing (and then getting either distracted or bored) I would try to practice keeping up with things. And it just happened to be the first of January when I signed up for HabitRPG.

I've tried numerous To Do list apps and I've attempted to gamify and/or track many aspects of my life before. I've used Runkeeper and Fitocracy and Duolingo and Superbetter and Epic Win and Patients Like Me and about ten different menstrual tracking apps (which all, without exception, sucked)....

And I've been consistently so terrible with keeping up with any of them that 25 days of HabitRPG feels like an amazing achievement.

I think part of it is the app itself. I've added so many todo items and habits to it that I have easily made it a habit to check in with it multiple times a day and tick things off... and so many that it does take a really really good day for me to do everything on my daily list. But rather than seeing a missed day as a failure that nukes my streak, the things I don't do as regularly change colour to encourage me to prioritise them - and missing something the app knows I'm already "good" at incurs much less of a punishment than missing something I'm already neglecting. I've also already used the "Inn" functionality (where it freezes all of your tasks and status) when I went away for a weekend recently

It feels like a really good fit for practising my diligence! I'm keeping up with SO many things this year including duolingo and medication and vitamins and meditating and housework and laundry!

And someone on the internets recommended Ovia to me as a cycle tracking app which DOESN'T ACTUALLY SUCK and I am pretty excited about that too!

Liptember Day #1

As I mentioned in my last post, this September I am participating in Liptember. Wearing Liptember lipstick every day to raise money for the Centre for Womens Mental health and Lifeline.

Lipstick: W7 Liptember "Devils Darling"

Thank you so much to: Sharmini, Simon & Jess, Christine, Ben, Cha, Jess and Lora for donating bringing me to $380 so far!

You can read about my reasons for participating in liptember, or donate to my cause on my liptember profile page.

Ten Years Ago vs Last Week. Obligatory Liptember Shout-out.

When I was nineteen I wasn't a person. 

It wasn't long - maybe thirty seconds? Less than a minute I am sure. But I can still remember the looks on their faces - one holding an arm out to hold the other back.

"Let's wait for the next one. I think she's on drugs," one said. In one of those "whispers" that isn't really a whisper. And they didn't get into the lift. It isn't them not getting into the lift that bothers me, a decade later. It's that they didn't care that they heard what I said.

It was a whisper because that's not a polite or nice thing thing to say, but it was loud because I wasn't a person enough for them to care if I heard. I think that to them I wasn't a person enough for them to think I understood.

I don't remember what I looked like that day. I assume I was crying. Was I slumped on the floor? Likely. Was I drooling? Humming? Rocking? Where is the line between unacceptable and inhumanity?

I've been thinking about it a lot this week. 

Last Sunday I wasn't sure I was on the right side of that line. Terrified of the looks they might give me I pulled my shirt over my head and gave myself a slit through the collar to see out of. 

And of course I knew - I knew - that even if I was still skirting the wrong side of unacceptable before I was probably way over it now, behaving in one of the ways that makes people feel like they don't need to watch their volume before making fun of someone in public.

So I put my fingers in my ears and hummed all the way home. And I laughed in the street like a mad person is what I want to say. But don't want to say. Because I don't want that to be true because (I'm not like those people/I'm probably just faking anyhow/I don't want you to talk about me as if I'm not hearing you. As if I don't count)

And I didn't fall down and I didn't see or hear anyone laugh at me. And for me, that day. That was a win.

This September I am taking part in Liptember raising money for Women's Mental Health Research and Lifeline. I'll be taking selfies every day (which I try to do anyway) wearing my liptember lipstick and posting them to my whatmyhairdoes tumblr.

(Lifeline 13 11 14)

The Edge of Yesterday: Warning contains feelings about 2002 which was a really SHITTY year and also you've probably already heard me cry about this story

I went to see The Edge of Tomorrow last night. It made me think about the past and alternate realities and that sort of thing. But it was mostly the blog post I read this morning that sent me into a terrible time-loop of distress and self-loathing and I don't think there's a big alien to kill that will break me out of this one.

Sometimes you just gotta say the thing and let the other person deal with the thing. Working around someone’s terrible behavior while you grow to dislike them more and more and more isn’t actually kinder.

