Help, sources, and privacy

Using the generator

Open Generate a board, choose the scenario and player count, select a setup mode when one is published, and generate the board. The setup inventory beside the board distinguishes tiles, number discs, ports, markers, and off-board supplies when the scenario defines them.

• The illustrated board follows the authored starting setup.
• The variable board shuffles only the named rulebook pools.
• Cities & Knights is available only for Standard Catan, Heading for New Shores, and Through the Desert.
• The browser may keep the current and previous committed boards so they can be restored after a reload.
• Use Share this board after generation to create a browser-local exact-board link. The link keeps the board in the URL fragment; it does not send the board to a server.

Reading the board and balance comparison

Select a tile, harbor, or marker to read its setup details. Markers identify published starting pieces, blocked intersections, or scenario reminders, including owner or color when the scenario supplies one; they do not describe later gameplay. The inventory lists required games and the pieces to gather, with placed board counts kept separate from collectible, face-down, and off-board supplies.

The balance comparison looks at the six highest-scoring candidate intersections for 3 players or the eight highest-scoring candidates for 4 players, considered as one sample. It combines resource variety, number-disc production, harbor access, nearby candidate intersections, and sea access. Lower variation means the sampled scores are closer together. The score is an arbitrary weighted comparison value rather than game points. Candidate intersections are map observations: the comparison does not assign starts, verify placement order, or guarantee an open or equally useful location when a scenario has preplaced pieces or markers. The average is the sample center; the typical score difference shows how far scores usually sit from that average.

Saving, sharing, and board output

After a board is generated, Edit setup changes a draft while the committed board remains available. Regenerate replaces the committed board only after success, and Previous board restores the last committed result. The browser may keep the current and previous committed boards on this device for recovery after a reload.

Share this board creates an exact-board link in the URL fragment. Board output controls download a board image or open a print-ready setup sheet; these outputs describe the committed board shown on screen.

Sources

Setup claims are checked against the cited 2025 sixth-edition CATAN, Seafarers, and Cities & Knights rulebooks. The application is an independent, unofficial setup utility and is not endorsed by or affiliated with the CATAN rights holder. CATAN and related marks belong to their respective owner.

Crawler policy

A public build permits ordinary search crawling and OAI-SearchBot on its published pages. GPTBot is disallowed by robots.txt for training unless the maintainer explicitly changes that policy. Search visibility and training use are independent, and robots.txt cannot guarantee how other services behave. See OpenAI’s crawler guidance: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots. Development and preview builds are marked noindex and disallowed in robots.txt.

Privacy

The current static site does not require an account, set cookies, run advertising, or enable application analytics. The browser performs generation locally and may keep one current and one previous committed board, together with their settings, in local storage on this device so they can be restored after a reload. Draft edits and failed generations are not saved. Share this board creates an exact-board link in the URL fragment so the board payload is not part of the server request or page metadata; the browser does not upload it. Clear saved history removes that browser record; storage may be unavailable or limited, while the board remains usable for the current visit. The repository contains an opt-in same-origin measurement endpoint, but it remains inactive unless a public build explicitly enables it and the Worker has an Analytics Engine binding and matching runtime flag. If it is activated later, it records only finite page/referrer categories and successful-generation scenario, mode, expansion, and player-count fields; it does not record board content, raw URLs or query strings, raw referrers, cookies, IP addresses, user agents, or user IDs in the application event. The provider may still process network requests according to its privacy policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/. The provider retention and plan limits are documented in the maintainer runbook and must be rechecked before activation. This page must be updated before any production analytics activation.

Maintainer and feedback

The project is maintained by yqrimu. For questions or documentation corrections, use the public maintainer profile.

• Public maintainer profile: https://github.com/yqrimu