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Carc Central Community => General => Topic started by: Whaleyland on September 19, 2014, 11:31:27 PM

Title: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Whaleyland on September 19, 2014, 11:31:27 PM
ELEMENT OF THE WEEK: THE RIVER

As an attempt to keep this forum someone on topic, each week a specific expansion element is chosen from among the various expansions that have released over the years. This is an opportunity for you, Carcassonne's biggest English-language fans, to discuss techniques and problems you have encountered over the years regarding specific expansion elements. All forms of critique – from the most positive to the most resolutely negative – are encouraged.

This week's element is THE RIVER & THE RIVER II (the first of which is included in most copies of Carcassonne while the second is a part of Count, King & Robber [Expansion #6]). The beauty of a river meandering through the board is obvious, but how does it affect gameplay for you? It scores no points and Followers can't be placed on it. The entire River (or Rivers) has to be placed at the beginning of the game even before other tiles are added. What is this madness? Discuss your relationship with The River and The River II, as well as your strategies for taking advantage of these expansions.

Next Week's Topic: The Pigs  :@ :@
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Paul on September 20, 2014, 12:16:50 AM
I've mostly considered the River as a cosmetic expansion for Carcassonne. It's not much planning rather than who gets their farm out first and who is lucky to get the city or roads tiles.
  The cloister river tile rarely gets completed due to tough road combinations when using few expansions.

Nevertheless, I like the expansions and I keep collecting duplicates whenever I can.

The original post does bring up an interesting idea. A scoring variant for it when it gets completed. One or two points for each follower on a River tile after it's completed, for example (including farmers).

We usually play with the strict outwards rules, i.e. no U-turns (also known as the Amazon River amongst my friends'n'family) whatsoever. There are pros and cons to this. It's harder to get in on someone else's feature early on which is both good and bad depending on how you see it.  :@

I chose 'usually just place the tiles' and always go for a feature if I have not placed a follower on an early River tile.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: kettlefish on September 20, 2014, 01:08:46 AM
Here in Germany wasn't the river in the box of the base game.

The river was a give away at Spiel in Essen many years ago.
For all the Carcassonne fans who wasn't at the Spiel - HiG put a download file on their homepage.
HiG has still the download file on their home page:
http://www.hans-im-glueck.de/fileadmin/data_archive/Downloads/fluss.pdf (http://www.hans-im-glueck.de/fileadmin/data_archive/Downloads/fluss.pdf)
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Whaleyland on September 20, 2014, 01:46:49 AM
Here in Germany the river wasn't in the box of the base game.
Grammar checked you. But you are correct, although The River was included in Big Box 1 in Germany as well as the US (though not advertised as included). Early editions of Big Box 2 included it as well, but I think they ran out someway through the packaging process.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: SRBO on September 20, 2014, 01:55:50 AM
I use them to start a good field if i have the chance.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: kettlefish on September 20, 2014, 01:58:36 AM
Here in Germany the river wasn't in the box of the base game.
Grammar checked you. But you are correct, although The River was included in Big Box 1 in Germany as well as the US (though not advertised as included). Early editions of Big Box 2 included it as well, but I think they ran out someway through the packaging process.
The River was never a part of the BigBox 1 or the BigBox 2 in Germany.

Thanks for the Grammar correction.  ;D
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: danisthirty on September 20, 2014, 03:28:16 AM
Thanks for this topic whaleyland!  :(y)

I will usually use River 1 or River 2 (rarely both together because of the number of tiles) purely because it expands the starting area of the game beyond the usual crfr starting tile. This provides players with many more options right from the start and the game can settle into a pace determined by the players rather than something overly competitive with lots of meeples clustered closely together and everyone competing for the same huge city simply because it was the best thing to do at the time.

As I understand it, u-turns are only explicitly forbidden if they are immediate (i.e. there are 0 tiles between the 2 bends). This seems to cause a lot of confusion and personally I'd prefer it if there was an official ruling to say that the river must always extend away from the source and should never turn back towards it. I guess there will always be exceptions though and this is where a lot of the confusion can come from.

As expansions go I appreciate this because it's easy to play, it doesn't conflict with any of the other expansions too much and I like how it affects the overall landscape.

