Carcassonne Central
Carc Central Community => General => Topic started by: BT on May 11, 2013, 10:45:56 PM
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I read a series of articles online during this week called "Anatomy of a Game: Carcassonne" by Shannon Appelcine on www.mechanics-and-meeples.com, originally posted in 2006. I'm sure many people have already been alerted to this series of articles (I saw a carcassonnecentral link in the google search) but I found them extremely interesting. The discussion in part two bout the tile ratios and the way that "Inns and Cathedrals" and "Traders and Builders" evens out the perceived inequality in the base game was particularly interesting.
Catching up with my folks this weekend for Mother's Day and inspired by the article Dad and I decided to have a game of Carcassonne and we used the Base game, started with River and River II without allowing follower deployment until the rivers were completed and then added the "GQ mini expansion" tiles to "Inns and Cathedrals" and "Traders and Builders" for the main game.
Game 1 ended with my Dad wining 176 - 114. Aided by his 56 point city and superior farmer deployment he thrashed me. The finished layout was extremely compact, almost rectangular with very little gaps. The fields were all divided up into small sections because of the number of short roads.
Game 2 was a whole other story. We continued with the same expansions and from the very beginning the game was much more spread out. But as you can see in the photo of the end of game, the majority of cities lay to the west of the rivers. Dad's 30 point road sprang out of the centre of the game headed east, while I focused on trying to steal his large city that he was developing with his builder. After using 4 followers and risking the entire city on a single remaining tile I was able to claim ownership and score the 90 points that the Cathedral tile helped create. With the help of my 90 point city and 3 farmers, the game ended with me, gaining "revenge" for the first game, wining 310 - 170.
So the 90 point city was the largest city we had ever scored and it got me thinking. What is the biggest city that everyone on the forum has scored?
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Here's a picture of my city.
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That is a great city. Hopefully your Builder was also in that city...because of the double turn...
Didn't your father like to come in with his own knight in this city with tactical placement of tiles?
We play like a battle - who becomes the majority of such a big city the same is with the biggest farm...
I can't remember what was the biggest city which I had may be around 50-60 points.
Your city has 93 points (25 ctiy tiles + 6 pennants - each with 3 points).
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Thanks kettlefish, I missed the pennant on its own down the bottom. Dad is not going to be happy when I tell him that the city was worth even more points ;)
My Dad did try to keep me out. He kept adding followers when he could but he just couldn't close off the city and I would bring in another to match him. I was very lucky near the end as we were tied for the city for about ten minutes when none of tiles that came out could be added to it. The city just kept getting bigger and bigger as we tried to gain majority control.
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The most valuable city I can remember from one of my games was 63 points. My opponent got that one. Even worse was a different game where my opponent got a 60-point city and had a castle sitting right beside it, so she got 120 points all at once. I kept hoping to draw the right tile to try to steal the city or complete a small road beside the castle before the city finished, but fortune was not with me that day. :(
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Not a real-life game (it was on JCloisterZone with computer players), but I was proud of my 111-points city:
http://imgur.com/a/nMi2x