Five resources, four kinds of purchase
Wood and brick pay for roads. A settlement adds wool and grain to that pair. A city needs three ore and two grain, while a development card needs one wool, one grain and one ore. The desert produces no resource.
A resource is useful because of what it completes. One ore is not automatically better than one wood: if wood completes the road to a contested corner, it may be the card your opening needs most.
A number connects the dice to the tile
When a tile’s number is rolled, each adjacent settlement normally receives one resource and each adjacent city receives two. Production can happen on any player’s turn, including a turn when you take no action yourself.
A settlement touching wood, grain and wool does not receive all three on every roll. Only matching numbered tiles produce. If two of its tiles share the rolled number, each matching tile can contribute separately.
Check the robber and the bank
The robber switches off the tile it occupies. Even a city gets nothing from that tile while it is blocked. Other tiles with the same number can still produce, so a matching roll is not cancelled across the island.
The bank is finite. A standard game starts with 19 cards of each resource. Supply shortages can reduce or prevent a payout; spending cards returns them to the bank. The bank-shortage guide explains the single-recipient exception.
Read your economy as a set of purchases
Before adding a settlement, list the resources you already produce and the builds they can fund. A strong wood-and-brick opening creates roads, but still needs grain and wool to turn those roads into points.
Try naming your missing resource before the next roll. That turns a vague hope for more cards into a clear plan: improve production, negotiate for a particular card or reach a useful port.
| Terrain | Resource | Common use |
|---|---|---|
| Forest | Wood | Roads and settlements |
| Hills | Brick | Roads and settlements |
| Pasture | Wool | Settlements and development cards |
| Fields | Grain | Settlements, cities and development cards |
| Mountains | Ore | Cities and development cards |
| Desert | None | No resource production |