Next Week's Topic: The River

As much as I like it I'm not sure I'd want to discuss it two weeks in a row!  :)
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Whaleyland on September 20, 2014, 03:35:32 AM
Next Week's Topic: The River
As much as I like it I'm not sure I'd want to discuss it two weeks in a row!  :)
Corrected. Next week: THE PIGS!  :@ :@ :@
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Paul on September 20, 2014, 03:38:16 AM
Because there is actually a chance that the river will become incomplete, we do not allow any U-turns at all.

My cousin played a game with me on my mobile phone, the old .apk version and he managed to make the river incomplete after his second river tile! Lol.

Luckily, the program discarded every river tile after that placement and we could continue the game with the regular tiles.
  We took a screenshot of it, if interested. Don't have it on me atm.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: quevy on September 20, 2014, 03:38:33 AM
If you can try to take over the field with the pigs when I use the 2 rivers, a point in the city is something too good not to consider.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Gerry on September 20, 2014, 06:12:16 AM
I usually lay out the entire river by myself before we start playing.  I use it to spread the game out along the table so nobody gets crowded and we can each just enjoy working on our own structures.  To me it is one big long starting tile.  I have the most spare time and like to get it all set up so we can start playing straight away without worrying about the shape of the river.

My main frustration is the way it is sometimes included in the base game and sometimes not.  I ended up printing extra tiles from the HiG site before I realized that it was included in the Count expansion.  There is no mention on the front of the Count box that it includes the river and I was doing my choosing from amazon and other web pages.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: MrNumbers on September 20, 2014, 01:02:28 PM
I've mostly considered the River as a cosmetic expansion for Carcassonne. It's not much planning rather than who gets their farm out first and who is lucky to get the city or roads tiles.
The cloister river tile rarely gets completed due to tough road combinations when using few expansions.

My opinion is very close to Yellow's. "I usually just place the tiles". In competition games I am very cautious in placing followers on the river tiles. But there is an exception: if we play with some "eating" expansions (Dragon, Plague, Tower), I place followers almost at every River tile I can! :)
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: jungleboy on September 20, 2014, 01:19:12 PM
But there is an exception: if we play with some "eating" expansions (Dragon, Plague, Tower), I place followers almost at every River tile I can! :)

I noticed that you placed a farmer on the river fork in all three of our attempted World Cup semifinals featuring the dragon. But this farmer did not help you in the very short game that I won 3-2.  :green-meeple:
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: MrNumbers on September 20, 2014, 02:07:42 PM
But there is an exception: if we play with some "eating" expansions (Dragon, Plague, Tower), I place followers almost at every River tile I can! :)

I noticed that you placed a farmer on the river fork in all three of our attempted World Cup semifinals featuring the dragon. But this farmer did not help you in the very short game that I won 3-2.  :green-meeple:

But in last attempt it gave me 42-point farm :P
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Tacita on September 20, 2014, 02:52:19 PM
When I use The River I always use the tile from GQ11 as fountainhead and I always use the lake from River 2 if we are going to use the dragon (which is not very often). However, with all the various starting tiles one can choose from today (School, Rose etc), it seems that we have more or less abandoned these small expansions.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: quevy on September 21, 2014, 03:06:01 AM
Because there is actually a chance that the river will become incomplete, we do not allow any U-turns at all.

My cousin played a game with me on my mobile phone, the old .apk version and he managed to make the river incomplete after his second river tile! Lol.

Luckily, the program discarded every river tile after that placement and we could continue the game with the regular tiles.
  We took a screenshot of it, if interested. Don't have it on me atm.

Has happened several times to me with my symbian. I do not know why but the tile bifurcation at times was positioned laterally from the computer, the other objectors (computer) inserivano tiles in a particular way, and almost all the tiles were discarded, sometimes it was not possible to complete the river 2.

I was thinking instead of a single river with all expansions outputs, eliminating springs and lakes in excess, using river 1 2 3 and GQ11, if I'm not mistaken, you can create a stream of water along 33 tiles.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: thegreatone3182 on September 21, 2014, 10:09:21 AM
We always play with both The River & The River II. We also use the Spring tile from GQ11. I love the road on that tile, as it helps to break up the fields some.

I honestly can't imagine not playing with the river. In addition to the incredible visual aesthetic, it spreads the board out and gives you plenty of options to start the game.

