data API or ability to export data after games for analysis

262 votes

Would like to be able to query the data from a game given a game ID. Could be an API -- or a database or just CSV access

Under consideration idea Suggested by: nick (09 Apr, '20) • Upvoted: 03 May • Comments: 17

Comments: 17

30 Mar, '20
Dylan Merged
When I play this as the board game, I love keeping a spreadsheet of all the roll counts and other stats throughout the game like the nerd that I am. I love that this platform displays all of that data (and more!) after the game ends, but I would love to be able to export it to an excel sheet so we can record trends over time!
13 Apr, '20
Josh Pohlkamp-Hartt
I think if this wants to become a premier platform for online Catan, they need to open up the data to the esports analyst community.
1
20 Apr, '20
Dani Chu
This would be really cool to have and would help us bring more interest to the site!
21 Apr, '20
Sasha Wilde Admin
"Exporting Score/Stats Info" (suggested by Dylan on 2020-03-30), including upvotes (7) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
22 Apr, '20
Ron
Would be incredible to access the game's data - especially during this time! Would be fun to share analysis on the games being played, strategies, etc. Hope this can happen!
1
22 Apr, '20
Dani
We could also share our work to be implemented into the platform. That could be site wide player rankings or live win probability models!
08 Oct, '20
Neil
This would be super cool to build machine learning type bots for the game!
22 Dec, '20
Mousetail
Note that there is a decent (websocket) API already, it just needs to be documented, and not changed as often. That way bots won't break every update.
19 Jan, '21
JUAN Admin
"Download stats" (suggested by Zack on 2021-01-19), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
28 Apr, '21
Mousetail
This would be super useful for tournaments so they can automatically compile scores. Right now it's a lot of manual effort.
05 May, '21
Uri Balsam
I'm a catan enthusiast and data analyst and I'd love to contribute to the community by performing analyses and creating dashboards to promote more strategic gameplay. I think there should for sure be an API or export feature for everyone (or premium members) to export their game data.
1
07 Jul, '21
Avantika
Hey,
I would absolutely love to contribute to this in any way!!
28 Aug, '21
alex
Hey guys, I would love to see a real API made available as with everyone else, in the meantime, I worked out a way to get some of the data by scraping and interpreting the chat window. I turned it into a web app that provides some basic stats but also the ability to download the data as a json file if anyone else wants to try it: https://settlersofcatan.anvil.app
1
04 Apr, '23
Josh
the ultimate version of this would be a 'replay' feature (similar to chess.com and other chess servers), whereby you could copy a game in its entirety (including all rolls, placements, cards in hands etc) in text format, paste it back into a replay engine, and 'play' the game turn-by-turn, thereby seeing everyone's hands. The actual text generated wouldn't need to be complicated because the replayer engine could interpret based on roll, placement and turn action data only what was left in everyone's hands, but it would mean designing a replayer system to interpret that text.
2
21 Sep, '23
Felix
Colonist.io is in such a unique position here. The biggest open Dataset on Catan Games is a 50 game dataset on kaggle. Having api access would be so cool. Even publishing a subset of the games for further analysis would be super helpful and good and probably the best way to push the Catan meta further. I don't really get why none of this is done as of now.

Data access would probably be the biggest thing that'd make me consider paying.
1
21 Sep, '23
Felix
There are even existing notations that could be used to build this feature with:
https://github.com/dnmfarrell/Settlers-Game-Notation
24 Sep, '23
Felix
An alternative to this would be making an extended version of the game log available through an API. This would only require two more things to make the whole game reproducible: Map Coordinates and open steals.
You would then supplement the game log by only a few things:

1. In the beginning print the map, i.e. two 33-long-lists with resources and numbers, one 30 long list with ports.
2. In the "Player X placed a Settlement/City/Road" rows add a coordinate, ie. with a 6*11 system (i.e. "on the 4-11" or for roads "on the 4-11 to 4-12"
3. For Devs reveal what the dev they bought is
4. For Robbers reveal what was stolen

This would make the game logs completely deterministic and parseable for data analysis. I really hope to see something in this direction!
1