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.

First Catan expansion? Don't worry — the turn you already know survives intact: roll, trade, build. Cities & Knights adds exactly three things to track. A third die now joins every roll, either pushing a shared barbarian ship toward the island or handing out Progress Cards. Your cities earn refined commodities alongside resources, and commodities buy upgrades the way resources buy buildings. And knights are the tax everyone pays: keep at least one fed and active, because when the ship lands, the island defends together — but the least-prepared player pays the bill.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table. This is an expansion: you need a full base Catan set — everything stays in play except the development cards, the Building Cost cards, and the Largest Army card, which are set aside entirely.

• 1 barbarian tile + 1 black barbarian ship — the game's shared doom clock. The tile is a sea track clipped to the coast; the ship advances one space every time the event die shows a ship, and when it reaches Catan the barbarians attack and the whole island settles accounts.
• 3 dice (1 yellow, 1 red, 1 event die with 3 ship and 3 colored city-gate faces) — every turn opens by rolling all three. Yellow + red set production as usual; the event die moves the barbarians or opens a Progress Card window, and the red die's number decides who is eligible to draw.
• 36 commodity cards (12 paper, 12 cloth, 12 coin) — the refined goods only cities produce: paper from forest, pasture gives cloth, mountains give coin. They pay for city improvements, trade like resources, and count against your hand limit on a "7".
• 54 Progress Cards (18 Trade, 18 Politics, 18 Science) — the complete replacement for development cards. You never buy them; the dice hand them out. Effects range from free resources and road building to the Spy and the Bishop — and a few are straight victory points. Hand limit: 4.
• 4 city improvement flip-charts ("city calendars") — one per player: three spiral-bound tracks showing what each of the 5 improvement levels costs in commodities, which red-die numbers pay you Progress Cards, and the special ability unlocked at level 3.
• 24 knight tokens (6 per color — 2 basic, 2 strong, 2 mighty — plus 2 label sheets) — round tokens flipped between an inactive and an active side. Strengths are 1, 2, and 3, and the sum of every active knight on the island is Catan's defense when the barbarians land.
• 12 city walls (3 per color) — square blocks slid under a city for 2 brick each; every wall raises your safe hand limit on a "7" by 2 cards.
• 3 metropolis pieces ("Golden City Gates") — golden arches that fit over a city piece. The first player to a track's 4th improvement level claims that discipline's metropolis: +2 VP and immunity from the barbarians. Only one of each exists — and a rival reaching level 5 first can take it.
• 1 merchant (wooden cone) — enters play through Merchant Progress Cards: it grants 2:1 trade on its hex's resource and is worth 1 VP to whoever currently controls it.
• 6 "Defender of Catan" VP cards — 1 VP each, awarded after every repelled invasion to the player whose active knights contributed the most strength.

The base rhythm — roll, trade, build — remains, but each turn now runs through four expanded steps:

1. Roll all three dice. Nothing may be played before the roll except the Alchemist Progress Card, which lets you choose the production dice instead of rolling them.
2. Resolve the event die. A ship face advances the barbarian ship one space; if it reaches Catan, the invasion resolves at once. Barbarian strength equals every city and metropolis on the island; Catan's defense is the summed strength of every active knight (basic 1, strong 2, mighty 3). If the defense equals or beats the attack, the single player who contributed the most active strength takes a Defender of Catan card worth 1 VP — on a tie, no card is given and each tied player instead draws a Progress Card of their choice. If the barbarians win, every player tied for the least active strength (contributing nothing counts as least) has a city stripped to a settlement — its wall is destroyed too. Players with no cities, or only a metropolis, are immune. Win or lose, the ship returns to the start and all knights flip inactive. A city-gate face opens a Progress Card window: you draw a card of that color if you have improvements in it and the red die shows one of the numbers printed on your flip-chart page — the first level covers 1–2, and each further level adds one more number.
3. Collect production. The yellow + red sum pays out as usual: settlements take 1 resource; a city on fields or hills takes 2 resources; a city on forest, pasture, or mountains takes 1 resource plus 1 matching commodity (paper, cloth, coin). On a 7, everyone over their hand limit discards half — city walls raise that limit — and the roller moves the robber and steals; until the first invasion has resolved, though, the robber stays in the desert and no one steals.
4. Act in any order. Trade with players or the bank (commodities trade exactly like resources); build roads, settlements, cities, and walls; buy city improvements with commodities — level 1 costs 1 of the track's commodity, and each level costs one more. The 3rd level grants a permanent ability: the Trading House (Trade) trades commodities 2:1, the Fortress (Politics) unlocks mighty-knight promotions, the Aqueduct (Science) grants any resource on a roll that pays you nothing (except a 7). The first player to a track's 4th level claims its metropolis (+2 VP); level 5 lets a rival steal it — or lets you lock yours forever. You may also hire a knight for 1 ore + 1 wool, activate one for 1 grain, or promote one for 1 ore + 1 wool. An active knight that wasn't activated this turn may move along your roads, displace a weaker enemy knight, or chase away the robber (steal included). Finally, play any number of Progress Cards.

A stretch of play. Ana rolls 2-3 with a green gate: the ship holds still, and the red 3 pays Beto — his second Science improvement's page shows red dice 1–3 — a green Progress Card. The 5 produces: Ana's city on mountains yields 1 ore + 1 coin, Carla's settlement 1 wool. Ana spends 1 ore + 1 wool to hire a knight on the intersection that blocks Diego's push toward Longest Road, then 1 grain to activate it. Two turns later the ship lands: four cities stand against a defense of 5 — Catan holds, and Carla's mighty knight, 3 of those 5 points, earns her a Defender of Catan card before every knight on the island flips face-down again.

The first player to reach 13 victory points during their own turn immediately wins — there are no tiebreakers, because someone simply crosses the line first. Points come from settlements (1 VP), cities (2 VP), a metropolis (4 VP total, replacing its city's 2), Longest Road (2 VP), each Defender of Catan card (1 VP), the Merchant while you control it (1 VP), and victory-point Progress Cards. Largest Army does not exist in this game.

Strategically, balance your commodity investment across the three tracks rather than ignoring any color — the event die will eventually reward all three, and being locked out of a Progress deck is a real disadvantage. Keep at least one active knight on the board as the ship advances: defense is collective but the punishment is individual, and a single undefended attack that strips a city back to a settlement can cost you two or three turns — while losing your last city also freezes your city improvements until you rebuild one. The metropolis races are where games are decided: being first to a 4th-level improvement is worth as much as a city, and pushing to level 5 makes it theft-proof.