Hi tothederby!
Recently I've been reviewing the rules for robbers in complex situations and also revisiting the sources of the various clarifications found in the CAR and, therefore, WICA.
The thought process in not fully explained but
obervet used this approach to tell apart normal other scoring events during the turn sequence (tagged with ROBBERS) from those happening in Step 3B (tagged with ROBBER CHOICE).
I would have to update my previous conclusion about Robbers in a previous post.
*
Robbers: - Used
ROBBER CHOICE in Order of Play whenever
several players can score simultaneously several features are scored individually but considered to be scored simultaneously. The CAR only considered this option during
3. Score a feature The only hint I have found about this approach is this post by
obervet from July 29th 2014 excerpted below:
http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=809.msg10416#msg10416It seems that scoring was considered simultaneous at least through Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars, as the special considerations for moving multiple wagons or scoring a castle after multiple features were completed would imply this. It looks like it was the introduction of the Robbers and the Messages that required each individual scoring event to be considered separately. To me, that makes the scoring much less intuitive and much more intrusive and likely to break up the flow of the game, which is why the Messages and Robbers have only hit my table once.
In any event, the Turn Order definitely needs some work. It's on the To Do list.
In any case, the fuzzy rules involving scoring and robbers seem to require a scoring process that may need several steps in order to allow the coexistence of features scored individually and robbers that could pick one out of several features scored in the order decided by they owners.
This "contradiction in timing" would be solved if the scoring is managed as follows:
* Feature scores are tallied (but not scored yet)
* Players decide the order of scoring and communicate their decision to players with robbers
* Players track their tallied points on the scoreboard and robbers steal points from the moving scoring figures accordingly
Cheers!