Opportunity Costs In Settlers Of Catan

Opportunity cost is the potential benefit lost by choosing one option over the next best alternative. In Settlers of Catan, this is shown in various ways, including where you place your initial roads and settlements, where to move the robber, and what resource to use your year of plenty development card on when you are attempting to acquire the necessary victory points to win. This is extremely important in playing Catan, as you generally want to take the option with the lower opportunity cost given what information you know, just as (economics-driven) businesses do. This ensures that the risk of taking this option is low, as the benefits that could be lost is minimized: by making the choice with the lowest opportunity cost, you will have a relative advantage over your opponents by making resource-efficient decisions. …show more content…
If you choose to build a settlement, the opportunity cost will be the benefits you give up, which includes the possibility of obtaining longest road, the extra resources from not building a settlement, and a connection to a existing road / settlement. In another example, you have the year of plenty development card. The opportunity cost of using it on two ore is two brick to build roads or settlements, and one has to consider whether they would value upgrading existing settlements (ore) or creating new ones (brick). Even choosing your 2nd opening settlement and road has an important opportunity cost, in that generally one decides to choose between a common roll (6 or 8) for future resource gathering or a better space to gather the surrounding resources right away, with the opportunity cost being the other choice. Keeping opportunity cost at a minimum raises your chance of winning by lowering the risk of your