White should have gone 6/3/11 for sure. The 5/4/11 would have been better defensively as that's by far blue's best next settlement but blue is already playing a pretty weak game, so improving your own position over screwing his is more important. 6/3/11 is stronger than 5/4/11 because while this leaves you without lumber, having that lumber without brick is already worthless, and you'll never have time to get a good 3:1 port to change it into something more useful. Having your hand flooded with all that is not what you want. You'd rather have your hand flooded with sheep which you can easily get a port for. You're more or less locked into an OWS game with how you have placed, so you should be increasing your potential to get tons of cities and win that army race. The sheep port will easily be the best for you with that, and you'll get extra wheat with your first city and your first settlement anyway, so having the 5/10 expansion spot open isn't that valuable. Blue should have gone 5/4/11, as I stated above, because it gives him a great expansion on the 5/10 to get wheat plus double up his lumber (so it's balanced with his brick), gives him coordinated roads with every 5 roll, and easily sets him up to win the longest road race especially when combined with his more or less uncontested brick port. Which leads me to red: Red's first placement was fine, aside from his road, which should probably point at the 5/10, but why wouldn't he go 9/10/2 and try to slice blue? It's a fairly low risk move, as if you lose that spot, it's not like you'd have to play any extra roads to get a different spot compared to where he actually went. It gives you great potential to snag the awesome brick port, plus solid road-building capabilities, and when you take it from blue, your only competition for building the longest road, you more or less lock up that entire win condition for yourself. Blue's first settlement was also bad. He should have gone where white went. Orange was the only player who placed well (aside from his first road which was, in my opinion, questionable). Combined with the fact that all three other players decided to completely screw each other over for no reason, I'm not surprised that he won.
white should've gone for 11/3/6 to max out sheep production. He'd be a little low on wheat, but given how much wheat orange should have you'll be able to trade.
I feel like the picks should be the following: 1st: 8/10/4 ore/wheat/sheep 2nd: 8/4/3 ore/wheat/sheep 3rd: 8/5/10 ore/brick/brick 4th: 6/9/3 wood/wheat/wheat 5th: 9/10/11 wheat/brick/sheep 6th: 5/10 wood/wheat on the desert 7th: 6/9/5 sheep/wood/wood 8th: 6/3/11 sheep/sheep/ore
