Name: Catan Universe
Rating: 3.88557 (26819 reviews)

User Reviews for Catan Universe

3.89 out of 5

26.8K Ratings

4 years ago, YayMuffins

Just like the board game, but with frustrating AI

Super fun app, but a few things I’ve noticed: 1. The AI can make actions (buy settlements, play dev cards, etc.) at the start of a turn (before they roll) even though I cannot, so they have an advantage where they can drop to under 7 cards BEFORE a 7 is rolled. 2. Sometimes the AI will offer me a trade, and I will accept it, but instead of trading, they will offer me another, better, trade. So I accept that, but instead of it going through, they offer me yet another better trade. It seems like the game gets hung up where my accept button is actually denying the trade, so the AI is offering me better and better deals, but I’m never able to make the trade go through. They eventually trade 4-1 with the bank, and it is frustrating. 3. The UI is not intuitive at all. After I finished the first few games, I had to quit the entire app because I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the home screen without shutting down the entire game. After a while I found where you can click through several screens to get back to the main menu, but it is unnecessarily complicated. 4. Also, as others have said, the dice are clearly not random.

8 months ago, JRA1987

Great game, horrible developers.

I have never experienced a game with so much glitches/ bugs ever! It’s sad because it’s such a great game! My family and I used to always play the board game in person. Since we live I different cities we were all so excited when we discovered we could play this online on our phones! That excitement quickly became anger/frustration when we realized it’s almost impossible to set up the game to play with your family/friends online. Always get an error message when trying to invite a friend from your friend list. It was just a nightmare. In about 6 months we were probably able to make it work just a few times. Every time an “update” would come up, we were positive and thought maybe they had fixed that issue, but NOPE, same problem as ALWAYS. If you want to play with family/friends online, do yourself a favor and try Colonist io. I discovered it about 2 weeks ago-download it- asked my family to download it-created and account- added each other as friends- and guess what? It actually works. No glitches/ bugs/ error messages/ lost communication with server/ nothing like that. Just fun playing with my family. You can become a member which unlocks more maps, modes, etc but it is a bit pricy (monthly payment) but I personally think it is worth it as it connects me with my family and allows us to have some fun. We play it all the time now. Sad these developers have never been able to fix that issue.

2 years ago, mcresh1

Obviously rigged

When playing the AI (especially of “Master” difficulty) it just happens to be that the robber is insanely lucky to be on your best resource for the whole game. Try to buy 1,2,3 development cards to get a knight to move it? They will all just happen to be road buildings, monopolies, victory points. When you finally get a knight, within 2 more turns a 7 is guaranteed to be rolled so that the AI can put the robber right back on your resource. Then a 7 will not be rolled for probably 25 turns as long as you dont play another knight. But once you play a knight to move the robber off, its guaranteed to be back on in only a couple turns. Also if you have 8 resources there are very high odds of AI rolling 7. Im pretty sure catan just cant come up with an AI that is actually good enough to beat a skilled human so in order to make it “hard” they need to adjust the luck of the game. What is worse than this though is when your resources magically “disappear” from your hand. Several times when I get robbed by the AI i have seen the resource that the AI took from my hand disappear and then about 1 second later another resource just disappears from your hand too (no 7 rolled or knight played). No explanation for that. You could at least do a better job at hiding the fact that the game is rigged. 👎 Also when playing multiplayer 90% of the time a 7 is rolled in the first 2 turns and then not rolled again for a long time. Not saying its rigged but just very annoying.

6 years ago, ExperiencedProjectEngineer

Extremely Buggy

EDIT 1: some of the main concerns were addressed and - to some extent - corrected. Game breaking bugs in matches were reduced substantially, from about 90% of matches to a healthy 15% (yep, I kept an excel). The in-game interface is still the same, and in my humble opinion, not very intuitive. Regardless, the app is moving in the right direction. Adjusting stars from 1 to 3. REALLY looking forward to the update that was supposed to happen a few hours ago(?). ORIGINAL: The board game is amazing and the app has so much potential. However, it is ridiculously common for a game to get bugged. The problem with that is that it affects all other players, not just whoever got bugged. So the game hangs up thinking no one is having issues, meanwhile this one player is stalling for upwards of 20 mins (and the game cant figure out that something is wrong and just kick him). Kicktimers trigger for no reason when you’re in-game and everything else seems to be doing fine. Not much incentive to level up. Not much to buy in the shop (honestly if there were more items available, with better perks than a viking hat, I’d be throwing money at you guys). Elo visibility is really nice tho, kinda only thing that keeps me and my friends around. Just a tip, elo games tend to not show opponents’ elo in the pre-game screen so that it won’t affect in-game tactics (i.e. 3v1, etc). Really looking forward to an update and hopefully adjusting this rating. Thanks for your hard work!

1 year ago, behduajqnshi

Someone needs a statistics lesson

Funny, when I play this game is real life I hardly ever see the number seven rolled 27 times in a game that had only 80 turns. That’s every three turns for those doing the math…. Anyone who downloads this app will surely notice some seriously suspicious patterns when it comes to the dice. The above example is not an outlier. Seven is rolled entirely too often - sometimes several turns consecutively - and usually happens coincidentally when you’re leading a game by several points. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself going a dozen turns in a row without collecting anything and having all of your items taken away from the robber, because obviously they always put the robber on one of your positions. Just as an example, the last game I played I clearly had the strongest positions on the board. I was winning by several points. Out of the last 24 rolls, I counted the number eight was rolled 6 times in 8 turns alone; seven was also rolled 6 times. The numbers I needed in order to win (6, 5, 4, or 10) were never rolled. The developer might argue I’m just being a sore loser but those statistics are virtually impossible and it happens constantly in this game. I could go on and on with examples like these. I should note that there is another setting that allows you to change the probability of the dice but you will find it is just as goofy as the default setting. Not sure what the point is in making the game so obviously skewed in favor of the computer.

