How to play Catan: Cities & Knights

Catan: Cities & Knights is an expansion by Klaus Teuber that layers three interlocking systems on top of the base game: a barbarian horde that threatens the island every time players neglect their military, a commodity economy that lets you upgrade your cities into mighty metropolises, and three decks of Progress Cards that replace the base game's development cards. It requires the standard Catan set to play and is not a standalone game.

Where base Catan rewards the player who builds the widest network, Cities & Knights rewards the player who manages depth — choosing when to invest ore and wool into knights, when to channel commodities into city improvements, and how to time each decision against the ever-advancing barbarian ship. The target rises from 10 to 13 victory points, and almost every point of that extra distance has to be earned through the new systems.

The base turn structure — roll, trade, build — remains, but each step is significantly expanded.

Roll phase: Roll two production dice as normal, plus a third event die. The event die shows either a barbarian-ship face or a colored gate (yellow = Trade, green = Science, blue = Politics). - A barbarian face advances the barbarian ship one space toward Catan. When it arrives, compare the total strength of all active knights against the number of cities on the board — if the total strength meets or exceeds the city count, the player with the most active knight strength earns the Defender of Catan VP; if it fails, the player(s) with the least active knight strength each lose a city (it reverts to a settlement). All knights then deactivate, win or lose. - A colored gate face lets any player whose city-improvement level in that color is at least as high as the number shown on the red production die draw a Progress Card of that color.

Cities and commodities: Cities now produce differently. A city beside forest, pasture, or mountains produces 1 resource and 1 matching commodity — paper (forest), cloth (pasture), coin (mountains). A city on fields or hills still produces 2 of that resource and no commodity. Settlements produce 1 resource as usual.

City improvements: Spend commodities to advance your three improvement tracks. Reaching level 3 in a track lets you upgrade one of your cities into a metropolis (worth 4 VP — two more than the city it replaces — and immune to barbarian attack); higher levels unlock powerful abilities.

Knights: Build a knight for 1 ore + 1 wool — it starts inactive. Pay 1 grain to activate it. Active knights defend against the barbarian, can displace the robber, and can block opponents' road expansions by occupying a key intersection. Each active knight has a strength rating: a basic knight counts as 1, a strong knight as 2, and a mighty knight as 3 — this is what is totalled when the barbarians arrive. Upgrade knights (basic → strong → mighty) by spending additional resources for greater defensive strength.

Progress Cards: These replace the base development cards entirely. You earn them through the event die and use them for a wide range of powerful one-time effects across the three colored decks.

The first player to reach 13 victory points on their turn wins. Points come from settlements (1 VP), cities (2 VP), metropolises (4 VP each, replacing the city), a Defender of Catan card (1 VP), Longest Road (2 VP), and any victory-point Progress Cards.

Strategically, balance your commodity investment across tracks rather than ignoring any one color — the event die will eventually reward all three, and being locked out of Progress Cards in a color is a real disadvantage. Keep at least one active knight on the board as the barbarian ship advances; a single undefended attack that strips a city back to a settlement can set you back two or three turns of progress.