Catan: unbroken (?)

Okay, there's an Xbox Arcade game that I love to play.  Unfortunately it's very laggy when you try to play it online.  The game is Settler's of Catan.  Or just Catan.

There are 2 achievements that are ranked match based.  One is to get 500 match points in ranked matches and the other is to get 1,000 points in ranked matches.  The only problem is that whatever points you have earned only count if at least 2 humans finish the game.  But the game is so buggy that just getting 2 humans to make it through 2 turns is almost impossible.  When someone drops out an AI takes their spots.  But if you don't finish the game with another human your points earned wont' count.

Not only has the online game been laggy but I've had DRM registration issues with the game.  Every now and then the game would revert back to the trial version and say I haven't downloaded the full version.  Even if I redownload the full game the next time I would play it would revert back to the trail version again.  It's a fun game but I wasn't sure if it was all worth it.


I had almost given up on this game and was about to delete it from my system and move on (space is an issue for me right now) when I decided to give it one more change last night.  I got in the game and had an update to do.  No problem.  It's been a long time since I've played this game so I can understand.  I did the update but the system wouldn't log me back on to Xbox Live.  Because I wasn't logged in the system reverted back to the trial version again.  After 2 attempts for the game to finally recognize that I was a logged in player I could finally get the option to play online.

I went searching for a ranked match and waiting around for awhile.  I was afraid that I won't find one because nobody was playing this game anymore.  To alleviate my boredom I switched over and watched some TV while it was still searching for players.  A while later I switched back and found 2 people in the lobby waiting.  Wow!  Just one more player and we could have a game.  But could we finish it.

It didn't take long before the 4th player jumped in and we got started.  The first turn was a little scary because the player wasn't doing anything which is a big indicator that the match is about to drop.  But we got through it and was able to place our initial pieces and start the match.

Everything time things slowed down I was afraid someone would drop out.  But we made it all the way to the end.  AND I WON!!!!!!!!  I didn't think I could but I got lucky at the end.  But more exciting than that was that all 4 players stayed in the game to the end.  So those points count.

I'm hoping that this wasn't a fluke and that the game has been patched so matches and players don't drop.  I'm going to try playing a couple more matched tonight and we'll see how that goes.  If all goes well I'll be keeping this game around for awhile even if I need the space on my hard drive for other things.

Right now I have 19 wins (you need at least 10 match points to win but you can win with more) and 53 losses.  If you figure 10pts per win that's 190 points.  And 4 points per loss (hopefully that's how many I had before matches went south) that's  212 points.  190 + 212 = 402 points approximately.  That means I'm getting close to one of the last achievements I need.  Does anyone want to join me in a game of Catan?