4 years ago, AKFisherofMen

Please add these features:

Love the game! Very well done! To any developer reading this, I would like to make a few requests: please add another expansion (I would pay another $5 for easily) that adds another ring of resource tiles around the basic game board. Just like the expansion for the board game in real life. That way the play can edit the basic game to have more players, victory points needed to win, more trading ports, and development cards into the pool. Also please add support for Co-Op for two players using the same device in a game. Possibly even up to 4 players on one device? I would also like the ability to play with only 1 other CP in singleplayer mode instead of requiring 3-4 players. There is also a bug that has happened quite often where the check mark does not work in trades with CP’s and forgoes the trade no matter if you click on the red X or the green check mark. The bug also does not allow you to properly re-negotiation the trade with CP’s. Last but not least I would like more edit features when generating the world map instead of only having a few preset “scenarios” to pick from with their own hidden list of possible resource hexes. Thank you for reading and I would love your feedback!

5 years ago, Chad bai

How embarrassing

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GAME!!! This is an honest question. Will it ever work again? It hasn’t worked for the better part of a week now. If you don’t believe me, check out the Catan Universe Facebook page. People vent there. IF the reason why it won’t work is because they are truly making changes to fix the game they haven’t said one word to us. They just let the game not work and let their customers get so frustrated that they leave 500 word reviews. It is beyond ridiculous and shows how poorly of a company this is exactly. I truly feel embarrassed for the developers of this game. I wish I would have read the comments before purchasing this game. It appears as though these issues have been going on for quite some time and they cannot fix it. When I was playing for free and someone would drop out I figured they just didn’t like the way the game was going or something to that effect. No, it turns out the game is kicking people. I have been trying to play and I keep getting a message saying that I am not connecting to the server. Implying that the issue is on my end. Well that certainly is not the case as I have tried both WiFi and cellular data and I just switched to pc and getting the same message. I really am embarrassed for the developers that can’t seem to fix this issue that has been going on for at least a few years. Don’t believe me..check the comments. Lesson learned, I will check comments before downloading in the future.

7 years ago, Shadowmarsh

Extremely disappointed

Get the game... that’s about as far as my story goes. I play one game (tutorial game) stupid because one person got kicked for inactivity. Then after that I finish the settling into Catan or whatever the overall tutorial is and still can’t play the different versions of the regular mode, which it says you need to complete and I did... then all the sudden I can’t even log in because it keeps saying timing out when I have perfectly good internet connection. Then I finally can get logged in and it “can’t connect to the server”, so irritating and I’ve tried like 20 times and still can’t connect to the server. Then I go on the forum and apparently this problem has been going on for two weeks and not a thing has been fixed. Honestly ridiculous and embarrassing for them. Like you get hired to do this crap and you can’t even fix a problem that makes the game UNPLAYABLE... ridiculous. Not even sure how the heck it has 4 stars I LOVE CATAN, LOVE THE IDEA, CANT EVEN PLAY, so who gives a crap what your trying to do, if you can’t play it it doesn’t matter. That’s like showing people you can give them a million bucks if they roll a 2 with a dice, but there’s only ones... oh and one last thing, AI’s freeze up after playing 7s. Think that should be an easy one to fix, but you also can’t FIX YOUR MAIN SERVER... poor people who actually payed for this game and can’t get a refund. Fix this game in less then a week and this 1 Star turns into a 5 in snap...

1 year ago, Demilord

1 game… 1 game every 24 hours?

So I’m new to Catan and I saw this free version of the game and they gave me one game I got to go through the tutorial and I got one game and said that I didn’t get another game for 24 hours no I understand if you guys want to sell maps or skins or any like cosmetic things but to only get one game every 24 hours is ridiculous and then on top of that you have another game which is the classic version it’s only five dollars so I could buy the classic version for five bucks or I could pay two dollars for 200 games now the price if you were to sell it like that is reasonable I suppose because I wouldn’t see myself needing more than 200 games if I’m still getting one game every day but as a new player I can’t believe that you would give me at least 10 or 20 games for free to get me into the game but only one game you give me one game to start out with and then you start asking for money like how much supposed to learn the game how much supposed to get into the game I’m very flabbergasted by this and if you expect people to actually play your game and possibly pay to play which I think is ridiculous against AI nonetheless I would really highly suggest you give a new player more than one game more than five games more than 10 games give somebody 1520 games so that they can actually practice and then learn how to play

2 years ago, plzfixyourapp123

Fun but has some fundamental flaws

I wanted to learn how to play this game before buying the real board game. For that purpose it did it’s job. However, there are some flaws in this game that make it not fun to play at all. There is definitely a problem with AI trading. I had games where I was middle of the pack and I kept only getting 1 or 2 resources ( because of odd dice rolling but I’ll get to that late) AI will not trade with you even if they have excess resources and even if you offer ridiculous abundance of every resources. You have to rely solely on the 4:1 trade ratio unless of course you get robbed which happens to me almost every single time I have 8 resources. Which brings me to my next point. The dice rolling is so odd in this game. Over the course of my last 4 games I payed closer attention and noticed that 2-3 numbers which have statically low chances of getting rolled get rolled significantly more by 3-4x the amount of other rolls ? Some times that happens in real life too but not every game? During the game I’m thinking okay it’s not a big deal I’ll just have to use the 4:1 trade. Nope, think again, most times I try to do that I just get robbed. So now I have no resources and I’m just in a perpetual state of AI not trading me and getting robbed. Now that I know how to play I will just play with friends, the way this AI is designed make it not fun to play.

2 weeks ago, Melikely

Purchased Gold not showing up

I love Catan and I love the app, but I’ve genuinely hit a wall here. I paid $27 for 3,000 Gold, (the in-game currency) and my Gold balance never changed. My intention since downloading the app in the first place was to get every game extension to play every scenario with no restrictions at any time. But after paying top dollar, I am still restricted to playing a lousy 1 game per 12 hours, and the only multi-player option available to me is the repetitive base game with no chat function. I reached out to the customer service email provided by the Catan Universe website. It’s been a whole week, and other than automated response emails, I haven’t heard back at all. My Gold balance remains at 0, and I cannot get the features I want from this app. At this point my review SHOULD be 1 star, plus a report for blatant theft. But I’ve enjoyed Catan Universe so far, and what it has provided me despite this. The Free-to-Play aspects are still perfectly fair. I have faith in the people, and assume that my email must have fallen through the cracks during the holidays/weekends. I’ve submitted another email for customer service. Please, CU Team, find a way to program that gold into my account, or allow me access to the extentions etc. I don’t WANT to be refunded, I just want to buy your game. Please don’t be a scam! 🤞🤞

