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Messages - kothmann
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271
« on: January 06, 2022, 11:13:07 AM »
I want these 6 tiles: /pic2353063.jpg) I'm not fussy about condition: good / playable is fine. Would be willing to buy and/or trade some of this stuff (all C1 in lightly used condition): —Princess & Dragon (tiles + dragon + fairy) —Mayor (tiles & meeples, no Abbeys, no box) —The Count (mini, in box) —River I (tiles only) —River II (mini, in box with markings / tape) —Das Fest (10 tiles only) —GQ (12 tiles only) (Last 2 are very available on ebay for about $20, so it might be silly to trade, but thought I'd list it just in case.) Please PM if you are interested. Thanks!
272
« on: January 06, 2022, 08:38:59 AM »
Sounds good. We’ll patiently await the first release of 1B & 2!
273
« on: January 06, 2022, 07:22:20 AM »
Project 2 takes priority as it is more practical and (believe it or not) even more ambitious than 1B.
Expected release date for P2? We have high expectations! 
274
« on: January 05, 2022, 11:15:19 AM »
Congratulations on your first post, @dunsany! Very timely for me, because I have just acquired the Robbers (in C1 art) and though we liked it more than some other users, I have been looking for variants. I like your idea. Overall +1 merit from me! Have you play-tested the idea? A lot of times ideas that I think will work totally fall apart when I actually try them out. This one looks good to me, but I'm just curious if you've tried it... Other questions / clarifications: - It looks like the robber bag symbol is always on a field, so, the robber meeple will be on a field. In that case, I don't understand the meaning of "No more than one robber can be placed on a feature", since no robbers are on features other than fields. Am I misunderstanding? Do you mean one robber in a given field?!
- I think the idea here is that the robber will rob the first completed road or city when the score for that road or city counts the tile on which the robber stands?
- I think the scoring intention is clear but just to confirm: if a city is worth 10 points and two players share control, but there are two robbers, then each player will get 5 points and each robber will also get 5 points? It might be good to add a couple of simple examples to the rules document.
- This is a very powerful robber! If a player has a large city that is only one city cap away from completion, a player who draws a city-cap robber tile can get half the points in a single turn!? Wow. I might like to see the robber placed on the robber symbol on one turn, and then on a subsequent turn, if the player doesn't "move wood" (e.g. place a meeple), they may move the robber onto an incomplete feature on the same tile (even if that feature is occupied). That way, you have to commit to a specific feature before it is completed and you can't steal points on the same turn that you place the tile. I suppose you could just add that as a rule (can't score on turn robber is placed), similar to the rules for the Castle from Expansion #8.
I'll try to play this sometime and let you know how it goes. I am also considering these, which you might find interesting: Messengers & Robbers. This one also puts the robbers on the landscape as meeples. I don't have messengers, so I'll have to improvise... Rule variant of the Robber. This one is a more minor variant. Again, welcome to the Forum!
275
« on: January 05, 2022, 07:24:38 AM »
I am not a pencil and paper person... I actually really enjoy the paper-and-pencil experience--reminds me of keeping score at a baseball game.  But, baseball is slow, so you have plenty of time to erase your log errors and then argue about what actually just happened, even if the official answer is incomprehensible.  Also, paper scoresheets are harder to share on the internet, which hopefully is part of the fun here. Before seeing @carlium's nifty tool, I did what any mechanical engineer does when facing what looks like a coding problem: I created a spreadsheet. In this case, a google sheet, so it would be easy to share--check it out here. You should be able to save this as an Excel sheet from the File menu, under Download. I'm not sure if you can copy to a new google sheet? PM me if you have any trouble. I don't think this will work well at all on a phone. The iPad is okay, but I prefer using my laptop, which is really an unwelcome intrusion of technology into the middle ages.  Each column contains one element of the turn, in what seemed to be an intuitive order to me, and @DIN0's notation is assembled automagically in the final column. Here is what it looks like in a 4-player game (there are templates for 2, 3 or 4 players, plus the 3 games we logged so far):  Things to note about this sheet: - unlike @carlium's tool, there are no helpful graphics or menus, so you have to manually enter compass directions.