Captain Awkward

In 2001 I was at a party. I was trying to be… fun. 

You see - I had this problem where I felt really left out of my friendship group. And there were lots of reasonable reasons for this - we were in different year levels at school and so while they were busy with their final year of VCE I was floundering in mental illness and unemployment during the year off which was supposed to refresh me after my life-meltdown of year 12 and telling my mother and my therapist about my sexual abuse.

But it made sense, you know? They’d see each other at school and organise things there and they didn’t see me regularly so, quite naturally, we were drifting apart which made me sad, but not angry, because it was just a thing.

But I thought, maybe, if I were… fun and cool enough they would remember me next time they were having a party or going to the movies or hanging out and then maybe I would get invited to things more. And I wanted to be more fun. More ZANY.

I always wanted to be zany. It was sort of a ongoing struggle for me to… try and manifest some sort of personality. Everyone else had seemed to pick one up naturally at some point, but I felt like I’d missed out on mine. Everyone else seemed to be forming opinions and interests all over the place while the most I could manage was a distain for the Backstreet Boys and an obsession with the Barenaked Ladies.

And that’s probably not the only reason I would get drunk and say and do stupid shit. Or even maybe the biggest. I was fucking miserable, after all.

But there was a dude at this party who’d been someone that none of us had even liked when I’d last had classes with him - which was, admittedly, in 1997 before I skipped up a year. It was a reminder of how disconnected I was from my friends and I recall promising myself that I would put in more effort.

But as I was drunkenly making my way either to or from the toilet this dude pulled me aside and told me I should pull myself together and shouldn’t be so drunk and stupid because it was worrying and annoying and he… he told me that this was why people didn’t invite me to things. 

That wasn’t a kind thing to say. 

I didn’t believe him. This was, you remember, someone I had never considered to be my friend. I thought, that if what he was saying were true, someone would have mentioned it. Only in less mean words. Or something.

I think about it more now, than I did then.

So I tried harder to cling to my friendships - friendships are important, you know, and we’d been pals, the girls at least, since year 7. I started uni  in 2002 and had a pretty good first 6 months, even. I was meeting people* but, you know, that’s not the same as true friendship. The people that are there for the long haul through changing year levels and exams and VCE and all that.

Haha.

And at the end of 2002 I was invited to a Christmas party. I was VERY happy about that - I’d seen my friends even less than ever and everyone was always too busy when I’d invited them to do anything. So I went, and, unshaken in my strategy to be AWESOMELY FUN and MEMORABLE so that I wouldn’t be forgotten so often in the coming year.

I peaked early, as I generally did at parties. It seems more acceptable now that I’m in my thirties but even back in my raging teens I couldn’t really keep awake much past 10pm.

There was a designated “quiet room” though and I thought it would be nice to sit in the quiet room and be quiet for a while and catch up properly with my friends. There were a few people in the room already but soon after I joined them, they trickled out.

And closed the door.

I’d brought my boyfriend-at-the-time to the party so I wasn’t alone. But I saw him plenty often and was at the party to see my friends but no matter how many times I opened the door and tried to smile invitingly at the people who walked past… they just kept closing it so eventually I gave up and went to sleep.

It was not, I am fully aware, anyone else’s responsibility to check my behaviour or correct me or otherwise coach me into being a less irritating adult than I’d, I can reasonably assume, been a teenager.

Someone I didn’t like and who’d had enough to drink to feel it was appropriate to tell other people how to behave had told me I was annoying and that people didn’t like me the year before and I’d felt like that was mean. I guess what I am saying is that I don’t think that the people at this party were being kinder.

Especially when I heard later via someone who would still talk to me that a bunch of people were really mad at me for being horribly rude and taking up the quiet room the whole night. Yeah.

The next morning someone offered me a lift home. I asked multiple times if they were sure they didn’t mind - because, not being able to drive myself, I was often aware of my inability to reciprocate in kind with lifts. She assured me that it was and I was very grateful and I thanked her again as she dropped me off.

And she looked me in the eye and she said “It was so great to see you! I hope I’ll see you again soon!” and she left without inviting me to the New Years Eve party she was hosting three days later.