2 years ago, Conan1247

Too buggy and rough AI

It’s decently fun to play online but if you play against AI it feels rigged. The game actually includes a dice roll feature but, say you have a settlement on two 6’s. Those two 6’s will rarely get rolled then a robber will get put on it and like 5 in a row will be a 6. So, the bell curve is somewhat realistic by the end but the actual turns those numbers are rolled on is stacked against you. Clever way to cover for AI that can’t compete against a human naturally I guess. All that aside, its still pretty fun but its actually unplayable at this point. For about a week now, the app just won’t load. Originally, I would try to play and it would reach the main screens but after I clicked the play button it would just say I was out of suns every time (even though I wasn’t and I tried on 3 different days w/ no success). Online mode would just say “this feature is unavailable while offline” but my internet has been fine and all my other games function normally. I deleted and reinstalled but now it just perpetually loads on the sign in screen. I’ve tried logging in, registering a new account, and playing without an account but nothing will load. I’ve tried on wifi and LTE. I’ve tried using a VPN to mask my IP address. Nothing works. What’s the point of an app you can’t use?

7 years ago, Goaldefender19

Better than you think

After seeing this game with only a two star rating I was worried about trying it but I did anyways. After downloading it I set up an account because why not...it was free. Even though I already knew how to play the base game Catan it put me through an tutorial which was helpful in the sense to figure out the controls of the app. After the quick tutorial I played a game against the AI and I had a lot of fun. I mean who doesn’t after they win. The game didn’t go easy nor did I feel like I was being teamed up on. It felt authentic and fair throughout. One of my favorite things about this version is that it keeps track of your wins and loses. It’s pretty sweet. You level up as you play and unlock different looks for your avatar and different virtual tables to play on. You can join up with friends and play that way, random matchmaking, or against the AI. Another thing to note is I had no issue logging in or setting up an account as others stated. It seems like the developer is working hard to keep the app up to date and I would hate to see this one die. I was very impressed and will update as I experience the app further.

3 years ago, Navywifeandmommyoftwo

Randomize the dice

I love Catan but this game is frustrating. I played free for as long as I could stand it and finally made the switch to get the random board and a couple of the add ons (cities and knights/ harbor master). You can have great board placement with all the right resources and lots of good numbers and no matter how many roles you are getting nothing. When you finally get a couple roles and just get over 8 cards a 7 roles. Meanwhile other players with terrible placement get the same number rolled 4 out of 5 rolls. I’m competitive by nature but this really needs to be fixed. Dice are random but certain numbers should show up more. I just played half a game and while the other players had two or three settlements, I had one road and bought a development card to stay below 8. I just needed two roads from the beginning of the game to move past another player. He is going the complete other way one his other settlement, I then finally get the wood I need for the road and he blocks me. I start the road to go around and on his next turn he places 3 or 4 roads to block me again, without a road building card. Please fix this and make the game about the board placement like it is in real life. Also when is the tournament play supposed to be added?

5 years ago, Zynga luver

Great game and well integrated, though expansion tutorials are needed.

The game is a great adaptation of the classic strategy board game. However, the tutorial introduces you to many different expansion themed game modes. While these are great when explained (Seafarers for example), the rest have minimal to no tutorial. The gamemode involving upgrading your cities in terms of politics and science offers no explanation as to how to get the resources required to do that or what happens if you can’t defeat the pirates. Even worse, the Rivals of Catan tutorial prompt says “Let me show you the two person card game, Rivals of Catan.” Then, with no explanation, it just throws you into the middle of the game and offers no information as to how this (only slightly similar to the board game) version is even played. It just keeps expecting you to know what to do with no prompt like the prior tutorials had. As for everything else game related, the app is incredible. No bugs. No glitches. Very well integrated and very well explained. Easy to play with friends. All that is necessary is some explanation for the new game modes introduced before just throwing them into the players’ faces.

9 months ago, Maevemoss

Rigged play makes it annoying

Update: the dice rolls aren't too bad now but my cities are only paying out 1 resource instead of 2 so it stills feels impossible to get ahead. There's nowhere in the app to submit issues with the programming. I tried the free version for a few days and it was fun so I bought it. I haven't even come close to winning one game since I bought it. It seems insane that the dice rolls are hitting 5s 3 out of 6 rolls in the AI's favor. Every 2 turns it benefits me but the rest of the rolls alternate between my opponents getting resources or them getting the robber and placing it on my hexes and stealing from me. One turn 3 of the 4 opponents rolled a 7 and moved the robber around all of my hexes stealing from me. Also, none of the AI will trade with me even if I offer up to 5 cards in a number of combos to get one card. So I'm stuck trying to save up to trade but magically when I finally get enough to do what I need a 7 is rolled making me throw out 1/2 my cards. They had an outage to upgrade the system at the time I bought it so I'm not sure if this is the paid version or the new "upgrade" but it makes playing the game feel pointless and annoying since the dice rolls and all the opponents team up against you.

5 years ago, cfreeley

So close, but too buggy and some bad UX

This game is so close to being one of the best apps on the App Store but it has way too many bugs and issues. A few games in a row now I’ve been foiled by a bug where if you have two ports, a 3 -for-any-resource port and a 2 for something specific port, trading with the bank forces me to pay 3 even if I’m buying the good I should be able to get for 2. Also if I tap the face in the right (which I think might be Arrival on Catan) it asks me to register, even though I’m currently already logged in. And if I log in again it still asks me, forever. Also there’s some really weird UX. Besides the board being a bit unintuitive at first, the game mode buttons at the bottom are also completely unlabeled. They keep telling you to play Arrival on Catan but give you no indication of what this is or how to do it. And you can buy the full version of the game at the shop but it’s very vague what exactly you get from purchasing it. I don’t know if this is a bug or a penalty for paying free but I also get the same map with the same resource and number placements every time. If that is an incentive for upgrading, it’s not doing its job because they don’t make that fact clear.

2 years ago, LacticAcidLoser

Fun, but buggy

I love Catan, and the ability to play so many game modes and expansions in this app is fantastic. But the game bugs out a lot of the time. I tried to purchase the premium version, but it was too bugged to play, so i asked for a return. Sometimes the game keeps me from building some things, or spending certain resources. The 12hour token regen to be able to play a game makes sense for the free version, but when I have a token to use, i usually have to close the app a few times before it will actually let me start a game with it. Often times it just resets the timer when i open the app, which is frustrating. The Barbarian function in cities and knights imposes inconsistent city destruction rules - taking out defended cities and leaving undefended ones. Unlike the boardgame, the app allows NPCs to build settlements at owned intersections. And even the “balanced” dice mode leads to drastic uneven roll distributions. It would be nice to have a more accessible list of special rules for the special game modes. The cities and knights additional cards from dice rolls is also inconsistent. The additional rules are tough to find, and seem to be missing some observed mechanics.

