Thank you for playing, sharing feedback, and helping us improve Colonist year after year. We entered 2025 focused on one thing: making Colonist more accessible, competitive, and social.

By the end of the year, Colonist is faster and cleaner across web, mobile, and Discord platforms. We also expanded how players discover games, compete, and join community events.

With mobile games growing up to 65% of all games, mobile UX and performance became the center of our roadmap. Our mobile version allows playing Colonist anywhere, anytime with no setup required making our game super accessible.

If you only remember three things from 2025:

• We updated every single week: 52 releases
• We launched a major new matchmaking mode: Shuffle.
• We did a complete redesign of our Home Page.
• We scaled competitive play through Colonist Championship 2025, powered by 114 tournament hosts in 37 countries.

Yearly growth between 2021=>2025:

• Yearly Active Players: +38%
• Monthly Active Players: +46%

2023–2024 active players include a one-time, low-retention Discord distribution.

How players actually play:

• 36% play ranked games
• 30% play bot games
• 24% play room games
• 10% play casual games

Highlights shipped in 2025

For all updates, see Patch Notes.

Community and Events

Colonist Championship 2025

Championship brought community-run qualifiers into a global finals ecosystem. The host network was a core part of that effort, with 114 total qualifier hosts supporting qualifiers worldwide.

Weekend Tournaments

Throughout the year, recurring events helped create a consistent competition window and a straightforward way for players to participate without needing to coordinate large brackets themselves.

Colonist Retreat (Istanbul)

We are a remote team spread across multiple countries, so getting everyone in one place is rare. In 2025, we met in Istanbul for our company retreat. We used the time to plan, review what we shipped this year, and reset for what’s next. The best part was meeting Colonist players in Istanbul and putting faces to the names we see every day in-game and in the community.

Fun Data

• Longest game played: 81h 42min
• Most played mode: 1v1
• Friends Added: 312K

2026 Direction

In 2026, we’ll stay focused on improvements that will make Colonist better every month:

• Mobile-first experience: faster performance, cleaner UI, fewer taps, and stronger stability.
• Competitive play at every level: a bigger, better Championship 2026 with more weekend tournaments.
• Communities first: improved support for communities, organizers, and creators that keep Colonist alive.
• New Modes: we have dopamine soup cooking in the kitchen 🍜😉.

Want to help us accomplish these goals? We're looking to expand our team. Join Colonist now! If you have friends, refer them!

• 2024 Summary
• 2023 Summary
• 2022 Summary
• 2021 Summary

Hey settlers,

We wanted to share something that has been brewing behind the scenes—and you might have already noticed it: Colonist is slowly shifting toward a portrait-only experience on mobile phones.

And yep—we’ve heard you. Loud and clear.

Some of our most loyal players have reached out asking, "Why can't I rotate my phone anymore?" or "Is landscape mode coming back?"

So here’s the honest story, straight from the team

We’re a Small Independent Team

Colonist.io started as a passion project—and it still is. We're a small, dedicated team focused on building the best digital Catan experience possible. Every design decision we make is carefully weighed against our time, resources, and the ability to iterate fast without breaking your game.

Why Portrait Mode?

1. It’s Just Faster to Play

In our internal testing, portrait games on mobile are completed up to 30% faster than landscape ones. Why? The UI is cleaner, interactions are quicker, and it's easier to keep track of your hand, your roads, and the chat.

2. One-Handed Play is a Game-Changer

Let’s be real—most of us play while multitasking. Whether you're waiting in line, lying in bed, or sneakily playing during meetings (you didn’t hear that from us), portrait mode makes it easier to play with one hand.

3. Fewer Bugs, Better Experience

Supporting both landscape and portrait sounds good on paper—but it doubles the work. It means double the layouts, double the edge cases, and double the bugs. By focusing on one orientation, we can fix issues quicker, ship sooner, and improve the game more meaningfully.

4. The Data Backs It Up

• 95% of mobile games today are portrait-first. That’s what players expect.
• Over 92% of Colonist mobile games in the past 3 months have been in portrait mode.

So... Is Landscape Mode Going Away?

Eventually, yes. While it’s still technically available in some devices right now, we want to be upfront: landscape mode will be deprecated from mobile phones in the near future.

We know it can be challenging to adjust to such change, especially if you've gotten used to a certain playstyle. This wasn’t an easy decision. But it’s the one that lets us focus, build faster, and keep delivering a smoother and more intuitive game.

We’re Listening

Thank you if you’ve shared feedback with us—we’ve read every message and discussed it thoroughly, making sure concerns were not ignored. This decision wasn’t made in isolation; it’s based on observing how you play, understanding what works, and identifying where we can make the game even better.

In upcoming updates, we will continue working to improve the Portrait mode experience.

The “broken” dice algorithm is a highly debated topic. So we researched this comprehensively and we were surprised by the results!

“The odds are way too low to roll a 🎲6 three times in a row!”

“Look at this distribution, it’s nuts, what are the odds of rolling 🎲4 three times more than 🎲5?”

“Wow, I just played a game and the 🎲7 almost didn’t roll!”

Does this sound like you? We heard you!

Read more about our random dice algorithm.

Are the dice broken?

The “broken” dice algorithm is a highly debated topic. So we researched this comprehensively and we were surprised by the results!

