 Introduction
The dice game version of The Settlers of Catan also involves building settlements, roads, and Knights. During the game, the player is looking at the image of a smaller Catan island.
Building a road, settlement, or city costs the same resources as in the big brother version of the game. But the way of getting to the resources is completely different. You can roll six special dice, up to three times per turn. After each dice roll, you may either set aside part of the dice or roll all dice again.
Each die has 6 sides, and each side depicts one of Catan?s resources: wool, grain, brick, ore, lumber, or gold. For example, if you roll 2 lumber, 2 brick, 1 grain, and 1 wool, you may build a road and a settlement.
Of course, you also must observe certain rules when building. At the beginning of the game, the first road is already depicted as a built road. Starting from this road, you continue building more roads. Each road built is worth 1 point. Settlements and cities must be built following the sequence given by the increasing number of points they are worth. The points for building a settlement increase from 3 to 11, and the points for building a city even rise from 7 to 30. Since you can build a city or settlement only if it is situated next to an already built road, you might often find yourself in a situation where you are asking yourself whether you should put up a city, more lucrative but more difficult to build, or a settlement, less lucrative but easier to build.
 And what is the task of Catan's Knights? Well, on each of the six terrains the shape of a Knight is depicted. If you build a Knight 'filling in his shape' once during the game you may use the resource of a terrain where a Knight has been built, as a joker. This means that after the third dice roll you may turn one of the dice so that the resource corresponding to the joker is face up.
Your points for building are entered in one of the 15 boxes. After 15 rounds, the points are added up for the total score.
For a start, you actually don't have to know more - just go ahead and play!
At the beginning of the game, you can choose to let Marlene teach you the tricks and tips of the Catan Dice Game, in a tutorial that accompanies the game. You may play once per day; if, on a given day, you have played already, you will have to wait until 12 p.m. CET (3 p.m. PST) to be allowed to play again.
The Game
 You must maintain your Internet connection while you are playing. With some practice, a game won't take longer than five to ten minutes.
The spinning globe indicates Internet activity. If you should lose your Internet connection while playing, you have to log into the game again.
You can always conclude your unfinished game, even hours later and from a different computer.
For playing the Catan Dice Game, you need Java Runtime Environment Version 5.0. You can download it for free by clicking on the adjacent Java icon.
(Note: For Mac OS X, JRE V5.0 exists only since 10.4 "Tiger". Unfortunately, you cannot play the Catan Dice Game if you are still using Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther.")
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