# Welcome to Catanatron!

Catanatron is a high-performance simulator for The Settlers of Catan, designed to help you develop, test, and benchmark AI players. Whether you're a machine learning researcher, game developer, or just a Catan enthusiast curious about AI strategies, Catanatron provides the tools to explore the full strategic depth of the game at scale.

### What is Catanatron?

Catanatron is an open-source project that allows you to:

* Run thousands of Catan games per minute between different bots.
* Develop your own AI players with simple Python interfaces.
* Test strategies using weighted decision trees or custom algorithms.
* Train reinforcement learning agents using an OpenAI Gym-compatible environment.
* Web UI to watch, inspect, and play games against Catanatron!

### Getting Started

You can start simple by playing against catanatron at [https://www.catanatron.com](https://www.catanatron.com/).

Or jump right in:

<table data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th data-hidden data-card-cover data-type="files"></th><th data-hidden></th><th data-hidden data-card-target data-type="content-ref"></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Getting Started</strong></td><td>Running a simulation</td><td><a href="https://2307297720-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2Fc1RWZmD8LVh4SmyKwO9W%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-3a9f37fc26fc0c0eb1899abaa05dcf0aacada057%2FScreenshot%202025-05-21%20103849.png?alt=media">Screenshot 2025-05-21 103849.png</a></td><td></td><td><a href="getting-started/quickstart">quickstart</a></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Simulation Hooks</strong></td><td>Learn how to compute statistics on simulations</td><td><a href="https://2307297720-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2Fc1RWZmD8LVh4SmyKwO9W%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-035e9713fb61e461725a96eee772ffb6df7903e4%2FScreenshot%202025-05-21%20104023.png?alt=media">Screenshot 2025-05-21 104023.png</a></td><td></td><td><a href="https://github.com/bcollazo/catanatron/blob/master/documentation/broken-reference/README.md">https://github.com/bcollazo/catanatron/blob/master/documentation/broken-reference/README.md</a></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Graphical User Interface</strong></td><td>Improve the web UI</td><td><a href="https://2307297720-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2Fc1RWZmD8LVh4SmyKwO9W%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-64272c55c34ef6d74b7b5db9e65feeb6fafb6199%2FCatanatronUI.png?alt=media">CatanatronUI.png</a></td><td></td><td><a href="https://github.com/bcollazo/catanatron/blob/master/documentation/broken-reference/README.md">https://github.com/bcollazo/catanatron/blob/master/documentation/broken-reference/README.md</a></td></tr></tbody></table>


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.catanatron.com/readme.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.