- The "orientation" is optional for unidirectional tiles (ffff, cccc, rrrr).
- The "direction" is optional for any meeple placement when there is only one feature of that type on the tile just placed. This helps to speed-up the logging.
- I added a "comment" field, which I append to the end of the line using the python comment character '#'. I have mostly been filling this in when reviewing the game to help me learn from what happened.
- I added a log of the end-of-game scores for each of the 4 types of features in the top left, and there is a "running total" in the top right of the sheet. We found this useful to double-check with the scoreboard while logging, improving both the log and the score on the board.
- In the {Role} column, the sheet won't accept anything except F, K, M, R. This is because I kept trying to put "N" for kNight, like chess.
- I leave caps-lock on, so the tile edges are entered uppercase, but the script converts them to lowercase to conform to the standard.
- You have to put a single-quote character (') before the + to indicate a shield--otherwise, google sheets thinks you are entering a formula.
- I started using a ^ to denote the presence of a monastery on a tile. Obviously not important with only the base game.
I entered my paper-and-pencil log (earlier post) to test the spreadsheet. Then we played two more games--one 2-player and one 4-player. Logging slows play a bit more in 2-player games; it is still a noticeable if small nuisance in 4-player games, too. But I really like being able to go over the game at the end! Also, in 2 of 3 games logged so far, there was a scoring error!  Here is a photo of the final landscape and the complete log for the very exciting 4-player 60-tile game we played last night (blue has 4 too many points in the photo): 
