In April 2001, Paul and I bought Cities and Knights of Catan, which is an expansion set for the board game Settlers of Catan.

Cities and Knights adds more complexity to the game, which makes games in general take longer to complete. It's also much easier to be actively hostile to your fellow players, so if you like Settlers because it's mostly non-confrontational, you might not enjoy Cities and Knights as much.

There are lots more little pieces to keep track of, more card types even with the elimination of development cards, a third die to roll each turn, and a barbarian horde in addition to the robber.

You need 13 points to win now, not 10.

You have to put all victory point cards you get face-up.

You can build a city wall under each of your cities, and that increases the number of cards you can hold in your hand without being hosed by the robber--one city wall = 9 cards, two walls = 11 cards, three walls = 13 cards.

Developement cards are gone. What's replaced them is a sequence of upgrades that you can buy, in three categories: political, economic, education. You buy these upgrades with another new feature, which is commodities.

The three commodities are cloth (from sheep), paper (from wood) and coin (from ore). If you have a city on a sheep, wood or ore space, in addition to producing two resources, you produce one commodity.

The ugrades go in six phases, and each phase gives you a special little perk. When you reach the fifth phase, you get a "metropolis" marker to go on one of your cities. There's a metropolis marker for each of the three categories (political, economic, education), and only one person can have the metropolis for that category. Metropolises also get special bonuses, and when you get to the sixth level, your metropolis can't be taken away by another player who's been racing you to get it (at the fifth level, it can still be stolen from you).

One of the higher-level merchant-category upgrades is that if you don't get any resources when the dice are rolled, you get to pick a resource, thereby insuring that you always get SOMETHING.

Soldiers, a subset of development cards, are also gone, as is the "largest army" card, though "longest road" still exists.

Soldiers have been replaced by knights. Knights come in three levels and can be active or inactive. One of their main functions is to defend Catan from the barbarian fleet. They can also block roads to keep players from putting settlements down.

Knights are important, because when the barbarian fleet reaches the shores of Catan, they attack. You add the number of cities currently on the board (not counting sabotaged ones) and that's the barbarians' attack value. Then you add up the points of knights on the board: basic knights are 1 point, the middle level is 2 points and mighty knights are 3 points. If the value of the knights is greater than the barbarians' attack value, they are repelled and go back to their beginning square. If they're NOT repelled, then the person who contributed least to the defense of Catan loses a city--it gets bumped down to a settlement.

The barbarian fleet is represented by a black ship that sits several squares off the main map. Each turn, you roll three dice now instead of two. The third die is for the barbarians and has six ships on it: 3 black, and one each of blue, green and yellow. If black comes up, the fleet moves forward one space. If another color comes up, you match that color with the number that was rolled on the red die, and that determines whether one of the upgrades you bought in the economic/political/education category is activated.

If so, you draw a progress card from that color. Some of the cards allow you to attack your fellow players, for example:

You can actually sabotage another player's city, symbolized by knocking it on its side. It doesn't produce resources until it's repaired.

You can spy on another player and steal a card from his/her hand.

Other progress cards are plain ol' victory points, which have to be turned face-up when you get them. You can only hold 4 unplayed progress cards at a time.

Cities & Knights can be played with just Settlers, or with Settlers plus Seafarers of Catan. I've only played Seafarers once, and it's a little weird. None of these work with Spacefarers, which is a standalone but lots of fun.

If you're getting a little tired of the same old thing with Settlers, you might think about Cities & Knights. It's more complex, and if your numbers aren't coming up it's fairly frustrating, but it's a fun evening's entertainment.