5 months ago, Mute Me Please

Add ability to mute group chat

Some players are really aggressive and question you and harass you every time you put a robber on their spot; use cards to steal their resources, etc. That is what you are supposed to do! It’s the game! It’s worse in the basic game than in Cities and Knights. People use really insulting and offensive language. It’s really upsetting. It just means that I play on single mode most of the time. It ruined trying to play with others for me. Please make it possible to just block group chat. It’s so unnecessary anyway. Also, most of the trade offers I accept from AI characters simply disappear or go to other AI players so fast. That’s really frustrating. Also, the robber just comes up too often. That’s annoying, but it shouldn’t come up during the first round when you’re trying to build knights. Lately the first round has also been going by way too fast and most players lose their cities. The last issue is that a robber will land on your spot and many times that number will roll 4 or 5 times in a row while the robber is on that exact number! All these things combined take the fun out of playing. Thanks!

6 years ago, KnowLockz

Catan App

Love that i can now have Catan on my phone so I can play wherever I go, overall a great app! Only minor critique here as a long term Catan player, the trade options are limited, like you can’t counter offer and that’s a pretty big oversight, you also can’t offer trades to players when it is not your turn, also would be nice if there were pre set dialogues that you can use like Catan online used to have, and the messaging option is only accessible by going into a screen separate from the view of the board, maybe that’s not a big deal to some but it would be helpful to see the chat on the board screen, and last, my only big gripe with the app is the obnoxious angles, I often get stuck at a really awkward viewing angle and I still sometimes can’t get it to show a top view of the board, I mean it’s kind of cool the board view is interactive but it really is more of an annoying feature, if they could add some controls to the view that would be great or just eliminate it altogether, anyways it’s cheap so can’t really say it’s a bad app just needs a few renovations and it will be supreme!

6 years ago, LFarya

Glitchy and Slow

For the most part this an amazing game. However the reason I’ve given this 1 star is because the game is horrendously glitchy and loaded with bugs. There are some issues that need reprogramming as well. For example, the kicktimer is a whopping 2min. The game does not proceed until these 2 minutes have passed. This needs to be shortened to a maximum of 1min. Also each player is allotted 1min per turn, again this is much too long. I can understand that some turns take that long but there should be a separate “idle” timer for turns. If a player hasn’t clicked the screen or demonstrated some activity then his turn should be skipped after 30s. As far as bugs, sometimes you will load into a game and the screen is black showing only maxed out commodity cards, only way to fix this is to reboot the app. Other times after a 7 is rolled (the robber) the turns freeze. This shows only on some players screens but not others. For example, some people will be waiting for player 3 to go but on his screen he thinks it’s still player 2’s turn. Again this can only be fixed by exiting and rebooting the app. Overall great app and I still love playing it but it can be tremendously frustrating at times. The app need technical maintenance and bug fixes ASAP. Hope this helps.

3 months ago, Rocko53

Game is Great! (when it works)

My friends and I have loved the board game Settlers of Catan for years and were thrilled to find a way to play it online with each other since we live far apart now. We have paid for the online expansion pack and when the game works, it works well and everyone enjoys it. However, recently we have been encountering more and more bugs that make the game unplayable. The worst bug occurs when playing with other people and the computer selections. After one of the computers prompts a trade, the game will freeze and not progress forward. All of the buttons are still interactive, but nothing will progress the game off of the computers turn. We also consistently struggle with the app not loading or launching a game and being stuck at the loading screen before sending us back to the home screen. We haven’t been able to play a few games with no issues in probably a month now. Very frustrating user experience for an otherwise great app. Reduced to one star because the app is unplayable for the last two days. Try to start a match and it just says “Find running game…” and loads continuously. Will not let me load a game single player or multiplayer. Incredibly frustrating.

3 years ago, Kjtgmn

Perfect solution for isolation from fellow Catanians

As more and more of my family and friends are exposed to Catan, it is becoming the perfect solution to playing together long distance. I really don’t have much else to say except it provides a near exact representation of the original game in a virtual format. However, note for the app developers, there have been a few coding changes over the past 6 months that I feel could be improved: For example: Incremental numbers that are added or subtracted, such as the number of cards or roads you have in your posession, are being calculated and displayed BEFORE the visual annimation of the cards or roads is being applied. Although this does not change the end result of the calculations, it does cause some visual confusion because it quickly calculates your numbers, and then you watch the cards come and go, but the numbers stay the same because they already changed. Is it possible to adjust the order of the coding to allow for the calculations to take place AFTER or more in SYNC with the visual animations?

4 years ago, SarcasticChef79

A great game gone wrong

I love Catan. This app has all the right ideas: great layout, art design, and more. The free option is really good, though I wish I could play more than once every 12 hours. I would gladly buy this game, but unfortunately it’s not worth it. If you’ve read the other reviews you might see issues with the AI. It’s crap. There’s no point in playing master AI, the novice ones seem to be able to play at that level. Random generated dice? It doesn’t seem that random. I’ve probably played at least 100 games so far. Too often what happens is that every number you’re not on is what gets rolled. Let’s say you’re on 8 but not 6 (6 is rolled more often) and vice versa. I’ve had amazing games where I start with 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (or similar). And yet, 6 and 10 become the hot numbers that game, sometimes occurring consecutively. I’ve had games where 2 has been rolled 4 times in a row. I just played a game where I was ahead by 6 points, and then the AI “somehow” got these amazing rolls to come back and beat me by 3 points. Until they fix the dice and AI, I would just stick to the free version. If you buy the game, then you’re still going to have the issues they were having now

4 years ago, jvkmc1

Computer works against you

Really wish the dice roles were actually random, it just ruins the game. Nearly every game just favors the computer. If you have settlements on high probably numbers they basically never role, and anytime you have over 7 cards you get hit with the robber. Computer can literally have +15 cards for like 3 hands, ranking them in somehow from 2’s and 12’s but as soon as you hit 8, boom robbed. Not to mention the cards you do get are useless. Anytime I get ahead on points it’s impossible to get the cards I need to win and finish the game, and you have to watch the computer magically get everything and gain +5 points in like 3 rounds while you just keep getting sheep until you are over 7 cards and then you somehow role 7 every single time and have to give everything away. It’s programmed for you to get close to that win, and then it just somehow slips through your fingers so you keep coming back for more. I read some of the reviews and thought people complaining about the dice roles were just people upset they were losing, but after playing multiple games I completely understand it. I’m glad I haven’t wasted any money on this app and only played the free version because it’s really disappointing.

