Catan Cities and Knights — Rules FAQ

Cities & Knights is the second major expansion to The Settlers of Catan. It layers commodity cards (paper, cloth, coin), city improvements across three tracks, knights that defend Catan, and a barbarian ship that attacks every few turns onto the standard board layout. The base hex board is unchanged.

Three core additions: (1) commodities — upgraded cities on forest/pasture/mountain hexes produce paper/cloth/coin; (2) knights — pieces built on intersections that defend against barbarian attacks and can chase the robber; (3) the barbarian ship — a permanent threat track that triggers a defence check whenever it reaches Catan. Victory threshold goes up from 10 to 13 VP.

A basic knight costs 1 sheep + 1 ore. It is placed on an intersection adjacent to your road network. Knights start inactive — to use them you must spend 1 wheat to activate, after which they can chase the robber, defend against barbarians, or move along your roads.

A barbarian ship sits on a track of seven spaces. Every time a 7 is rolled (replacing the standard robber-mover effect with the C&K defence sequence) or specific events trigger it, the ship advances one space. When it reaches Catan, all active knights tally their strength against the number of cities on the board. If the knights win, the strongest knight-builder gets a Defender of Catan VP card; if they lose, the weakest knight-builder loses a city back to a settlement.

Commodities are a second tier of resource cards: paper (from upgraded forest), cloth (upgraded pasture), and coin (upgraded mountain). Cities adjacent to those terrains produce 1 commodity in addition to their normal 2 resources. Commodities are spent on city improvements.

Three tracks — politics (paper), trade (cloth), science (coin) — with five levels each. Each level grants an ability and counts toward a metropolis. Reaching level 4 in a track lets you flip a settlement into a metropolis worth 2 extra VP, but only one player can hold each metropolis (the highest level on that track).

13 victory points (vs. 10 in base Catan), reflecting that VP sources are more abundant: each metropolis is worth 2, the Defender of Catan card adds VP per successful defence, and progress cards include VP cards.

The robber still exists but moves differently. When a 7 is rolled, the active player resolves the barbarian-ship advance instead of the standard discard-and-rob; the robber moves only when a Bishop progress card is drawn or a barbarian attack succeeds. Knights can chase the robber off a hex in lieu of moving it via a roll.

Yes — the underlying 19-hex board is identical to base Catan. Use the dedicated Cities & Knights generator to produce a balanced random layout with the right meta context.

Yes — the C&K rulebook includes a section on combining with Seafarers. You need both expansion boxes; some published scenarios are designed specifically for the combination. The board layout differs from the standard generator (use a Seafarers map for that combination).

Three decks — politics (yellow), trade (green), science (blue) — with cards drawn whenever an upgraded improvement is built or specific tiles produce. Cards include Diplomat (move someone's road), Engineer (build a city wall free), Inventor (move two number tokens), Constitution (free VP), and many others. Progress cards replace base Catan's development cards.

A city wall costs 2 brick. Each wall raises your hand-size limit by 2 (from 7 to 9 with one wall, up to 13 with three) so 7-rolls discard fewer cards. Each city can have one wall.

Plan for 90–150 minutes for 3–4 players, longer for 5–6 player games. The 13-VP target and the layered improvement tracks add depth and length compared to base Catan. Most groups find the first C&K session runs longer than subsequent ones because the layered rules take a turn or two to internalise — particularly the barbarian-ship advance interactions with knight activation and the metropolis tie-break rules.

When the barbarian ship reaches Catan, total all active knights on all players' boards (basic = 1, strong = 2, mighty = 3 strength). Compare against the number of cities currently in play (each city = 1 strength for the barbarians). If knight strength ≥ city count, the barbarians are repelled and the player who contributed the single greatest knight-strength receives a "Defender of Catan" VP card (ties: no card is awarded). If knight strength < city count, the barbarians win and the player with the lowest knight-strength contribution loses one of their cities (which reverts to a settlement). After the resolution, all knights deactivate, the barbarian ship resets to the start of its track, and the cycle begins again.

Yes. A basic knight (strength 1) can be promoted to a strong knight (strength 2) for the cost of 1 sheep + 1 ore, and a strong knight can be promoted to a mighty knight (strength 3) for the same cost, but only if you have built the politics-track improvement that unlocks mighty knights. Promoted knights deactivate when used and must be re-activated with 1 wheat like any knight. Promotion is the single most important investment in C&K once you have at least one knight on the board — strong knights are roughly twice as efficient per turn as basic ones.

The Diplomat (politics-track progress card) lets you remove an opponent's open road segment — a road segment not directly connecting two of their own settlements or cities. The opponent does not get the road resources back. The removed road segment can then be replaced by a road of yours, paid normally. Diplomat is one of the strongest cards in the politics deck because it can dismantle a longest-trade-route holder's chain in a single play.

Only one player can hold each metropolis. The first player to reach level 4 in a track claims the metropolis and flips one of their cities into the metropolis (2 extra VP, immune to barbarian attack). If another player later reaches level 5 in the same track, the metropolis transfers to them — the original holder's metropolis reverts to a regular city and the new holder flips one of theirs. Ties at the same level do not transfer the metropolis; the original holder keeps it.

Drawn face-down into the player's hand. Most progress cards can be played on the holder's turn (specific timing varies by card — some are "play immediately when drawn," some require the appropriate phase). Some progress cards must be revealed and discarded when drawn if the holder's situation makes them unplayable. Victory Point progress cards (one per track) are held face-down in hand until the final reveal, exactly like base Catan's VP development cards.

Aqueduct is the level-3 science-track improvement: on any production roll that yields no resources to you, you may instead take one resource of your choice from the supply. In practice this turns dry production rounds into reliable income; over a 90-minute game it can add 6–10 resource cards to your total. Many tournament players target the Aqueduct as their first major improvement investment because it sharply reduces the variance of bad-luck production stretches.

They don't — there are no commodity-specific 2:1 ports in C&K. The standard resource-specific 2:1 ports (wood, brick, wheat, sheep, ore) trade only their named resource, not the commodity it would otherwise upgrade into. Commodities (paper, cloth, coin) can only be traded at the standard 4:1 generic rate or 3:1 with a generic port. This is a deliberate design choice that keeps commodity-track investment slow and prevents trade-route holders from converting commodity surpluses into city improvements at favourable rates.