Hi benver!
Here you are my comments.
The rules implicitly convert road segments into tile count, so the German Cathedral tile is counted more than once if participating in a road more than once.
The rules say you count and score each section of the road separately. The German Cathedral road tile is "counted twice" *because* the road segments are counted seperately. The rules never mention counting the tile twice. They say you count and score both roads seperately.
I've been reviewing the original rules in German and English to find any differences. I also checked the clarifications that HiG provided in 04/2016 to check if anything fell through the cracks too. Here is result:
1. The original German rules by HiG: They only talk about "road segments" (they use the word "Straßenabschnitt") and there is no mention of "tiles" when explaining the scoring of roads and archbishops.
2. The original English rules by HiG: On the other hand, they use "road tile" (even "tile") preferable over "road segment" when explaining the scoring of roads and archbishops. Of the 6 occurrences of "road segment" in the German rules, only 1 uses "road segment" explicitly in English. On the other hand, there are 4 mentions of "tile" instead.
Here you are an excerpt of the original rules with some comments. I underlined the expected occurrences of "road segment", that do not match the German Rules most of the time:
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>> Scoring a closed road[Rules] When you complete a road leading directly to a cathedral your highwayman gives you
2 points for each
tile the road consist of.
[Comment] The English rules used "tile" instead of "road segment".
>> Special rule when scoring a road[Rules] Differently to the rules of the base game, for a road starting and ending on the
same Land tile showing a cathedral, you count and score both
roads separately
[Comment] The English rules omit the word "segment" as the German rules.
>> Scoring a cathedral[Rules] The cathedral itself will only be scored once all roads leading to it are closed. The archbishop gives you points for all these roads -
1 point for each
road tile.
[Comment] The English rules use "road tile" instead of "road segment" as in German.
[Rules] The 3 or 4
road segments on the cathedral tile are counted separately.
[Comment] The English rules use "road segment" the same as in German.
>> Final score[Rules] At the end of the game all unfinished roads leading to cathedrals and all unfinished cathedrals give you points. Highwaymen and archbishops give you one point for each
road tile leading to the cathedral.
[Comment] The English rules use "road tile" instead of "road segment" as in German.
>> Special rules in combination with expansions[Rules]
First expansion: For each closed road with an inn that leads to a cathedral, you get 3 instead of 2 points for each
road tile, and 2 points instead of 1 for your archbishop.
[Comment] The English rules use "road tile" instead of "road segment" as in German.
===
So as you can see, the German rules are consistent but the wording of the English ones is somewhat misleading.
3. Clarifications by HiG: Our friends on CarcF got some clarifications from HiG you addressing several topics.
https://www.carcassonne-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=3237&p=40694#p40906Here is the translation into English:
===
[Q1] According to the cathedral rule, the number of "road segments" is decisive for the evaluation. In the rules of the new Carcassonne edition the word "road segments" ("Straßenabschnitt") cannot be found. The rule for the old edition uses the "road segment" as the designation of the individual road markings on a landscape tile. However, the score is always based on the number of landscape tiles (e.g. 4 points for a circle with 5 road segments on 4 landscape tiles). Are the "road segments" or the participating landscape tiles evaluated now for the "Cathedrals in Germany"?
[A1] The road segments are evaluated.
[Q2] The question arose with the evaluation of branched roads, which are connected somehow also with the cathedral:
"What are "road segments leading to the cathedral?" So are all "road segments" meant that are in any way connected to the cathedral?
[A2] I'm not sure you want to go ahead with this question. Are you wondering about the wells / roundabouts? In any case, this refers to all road segments of the roads that have a road segment on the cathedral tile.
The examples in the forum "Cathedrals in Germany - Riddles: Evaluation" are correct.
https://www.carcassonne-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=3222#p40374Note: You can find the English version on CarcC as well:
http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2580.msg37680#msg37680[Q3] "For a highwayman as well as for an archbishop you get 1 point each for every road segment leading to the cathedral".
This formulation leads to the conclusion that at the end of the game, a highwayman gets points for every road segment connected to the cathedral, no matter if he "owns" these roads or not.
Is that really the intention, or is it just the unfortunate formulation?
[A3] That is not the intention. What is meant is: A highwayman is evaluated normally, even if a part of his road ends at a cathedral.
Note: So majority applies when scoring roads with German Cathedrals. This is the meaning of normal evaluation here.
[Q4] At the end of the game, unfinished cathedrals are also scored. If an unfinished cathedral has a completed road with an inn (as in the 2nd riddle with the cathedrals, see link below) the archbishop receives 0, 1 or 2 points per road tile / "road segment"?
https://www.carcassonne-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=3222#p40381Note: You can find the English version on CarcC as well:
http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2580.msg37715#msg37715[A4] This is clearly stated in the rules of the game. The archbishop receives 2 points per road segment.