2 Common issues players run into:

1. Roll Streaks (Example: rolling 🎲4 multiple times in a row)
2. Skewed distribution (Example: 🎲3 rolling way more than 🎲5)

“If there are 50 rolls in a game, the chances any number is rolled 3 times consecutively at any points in the game is 3.8%. However, it seems like it happens every other game.”- Source

At your request, we revisited our algorithm and this is what we’ve found...

57% chance to roll the same number three times in a row...

To properly address why this is the case we need to consider the probability of rolling a 🎲2 three times in a row OR a 🎲3 three times in a row… OR a 🎲12 three times in a row then sum all the probabilities together. After running the numbers, for a 50 turn game the chance to roll a number three times in a row is 57%.

Yeah, we were surprised too! The statement "happens every other game" was quite correct.

If you’re curious on how we got to this answer, we broke it down.

Does Colonist dice match expected results?

Next we compared 1 million Colonist.io simulations to the expected results. This is what we found:

The Colonist.io dice actually has a ~1-2% lower total probability of rolling triples than expected. This is close enough to mimic real dice.

Try it yourself

Want to see how dice rolls play out in practice?

We’ve created an open tool for simulating dice rolls, available at this link. You can input the number of rolls and instantly see a chart showing how often sums from 2 to 12 appear. This helps understand how randomness works in the game Colonist.

How to Use

The tool is easy to use. After visiting this link, you’ll see an interface in the fourth block with a field to enter the number of rolls and a "Generate" button.

This process helps visualize why, for example, the chance of rolling the same number three times in a row seems high (57% in a 50-roll game), though it’s normal for random events.

We recommend starting with 50 rolls to see a typical distribution for a standard game, then increasing to 200 or 1000 to notice how the distribution becomes more even.

We hope this tool helps you better understand the mechanics of dice rolls in Colonist and dispels doubts about "broken" dice. Use it to experiment with different numbers of rolls and see how randomness works in practice.

Technical Details

The code is available for review, showing how it generates random rolls (1 to 6 for each die) and sums them to produce results from 2 to 12. CSS styles the interface, including buttons and charts, while JavaScript handles the simulation logic.

61% chance of rolling non-ideal distributions

To measure the probability of rolling non-ideal distributions, we used a statistical value called Goodness of Fit. The values span a range from 0 to 1 where a perfect distribution approaches a value of 1. There are more complex explanations but this is a concept more easily visualized. Note below the increasing normality as we increase the Goodness of Fit:

So what is the average Goodness of Fit for a standard game?

This means 61% of the games have an awful dice graph. Surely we must fix this.

It takes >200 turns to get a good fit

More competitive Colonist players are often quoted saying “This is randomness, games on Colonist aren’t long enough to get an even distribution.” After crunching the numbers, we’ve worked out that games would only be expected to be evenly distributed after 200 turns! That is roughly the length of 4 games!

Implementing the Balanced Dice

While some of the most competitive among you argue that random dice are at the core of the game, this doesn’t change the fact that a large subset of you are frustrated by what can easily be perceived as a lack of randomness. So, as game developers, it was important to us to provide a new optional dice algorithm, Balance Dice, that more closely matches expectations. Don’t worry though, the original Random Dice remains untouched!

Using Dice Deck to control distribution

Dice Deck is a card deck with all 36 combinations found in a 2 dice system. Instead of rolling the dice you draw a card. After the card is drawn it is discarded. This provides an easy way to create a balanced distribution. The problem with a Dice Deck is that it creates a system that is easily countable. To lower the predictability (Goodness of Fit) it is possible to change the point at which the deck is reshuffled:

Above you can see that by modifying the minimum number of cards left in the Dice Deck before reshuffling, it is possible to tune the Goodness of Fit expected from the algorithm to closely match an ideal double dice distribution. The range between 10-15 provides a good balance between Goodness of Fit and predictability.

Dice Deck and Roll Streaks

We got a new problem. Though it effectively controls distribution, the dice deck doesn’t lower the probability of Roll Streaks by much. Also, the probability of rolling doubles remains constant despite dice deck configuration.

With such a large percentage of you complaining about dice streaks, a simple Dice Deck would only solve part of the problem.

Weighted Dice Deck to reduce the odds of rolling streaks

The only way to reduce the odds of rolling streaks was to lower the odds of rolling the same number consecutively. With this goal in mind a truly tunable algorithm could be created. In the following graph we reduce probability of recent rolls from 0 to 50 and see how it effects "Average doubles per game":

So the final solution had to be a combination of a simple Dice Deck to control distribution paired with a weighted random number generator (RNG) to reduce the probability of Roll Streaks.

Final Balanced Dice Stats

With some fine tuning we landed on the following solution:

The Colonist Balanced Dice algorithm uses a single Dice Deck with reshuffling at 12 cards remaining and a 30% probability reduction of rolling the same number 2 times in a row. This increases the average Goodness of Fit from 0.25 to 0.8 and decreases the number of doubles per game from 5.43 to 3.75.

The final code:  Link

The results

Once we made the changes, we asked our play testers to send in example games played with Random Dice and Balanced Dice:

• Random Dice
• Balanced Dice

All play testers advocating for Balanced Dice were satisfied with the end results :)

Go try the new Balanced Dice option on Colonist and tell us what you think on our Discord channel!