Player Name Points
A Lewis 66
B Garrett 67
C Andrea 62
D Bruce 69
Date: 2022-01-04
0. [0;0]E:cfrf #Wind Rose start tile
1. A:[-1;0]W:crrf>K #?! not take 4 points
2. B:[1;0]W:cfrr>K=+4B
3. C:[-1;1]W:ffrr>R
4. D:[-2;1]S:cfff>K
5. A:[-2;2]E:cfcf-J+>K
6. B:[1;-1]W:frfr>R
7. C:[0;1]E:ffrr
8. D:[-2;0]W:cccf
9. A:[0;-1]W:fffr^>M
10. B:[2;0]N:cccr>K
11. C:[-3;1]N:cfcf-S>N:K
12. D:[0;2]W:ccrr>K #I hate glom-across!
13. A:[0;-2]S:cfrr>R
14. B:[0;-3]N:crrr>K=+4B
15. C:[-3;2]E:ccrr+
16. D:[-4;2]S:crfr>K
17. A:[1;-2]E:ffrr=+6A+6B #friend!
18. B:[1;-3]N:ffrr>F
19. C:[-3;3]W:cccr+>K
20. D:[-5;2]N:frfr>R
21. A:[-3;0]W:cccr+ #risky-new city better?
22. B:[2;-1]N:cfff
23. C:[1;1]ffff^>M
24. D:[-4;1]N:cfcf-J+ #foe!
25. A:[-3;-1]W:crfr>K
26. B:[-1;-1]W:fffr^>M
27. C:[0;3]cccc+ #[-4;0] too risky
28. D:[-2;-1]ffff^>M
29. A:[3;0]W:cfff>F #nice farm glom
30. B:[1;-4]E:crfr>K #[-1;3]E = savage hole!
31. C:[-2;3]W:ccff-J+
32. D:[-6;2]S:frrr>S:F=+5D #big cities = bad farm?
33. A:[3;-1]E:cfff #no knight?!
34. B:[2;-4]S:ccrr
35. C:[-2;4]S:ccff-J
36. D:[-4;0]N:ccff-J=+20D #i thought game over!
37. A:[4;-1]W:ccrr+>K
38. B:[-1;-2]W:frfr>R=+9A
39. C:[-1;-3]S:crrr>E:R=+3B+2C #score=15-17-2-25
40. D:[-1;2]W:cccf+ #lucky! CCCF before CFCF-S
41. A:[-3;-2]W:frfr>R
42. B:[-1;4]E:cfff>K #glom, not future block?
43. C:[-4;3]W:cfcf-S>F
44. D:[3;-4]N:ffrr>SW:F
45. A:[4;0]S:cfrr=+8A
46. B:[0;4]S:ccrr
47. C:[-3;4]E:ccff+=+16C #nice!
48. D:[-1;3]E:ccff-S>F #only 3 turns left, so F
49. A:[-4;-1]E:ccff-S>F=+4A
50. B:[1;-5]E:frrr>R=+4B
51. C:[-1;-4]N:crrf>K=+4C
52. D:[2;-3]W:frrr>S:R
53. A:[-4;-2]W:ccff-J>K
54. B:[-3;-3]W:crrr>W:F=+4A #nice farm grab!
55. C:[-4;-3]E:crrf>K=+4C
56. D:[5;-1]rrrr>NW:F #last meeple for 3 pts?
57. A:[-5;-2]W:cfcf-S>F=+6A
58. B:[-3;5]W:cccf>F
59. C:[-2;-2]ffff^>M=+9B+9D #[-5;1]=gray gets no meeple
60. D:[-2;-3]N:frrr>SE:F=+9C #9B = being nice to blue
276
« on: January 03, 2022, 05:43:09 PM »
next step perhaps is to create an interpreter, maybe!
“interpreter” = read the notation to create a game? It would be amazing to be able to jump to a certain point in the game. Even if you could just generate an image of the game and the score at that point, someone could build the game quickly with tiles and then play out possible endings…. Anyway, +1 merit from me. Thanks for sharing.
277
« on: January 02, 2022, 03:59:45 PM »
Let us know if they cheated... 
Hahahahahaha! Well, it turns out that in turn 60, I originally placed the monastery at [-2;1], overlooking the perfect ffff hole at [2;-1]. When I drew another monastery on turn 62, I groaned because I had no meeples left and I then noticed the hole at [2;-1]. My daughter very graciously said, “you must have been distracted by the notation system, so you should change move 60 to fill the hole for 9 points, and then put the new monastery on [-2;1] on this turn.” Young people are so quick to assume that the brain just works as intended. Anyway, those 9 points were exactly the margin of victory! I should also say that I just now noticed that I switched from DIN0’s official “K = Knight” notation to the “N=kNight” notation of chess after the first turn! Super confusing here, because N=North. Sorry about that. Old dog learning new tricks…
278
« on: January 01, 2022, 05:03:27 PM »
Everyone is free to post their own games or usages of the system
My daughter and I played a game today to give me a chance to use the notation system and it was unexpectedly wonderful... We played a standard base game, except that we used the Wind Roses start tile, because it has the compass directions prominently displayed and also because I'm in the 73rd-Tile-Is-Missing club. I decided to go old-school by using a pencil and lined paper, with the log spilling onto a second page. Below is the game log, as recorded during play, and a photo of the landscape and scoreboard, after we finished final scoring and removed all the meeples. My daughter was Red and I was Yellow: she beat me by one point, 99-98!   I'll offer some comments on the notation system in a follow-on post. But for now, suffice it to say that the system is easy and actually fun to use. After a few turns, my daughter (23) had picked up the basics of it and was helping by calling out the coordinates. It definitely slowed the game a little bit, but what's the rush? Verification: After we finished, I decided to recreate the game using the log. I found a few minor mistakes (for some reason, I put "c" in place of "f" a few times at the beginning, including my first turn), but was easily able to recreate the game. There were several interesting plays and I felt like I got to reinforce some key tactical ideas during this process! For example, on my daughter's move 45, she originally was going to put a meeple on the road and then decided not to-- good choice not to put three meeples where they can all be trapped by a single hole!You might also have noticed in the original log that I occasionally wrote the score in the right margin. But during the recreation, something wasn't adding up. After an animated conversation, we concluded that my daughter, who had kept score, must have forgotten to give me 9 cloister points on turn 44! Luckily, I had also taken a photo of the landscape and scoreboard after turn 48, and it was easy to confirm that I was 9 points short:  We also found that she had failed to give me a point for my 1-tile incomplete city at the end, so the corrected final score was 108-99--I won! My daughter was quick to point out that I should temper my pride, since I had, after all, drawn all 6 cloisters! Anyway, here is the log with corrections and a few comments in red.  I can use every win I can get against my daughter, so I was really happy to have logged this game. I also really enjoyed the post-game walk-thru and strategy review. Thanks, DIN0!