2 months ago, Hdbdkdm

Years later and still no fix: save your money

I can’t believe I paid $15 for this app that barely works. At least every other game there is a game-breaking glitch like randomly resetting everyone back to the start or kicking you even though you are not running the timer down. As others have mentioned the AI often breaks and will make the same offer again and again for sometimes half an hour. Also I was skeptical about people criticizing the dice initially, but after playing for a while I definitely think the rng for this app is awful and not realistic at all. I intend to start keeping a spreadsheet to see just how far from expectation the statistics really are. To make matters even worse you can see reviews talking about the same problems for YEARS back and people saying the developers are “working on a fix”. How long does it take to find a fix when you are charging people $15 each just to play the expansions?? The developers should be ashamed of themselves. I have played other multiplayer apps that were free or a fraction of the cost that ran MUCH smoother than this train wreck of an app. I am so disappointed. I feel ripped off. I want my money back. DO NOT BUY.

3 months ago, Oshizzler

Dice Rate/Progress Cards/AI

I love Catan and play matches frequently against bots. I’ve slowly gotten better but when I play against Master level AI they bully you into oblivion even when you’re not winning. I recently played a c&k match that was the tipping point for me. During setup, I got favorable positions that should have a good resource rate however the robber was rolled nearly half the time and the AI only cycled between putting it on my resource tiles and stealing from me. Had absolutely no resources, any progress cards I got weren’t helpful — how can I use my 3 merchants with no resources to trade. I’m all for a good challenge, and I admit there may be a skill gap, but how can anyone possibly get ahead if AI are only stealing from me, removing my roads/ships, removing/stealing my knights and making me lose my city to barbarians, all the while I cant gain resources because 7 is constantly rolled and my tiles always blocked — the end of game stats reveal the imbalance. Please tone down the Master levels AI — its unplayable.

1 year ago, kris hood

King card cannot be placed

Update: the issue with the king card was resolved the game still needs to be simplified with the controls but none the less it’s a great game with developers who are making consistent adjustments and updates. I highly recommend! The game is good until it comes time to place the king card once that happens when you click it your finger is able to drag it around the screen but it won’t place, when you remove your finger from the screen the king card goes back into your deck. They need to just make it a button to press verses dragging it it’s to complex and needs to be simplified. If this gets fixed then honestly the game would be worth 5 stars but it ruins the game play entirely so it’s my ranking is 3 stars until this problem is fixed. I did look online but could not find anyway to place the king card so I’m really hoping for an update that addresses this issue. It’s a game with great potential!

4 years ago, acallan1

Sticking w/ Catan Classic until Stack Mode Improved

I tried this again after all the improvements since its release when I found its gameplay far too slow compared to the Catan Classic app. I really wanted to like it given the community potential w/ guilds, chat & ELO and the gameplay was much improved but its "Stack" mode is too limited for competitive play IMO. You can't activate "Stack" mode unless you invite a friend so it’s not even an option for your usual quick auto-match games & even if you do the implementation of "Stack" as explained by the Almanac is far worse to the simple but effective "Full Stack" & "Stack minus 5 random tiles" options from Catan Classic. What's even the point of tracking ELO in a game driven completely by RNG dice roles??? Probability is a central aspect of Catan and Cities & Knights has ample strategic depth but all of that is wasted when you can't normalize the dice rolls to some approximation of expected probabilities via decent "Stack" options. Me, my potential revenue & all the friends I recruit to play will be sticking w/ the Catan Classic app until Catan Universe supports "Stack" at least as well as that very old app :-/

4 years ago, Lisapisa1234

Frustrating

A lot of things with the ui are not intuitive. It took three of us some time to figure out how to build a road for example. We’re long term catan players. We just couldn’t figure out the ui. I’m not too mad that the base game costs money, but why make it a pain to buy? I have to jump through several hoops and buy gold (how do you earn it? No idea. Hubs and I played a game, he won, I came in second. But I had gold and he didn’t. I don’t even know how I got the gold.). And where in the app do you find the purchase game option? It’s buried in a weird spot! Also several bugs. The AI is EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. Why on earth would anyone want that? And the sliders to change their speed are locked. I thought buying the game might unlock them. Nope. Spent $5 for nothing. I’m spending soooo long waiting for a turn at a game I’m playing by myself! And there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it! It’s nice to have this game as an option during the pandemic, but ugh it’s frustrating as heck! Ps is there some reason the AIs won’t trade at all with me? Am I doing it wrong? I played a game with friends and we traded ok, but nothing I suggest gets responses from the AI.

4 years ago, Stefani <3

Glitchy but worth it

My friends and I used to have “Catan” nights often for our game nights. Now that we are in Covid crisis it’s been a nice supplement - and with all the practice I am getting much better at the game strategy. However it is a very glitchy product. Once I reached Level 9 and went to switch devices and the game forgot my account. I literally tried to reset my password and no matter how many times i attempted to reset I got a “this account does not exist” message. I believe it because I was able to make a new account with the same user name and my fiancé still has my old account as a friend but the name changed to John Doe. My fiancé also had issues with logging back into his account after changing passwords and we had to reach out to the support email. From the online community it looks like there have been a ton of issues but I still find it worth playing because it is free and kills time. Because of the glitches I would not invest in the full game. Maybe if the support team gets it together I will reconsider but for now the free version is enough for the hassle.