P.S. Checkout all the data presented in this article.

Hi everyone.
On May 4, our website, mobile app, and Discord activity were all down for about 6 hours. We understand that this is unacceptable, and we sincerely apologize for this incident.

What Happened

Our domain provider (the company that helps people reach our website) was doing some planned maintenance.
During this, some settings that tell the internet how to find Colonist were reset. Because of this, no one could access our site or services.

How We Fixed It

Once we realized what was wrong, our team acted fast.
We reached out to our provider and also updated the settings on our end. It took a little time for the internet to catch up to the changes (which can take up to 48 hours), but by the evening, most people were able to get back in.

What We’re Doing So It Doesn’t Happen Again

We’ve already started making changes to avoid this in the future:

• Moving our website setup to a more reliable provider
• Improving tools to catch problems faster

Better Communication Next Time

We also fell short on communication. During the outage, we didn’t do a good enough job keeping everyone informed.
While we responded to messages in Discord, we failed to communicate broadly across all platforms.
To ensure this doesn’t happen again, we’re putting better systems in place. Moving forward, we’ll keep everyone informed with timely updates across all our platforms whenever there’s something worth sharing.

Thanks again for your patience and support. We’re working hard to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Colonist Team

Hey Colonist Community,

This is our 6th year live! Thank you for your ongoing support. Your passion and feedback fuels our mission to create the ultimate online settling experience.

• In 2024, we grew our playerbase by 1,000,000+
• Colonist also became the largest repository of Catan game data, logging over 3,000,000 monthly Catan matches and saving 600GB of data—giving us complete insight into every game.

Recap of 2024

Big Features

We built some of the most requested features by our players:

• Game Replays
• Many trade improvements including Open Ended Trades
• Auto-reconnection
• Bot difficulty levels
• Improved friends feature

In addition to the above features, we added:

• Beginner mode
• Mobile Discord Activity
• Countless mobile app improvements
• Notification panel
• Gifting Memberships

Development Stats

We went from updating every 2 weeks, to every week! With our new schedule we released 52 new versions.

This leads to different kinds of comparisons, to show the impact of our work:

This shows that making changes, improving things, and fixing even small annoyances in the game is worth it. - Kovarex

Colonist Social Stats

Our attention has primarily been on the game but our Discord and Reddit communities have been growing at a solid pace!

We've also started uploading content to our Youtube channel.

We hosted our 4th Colonist Con! Watch it on YouTube.

Colonist Community Stats

We love seeing our players post video and highlights. Here’s a look at some of their growth this year:

• The Catan community is growing a lot. Especially Reddit.
• This is not an exhaustive list of the community, only the most popular ones.

2025 Plans

Here is our public to-do list. This year, our primary focus will be to double down on enhancing the user experience and making the entire experience more enjoyable across all of our platforms, especially mobile!

Want to help us accomplish these goals? We're looking to increase the size of our team. Join Colonist now! If you have friends, refer them!

• 2023 Summary
• 2022 Summary
• 2021 Summary
• 2020 Summary

Ever feel like your friends and family always gang up on you in Catan? Looking for a new way to enjoy the game without the usual drama?

Even if you're already a seasoned Colonist.io player, transitioning from in-person Catan to the online version comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. This digital platform offers the classic Settlers of Catan experience with added convenience, global competition, and a surprising amount of collaboration.

Ready to dominate the online arena? Here’s your quick guide to enhancing your Colonist.io experience:

1. Sharpen Your Skills vs Bots:
Even if you're familiar with the game, practicing in “Beginner Mode” or with easy/medium Bots can help you refine your strategies and get comfortable with the nuances of the digital interface. This is also a great way to teach friends and family how to play online.

Tip #1: Focus on Resource Balance:
During your practice games, aim to build settlements on numbers that have high production (like 6 & 8). This will give you more flexibility in trading and development.

2. Master the Interface:
If you haven't already, take some time to familiarize yourself with resource management, real-time trading, and strategic robber placement. These features will become second nature as you continue to play.

Tip #2: Utilize the Trade Menu:
Don't be shy about using the trade menu! Clearly propose your desired trades (e.g., 1 Wheat for a Brick and an Ore) and see what offers come in. The real-time chat allows for quick negotiation and can significantly enhance your gameplay experience.

Adapting to the Online Social Game:

Online Catan presents a unique social dynamic. While friendly banter is encouraged, keep your text chat concise and focused. Long-winded messages can slow down the game.

Tip #3: Be Mindful of Chat Etiquette:
Use emojis or short phrases to express emotions ("Good trade!" or "Bummer about the robber!"). Avoid negativity or accusations in chat, as it can sour the online experience for everyone.

The Nuances of Online Play:

One interesting aspect of online Catan is the rise of "extortion." Unlike the classic game where the robber can only steal resources, online players might offer non-blocking or non-stealing placements in exchange for a specific resource.

Tip #4: Counter Extortion with Collaboration:
If someone tries to extort you, consider proposing a collaborative trade. Offer to help them build a road or army in exchange for the resource you need. This can be a win-win situation and build alliances.

Join the Colonist.io Community:

That's just the beginning!

Make sure to join the Colonist.io Discord, introduce yourself, and learn tips in the #Strategy channel - https://discord.gg/colonist

So, what are you waiting for? Gather your resources, fire up Colonist.io, and get ready to conquer the online Catan world!

