I think that might be a function of playing 1 on 1. At some point (when settlers was still only popular in Germany), we (4 player game) played with one of my best friends flatmates who was at the time winning a lot of the tournaments in Germany. He would consistently whoop our butts no matter how the game started (and all others of us were pretty big board gamers as well). It was amazing to see how little he relied on chance, his dominance became even more apparent once we used the cities and knights extension.