2 years ago, HdsfjokvfdhjjMe

Nice breadth of options but questionable design

Overall it’s not terrible for a free app but Catan Classic is far better for $5. My biggest issue here is that the dice rolls are very obviously not random. You might think this is just a sore loser but I’m serious, if you play cities and knights but expand victory points to 21 play repeatedly and you’ll agree within 3 games. I like the randomness of dice rolls so I’m hesitant to use the stacked deck of numbers but it’s a must for this app. One of the apps work arounds for not making this skewness in rolled numbers so obvious is by timing your numbers for when they’re under a robber so you won’t get resources but if you check the stats it’ll look closer to even in rolls than it really is. The bots also rob at random, I’ve been in last in a 6 person game with bots that are at 8-12 VPs while I’m still at 4 yet they’ll place the robber on a tile that only I’m on and steal from me. Alternatively, I’ve been a point away from winning ahead of the closest bot by 5 points and they’ll steal from a bot that is no where near winning. I wish they’d program the bots to just stealing from the current leader

10 months ago, Keyholekid

Several bugs

I love Catan, and play this game almost daily. I’ve paid for the original game and mostly play the classic map with the computers. The trading aspect is almost entirely broken, where the computers skip my accepted trades or trade after doing other actions. I’ve also had problems with logging in, where resetting the password goes nowhere and times out without anything happening. I usually select play without log in and it gets to my profile no problem. The most recent glitch being an error message saying Client version too old, despite having the most recent update. I’ve paid for the base game twice on two different devices and have had the same problems all around. It’s extremely disappointing considering I may have to make a third account and pay for the game a third time if I want to continue playing, which I really don’t want to do. But since it won’t reset my password or let me into my account I don’t know what else to do. Definitely a lot of bugs that aren’t being addressed.

5 years ago, Many4gamea

Love it but , expansions need some upgrades

I love the visual representation of the game. It’s fun and addictive! Lots of great options for play. Good graphics. Some things take a bit to figure out because there no directions on them but if you know the. Base game it’s fairly easy to figure out. The base game works pretty well the only thing I would suggest is being able to kick out those with weak connections or have the kick timer at 30 seconds and a limit on how many times it can get activated. Additionally, when playing ( and I love that you can live play against others and also just vs AI ) but against AI two will steal from you even when you have less points than both of the Ai’s. I would also like to undo selections when discarding cards. Sometimes I hit the wrong cards and you can’t undo your selections. I would like to see the bugs with cities and knights fixed. I love that game but my settlements will disappear. Lately it will crash my city when the barbarians strike even though I have an active knight to cover it. Sometime it will roll. Resource I’m on but not give me the card. I also had one game where the 7 was rolled 28xs.. need a cap on that, it was like 3x any other number. I would also like to be able to pause or recall when my cards get stolen or another player does something that effects my hand so I can see what was lost. It will go so fast I don’t even know it’s gone. Overall I really love the games and the Ap! I play it all the time.

8 months ago, alric456

Not even fun

Super buggy and only allows 3 player multiplayer at a time. Most of the time it seems like the “multiplayer” is just ai that gangs up on you. Trade is non-existent, to the point that you have to accept bad deals for any deal to be made or an entire game will literally go without trade. I played 20 games and each time, the dice rolls kept giving numbers that I was not on (if I played by 8, six would be rolled mainly, if you play by six then 10 would be rolled) it gets pretty ridiculous when six turns go by and you don’t get a single resource because none of your numbers got rolled, then you have to skip your turn again while you watch the other two get all of the resources. Then on to building. You don’t always get to build settlements even if you have the resources. I have had to maritime trade resources hoping that I can make some kind of comeback by adding a settlement after a freshly made road is put down and then there isn’t even option to make one. So you’ll end up with plenty of useless roads instead of settlements that can help you out.

2 years ago, Alexisdeadstill

Amazing game, app could use a little work

Catan is obviously an incredible game, and I have a ton of fun playing it in this app. Really great being able to play with friends, being able to send messages back and forth etc. The reason I am not giving this 5 stars is because the app itself could use a little bit of work. For example, I am on an iPhone XR. A lot of times when I click to see info on something, the text window that pops up has a portion off screen, which makes it unreadable. It is quite frustrating sometimes when I need to be able to read something and can’t. I payed the 5 dollars for the app, and I would be willing to bet many other people have too. Some of that money should be used to pay a programmer to fix these issues. It would not be difficult and I would be more than happy to fix it for free just to get it done. Other than that, I’m very happy with the purchase.

3 years ago, Mjk28014141

Fine but could be so much better

This does the job but it seems like they stopped short of putting much polish on the game. There are almost no audio/visual cues when something happens. Other players can place new buildings, etc and you won’t notice unless you’re paying extremely close attention to your screen the entire game. I also wonder why you have to choose from static game boards. Why can’t the tiles be completely randomized? The biggest problem though is the opponent AI. They really easy to beat even on Master level, they make nonsensical decisions regularly, and sometimes one of them will take half the game to score a single point. You can play online of course, but it’s nice to play with AI players who don’t take forever to take their turns. The Xbox 360 version of Catan had better AI if you can believe it. I have no idea why this game is about 2/3 of what it could be. It’s fine and we enjoy it, but it’s obvious there’s only so much replay ability here when it could’ve been almost infinite.

7 years ago, Katily =^•^=

Was really hoping for 5 human player support

Got the original app hoping to play it as a family, nope. We all have ticket to ride which supports up to 5 live players locally or online, replaces with an Ai in the event of disconnect and uses a karma system to curb game quitters etc. I was excited to see this game released in an updated app, hoping for an experience like that of ticket to ride, or even exploding cats, this isn’t even close yet. With 3 local people playing in the online setting we can’t even get through 1 quarter of a 10 point basic first island game. It glitches or crashes like everyone comments on, not only for special moves like the robber, just at random, taking away the ability to end a turn, forcing all of us to leave the game because the end turn button disappears. We are keeping the app and sincerely hoping they get some good programmers to put this in order because sooo many of us would be ecstatic and support it. 3 stars for the potential and hope to have it in the future although, sadly, it isn’t playable right now.

