Cartel Variant Strategy

The Cartel Variant Strategy focuses on share control of a resource in order to reduce the chance of the robber being place on a title you need. If your settlements are sharing a tile with one or more player then it will decrease the chances of you being hit by the robber. This event is because it now gives you a 50% chance of you or the person you are sharing the tile with to get the robber and neither you nor the person you are sharing with will put the robber on the tile. The robber is placed mainly on the dominant player, so if you are in that position you want to also diversify your locations because if you are stuck to one location, and the robber is placed on your primary resource then you are basically shut out of the game until the robber is moved. If you diversify your settlements, it is impossible for other players to completely shut you out of the game. Also, focusing on the resources with little appeal to other players becomes more valuable as the game goes on especially if you have the corresponding port. For example, if I am pursuing a sheep in the beginning of the game and also place one settlement on a sheep port. In the end, when the sheep is rolled, you could maximize the port by trading resources at a discount rate and get more necessary resources.” Sheep and wheat are the resources that are targeted for this particular strategy. This event is because they are not targeted at the first placement of the game. In order to also prevail with this strategy one needs to obtain knights to make sure the robber doesn’t target you, and preferably on your opponents most valuable tiles or tiles that your opponent has a port.

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