Written by CellyK

Making friends is great, but winning at Catan is infinitely greater.

In this post I’ll give you three mischievous tactics to add to your arsenal which can benefit you immensely when the time comes.

1. Extortion or ‘No Block’

If you’ve played enough Colonist games you’ve probably come across people on the chat saying things like “ore for NB?”

This is not your opponents offering to give you a Ninja Bunny, but instead extorting you: if you give them the material they’re asking for, they will not place the robber on you.

NBs are a dangerous tool for a few reasons:

• The deal is not binding
• Blocking that player might be more valuable for you than the trade itself
  

However, if you really want to block someone but want to get a specific resource, you can resort to a NS: non-steal.

If you’re lucky and it makes sense on the board, you’ll be able to trade the resource you want in exchange for not stealing from that player but still blocking them.

This tactic is pretty common in Colonist games, but I wanted to share it to show you how to gain some flexibility and leverage when you roll a 7 or even when using a knight card.

So now let’s move into some sneakier strategies.

2. The Cold-Hearted Plow

One of the most frustrating elements of this game is when you’re racing someone for a settlement and they beat you to it.

Not only does it suck because you don’t get the settlement, but you also lose so much momentum, particularly if it’s at the beginning.

So how great would it be if you could ensure ‘plowing’ your opponents?

Something we often don’t think about when placing our settlements is the materials we’ll get from our second placement.

However, these materials could come in extremely handy when faced with a position where you might be racing someone.

Imagine you’re racing someone or contemplating placing a spot likely to be contested.

If your second placement was on a spot with both wood and brick, you’ll be guaranteed starting with a road which will enable you to win the race.

This is especially useful if you’re rolling before the opponent you’re racing, as it  essentially makes sure that you’ll win that spot.

But this tool can be used even if your opponent plays before you, it’s just slightly riskier depending on what materials they got from their second settlement.

So have fun torturing some innocent souls with this tactic.

Now let’s move on to the most evil of them all.

3. The Infamous Pre-Monopoly Trade

The monopoly card. We all love drawing it and we all absolutely hate when it’s used against us.

You’re saving up your resources religiously and finally you get enough wood to trade 4:1 for the wheat you need to build a settlement.

But right before you, boom. Your opponent monopolies the wood and it seems like the floor just fell from beneath you.

It sucks and yet it’s one of the most fun features of the game.

Now, what sucks even more and is even more fun when you’re the one doing it is getting extra resources for free.

This is how it goes:

1. You’re planning on monopolying a resource which is abundant on the board and which you have some of, let’s say ore.
2. You offer your ore for some other resource (you even do 2:1 or more if they don’t initially take it)
3. You get as many resources as you can for your ore
4. Everyone is happy
5. Then you monopoly ore.
   

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Well there you have it, three tactics to add to your arsenal that can get you some extra resources, momentum, and, most importantly, will win you some games and make you some enemies.


Written by Sergio Sastre

Hey Colonist Community,

This is our 5th year! Thank you for your ongoing support. Your passion and feedback fuels our mission to create the ultimate online settling experience.

• In 2023, we grew our playerbase by 1,000,000+
• Colonist became a multiplatform game by launching on Mobile and Discord Activities

Recap of 2023

We started using average numbers for Monthly Active Players. Our best month, December, saw 1.3M Monthly Active Players. We also had a huge Discord Activity launch that same month.

Big Features

We built some of the most requested features:

1. Mobile App on iOS & Android!
2. Revamped trade system
3. Added new keyboard shortcuts
4. Karma filter setting for room games
5. Fullscreen gameplay

In addition to the above features, we:

• Translated the game to 30 languages
• Added Apple & Discord login options
• Added Hover Mechanics: Click on the board to build

Development Stats

We went from updating every 2 weeks, to every week! With our new schedule we released 35 new versions.

This leads to different kinds of comparisons:

This shows that making changes, improving things, and fixing even small annoyances in the game is worth it. - Kovarex

Colonist Social Stats

Our attention has primarily been on the game but Discord and Reddit have been growing at a solid pace!

We hosted our 3rd Colonist Con! Watch it on YouTube.

Colonist Community Stats

We love seeing our players post video and highlights. Here’s a look at some of their growth this year:

• The Catan community is growing a lot. Especially Reddit.
• DandyDrew came out of nowhere and placed himself as the 3rd top Youtube channel in his first year.
• This is not an exhaustive list of the community, only the most popular ones.

2024 Plans

Here is our public to-do list. Our primary focus this year will be to create a more welcoming platform for new players. We've seen that many players are interested in playing Colonist but don't know what Catan is. We want to address this problem and make the game easier to learn.

Some of the ways we plan to do this is:

• Adding a Beginner Mode
• Finishing mobile version
• Addressing issues raised by the community

Want to help us accomplish these goals? We're looking to increase the size of our team. Join Colonist now!

If you have friends, refer them. We give $2K referral rewards!

• 2022 Summary
• 2021 Summary
• 2020 Summary

We dug into the data and found that a two-seven streak occurs 1.6 times per game. Even worse, three-seven streaks happen in a staggering 70% of games, practically every other match! Do the math: with an average of 15,000 1v1 games per day, that's:

• 75 players experiencing an unfair eight-seven streak.
• 165 players struggling with a dominant seven-streak advantage for their opponent.
• Nearly 5,000 players facing a four-seven streak daily.

