Sure, it’s attainable to wind up in a recreation state the place it’s unattainable for any participant to win. Think about the next board place (assume non-red gamers have not constructed any roads past their preliminary placement, which do not actually matter):
Every participant has solely 2 settlements/cities, and can’t construct any extra for the remainder of the sport – crimson has used all their roads however has no entry to a buildable location, whereas all the opposite gamers are boxed in by crimson’s roads.
Crimson may get 4 factors from cities and a couple of from the longest highway, however they’d require drawing victory factors and knights to win, which isn’t assured. Moreover, we will distribute the excellent 7 factors unaccounted for by the board state (5 victory factors playing cards, 2 largest military) among the many remaining 3 gamers, and have none of them attain 10 factors as properly. There are numerous distributions of the knight and victory factors playing cards that may lead to nobody ever reaching 10 factors from the pictured board state.
By limiting everybody to solely 2 cities, there can solely be a most of 25 factors whole scored by all gamers over the course of the sport (2 factors x 4 cities x 4 gamers + 2 longest highway + 2 largest military + 5 VP playing cards), that are simply distributed amongst 4 gamers in order that nobody reaches 10 factors. Within the absolute worst “farthest from victory” case, three gamers rating 6 factors and one scores 7.
