Settlers of Catan: what contributed to its success?

When I started gaming over lunch at work, we played started with these games in this chronological order: Pandemic, Ticket To Ride, Settlers of Catan (that's if I remember correctly). If you don't know what Catan is like, you can get it cheap on iPhone or Android. There are also unofficial, free versions that can be found online. There are multiple There isn't much to say about Settlers of Catan. It might be considered THE classic since it started the wave that is modern, strategy/euro board games. However, it still gets mixed reviews when I talk to people about it. Some casual gamers who haven't played it much tell me they "can't figure it out." More serious gamers tell me that there isn't enough strategy or the rolling makes it too random. Correspondingly, Settlers of Catan is #67 on boardgamegeek's current ranking of games, giving a good idea of how it is good (in the top 75 even being over a decade old--newer games tend to get better rankings just because they are new and trendy), but there are still many games above it in the list.

It is all about placing your settlements on hex intersections
of hexes whose numbers get rolled a lot.
From Settlers of Catan image gallery on boardgamegeek.com

Nevertheless, as I study board games for this blog, I just don't see any before Catan that did what it did. (Please leave comments if I am wrong and many other games had done what I mention below.) Regardless of what the "hard core" board gamers may like to tell you, it has a strong element of strategy, especially when compared to the games of its day.

The strategy comes in placement of your settlements. Often one will try to place there settlements where the numbers are likely of being rolled such as 6s or 8s. Also, it is of course good to be on as many numbers as possible. That way when a number is rolled, one can consistently be gathering resources because they have many numbers covered. Nevertheless, there are more strategies still. If one cannot get to other numbers (because they are blocked by other players) they can instead to collect a lot of one resource, grab that resource's port and then trade with the bank at 2:1 to get the resources you need. Of course, there are other strategies as well. It just depends on what other players do and what resources you get via the rolls. That is maybe the most important thing: you must adapt as the game goes along. The game has a nice balance of things to do with the different card combinations needed to complete roads, settlements, cities, and development cards. So, one can utilize that balance to properly adjust their strategy to the cards and settlements/cities that they have.

I just haven't found games that have been able to accomplish such a nice setup for strategy while being so simple and, thus, accessible. Other games before, had strategy, but even games as simple as Risk were not accessible to many people. Catan has been able to bridge that gap between strategy and accessibility better than Risk. That is due in part to the theme (some people just don't like any kind of war game) but is ultimately successful because it only takes a few turns to have the basic idea down. Then once one gets into it more, they realize there is more strategy than expected. They find that they can get better as they play it more because they can see the different strategies they can adapt to (or bounce between) as the game progresses. That increases replayability, giving people a reason to continue playing it instead of getting bored with it and leaving it on the shelf. So, it is replayable and accessible, and that is what makes it brilliant. At the time in America, the only real options were games like Battleship and Monopoly, which got boring fast and collected dust on the shelf, or games like Risk or Axis & Allies, which simply don't have a theme and simple enough mechanics to make them appealing and accessible to many people. So, board games may have advanced, now offering many more options that have just as good, if not better, strategy elements, and some of those may even be more accessible than Catan. However, Catan is still a classic, and there is a reason I brought it to lunch to play, and there is a reason that it is still 67 on boardgamegeek.com's list when the far majority of the games on that list were published in 2002 or later.