The 7 Imbalance

But wait, there's more! Even with an algorithm designed to avoid streaks, a seven imbalance can still rear its ugly head. Imagine this scenario:

Yikes! In this situation, your opponent hoarded 75% of all sevens, leaving you at a significant disadvantage. Let's dive into actual data

Only 30% of our games have an even split of sevens. If we do the math like before, 100 players each day only get 10% of all the sevens rolled. So, in a game with 10 sevens, you only rolled one!

Dynamic Seven Adjustments

So, here's the fix: before each Balanced Dice roll, we fine-tune the probability of rolling a seven based on whose turn it is.

• If you're on a seven streak, the chance of you rolling another seven decreases
• Likewise, if your opponent is on a winning seven streak, it becomes less likely for the sevens to roll in their favor.

Additionally, we keep track of the overall seven distributions throughout the game. Ideally, in a two-player match, each player should have roughly 50% of the sevens. Any deviation from this balance triggers an adjustment:

1. We calculate the difference between the ideal and actual seven ownership.
2. We translate this difference into a percentage.
3. This percentage is then added to the "streak adjustment" mentioned earlier.
4. Voila! The final probability of rolling a seven is now perfectly balanced, no matter who's winning or losing.

The results

Look at these results. We can not only reduce the chance of streaks, but also make sure each player gets the same number of total seven rolls.

Final Code: link

Remember, balanced gameplay is at the heart of Colonist.io, and we're constantly refining our algorithms to ensure fair and exciting matches, especially in those intense 1v1’s. So, roll on, colonists, and may the sevens (and all other numbers) be ever in your favor!

Feel free to participate in our Discord to tell us what you like and don’t like!

Colonist Team

Colonist is under scheduled maintenance. During this 60-minute period, the website will be temporarily unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding and patience.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact our support team on our Discord server.

Thank you for your continued support.

Colonist Team.

Grab some friends and hop on a Discord call for a new way to play Colonist!

What Is Colonist?

Colonist is the most popular online alternative to the wildly popular board game Settlers of Catan. In Colonist, players trade, steal, settle, and play powerful development cards to take over the island!

Your goal is to be the first player to reach 10 Victory Points by building settlements, cities, and competing for other win conditions such as the Longest Road and Largest Army!

Colonist can be played on over 15 exciting maps that each offer unique challenges and gameplay scenarios. Definitely check out the available expansions such as Seafarers or Cities & Knights to spice up your game!

How Can I Play Colonist on Discord?

To play a game of Colonist on Discord, you need to start a Discord Activity. You can find instructions on how to start a Discord Activity here.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask in our Discord Server!

Starting a Game

Select Multiplayer to play against others in your voice call, or play against the AI in Single Player mode.

In the Multiplayer lobby, choose your preferred game mode, map, and scroll down to customize advanced settings! When everyone is ready, click "Start Game" to begin settling. You’re ready to play!

Choose your starting settlements, and you can begin trading, stealing, and building your way to victory!

To view the resource cost associated with each action, hover over the build options at the bottom of the screen. For further information, you can consult the rulebook located in the top left corner or watch our tutorial video!

Colonist on Discord VS Colonist.io

There are a few small differences when playing Colonist as a Discord Activity or on the Colonist.io website:

- Profile and game history are only accessible on Colonist.io
- Ranked game mode and leaderboards are only accessible on Colonist.io
- Discord is completely ad-free!

Colonist on Discord FAQ

Q: Can my existing Colonist account be linked to Discord?

A: Yes! Your account will be automatically linked, so any items or subscriptions will carry over

Q: Where can I learn more about the rules of the game?

A: Check out the Colonist FAQ Blog Post.

Q: Where can I report bugs and problems with the game?

A: You can submit a bug report by going to https://discord.gg/colonist.

We are looking for passionate, dependable individuals to join our team:

• Work on your own time; we are fully remote and asynchronous! 😎
• We have team members from all over the world! 🌎
• Learn fast in a hands-on environment where YOU will lead projects! 💪
• Contribute to a game that players love 🎲

🎉 Fill out this short form and we will contact you when a suitable role opens!  🎉
https://colonist.io/careers/interested

• Whether you are a fully-fledged gaming professional or a student, we want to hear from you
• If you think you have a skill that will benefit Colonist, don’t hesitate to apply!

📬 Check which roles we are hiring for RIGHT NOW! 📬
https://colonist.io/careers

Want to meet some of the team and hear about our exciting upcoming projects?
Watch Colonist Con 2023 on Youtube! 📺

📈 Check out the 2022 summary to learn more about our growth and future ambitions! 📈

Colonist Con is an annual live stream where you can meet the Colonist team, hear about the latest updates for the platform, and watch some of the greatest Catan players ever battle it out in an exhibition game.

Colonist.io was founded by two brothers who wanted to connect with their family by playing Settlers of Catan online. There was no good way to get their fix back in 2017... so they built it themselves.

Since then, brothers Demi “Demiculus” Yilmaz and Goktug “Esqarrouth” Yilmaz have built the company to over 10 full-time team members, and over one million active monthly users.