279
« on: December 31, 2021, 09:59:02 PM »
It’s a beautiful and impressive document. Looking forward to trying out the system. +1 merit from me.
280
« on: December 31, 2021, 06:50:22 PM »
Excited!  
281
« on: December 31, 2021, 06:04:52 AM »
We’ve only recently starting playing with some mini expansions (Crop Circles, Mag & Witch, Goldmines, Robbers), and we’re really loving the games. We often remove some tiles from the base game (usually 4xRRFF + 4xRFRF; sometimes CCCC, RRRR, 2xFFFF) to maintain a low tile count. And we have even been breaking up the large expansions into key elements (e.g. Inns, Castles, Dragon, single Trade Good) and using those as minis. To help us decide how to keep a good balance when we mix all these together, I’ve tried to categorize the effects of the various elements of the expansions. I thought it might be of general interest ( does this already exist somewhere?), so here it is. Feel free to comment / criticize / offer additions, etc. I’ll update the list as needed. Balance Feature Scores- Inns
- Cathedrals
- Signposts
- Vineyards
- Pennants
- Cathars / Siege
- Pig
- GQ Pig Farm
- School
New Features- Gardens
- Acrobats
- Castles
- German Cathedrals
- German Castles
- Dutch/German/Japanese Monasteries
- Wind Roses
Collections- Trade Goods
- Goldmines
- Fruit Trees
- Sheep
Tile Connectivity- Abbeys
- Bridges
- Tunnels
- River
Tile Draw & Turns- Builder
- Baazar
- Gifts (Take Two)
Meeple Strength- Large Meeple
- Mayor
- Barn
- Hills
Meeple Relocation- Abbot (-)
- Dragon (-)
- Princess (-)
- Portal (+)
- Tower (-)
- Wagon (+)
- Crop Circles (+/-)
- Das Fest (-)
- Count (+)
- Fliers (+)
- Plague (-)
- Gifts (Synod, Road Sweeper, Change on the Lie, Cash Out) (+/-)
Score Modification- Big Top
- Ringmaster
- Robbers
- Messengers
- Mage & Witch
- King & Scout
282
« on: December 30, 2021, 02:18:55 PM »
While thinking about this during idle time of holiday travel, I thought of another approach you could use to help players escape traps. This is totally untested, but maybe you can adapt it...
Or you could just include Das Fest in your games! Happy Nee Year.
283
« on: December 30, 2021, 10:25:46 AM »
Two of us are well into the art of the trap which is causing the other two to start talking about other games....Our target is to help less aggressive players ease into the Art of the Trap with an easier way out of the traps as they get used to making them! I think this is the right approach! I have seen some posts suggest that players be "less aggressive", but for us that doesn't really work at all. When we play games, we try to figure out the best plays within the rules: that's what makes the game fun. If that results in tactics that some players don't like, then change the rules to make those tactics less advantageous. Since it isn't practical to calculate how many tiles can complete any feature in real time, you can't make a rule to ban "trapping," even if you wanted to. we are still looking for other ways for our more gentle players to un-trap themselves...we recently read a post by kothmann where he talked about the Gates and Walls... Yes, this was my motivation too! We all found it unpleasant to be stuck in a big city, and more generally, we didn't like how many incomplete cities there are in a typical game, even without traps, particularly using only base-game tiles. (Traders and Builders ameliorates a lot of these problems in our games, but with enough other expansions, I expect it would again be a challenge.) We will not restrict the use of Gates and Walls to only cities with pennants, but we will restrict them to only city tiles that touch four sided holes, like the Abbey tile restriction. Here is the page on our personal Carcassonne website that talks about this personal Expansion in more detail.