7 months ago, uLottie

Mostly good, a few bugs

I play mostly against the AIs. The experience is good, but now and then it’s frustrating. The AIs seldom trade with the human player and very often only trade between themselves. Furthermore, usually they only trade on trades they initiate and very seldom on trades that the human player initiates. The human player can offer a trade that gets rejected and the AI that follows will make the same trade. You can select AI difficulty levels like rookie, veteran, or master. however, the master level seems to rely more on board, set up and dice rolls than strategic gameplay. The master AI often benefits from repeated rolls of seven and its resources, as well as being favored in trades that the human player also accepts. I wish the master AI displayed more strategic gameplay skills, rather than relying heavily on favorable dice outcomes, board setups, and trades. I play against the AI to learn ways to improve my game, but if it’s designed to make, the master always win through favorable outcomes instead of strategy, it’s frustrating, rather than educational

3 years ago, Will5925

Inconsistent enforcement

I feel like this game has potential. But there’s several glitches and no way to report them or get help. There’s also “tournaments” that you can register for-but never get accepted into. There’s also clans-but they are pretty much dead too, even the 200+ ones. There’s the inability to really customize some of the rules but that’s okay. Lastly-the dice rolls are beyond random. Every single online match there are the same dice rolls 4x+ in a row but others get ignored entirely (for example 6 gets rolled 4x in a row). Odds are that this will happen at some point. But it happens way too consistently for it to be tolerable. Here’s some example of the glitches. 1-Seen bases placed one space apart. 2-there are times it won’t allow a base to be placed when opposing roads lead up to each other, but other times it will. 3-the harbor master doesn’t always get filled, have had a city and town on ports with no points given. 4-bots can offer trades on your turn but you can’t do it? I paid for the expansion to enter into tournaments which was a mistake. Can’t enter tournaments, deleted the game a few days later.

6 years ago, Astangi75

BE CAREFUL! (Updated)

Update1: Well, once we’ve recovered the option of resetting the password, I really enjoy the game. Will leave it at 4 stars right now. Expensive in app purchases. I bought one of the expansions because that’s the only way of playing against computer generated characters. If not you have to play against human opponents and some times that’s not convenient (wanting to be able to pause the game half way through, for example). Well, after a couple of days, the app asked me for my password. Of course, I didn’t remember and I still don’t remember. I use 1Password and Apple own password storing “app”, but I didn’t this time. Anyway I had seen that they had the option and assumed that I could always reset my password. WRONG!!! They have the option, but it doesn’t work. I wrote to their support email and they told me that the reset password option doesn’t work and there’s nothing they can do. So long story short I just lost $10 and they’re not willing to give me any solution. I find terrible that an app that asks you to pay for some of its “services” in 2018, doesn’t have a functioning option to reset your password or something similar. Yes, I know I should remember my password and that’s my bad, but every other app with the need of a password has a reset password option that actually works. That’s why they ask for your email and a bunch of other info.

1 year ago, TanksMaster

Unrealistic Gameplay (Horrible Algorithm)

You will see reviews talking about how bad the algorithm for the dice is. This is to explain just how bad it is. In the multi player gameplay, the dice are not setup to be “random” but instead the algorithm is set up to make the game competitive. What I mean by this, is that even if you have 3 rookie players playing someone that is a master, the rookies have a really good shot at beating the master. This is because even if you have the best placement and somehow dodge the algorithm and get quite a few points ahead, it will notice you are ahead and start to roll sevens 2, 3, 4 times in a row until you have little to no cards. And it will continue to do this to you until the other players who are behind catch up in points. This is why you will see games with a ridiculously high number of sevens rolled every game. And this just simply does not happen in real life. So, my conclusion of this game is that it is not a strategy game, but a game of luck and overcoming the algorithm set up against you. Do not make any purchases and play the real board game if at all possible.

3 years ago, Give.my.money.back

Really buggy and doesn’t follow the game physics right

There are a lot of issues with this game that would be really easy to fix if the developers cared to try. The board doesn’t set up right (the actual game rules specifying the numbers be put in a specific order) so you end up having areas with 3 6’s and 8’s bunched together which makes the game impossible for anyone who doesn’t get that spot. There also aren’t the proper ratio of development cards meaning there’s just as many monopoly cards as years of plenty as knights as road builders as whatever else which just makes the game extremely frustrating. As for bugs, the main ones I’ve noticed were one that covers up 2/3 of your screen so you can’t actually see the board and one that doesn’t let you place your starting pieces so it then auto places them in terrible spots. Otherwise the game is okay but a bit more frustrating than the real game since you can’t talk to the people face to face.

4 years ago, DrNiiick

Great except...

The dice rolling. I’m sure I’m not the first to say so and I’m certainly not going to be the last. It might be the only thing I dislike about the app as a whole, but it honestly leeches the joy out of the game. I find myself prioritizing how I think the dice rolls will play out based on the board rather than good strategy. Is there 8 on lumber with a lumber port, don’t count on 8’s rolling. Just use the inventor card? I’ll put money it rolls whatever you switched out. Robber get placed on your number guarantee it gets rolled immediately after and probably 2 or three times in a row. How bout some stats? I just played a game where out of the first 30 rolls 15 of them were the same 2 numbers. I’ve been playing this game for years, pre the Catan universe release and I’ve enjoyed a lot of it. One of the few apps I’ve ever been more than happy to purchase. But the dice roll algorithm is utterly broken, I’d even says it’s getting worse and it might push me away. Please don’t let that happen. PLEASE, PLEASE fix this.

10 months ago, BaltoShiba

Version too old - Update not available

Update: I posted this review and miraculously, there is suddenly an update. I am changing my 1 star review back to a 4 star review. Same as everyone else, Since late last week you cannot get in to the game. I upgraded IoS and that seems to be when the problem occurred. I sent a ticket to support, no confirmation it was received or is being resolved. Best time waster game ever, but worthless if you cannot use the app. You cannot play online, and you cannot play in the app, so therefore it is not a game at all, it is an annoyance. I tried reinstalling, and that did not resolve it either. If you love Catan, and have not updated your IoS, don’t update until these guys put out a bug fix for the problem. Otherwise you will be like me, trying over and over again hoping the problem is fixed, and being disappointed each time.

1 year ago, RelientK ninja

Good game, but could be a great game.

I get it that in order to provide a variety of gameplay, the numbers generated are not random. (For example, the dice roll the number shortly after the robber is placed on it.) I particularly don’t like it when a number (includes high probability numbers) doesn’t come up in the first 20 rolls, sometimes not once in a game! And funny thing, it is almost always my number for wood or brick, so you are way behind! - NOT Fun! And I don’t like when a ‘7’ is rolled right before I can go out causing me to give up a winning hand only to lose in the same round by an AI team getting its number come up TWICE by its turn and winning the game! That sure doesn’t feel random. there should be an option to play using a truly random number generator. When playing multiple AI opponents, the programming feels like I am playing four teams written by one programmer. 1) the initial placement of settlements seems like at least one team will block me despite poor placement for itself; and 2) one or more teams will make trades that don’t serve itself well - something no human would willingly do. (There is usually a team with only 3 or 4 points at the end!) Each team should be programmed to win on its own. - NO Alliances among AI teams! (Unless I can play two or more teams to match the AI.) Make a few programming changes and this could be a great game!

