A Carcassonne League?

[AlbinoAsian]

My friends and I did a league competition on BSW. It was hard work because of timezone issues. As we'd moved all around the world, but we managed to make it work and it was a great deal of fun!

We gave each round a timeslot of 2 weeks to make sure they could schedule in a match

[rfielder]

My friends and I did a league competition on BSW. .....

What is BSW?

[kettlefish]

My friends and I did a league competition on BSW. .....

What is BSW?

BSW is the brettspielwelt

There you can play many board games online.

[danisthirty]

I did have a quick look at this and it seemed like a convenient way to play but I'd read that it only supported second edition farmer scoring. Does anyone know if this is still the case?

@AlbinoAsian - I like the idea of having a set amount of time for players to arrange a game between themselves, thanks for the tip!

Is anybody else interested?

[jvnoledawg]

I'd be in favor of it, if it's simple to do (that is, login somewhere and play)

[Rosco]

I am in

[rfielder]

I have the Carcassonne game running on my PCs, and have linked it between two of my PCs.  There are five PCs and two laptops on my home network.

Have not actually played a game yet, but will do that as soon as possible - which is next week at the earliest.

Have not tried to link to this game from outside my network.  Not sure how that will work, since everything on my network is a 192.168.0.xxx address.

Have played the game a bit, to see how it works, and I must say this is not the same as playing on a table.  Zoom out far enough to see the board, and the tiles can get too small to recognize.  Panning around works, but like zooming, it will take some getting used to.  I am almost willing to be that those who win games are those who have spent the most time getting used to playing on a PC, regardless of their actual skill level.

It is nice, and useful, that the game always lists all possible locations for your next tile.

If we can make it work, I am in for some gameplay, and a tournament.

[jvnoledawg]

I've played a few games vs the computer with the JCloisterZone program.  I really like it, and think it would work for us.

And an interesting note, had I not done this, I never would have realized that we (my family) have been playing barns incorrectly.  For some reason we thought you had to have a farm before you could put a barn on it.  when the computer starting taking my farm with a barn, I thought something was wrong, so I went back to the CAR and discovered our error.

Anyway, using this method could work.

[danisthirty]

Hello! Quick update on this as I'm aware that I'm not moving things along very quickly and I don't want people to lose interest. So far it seems we have six or seven interested players (Carcking, rfielder, jungleboy, jvnoledawg, Rosco and I [and MrNumbers?]) which I think is a good number to see how things work out although obviously it's not too late for anyone else to join in if they want to.

@jvnoledawg - I know what you mean! Certainly for big games with several expansions anyway, as the AI opponents take their turns so quickly (as you'd expect from a computer) that it's difficult to keep track of everything that's going on and it doesn't help when you can't see the full landscape at a glance like you can when you play in person. I don't think this will be such a big problem when played against human opposition though as the game will be slower and you can take your time to zoom in and out as required before placing a tile. Obviously it varies from game to game, but I've posted a screenshot of a game I played this morning which is zoomed-out to the point that the entire landscape can be seen in sufficient, playable detail (for me anyway).

Similarly, I don't think any level of familiarity with JCloisterZone is going to be a significant enough benefit to anyone such that it would skew any individual results, but there are still alternatives available and at the end of the day it will be up to the two people who are playing against each other to decide how they're going to play. This seems like the fairest, most practical way of making things happen to me!

@rfielder - please let me know how you got on! Did you manage to set a static IP address for the computer you used to host the game and did you open a dedicated port for it as per MrNumbers' advice? If at least half the people in the league are able to host JCloisterZone games then it should be relatively simple for the other half to connect to them.

In other news I am still looking at BSW although I struggled to get this working at first because of silly Java security problems. Even once I'd managed to get into the lobby I wasn't quite sure what to do as I don't speak German for one thing, but hopefully I can work out how to get a game going (advice from anyone with experience of this would be greatly appreciated!) and will be able to present this as another suitable alternative to JCloisterZone, Facebook and the iPhone app.

All being well, I'm aiming to finalise some of the arrangements by 1st May and am hoping that we can get things going properly soon after this. Any thoughts/ suggestions/ advice etc please let me know!

[quevy]

Jcloister I use for my games solo, if you manage to make it work could be interested in understanding how to use the network and to match with you.

[Carcking]

There is a setting in JCloister so that it shows what the last tile placement was.

I like JCloister quite a bit and play it often against the AI. The system is somewhat limited in that there are not higher levels of AI difficulty. Often times the AI makes weird choices to place tiles and followers. At other times it feels like it knows exactly what you're trying to do and cuts you off at every turn. I usually challenge myself by waiting till very late to deploy Farmers and then try to get them glommed into the AI farms. Or I try to win without Farmers. Same with Barns. I don't place mine till they place theirs - then I try to either protect my farm if it's larger or glom in if theirs is larger.

One thing I love is it has the option for the 2 point two-tile city.

Farm scoring is kind of a hybrid. It scores like 3rd edition but any player can only score a particular city once no matter how many farms he has supplying it. I actually like that because it keeps farm scoring somewhat in check. (It's been no secret that I'm not a fan of the changes HiG made in the 3rd edition with farm scoring and two-tile cities. I think they nearly broke the game. But I digress - that's a topic for some other thread. )

[MrNumbers]

I am definitely interested!

As for JCloisterZone: in version 1.6 there was much better AI, that could not be beaten so easy. After major code rewriting now there are many new expansions and options, but AI isn't good enough. Although, the author promises that in some future versions he will improve AI level.

The hardest AI level I ever seen is in German PC version of Carcassonne (this one: http://www.amazon.de/Koch-Media-Carcassonne-PC-Download/dp/B005O2Y82U) - 10 levels of AI and the 10th level I can beat only in 50% of games. This version also has an option to play over the Internet, but still this product must be purchased, which is the only "minus" of this variant.

[rfielder]

@rfielder - please let me know how you got on! Did you manage to set a static IP address for the computer you used to host the game and did you open a dedicated port for it as per MrNumbers' advice? If at least half the people in the league are able to host JCloisterZone games then it should be relatively simple for the other half to connect to them.

As stated in my message, I am playing between PCs on my home network.  No ports or static IPs needed.

You just need to know the IP of one of the PCs.  Running ipconfig in a text window will tell you the PC's IP address.

The sequence to start JCloister so that it talks to another PC can be tricky.  Annoyingly tricky.  Once you get the hang of it, is it OK, but...

Another annoyance is that JCloister does not have an install.  You get a .zip archive.  When you extract the files from the archive, you get the game only.  With no install routine, it will be far more of a challenge for many PC users.

The fact that there does not appear to be any documentation whatsoever raises the level of that challenge.  A lot.

[danisthirty]

Hi all.

I have now received replies to all of the individual messages I sent out yesterday and will be emailing everyone again in the near future (hopefully today) with some final instructions/ guidance as to how I see things working. All being well, the league should be operational soon with the first round of matches scheduled to take place from next Monday (5th May).

@rfielder - hopefully any concerns you may have over the suitability of using JCloisterZone will be addressed in the email, but please do let me know if they're not 

Dan

[jungleboy]

Looking forward to it! After the first series is over, it would be great to do it again adding one expansion, then again with a different expansion etc.