I don’t think that was kinder.

And I don’t know, I guess, how hurt I would have been if at point between 1996 and 2000 or whenever it was that my problems became too difficult for anyone else to deal with (No blame here, we were all teenagers and my problems were way too difficult for ME to deal with and I had therapists and shit) I’d been told “hey we don’t actually like you or want to be friends with you”. Because I guess they’d probably told me that a million times with attempted slow fades and spurned invitations and not inviting me to things. I just didn’t hear it. Heck, a dude did tell me with words and I just didn't believe him.

Every few years this happens. Something sparks it and I think about it again and even after years of not thinking about it it still hurts so much and I wish I knew how I could make it not do that. Not hurt. Not come back into my head. At least one of those things.

I really enjoyed the movie though! Even though the ending was silly.


* am still friends with these people. <3

Strictly Ballroom: the (wish it wasn't a) musical

Yesterday my friend Miss Fairchild and I went too see Strictly Ballroom: The Musical.

The show was glaringly flawed in many ways but I'm pretty sure I've never enjoyed a live show so much in my life (disclaimer: I've never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show so ymmv)

It was visually ... all the words I can think of to fit here seem too small. It was SO sparkly. SO colourful. Sparkly curtains, sparkly seats. The costumes were, I think, my favourite part.

The flow of the story seemed off too things seemed to happen in an order because they were following the movie, rather than creating a show that flowed smoothly.

The songs, apart from Time After Time (even Love is in the Air was disappointingly underused, only popping out for the bows, basically)... sucked. Unmemorable and/or incomprehensible there is no way I would buy or listen to the soundtrack. I kind of felt like... they should have just used pop songs instead of trying to write their own. Or just not made it a musical at all. That would have been way better.

And yet I loved it. I had so much fun! It's easy for me to sit here and think "oh it would have been so much better if..." but I wasn't involved in making it so... yeah. But even though parts of it sucked I am super glad it exists and that we saw it and I will probably be thinking about how much I enjoyed it and all the amazing costumes and sets for a really long time.

And this morning I've been looking at my list of barely started fan fiction projects in Google Docs, my Veronica Mars essay, my abandoned Read Along project here on this blog, my short lived "... and remembering that something doesn't have to be perfect to be worthwhile. It can be flawed and also enjoyable. Times approximately infinity if I am doing it for fun, on the internet, for free.

On the other hand for a long time I wasn't really starting anything and I think failing to finish things is a way better problem to have than not being able to start anything at all.

It's lucky that you can't light your house on fire because otherwise my 'lit torches and wooden buckets' collection would cause problems

I'm easily frustrated and terrible at computer games some kinds of computer games.

I mean I rock at The Sims, I reached level 245 of Candy Crush Saga and I only stopped playing Tiny Tower because I ran out of levels. But according to certain internets those don't qualify as "games" so whatever.

Anyway this one time I bought Deus Ex: Revolutions and I died like 7 times in the first 10 minutes. I had the difficulty set to "story mode".

Something about the whole first-person thing gets me confused and disoriented pretty darn quickly I think but I'm okay with that. I stop playing when I stop having fun because I kind of feel like fun should be the point.

I didn't used to be very good at being bad at things. I was good at enough stuff that I managed to basically avoid anything I wasn't immediately good at for a very long time.

My peak year of being really good at stuff was probably 1997 though. Things went a little downhill after that and then picked up steam around 2000-2001.

But I didn't really get a handle on how to deal (academically, anyway) with not actually being as good at things as I felt like I should be and throwing furniture at people out of frustration that I wasn't immediately brilliant at everything until I started exclusively studying things I was kind of shit at. Only way I finished my degree was to do something where getting 50 or 55 for a subject felt like an achievement.

Being good at being terrible at things, is something I wished I'd learned how to do much earlier as it has improved my life... well more than "immensely" or "considerably" or "phenomenally" or any of the other words I was trying to put here. I'm sometimes not very good at picking words. I'm okay with that. It's cool!

Also on the lowest difficulty in Skyrim I can be flamed by a dragon a few times while I work out how to turn around without dying. That's cool too.