When playing Catan, if you expect to get some victory points by buying development cards, a good thing to know is the probability of getting them.
Or even more usefully, to know how many cards you are expected to draw to get the cards you want.
For the post The 143 ways of winning at Catan – Part II, on how to determine the expected cost of drawing cards, I wrote the following calculator.
How it works
- Enter the desired number of each card type OR the desired number of victory point
- Evaluate the expected cost (expressed in development cards, X3 for resources cards)
- Draw random, or specific cards for you or an opponent
- And see the expected cost for your hands evolve!
- The discounted cost take into account beneficial side effects of cards
Hope you find this useful! And let me know if there is any problem, questions, or if you have suggestions for improvement you would like to see!
Important note: I recently wrote a free Iphone app version with some additional features.
You can find it here: Dev Card Cost calculator
X 0.47 %
X 0.47 %
X 0.47 %
X 0.47 %
X 0.47 %
Knights:
Victory Points:
Years of Plenty:
Road Building:
Monopoly:
Knights:
Victory Points:
Years of Plenty:
Road Building:
Monopoly:
(in development cards)
Expected For Desired:
Final Expected Cost:
(in development cards)
Expected For Desired:
Final Expected Cost:
Some Notes on the calculator
- All the costs are expressed in development cards equivalent.
- If you want to know how many resources cards it represent, multiply by 3!
- The raw cost shows the number of development cards you are expected to buy.
- The discounted cost is with all beneficial cards side-effect taken into account.
- I do not discount for the possible Extra VP here, but it will tell you if you get one.
- The calculator assume that you can use all the Road buildings cards
For all the details behind the calculation, I’m afraid you will have to take a look at the full post: The 143 ways to win at Catan – Part II: The expected cost of victory