One thing that sometimes gets annoying is that depending on the course the river flows, it sometimes starts to move off the table. So, on a few occasions, we've had to shift all the tiles after placing the river to center it better on the table. I always dread the one lake tile coming out too early- I just like the game so much better when the right and left rivers are roughly the same size.

We never allow U-turns, so have never had a problem with the placement.

I really, really want to get the tiles from the "River III" to expand the river some more.

Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Gerry on September 21, 2014, 10:17:27 AM
We always play with both The River & The River II. We also use the Spring tile from GQ11. I love the road on that tile, as it helps to break up the fields some.

I honestly can't imagine not playing with the river. In addition to the incredible visual aesthetic, it spreads the board out and gives you plenty of options to start the game.

One thing that sometimes gets annoying is that depending on the course the river flows, it sometimes starts to move off the table. So, on a few occasions, we've had to shift all the tiles after placing the river to center it better on the table. I always dread the one lake tile coming out too early- I just like the game so much better when the right and left rivers are roughly the same size.

We never allow U-turns, so have never had a problem with the placement.

I really, really want to get the tiles from the "River III" to expand the river some more.
Instructions for using the River from the CAR documentation
Separate the spring tile and the lake tile from the others.35 Place the spring tile in the middle of the table and make the
other ten tiles into a stack. The game now begins. As usual, the players take turns to place a tile and can deploy their
followers to the river tiles as knights, thieves, monks, or farmers. When the river is finished, the lake tile is placed,
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: danisthirty on September 21, 2014, 10:53:03 AM
I don't quite see the relevance of posting the rules Gerry? Was there a point you were trying to make?
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Gerry on September 21, 2014, 11:08:00 AM
I don't quite see the relevance of posting the rules Gerry? Was there a point you were trying to make?

Sorry I was referring to what thegreatone3182 had in his message


“I always dread the one lake tile coming out too early”

when the lake tile should only be placed after the other tiles have been placed.-
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: danisthirty on September 21, 2014, 11:13:12 AM
I see.

I'm not sure if the official rules for River 2 are any different but if there are more than one lakes being used I normally play that one of them gets thrown in with the rest of the tiles too.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: thegreatone3182 on September 21, 2014, 12:20:02 PM

I'm not sure if the official rules for River 2 are any different but if there are more than one lakes being used I normally play that one of them gets thrown in with the rest of the tiles too.

I think this is right, according to the CAR. You have the normal lake and the volcano lake. The Volcano Lake tile is placed last. We mix the other lake in with the rest of the tiles. As such, it can be pulled any time. Page 60 of the CAR seems to back this up -"The spring tile, the river fork and the lake with a volcano should be separated from the others, while the remaining tiles are mixed and placed face down in a stack."

As the regular lake isn't included in that list, it would be mixed in with the others and can come out any time.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Gerry on September 21, 2014, 12:28:18 PM
The other lake included in river II ends in a city so it would encorage further building beyond the end of the river and would not be an issue.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: thegreatone3182 on September 21, 2014, 12:35:42 PM
The other lake included in river II ends in a city so it would encorage further building beyond the end of the river and would not be an issue.

True, my point was simply that I don't like when one branch of the river is very short and the other one gets super long. It doesn't have anything to do with being able to play the game and add to it, it's just the aesthetic of the board. I like when both sides of the river are roughly the same length. I've played games where the lake with the city is the third or fourth tile drawn, and one side of the river gets capped early. You can still play fine, it just doesn't look as good to me.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Gerry on September 21, 2014, 12:56:50 PM
I agree, that is why I lay out the entire river before we start playing to get the best layout for an enjoyable game.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Tacita on September 21, 2014, 01:19:47 PM
We usually take half the tiles and mix in the fork, and in the other half we put the city lake. That way the fork is not likely to be next to the fountainhead, but it will always be before the first lake.
Title: Re: The River – Element of the Week #2
Post by: Christopher on February 23, 2016, 12:30:39 AM
I very rarely play without at least one River expansion, usually two. I like the aesthetics, and the increased starting space which makes less competition for features early on. I did enjoy the addition of the road-spring from GQ though, as the starting farm was often very large.

I especially enjoy using the River II when playing with Princess and Dragons as it means the dragon gets deployed early on via the volcano lake as opposed to waiting until randomly drawn.