Colonist provides a platform for casual and professional players alike. Our leaderboards are the most important way that the best Catan players across the world measure their skill.

Our mission is to continue to be the industry standard for online Settlers of Catan, as well continuing to build the Catan community.

Meet the Team

Colonist Con was hosted this year by Jack “Ushpuppy” Usher. Ushpuppy is a long-time member of the online Catan community , and often ranks highly on the Colonist leaderboards in his own right. We even got a glimpse of the ‘real’ Ushpuppy!

This year’s stream gave the Colonist community an opportunity to meet the team behind the game. Co-founders Demi and Goku gave us an insight into the history of the company and how it grew from a black and white prototype to now facilitating up to 100k games a day!

We met Rob Schwartz and Devyesh Tandon, who are leading new platform development for Colonist. Later on we met the lead developer Jeff d’Eon, who is so dedicated that he builds Colonist on weekends.

We also caught up with London-born, German-speaking Florida man Paul Lorenzen who leads recruiting at Colonist. Paul hinted at future openings to watch out for and shared his thoughts on working at Colonist.

Goku spoke about the main focus of the company this year: growing the playerbase. His mission for the platform is to make it as accessible to new players as possible. At Colonist, every aspect of the development process is centered around making the experience better for players.

The Exhibition Match

Enter the most anticipated event of Colonist Con: The star-studded Exhibition Match.

We assembled some of the best players to ever play Settlers of Catan and pitted them in a match to the death (or 10 victory points, whatever comes first).

Introducing the one and only Dylan “Dylighted” Lu. Dylighted is currently the biggest Catan content creator, and has worked closely with the Colonist team to improve the product for years now. The community has affectionately dubbed him the “slowest man to take a turn” in the history of Catan.

Against him was recently crowned US National champion Griffin Burstyn aka 'Griff1n', Brazilian National Champion Felipe Maranha aka ‘Shanks’, and Australian Champion Elliott Yap aka ‘Cooldool’.

To see who came out on top in the much-anticipated Exhibition Match, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QZL6VrKS0E

We Know How Important the Colonist Community is

The Colonist team knows how important the community is. We always want to hear your suggestions. Join the Discord to connect with our team directly: https://discord.onl/colonist-io/

If you think you have what it takes to join the colonist team, we are now hiring: https://colonist.io/careers

Colonist.io is the best way to play Settlers of Catan for free online, and the ranked 1v1 game mode is a thrilling, fast-paced alternative to the 4 player base game.

I am David George, also known as Davbav. I was the #1 Ranked 1v1 Player Worldwide (for a total of 4 hours) last season, and finished the season ranked 30th and 33rd, on 2 accounts. I also won 19/24 of my games on the final day of the season.

RULES

The 1v1 game mode on Colonist.io has a number of differences to the 4 Player Base Game. Most notably, there are only 2 players, Friendly Robber is On, Dice are Balanced, game-speed is set to Very Fast, win condition is set at 15 Victory Points, and you can safely hold up to 9 cards in your hand without 7ing out.

1v1 FUNDAMENTALS

• You have a maximum of 13 points to build with all 5 Settlements and 4 Cities. This means you can’t win without Army, Road, or multiple Victory Points. You also can’t win without a City.
• Play as much as you can! 1v1 allows for experimentation at a higher frequency than 4P due to how quick the games are. There are skills and tactics necessary in 1v1 that you will rarely or never encounter in a 4 player game.
• Be wary of your opponent. Just as you should aim to make the game more difficult for your opponent, they will surely look for opportunities to slow down your progress. Do what you can to prevent that, while capitalizing wherever possible against your opponent.

PLACEMENTS

Placements (including starting roads)  have a HUGE impact on the game. 1v1 games are primarily decided by placements to the extent that a misplay or oversight in the placement phase often results in a resignation.

• Consider resource scarcity, Ports, City quality, and production in that order.
• If there isn’t a clear dominant Ore, Wheat ,or Brick position, look for the Ports that will allow a player to gain a long-term advantage as production increases.

Due to the lack of trading, you are 100% self-sufficient, and must figure out how to remain self-sufficient after you get your first point on the board.

The average 1v1 game runs for 69 turns. Balanced Dice means that dice rolls are more predictable, so luck is less important. This also means that coordinated Wood-Brick rolls, Wheat-Ore rolls, Sheep-Wheat, or Sheep-Ore are not only easier to secure on a board with more space, but they are also certain to roll, and more likely to roll as often as expected.

Playing with all 5 resources is ideal and allows for a flexible early game based on the rolls.

Playing 4 resources should be generally contingent upon settling onto the 5th resource as well as securing a strong Port. The most effective 4 resource setup is generally the Wood-Brick-Wheat-Ore combination, allowing for securing expansions, and increasing production via Cities, which in turn allows for easier porting for the missing resource to settle. Strong road production can unlock access to hexes that can make your setup self-sufficient.

Alternatively, a hybrid OWS setup can be effective, having a touch of Wood or Brick allows for steals to build roads, and easier activation of the Road Builder, Monopoly, and Year Of Plenty Development Cards.

Finally, full OWS can be played in certain situations.

