Catan Expansion · Free in browser
Cities & Knights (C&K) is the expansion most long-time Catan players consider the real game. Commodities, knights, progress cards, barbarians, city walls and metropolises — it solves most of the complaints people have about base Catan. Play it free here in your browser.
Free · No download · Bots or multiplayer with friends
Three real options, ranked by what most players actually want.
Free in the browser, no install, no account. Start a C&K game against bots in a few clicks or open a multiplayer lobby and share the invite link. 13- and 15-VP modes ship by default; both fit on standard maps and custom boards.
The other major free fan-made Catan site. Largest active player base — handy if you want random opponents at any hour. C&K is included free, and finished games can be rewatched as replays (gotland.gg doesn't yet have replays).
Open Colonist.ioThe officially licensed app uses original Catan artwork and card text, and is available on web, iOS, Android, PC, Mac and Switch. Cities & Knights is sold as a paid expansion (or via subscription). Worth it if the official presentation matters to you.
Open Catan UniverseA focused summary of how C&K changes base Catan. This won't replace the official rules but will get you 90% of the way there.
Cities still produce two of their base resource on a roll, but only on forest, hill and mountain tiles (lumber/brick/ore). On the other three tile types — pasture (sheep), field (wheat) and mountain (ore) variants — your city instead produces one resource plus one commodity: cloth from sheep, paper from wheat, coin from ore. Commodities are used to upgrade city improvements, draw progress cards, and build metropolises.
You hire knights for sheep+wheat+ore, then activate them for a wheat. Active knights protect against the barbarian ship that advances one space toward Catan on every "7" roll. When the ship arrives, total active knight strength is compared to total cities — if knights lose, the player with the fewest active knights loses a city (it's demoted back to a settlement). Knights can also be moved on the board to displace opponent roads, force the robber to move, or chase the merchant.
Each city improvement track — trade (cloth), politics (coin), science (paper) — has its own deck of progress cards. Upgrading an improvement on a track means that when a "red die" matches that track's color on a roll, you may draw a card from that deck. Cards range from one-shot effects (resource grabs, knight tricks, road construction) to permanent boosts.
Fully upgrading a city improvement track (level 4 → 5) lets you build a metropolis on one of your cities — worth 2 extra VP and immune to barbarian sacking. There's only one metropolis per track (trade, politics, science), so being first matters. A metropolis can be lost if another player overtakes you on the same track AND you have fewer points on it.
For 2 brick you can build a city wall, raising your hand-limit-on-7 from 7 to 9 cards for that city. Underrated — losing half your hand on a 7 is one of base Catan's worst feelings and walls are cheap insurance.
13 VP standard, 15 VP for a longer game. Sources: settlements (1), cities (2), metropolises (+2 each, max 3), longest road (2), defender-of-Catan tokens (1 each, earned by being the strongest knight when the barbarians are repelled), constitution and printer (each a single 1-VP progress card), Saviour-of-Catan progress cards (1 each). No "largest army" in C&K — it's been replaced by knight tactics on the board.
If you've played a lot of base Catan, these are the habits to unlearn (and the new ones to pick up).
If you've heard "I only play Cities & Knights now" from a regular Catan group, here's what they mean.
The red die is read on every roll for progress card draws, not just on 7s. A "dead" personal roll still gives you something to think about.
Progress cards and barbarian dynamics give players with weaker openings ways back in. The leader is always one bad barbarian turn from losing a city.
Knights can be used aggressively — chase a robber, displace an opponent's road, block their longest-road plans. Base Catan's interaction is mostly trading and the robber; C&K has tactics on the board.
13 VP across multiple income streams (improvements, knights, defender tokens, metropolises) means there's more than one path to a win, and the game-state rewards thinking three turns ahead.
gotland.gg and Colonist.io both include C&K free in the browser. Catan Universe (the official app) sells it as a paid expansion.
13 VP is standard. Many groups play to 15 for longer, more strategic games. gotland.gg supports both — 13 VP quick start · 15 VP quick start.
Three commodities (cloth, paper, coin) produced by upgraded cities; a knight system for defending against barbarians and harassing opponents; three progress card decks (trade, politics, science) replacing development cards; city walls; metropolis bonuses for being first to fully upgrade each improvement track.
Most long-time Catan players think so. C&K reduces randomness, gives every roll something to do, adds direct interaction through knights, and rewards longer- term planning. Trade-off: longer teach and 90–120 minute games vs. 60–75 for base Catan.
Physically yes — the tabletop expansion requires base Catan. Online (gotland.gg, Colonist.io, Catan Universe) the expansion is self-contained: start a C&K game directly without setting up base Catan first.
Yes. gotland.gg's bots play the full Cities & Knights ruleset — knights, progress cards, barbarians and all. Useful for learning the rules without slowing down a human group.
Typically 90–120 minutes for 3–4 players who know the rules. First games run longer because of teaching. The 13-VP setting is the standard time; 15-VP adds about 20 minutes.
Free in your browser, against bots or friends, in under a minute.