Edit 8/01/07 - Section 5.3 edited to reflect my new understanding

Edit 9/30/07 - I received feedback on my original post from Mayfair Rules Guru (ie, rulesguru@mayfairgames.com) through email. I've included the email points in the relevant sections of my post below as quotes and updated my observations based on this new information (section 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3). The beginning of the email starts with: I am encouraged that this FAQ work is being done and that I received an answer to my inquiries!
------------------------------------------------------------

I have some observations about the placement and movement of ships. I have the 2006 Mayfair edition (i.e., no 'home ports') and I read through the other ship movement rules forum topics (very informative!) here. Based on these, I'm working with this assumption of ship rules:


Placement of ships
* adjacent to a settlement or city you have already built on the coast
* adjacent to any of your other ships that are already on the board
In addition, the ship cannot be placed:
* on the boundary between 2 hexes, but not between 2 land tiles (duh)
* on a coast that already has a road
* on an edge bordering on the hex containing the pirate

Movement of ships
* The ship must be at the end of an open shipping lane.
* You may move only one ship per turn and it may not be one you've built this turn.
* You may move the ship to wherever the placement of a new ship is allowed (follow same rules as new ship placement)



Observation #1 - The routeless settlement

Based on these rules you could potentially move the only ship next to a settlement to a different settlement. So if I started the game with this setup:

[townA][shipA]

[townB][shipB]

On my first turn I could move shipA over to the open shipping route next to [townB], like this:

[townA] <-- now all by it's lonesome, no roads or ships!

[townB][shipB][shipA]

This seems a little weird to end up with a settlement without any roads or ships connecting to it, but being that there is no rule forbidding it, I've been playing that it is allowed.




Observation #2 - I can build ships and then move a ship next to my last built ship

The rules state that I can move a ship 'during' the build phase. The rules also state that I can't move a ship I just built. My interpretation of 'during' is that I can move a ship before or after or in the middle of building other things. Therefore, I could build a bunch of ships and then move a ship from elsewhere to the end of the shipping line, next to the ship I just built. This could give you a long ship route in just a single turn! If I have the resources for 2 ships, I can build these 2 ships and then move an unrelated ship from somewhere else to make a 3 distance shipping route increase! The restriction that you can't move a ship that you just built never comes up - if you wanted it somewhere else, why wouldn't you just put it there when you built it? If the intention of the rule was to limit the big ship route growth scenario that I just described, the rule should have been worded that you 'cannot move a ship you have just built AND cannot move a ship next to a ship that was just built'. I don't play that way though, I stick by the rules as printed in this case.



Observation #3 - I can't move any ships deemed part of a closed shipping route.

The rules seem clear here as well - If the ship is part of a closed shipping route, it cannot be moved. I could see this potentially being annoying if I ended up with 2 closed shipping routes between 2 towns (perhaps a ship circled tile in the middle of the shipping route) - and I wanted to start moving ships off 1 of these shipping routes to somewhere else. But better to keep things simple - that scenario could be avoided (and hasn't come up in my games yet).



Observation #4 - Can I build a ship route through an opponent's settlement? Confirmed answer: No, you cannot.

Is it OK to build a ship route behind (or rather, through) an opponents settlement? Looking at the rules, it doesn't specifically prohibit this - though it comes down to your interpretation of 'adjacent' - as you are allowed to build a ship 'adjacent' to one of your existing ships. If you do not consider the hex border on the other side of the opponent's settlement to be 'adjacent' to your ship route leading up to the opponent's settlement - then you cannot build through an opponent's settlement. In the case of building roads, it is prohibited to build through an opponent's settlement. Though it's not explicitly stated in the rules, I've been playing that you cannot build a shipping route through an opponent's settlement. To me, this feels within the spirit of the rules.



Observation #5 - [Changed based on Mayfair support] Opponent settlements placed at a juncture in your shipping route potentially break your 'Longest Road' (via ships) but do not open your closed shipping route.

Here is a direct quote from my 2006 Mayfair rules:



So based on this quote it seems pretty clear that another player's settlement will break your shipping route.



This brings up the corollary observations below:

Observation #5.1 - 'Longest Road' (via ships) can be lost when opponent places a settlement

Someone can lose their 'Longest Road' card when their shipping route is interrupted by another player's settlement- following the same rules as are well spelled out for roads. This is clear and reasonable (and now confirmed).


Observation #5.2 - Your closed shipping routes cannot be 'opened' by an opponent

Mayfair has clarified this in quote above. I believe this is a good ruling!

As is stated in the rules quote above, a closed shipping route between 2 settlements can turn into 2 open shipping routes when another player's settlement is placed in the middle of that route. If these ship are not part of my longest road/route plan, then thank you Mr Opponent for breaking my closed route! I now have the option of moving these ships somewhere else.


Observation #5.3 - Stranded ships

Now that Mayfair has confirmed that a "broken" line of ships does NOT form 2 open routes it is clear that we don't really have any stranded ships.


If I have an open shipping route, and my opponent puts one of his settlements right in the middle of it, what am I left with? My shipping route is broken into 2 parts - I have an open shipping route that starts at my settlement and ends at my opponent's settlement and I also have one or more stranded ships that are not connected to any of my own settlements.