3 months ago, Boochie AL 77

Used to love this game

I downloaded this game because I love Catan. There were some features of the game that I did not like (when playing online with other humans, the board never changes. You also have to wait 12 hours before you get a new sun so you can play with the AI players and you have no option to purchase more suns. Also, the dice is not randomized. If you are on a 6 or an 8 hexagon but do not have any on a 2,3,4, etc. expect to see those numbers rolled significantly more). However, I continued to play because as I previously mentioned, I love the board game. I even had all of my friends download it. Over the weekend, the app would not let me open it because it was “outdated”. I went ahead and updated it. It now is saying “find running game” and NEVER loads no matter if I am on WiFi or not. When I try to start a new game, it takes my sun away and makes me wait a whole 12 hours before I go through the same process all over again. I have not been able to play in days and I doubt I will get to play again unless the developers fix it.

2 years ago, Marvellaise

Single Player is Infuriating

I really need this to better. I’ve literally played 100’s of single player games and my family is tired of hearing my apoplectic complaints about the AI rigging. It seems as if the only way the developers could find to make the AI “skillful” is to rig the dice rolling, card stealing and AI targeting. Don’t have a 5 but, AI does? Guarantee it will roll off the hook. Have eight cards? The robber will almost always roll. AI will trade with each other, even against their best interest, but almost never trade with you (half the time they’ll have resource monopoly and steal back what they traded). Seriously, I could go on and on about how this teaming and game advantages are bestowed on AI. What makes no sense though, is AI decision making which can be random and ridiculous at times. Is there no way to make AI smarter and then balance the randomization? It makes this game infuriating and uninteresting. I win games all of the time that I would probably lose to humans, and I lose inexplicably to miracle dice roll runs that defy probability. Uggghh!

3 years ago, pikbrodyG1

This isn’t a good game

(Editors note: I love the board game but I’m talking about the mobile game for this but I love the real life board game) I was only able to get one game in because for one: it doesn’t even let you build a settlement for me and only roads so I have no way to win the game. 2: the AI’s always get the advantage and everyone else has said things already for me. The dice are clearly not random and the dice always go bad on my end and good for the AI, and how you said your fixing the game? I don’t believe it. The game is obviously super glitchy and broken and don’t waste your time playing this game it’s honestly is a bad game and I have only played a bit of a game and everyone else has already been saying bad stuff for me. This game is honestly super buggy and glitchy and I already deleted it within a hour or so of first getting time of playing it. Honestly I can see why they have so many bad reviews and I agree with each one that says bad stuff about the game. And luckily for me somehow the game was free for me so yeah luckily it was and a good thing it was too Becuase this game is horrible

1 month ago, crusoeno

“Find running game…”

I absolutely love the game of Catan, and I have enjoyed many hours of single player play in this game. But almost two weeks ago now, this error message “Find running game…” popped up at the top of the screen, and now no single player game modes will load. I can navigate around the menu/profile/settings, but no game will actually load. Nothing has been done to fix this and I see no way to do it myself. Add this on to the terrible multiplayer experience (major bugs with adding friends, etc.), various crashes, times I’ve been logged out and can’t reset my password… it’s just extremely frustrating that such an amazing (and popular!) game like Catan doesn’t have a well developed or maintained app. I’ve enjoyed the single player gameplay enough to not give the app a 1 star, and the game could easily be a 5 star if developed properly and if issues like the one I have were actually fixed. But I’m clearly not alone in having major issues with this app.

Description

Play your favorite game CATAN anytime and anywhere: the original board game, the card game, the expansions and ‘CATAN – Rise of the Inkas‘, all in one app! After a long voyage of great deprivation, your ships have finally reached the coast of an uncharted island. However, other explorers have also landed on Catan: The race to settle the island has begun! Build roads and cities, trade skillfully and become Lord or Lady of Catan! Go on a journey to the Catan universe, and compete in exciting duels against players from all over the world. The board game classic and the Catan card game bring a real tabletop feeling to your screen! Play with your Catan Universe account on the device of your choice: You can use your login on numerous desktop and mobile platforms! Become part of the huge worldwide Catan community, and compete against players from all over the world, and on all supported platforms. The board game: Play the basic board game in multiplayer mode! Join two of your friends for a maximum of three players and face all the challenges in “Arrival on Catan”. Make things even more exciting by unlocking the full Basegame; the expansions “Cities & Knights” and “Seafarers”, each for up to six players. The special scenario pack containing the scenarios “Enchanted Land” and “The Great Canal” adds even more variety to your games. The game edition ‘Rise of the Inkas‘ is another exciting challenge for you, as your settlements are doomed in their heyday. The jungle swallows the signs of human civilization, and your opponents seize their chance to build their settlement at the location they crave for. The card game: Play the introductory game of the popular 2 player card game “Catan – The Duel” online free of charge or master the free “Arrival on Catan”, to permanently unlock the single player mode against the AI. Get the complete card game as an in-game purchase to play three different theme sets against friends, other fans friends or different AI opponents and submerge yourself into the bustling life on Catan. Features: - Trade – build – settle – Become Lord of Catan! - Play on all your devices with one account. - Faithful to the original version of the board game “Catan”, as well as the card game “Catan – The Duel” (aka “Rivals for Catan”) - Design your own avatar. - Chat with other players and form guilds. - Participate in seasons and win amazing prizes. - Play to earn numerous achievements and unlock rewards. - Get additional expansions and play modes as in-game purchases. - Get started very easily with the comprehensive tutorial. Free-to-play content: - Basic game free matches against two other human players - Introductory game free matches Catan – The Duel against a human player - “Arrival on Catan”: Master the challenges in all areas of the game to get more red Catan suns. - You can use Catan suns to play against the computer. Your yellow suns recharge on their own. ***** Questions or suggestions for improvements: Mail to [email protected] We are looking forward to your feedback! For more information on news and updates: www.catanuniverse.com or visit us on www.facebook.com/CatanUniverse *****