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Catan: Cities & Knights Guide
Understand commodities, knights, city improvements, barbarians and metropolises.
Build and defend cities while planning new development paths.
Catan: Cities & Knights is the major Catan expansion that most substantially increases strategic weight. It adds commodities, city-development tracks, movable knights, barbarian attacks, progress cards and metropolises.
What Cities & Knights changes
- Some city production becomes commodities as well as resources
- Three city-improvement tracks create long-term development paths
- Knights occupy intersections, block routes and defend Catan
- A barbarian fleet periodically attacks
- Progress cards replace the base development-card system
- Metropolises add protected high-value cities
Commodities and city improvements
Cities adjacent to mountains, forests and pastures can produce commodities alongside normal resources. Commodities are spent to improve your city in three development areas: trade, politics and science.
Advancing these tracks improves access to progress cards and eventually creates opportunities to claim a metropolis.
Knights
Knights are board pieces rather than cards. They can be built, activated, moved and promoted. Active knights contribute strength against barbarian attacks, while their physical position also matters because they can block routes and influence where opponents can expand.
Barbarian attacks
The barbarian ship advances toward Catan over the course of play. When it arrives, compare the barbarians’ strength with the combined strength of active knights. If the defenders are strong enough, Catan is protected and the strongest contributor can earn a reward. If defense fails, vulnerable players can lose cities.
This creates a shared-defense problem: everyone benefits from enough total knight strength, but no player wants to spend more than necessary while opponents free-ride.
Metropolises
Advanced city-development tracks can lead to metropolises. A metropolis is worth additional victory value and, importantly, is protected from being downgraded by a barbarian defeat.
Can Cities & Knights combine with Seafarers?
Yes. CATAN provides official combination rules. Knights can move through continuous networks involving ships, and barbarian defense counts cities and active knights across all islands. The required victory target is also adjusted for combined games.
Who should add Cities & Knights?
Choose it when your group wants Catan to become a heavier planning game. It adds more interaction, more long-term development and more consequences for poor preparation than Seafarers.
What box do you need?
Cities & Knights is an expansion, not a standalone game. Its standard box plays with the CATAN base game for 3–4 players. For a 5–6 player game, check that you have the corresponding CATAN 5–6 player materials and Cities & Knights 5–6 player expansion for your edition. The publisher’s English-edition compatibility guide is useful when mixing boxes from different printings.
From production to defense: one example
In this expansion, a city on a mountain, forest or pasture hex receives one normal resource and one related commodity when that hex produces: ore and coin, lumber and paper, or wool and cloth respectively. Those commodities advance the politics, science and trade improvement tracks. A city on a field or hill still produces two of its normal resource. The robber can still block production on its hex.
When the barbarians arrive, count every city on Catan to establish their strength, then add the strengths of all active knights. If the island has four cities but its active knights total only three strength, defense fails. If they total four or more, the island defends successfully. Who receives a reward or loses a city depends on individual contributions and protected metropolises; use the official Cities & Knights rulebook for that resolution.
What changes in the buying decision?
The publisher lists a 90–120 minute play time and a 13-point victory target. This is a good fit when your group wants more planning around city improvements and shared defense; the extra systems add a substantial teaching step over base CATAN. For more map exploration without these city-development systems, compare Seafarers.
Related guides
Publisher sources
Rules and compatibility checked September 2026.