Can you continue to build off of these stranded ships? While the stranded ship rule is not explicitly stated, the rule for stranded roads is in the University of Catan FAQ. The answer for roads is yes, you can continue to build off of stranded roads. I think it is reasonable to assume the same for stranded ships.




Personally, I'm glad to have these observations confirmed/resolved. I look forward to the detailed Seafarers FAQ that they mentioned would soon be available. An updated rules PDF would be nice as well (I imagine they're doing this in conjunction with their new revision).

dsr15

Observation #1
I never noticed this issue with the rules. We always played such that it had to stay on the route it was allready apart of. So basically we played such that you could move it from one edge of a hex to the hex adjacent while still being connected to the previous ship. We used this strategy in the games with the unexposed land and sea tiles. I'm going to have to go back and re-read the rules but I think i like the way we play it.

observation #2

Never ran into this because of our interpretation discussed above.

observation #3
no difference here.

observatoin #4
we follow the rules pertaining to roads in that you can't build past an opponents settlement. I thought this was covered in the little picture discriptions in the book but i may be wrong.

observation #5

Yes. this instance is recognized and throws the longest route into disaray when broken.

We havent' run into some of your observed situations because of how we interpreted the rules.


General thoughts.

I need to re read the rules to see if i've been doing something wrong. My gut is that i like the way we do it and it kinda seems right. I've played on asobrain and this is how they implement it. I've actually learned a fair bit from asobrain for interpretations of rules pertaining to c&k that weren't clear or were open for interpretation. I'd recomend checking it out yourself and seeing how they deal with ships and routes.

have a good day
Ben

I would agree that you are playing the rules correctly, except for observation 5.3

I believe you can build off stranded ships, just as you can off stranded roads. The rules you quoted seem to back this up.

The rules don't say that you have to connect your line of ships back to a port.

About the restriction on moving a newly built ship: I've frequently wanted to do this, specifically in scenarios with hidden tiles. Sometimes you have two options about where to build a new ship, each of which would reveal a new tile. Say you build a new ship towards an open hex, take a hex from the pile, and find that it's water. Then if you don't have another wood and sheep, you may want to move the newly built ship somewhere else, to reveal another hidden tile. This rule prohibits that.

You know, I didn't think about stranded roads... that hasn't come up in my games so never thought about it. Yes I agree, the rules for stranded roads and ships should match. I see in the FAQ that a broken road can still be used for building... so it makes sense the same would apply for ships.

OK, so we were stretching things a bit on 5.3... I see that now. I've also updated my original post to reflect my new understanding.

Thanks freduk!

The Mayfair rules say you are playing correctly. Another poster (in another thread) reported that the German rules agree with the original message in this thread.

So if you have mayfair, your rules will back you up, but that doesn't mean it's the only correct interpretation!

I like the German rules because they are simpler, but moving a ship on turn 1 so you can build settlement #3 without buying a road or ship first seems a bit dodgy. We never thought of doing this in our games, so it never came up.

Unfortunately when you say 'the Mayfair rules' you need to refer to which printing. The Mayfair 2006 rules do not deal with 'home ports' when moving ships and show an example of a ship moving from one city's open ship route to another unconnected city's open ship route.

Dodgy indeed! At least then the shipping route is closed so the dodgy player can't take 2 more turns, move his 2 ship, and do it all again!

All i can say now, based on the various posts, there are too many different variants to the rules floating around out there. I was not using the new mayfair rules as my set of settlers games is several years old. Based on the discriptions of the various sets of rules i think i like the older "mayfair" rules we were using. I think it reduces the available movement of the ships and in turn makes them behave more like roads and there is something about that idea that I like. The slight movement allowed at the end of the string of ships comes in useful occasionally when tehre is competition over a spot but more often than not is only used when we do one of the scenarios involving uncovering mystery land/water tiles.

this has been an interesting thread and helps to understand the variety in rules out there. Kinda reminds me of some of the issues with carcassonne with the varying rules regarding farm scoring and 2 tile scoring that exist in the various printings.

Benjamin - I agree there are too many variants. The worst part is that they're all from the publisher! It appears to me that this game suffers from a low level of support for it's English speaking users. Where are the downloadable latest version of the rules? Where is the 'official' FAQ?

I've sent a bunch of questions from these forums to mayfair game support, and I'll share whatever response I get from them here.

I updated the original post based on information received from Mayfair game support.

dsr15

That's not true. It could come up (but is luckily prohibited by the rules) in this situation: You play "road building". You may place IMMEDIATELY two raods, OR one ship and one road, OR two ships. Now consider you have to place one road at a point to be able to build a settlement later on. After the settlement was built you would like to have a ship next to it to go to the sea. But the rule about ships prohibits to use road building to place the road and then the ship next to this road. There has to be a settlement to allow this. But as you have to use road building immediately, you may not build a settlement while building the road and the ship. So you might think "let's build the ship elsewhere and after I build my settlement, I will place it where it was intended". As you may not move ships you just have built, you will not be able to perform the described actions. ROAD-SETTLEMENT-SHIP cannot be done by road building.

Kudos Ponton - you got me there!

Still, the rule doesn't come up very often. Another (probably more common) case would be where someone places a ship and by the end of their turn decides they'd rather have it somewhere else.

Thanks, dsr15, we just got the Seafarers expansion and you've cleared up a lot of ship movement/placement questions!