Settlin'

So I really like playing Settlers of Catan, especially with the Cities and Knights addition, but it can be tough to get people to come and play with me (especially when I beat them), so I've been looking for alternatives. I recently found a website where you can play "Xplorers" (Settlers) or "Tolouse" (Carcassonne) as well as a few other games. You can play with other humans in either three or four player games, or you can play with "bots" that always sport the names of various charcacters from "Friends". And you can play just for fun, or you can play to be ranked. And there are tons of variations of the board that you can play on. It's pretty great. In a time-wasting kind of a way. :)

When I first happened upon this website, I started at the top of the page, with the ranked tournaments, and when I got totally rocked 5 or 6 times in a row, I decided that I needed to bone up on my playing strategy, so I went to the non-ranking pages and have been working my way through all of the different maps one by one, playing against bots. Don't be lulled into complacency by thinking you're at an advantage with your real brain and all. Those computers can be pretty crafty. I'm winning against them about half of the time (and I may be being generous here) these days, but they still give me a run for my money.

So if any of you are fellow fans of Settlers, I strongly discourage you from checking out this website if you ever want to be productive in the presence of a computer again.