===
So the conclusion is:
* Roads connected to German Cathedrals are evaluated by their number of road segment not the their number of tiles
* Majority is taken into account for the evaluation
* Inns are taken into consideration
* German Cathedrals are evaluated based on the roads connected to them independently. Additionally:
- The road segments on the German Cathedral tile are counted independently
- A road connecting two or more road segments on a German Cathedral tile is evaluated only once
* Other road modifiers such as German Castles benefit road evaluation as usual but are not applied to the German Cathedral evaluation. Officially it takes into account road segments and inns.
NB Wikicarpedia mentions counting the road tile twice in an i.e. addendum, but this is not in my printed rules (English).
This was an addition based on the inference that the scoring of German Cathedrals was more related to tile count that it is really as per the German rules. In terms of scoring is equivalent. The problem comes with the line of thought that German Cathedrals modify the tile count. The German rules show clearly this is not the case although the English rules seem to go in that direction.
A 4-tile road with a loop back to the Cathedral tile means 5 road segments. However, since the points are applied per tile, the rules assume you have a 5-tile road as a special case. Therefore if the rules modify the tile count for the scoring when a German Cathedral tile is involved more than once, why not keep this altered tile count for all the tile-based bonus calculations, namely Mage and Markets of Leipzig? For me is the simpler solution.
Because you count and score roads. Normally with a T-section loop the rules explain that the road on the T-section is not counted twice. With a German Cathedral T-section, the two road segements are both counted. The tile count is always 4. Four tiles staying four tiles is the easier solution for me.
My strict interpretation of the rules would be the following (I think it overdoes it and I don't back it, but here it is):
In the example above the have 5 roads segments in 4 tiles, so the score would be as follows:
1. Core feature scoring = 13 points (decomposing the score feature in "layers")
- Road basic score: 5 road segments * 1 point = 5 points
- Inn : 4 tiles * 1 additional point = 4 points
- German Cathedral: 4 tiles * 1 additional point = 4 points
2. Bonuses = 10 points
- Mage: 4 tiles * 1 additional point = 4 points
- Markets of Leipzig: 4 tiles * 1 additional point = 4 points
- Little Buildings: 2 buildings * 1 point = 2 points
Total = 23 points
So, in this case the core feature scoring would be 4 tiles * 3 points + 1 extra point per the additional road segment = 13 points. This would count real tiles, and treat additional road segments separately.
This is in direct contradiction to a scoring example in the printed rules.
My example below is a just a mind experiment to see how far I could tweak the rules to get a weird approach when scoring. Sorry for torturing you with this nonsense.
The example is a closed loop of 4 tiles with a German Cathedral.
The score is 5 (road segments) x 2 points (because of the German Cathedral) = 10 points.
With an Inn you get 3 instead of 2 points for each road tile.
So according to these rules the score would be:
5 roads x 3 points = 15 points
OR
4 road tiles x 3 points + 2 points from the German Cathedral road segment = 14 points.
The rules are unclear about which of these two is correct.
(but I'm using the first one)
The right scoring would be:
5 roads segments x 3 points = 15 points
Check this post with the solution to a riddle by kettlefish accepted as correct by HiG (I included the link to the enunciation above too - the German and English versions)
http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2580.msg37695#msg37695 On the other hand, we all know that this is not the spirit of the expansion for example when interacting with Inn & Cathedrals as per the wording of the rules: as a special case, they consider the road segment count as the tile count for this feature.
IMHO this distinction of tile count between core feature and bonuses seems a bit odd. The simpler thing is to use the "altered tile count" in all cases for the sake of consistency, that is, the German Cathedral tile is counted more than once to all effects to compute the scoring when the road loops back to the German Cathedral tile. What do you think?
I think insisting that there are 5 tiles for bonus scoring that is dissociated from the road feature seems odd.
- For Inns it makes some sense to apply the road modifier with the German Cathedrals.
- For Mage it feels odd, it gives +1 per tile in the scored feature, and there are literally only 4 tiles. The Mage doesn't give +1 for shields in cities that give extra points. Why would it give +1 for an extra road segment that gives extra points??
- For Wainwrights quarters it also feels weird, The Markets of Leipzig give +1 point for each road tile, and there are 4 of them.
- For the Little Building it feels odd to count it twice. But if the tile is counted twice for Mage and Markets of Leipzig, then why not for Little Buildings?
Where did the "tile counting twice" come from? I can't find it in my rules. My English German Cathedrals rules only mention counting roads seperately.
(Every time I type "there are 4 tiles" I think of Captain Jean Luc Picard's "There are four lights!")
Cheers!
After this analysis I will have to recant since there is no base to support the idea that German Cathedrals were including a tile count modification mechanism. So it is clear to me now that:
* Roads ending at a German Cathedral will score their core feature scoring based on road segments.
* The core feature scoring for these roads will be affected by modifiers such as inns and the German Cathedral itself.
* The Mage and Markets of Leipzig will take into account the original tile count from the road.
So you did good in insisting about your views of the German Cathedral rules. If the excerpts I included above differ from your printed rules, please let me know. I only have the PDF versions on CarcF to hand at this moment and did all the analysis based on them.
Thanks for helping WICA too.
+1 merit from me.
Cheers!