You can win games in 1v1 without any Wood or Brick production. This requires using knights effectively on your opponent’s Wheat and/or Ore to prevent Development Cards, expansions, and Cities, securing multiple VPs and Army, as well as at least a Road Builder or Year of Plenty to secure a Settlement spot. If you can expand onto a spot with Wood+Brick, more OWS, or a strong Port, your game becomes much more flexible with the added strength of better dev card production and therefore robber control than your opponent.

Your setup should aim to buy dev cards consistently and build Cities.

Take great care with your starting roads. Consider the potential to either secure or lose a spot to your opponent (how risky is that play based on the rolls that are required to give you the expansion?), as well as the relevance of defending a key hex.

If you are placing 1st, always ask yourself :
What is the worst case scenario if 2nd decides to play defensively against your dominant 1st pick?

Finally, if you are placing 2nd, choose your starting resources carefully. It could be the difference between an early City or a stuck hand, a 3rd Settlement or a hand full of Brick.

EARLY GAME

Momentum is key. If you can steal momentum from your opponent consistently, reblocking key hexes, taking away their settle spots (especially if they have committed roads), and maintaining pacing on devs, your opponent will struggle to keep up, allowing you to snowball to victory!

1v1 may lack social interaction and trading, but psychological elements are still at play and remain relevant. 33% of 1v1 games end prematurely due to a player resigning. There are a number of ways to induce your opponent to resign. Of course, in many of those situations, you would likely win anyway, if the game ran the full length, but there remain many variables that could come into play through the course of a longer game.

In short, there can often be a disparity between the optimal play, and the play that is most likely to make your opponent quit. This is a viable strategy and highly effective in certain situations.

What is Friendly Robber?

Friendly Robber is a balancing mechanism in 1v1 that means you can only be blocked and stolen from after you openly have more than 2 Points. This can come in the form of a Settlement, City, Longest Road, or Largest Army but doesn’t count Victory Point cards.

Friendly Robber can be leveraged in a number of ways, especially when considering that hand size has been raised to 9 cards. You can stock up on Dev Cards early, spend multiple roads to secure expansions and/or take them away from your opponent, and plan big opening turns.

9 cards makes for the perfect Settlement + City turn, and you could safely have as many as 13 cards on that turn. Getting onto a Port and dropping a City can make you unblockable in the pursuit of expanding, citying, and buying Dev Cards. Dropping a City and buying a Dev Card is always a great turn, but less effective if your opponent hasn’t got a point down yet, as they could still rob you without you being able to return the favour.

The early game is extremely important and must be handled with caution.

Make sure not to spend cards if not pressured by the risk of 7 out, or your opponent’s ability to build roads to block your expansions. Throughout a game of 1v1, you will be able to perfectly track your opponent’s hand, though this is easiest and most important right at the beginning.

MIDGAME

Once your opponent has achieved a 3rd Victory Point you will be able to block and rob them!

Being able to block another player’s only Wheat hex is extremely powerful, and can prevent them from settling, citying, or buying development cards! The counterplay is to either have multiple Wheat hexes from starting placements, settle onto a 2nd Wheat hex, or settle onto a Port that allows you to substitute for Wheat with other resources.

If a player has successfully secured their Wheat production through any of the mentioned means, the effective blocks should turn to Ore.

If a player has unblockable Ore and Wheat, you are probably in trouble, but if viable, target the Sheep which in turn prevents actioning without use of a Port.

Of course, one must take into consideration the value of production with a Port. If an opponent produces 4 Brick on the 6 roll with a Brick Port, that is more valuable than a single Ore on the 8 roll.

Your blocks should aim to plug your opponent’s flexibility.

The further you advance into the game, the less reliant one should be on an individual hex. However if there is only one good Wheat hex on the board, for example, sharing it with your opponent can be beneficial, as it will never be blocked.

Pay attention to expansions on the board. Which short and long term expansions could allow your opponent to become dominant on the board?

During the midgame, you should assess the availability and value of each win condition. If you’ve pulled 3 VPs and your opponent has a major lead on Army, maybe drive for Cities, expansions, and Longest Road instead of buying more dev cards.

If your opponent has the clear road play, go hard on Dev Cards, and production, with potential to sneak Road for win if you don’t alert your opponent to it at all.

If your opponent has massive production but a poor position for Road and no Army pacing, do what you can to secure Road and Army/VPs. A player who has committed fully to expanding may suffer for lack of available points in the endgame.

ENDGAME

Closing out the game can get very technical, but your goal here is to find, prevent, and secure win conditions.

Counting Roads and tracking Dev Cards is also crucial. If your opponent is holding 5 non knights, and no Monopolies have been played, you have either VPs or Monos to pull for. Alternatively, your opponent may build a road sub-optimally for their network, opening a chance for you to build a longer Longest Road.

Your optimal block may change based on your opponent’s win condition. If they have 4 Cities and need Longest Road to win, the Ore block may become less effective than a Wood or Brick block for example.

Finally, losing doesn’t necessarily mean that your placements were wrong, and winning doesn’t mean that your placements were optimal. Whether you win or lose, take a look at the dice stats, number of steals relative to number of knights played, and blocked production.

Test out these Catan tips and tricks on Colonist.io

Written by David George

Trading is an integral part of playing Colonist.io, and after listening to community feedback we are excited to share some significant improvements coming to the trade interface!