I'm a huge fan of doing whatever works for your group, and I love the web page as a quick reference for all players. But this change makes the Walls/Gates modifiers very similar to the Abbey? In particular, I worry that it diminishes something that we discovered was an unexpectedly fun aspect of using them: Walls/Gates not only help players escape traps, but they also open up a lot of clever new tactical avenues for joining features or blocking attempts to join features. The members of your group who are more adept at trapping may really enjoy exploring and exploiting these new tactics and find that they at least partially compensate for the loss of successful trapping outcomes. ...each unused Modifier would be worth 5 extra points during the end of game scoring...
Did this work? It is interesting. My concern is that with the Abbey-like rule, it may often require more than one modifier to escape a trap, and the increase in points may not offset the "cost" of the modifiers. Of course, there is value to getting the meeple back, even if that is interestingly difficult to quantify. But a meeple trapped in a half-moon city while attempting to join a city might be best left abandoned? I suppose that is the intention of the rule, so maybe it does work? While thinking about this during idle time of holiday travel, I thought of another approach you could use to help players escape traps. This is totally untested, but maybe you can adapt it... Absolving AbbotOn any turn when a player does not "move wood", the player may place their Abbot next to any meeple, indicating their intention to abandon the feature occupied by that meeple. On the next turn, the player must use their "move wood" action to remove the meeple. And on the next following turn, they must use the "move wood" action to remove the Abbot. If at that time the Abbot is the only meeple in the feature, the player scores points for the feature as if it were the end of the game. This allows a player to abandon a truly hopeless feature, but at the very considerable cost of locking up their Abbot and not placing new meeples for 3 turns. If this is found by experiment to be too "expensive" you could have the Abbot and meeple depart the feature together on the second turn. Anyway, thanks for providing a thread for this important topic. I often find new players don't enjoy the trapping tactics and it is always good to have a lot of ideas to ease them into the game, as you suggest. Looking forward to hearing results of any play-tests with these ideas...
284
« on: December 30, 2021, 05:15:55 AM »
where some people will try to actively look for those without….
I definitely prefer without for the aesthetics. But for those who need a justification, sorting the tiles without watermarks helps you learn the tile distribution. With just base game + I&C, are you trapped if you need CFCR or CRCR? Does Traders include CRFF or CFFR? Sort the tiles for a few years and you’ll know right away! The Carcassonne Limited Edition included just I&C, T&B and river in a beautiful box, no watermarks. If I had to own just one thing, or help someone start a C1 collection, that would be my pick. And it’s pretty cheap on ebay from time to time. The only ones I don't have with symbols on them now are Princess and Dragon and The Tower
Of course there’s no logic to getting these, since the tile markings are sufficient, but I recently acquired P&D no watermarks, and I didn’t know watermarkless Tower existed… oh boy…
285
« on: December 26, 2021, 06:02:02 AM »
I was surprised to learn from the answer to @PapaGeek's recent question about Bridges that we have not been following the official rules: we allow multiple bridges to be placed on a single turn! It made me wonder another thing we allow is also illegal. We allow a player to place a bridge when there is no adjacent tile connecting to either end of the bridge. For example, after placing the monastery as shown below, may Yellow place the bridge?  We don't restrict a player's ability to make a placement like this, although in this case the play is tactically justified. (Yellow is worried that Red or Black would place a field edge to create a CRFF hole that would make the Cathedral City permanently incomplete. With the bridge Yellow just needs to draw one of several remaining CRFR tiles to complete the Cathedral city and connect to the Inn road segment.) Our usual ethic is to do this to prevent a permanent hole, but our rules don't stop you from doing it to create such a hole. So, the question is: may a bridge only be placed when necessary to ensure compatibility with a previously placed adjacent tile?
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