Catan: Cities & Knights – The Best Catan Expansion

More strategy, more depth, and a barbarian threat that changes everything — the expansion that Catan fans call essential.

If you love Catan but feel like you've mastered it, Cities & Knights is the expansion you've been waiting for. It takes everything that makes Catan great — the trading, the resource management, the tense competition for territory — and layers on a richer, more strategic experience that completely transforms the game.

It is widely considered the best Catan expansion ever made, and after playing it, it's easy to see why. Many players who discover Cities & Knights never go back to the base game alone.

"We played Catan for years thinking we knew everything about it. Cities & Knights made us feel like beginners again — in the best possible way."

What Does Cities & Knights Add?

Cities & Knights introduces three major additions that work together to create a much deeper game. First, city improvements — each city can now be upgraded in three development tracks: trade, politics, and science. Upgrading these tracks unlocks powerful abilities and eventually grants access to city walls and metropolises.

Second, commodity cards — cloth, coin, and paper — are produced by upgraded cities and used to advance your development tracks. This adds a new layer of resource management on top of the base game's five resources.

Third, and most dramatically, the barbarian threat. A barbarian ship advances along a track each round. When it reaches Catan, it attacks — and if the players haven't collectively built enough knights to repel it, the player with the weakest defense loses a city. This shared threat forces players to cooperate even as they compete, creating tension that the base game never delivers.

How Does It Change the Game?

The base game of Catan is primarily about expansion — building roads, settling new territories, racing to 10 points. Cities & Knights shifts the focus toward development and defense. Upgrading your cities matters as much as building new ones. Positioning knights to defend against the barbarians matters as much as blocking your opponents.

The city improvement tracks create clear strategic paths. A player focused on science gets powerful progress cards. A player focused on trade gets better commodity production. You can't do everything — you have to commit to a strategy and execute it, which makes every game feel purposeful and distinct.

The barbarian mechanic adds a brilliant collective tension. Every player wants someone else to carry the defensive burden — but if everyone freeloads, the barbarians win and multiple players suffer. Deciding when to invest in knights versus when to let others shoulder the defense is one of the most interesting strategic problems the expansion introduces.

Rating Breakdown

Pros & Cons

Who Is This Expansion For?

Why Cities & Knights Is the Essential Catan Expansion

Of all the Catan expansions — Seafarers, Explorers & Pirates, Traders & Barbarians — Cities & Knights stands alone. The others add new maps or new scenarios. Cities & Knights adds new thinking.

The barbarian mechanic alone is worth the price. It turns Catan from a purely competitive game into something with a cooperative undercurrent — everyone benefits from repelling the barbarians, but everyone also wants someone else to pay the cost. That tension is completely absent from the base game and it makes every single round more interesting.

The city improvement system gives players clear long-term goals and a sense of progression that the base game lacks. In regular Catan, every game plays roughly the same way. In Cities & Knights, you build an identity. You become the science player, or the trade player, or the military player — and that identity shapes every decision you make.