Our goal for improving the trade system is:

Redesign the trade system so it's easy to understand for all players. Make sure the new design allows for deeper choices in trade strategies.

We want to recreate it so that trading imitates the real-life Settlers of Catan board game and Catan Strategies. We also want to make it simple for an online multiplayer strategy game.

Problems with the Colonist Trade System

We gathered feedback from our players and identified 4 main issues:

1. It's hard to tell when you are giving or receiving a resource.
2. It's not clear how to trade with the bank.
3. It’s not clear how to block trading with specific players, otherwise known as Embargo.
4. Trade strategies are limited by the current counteroffers feature, not knowing how other players react to trades, and not being able to make open-ended trades.

We also have to make sure that our design can be implemented through all our expansion packs including City and Knights and Seafarers!

How to make it clear which resources you are offering or receiving

We explored more than 20 designs to find the best placements for different icons, resources, icons, arrows, and buttons. We wanted to make sure the design had intuitive mapping, so we didn’t want to rely on just text.

After conducting user tests with experienced and new players, we picked a design with three vertical sections. This makes the trading process more straightforward and easier to follow.

Similar to the original design, we kept the player's hand of resources unchanged as it is consistent in the interface.

We also moved the icons and arrows to the left-most side of the trade hub as it matches with the natural reading pattern of users who read from left to right.

The biggest change from our original design is that the exchange of resources go up and down instead left and right. What we found is that the upward and downward directions offer a more direct mental mapping of giving and receiving resources. Users can easily visualize them moving up and away from their hand, while receiving resources can be imagined as coming down toward their hand.

After settling on this design, we move on to our next problem…

How to Make Trade With the Bank Mechanism more Obvious?

We wanted to fix the issues players have with the bank, so we set some design goals:

1. Players should be able to trade with the bank easily, even if they don't know how bank ratios work.
2. Players should understand that the trade ratio shows how much of one resource they need to give to get a different resource.
3. Trades should match the correct trade rates.
4. Players should know the default bank trade rate is 4:1.
5. Players should know how to trade with the ports.

Similarly, we created over 50 different designs to optimize how to show trade rates in an easy way while making the user experience simpler.

During our design tests, we found an important point…

When we show the trade rates under cards that users choose to get, it makes the experience confusing. This helped us learned a new rule for our future designs: we should not be putting trade rates there.

After testing and making about 10 iterations, we have the final design for trading with the bank. Here are some big changes we've made:

Bank Tab for Bank Trades Only. This makes it clear how to trade with the bank. It also lets users offer bank rates to other players. So, you can now offer 4 sheep to your opponents!

1. Trade Rates on Cards in Your Hand. This is a better placement for trade rates. It makes it easy to understand that you "give two wood for one of anything.”
2. Legend of All Trade Rates. If you have a port or no resources in your hand, you can still see all trade rates. This is helpful to check your trade rates. If you want, you can close this at any time with a button.

How to Block Trades with Other Players? (Embargo)

We got your complaints about embargoing, and we heard you! You can view the responses to our survey about the embargo function here.

We decided to keep the embargo feature but put it in the player profile section. Now, you can access it at any time during the game, and new players are less likely to accidentally embargo other players.

How to Make Trading More Like Real Life?

We made three big changes to help our experienced players make more strategic trades...

1. View opponents' responses to proposed trades

Similar to real life games, when somebody proposes a trade, we can hear other players say “no thanks” or “I accept.”

We’ve implemented this feature, by including the status icons of each player. You can now see which player accepts the trade, rejects the trade, or is waiting to respond.

2. Enable counteroffers even when you don’t have the resource

One big problem with trading in Colonist is when you can't suggest a trade because you don't have the specific resource someone wants. You might have a good trade offer for them, but you can't let them know! Now, we're letting players counteroffer trades for all trades. This way, players can say more about trades.

Another new feature is that we're letting players jump in on counteroffers. This is like in real life board games when you hear someone counteroffer a trade, you can say "I want that too!" and the player can choose to trade with you instead.

3. Open-Ended Trading

Finally, one of the biggest requests when it comes to trading is to allow open-ended offers or a “wildcard” trade.

This means you can make offers like “I can give one sheep for anything” or “I will offer anything for one sheep.” This makes trading more flexible and quick.

Our Results...

Of course, user feedback is the most important part of the redesign. After this implementation, we have been reading every single one of your suggestions and feedback. Many suggested that this redesign makes trading easier and more flexible for both new and experienced players. We tested each design at every stage to make sure it was the optimal design for a web game! You can see the summary of our results here.

For those of you looking to try out Catan online free or wanting to play Catan online, you're in for a treat with our new updates. So gather your Catan resources, prepare your Catan cards, and get ready to trade your way to victory.

These improvements were made based on your feedback, so continue to let us know what you think. We're all ears for any suggestions on improving the rules of Catan, optimizing the Catan map generator, or even a future Catan 3D edition.

User Feedback to Update the Design

As we slowly start to roll out the trade design, we are taking into consideration what you guys like and don’t like about it! The overall user experience is extremely important to us, and sometimes we need a bigger sample size. For example, we’ve updated the player and bank tabs to buttons after your feedback.

Current Updates:

Feel free to participate in our Discord during this rollout to tell us what you like and don’t like! We’re constantly checking and hoping that this will create a much better experience for everyone!