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Messages - Christopher

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226
General / Re: Carcassonne for 8 Players
« on: March 09, 2015, 03:12:18 AM »
But, if they were thinking about scaling sheep and wolves, don't you think, that they would have started with that right from the beginning? Providing rules, that you, lets say, have to include only 9 sheep tokens, when playing with 2 players, 12 when playing with 3, etc? After all, the difference in the likeness of drawing wolfs is bigger between 2 and 6 players, then between 6 and 8 players.

Possibly, but I don't know that scaling would suit the Sheep mechanism (I realise that contradicts what I said earlier, but let me explain). Things such as castles and towers were scaled to prevent them from being too powerful. This doesn't really apply to the sheep because you'd be hard pressed to come up with a way to use your flock of sheep against another player. The numbers of sheep and wolf tokens given in the expansion have (hopefully) been tested with numbers up to six players. I have played with two, three and four players, and the only noticeable difference is that that your flock is smaller. Scaling the expansion would be unnecessarily complex. This falls apart, however, when you add more players, because the difference which was largely negligible with up to six players becomes more and more prominent.

So you could keep the numbers static for up to six players, but add more as you add more players.   

227
General / Re: Carcassonne for 8 Players
« on: March 08, 2015, 01:40:44 AM »
Just to throw a spanner in the works...

Would you also need to scale your sheep and wolf tokens? The numbers are worked out so that as you draw more sheep, you have a higher chance of drawing a wolf. With six players compared to say, three, the sheep will be spread out more and each player will have a reduced scoring opportunity and a higher chance of drawing a wolf more quickly. Since the expansion is designed for up to six players, this is obviously accounted for. But with eight players, your sheep would go even faster. 

Probably irrelevant, but if you were scaling for up to twelve players as I think I saw someone suggest it might be pertinent. Thoughts?


Christopher

228
General / Re: Mega Carcassonne Tile Balancing
« on: March 07, 2015, 02:24:54 AM »
I'll have a look at Whaley's Campaign, thanks CKorfmann.

We mostly play Mega and though I have been tempted to double up some of our favourites. We find the balance and appearance to be just fine for our game. Sure some of those features don’t show up as often but some of the other interesting expansion will.

I’ll add, that there is no doubt adding too many expansions can water down some of experiences. For us one of those was the Wind Roses; we had so much going on that these were just forgotten about. I finally just took them out, at least for now.

This is the problem we had. A three point Wind Rose bonus ends up as not really important. I think I need to experiment a little and see what works. I actually have a spare set of inns and cathedrals, I replaced them years ago because they didn't have a watermark. I'll throw them in and see what happens. I'll probably play some games with fewer expansions too, the better to enjoy those expansions.

One thing to look out for is to try find a balancing with the cloisters. These can stack up to 60 or so easily if using many expansions.

It's funny you should say that, I actually spent an evening a few weeks ago doing some maths to calculate how the ratio of cloisters changed over the course of adding more expansions, to see if I could add some monasteries without removing the base game cloisters as it says in the rules. I haven't got round to posting it yet, but I can do, if you're interested.

229
General / Mega Carcassonne Tile Balancing
« on: March 05, 2015, 03:07:51 PM »
Hello, hello!

I wondered if I could collect a few opinions on this topic. I usually play fairly large games of Carcassonne. Not mega exactly, I don't tend to use everything, but for a typical game (we try to make time), I use:

Inns and Cathedrals
Traders and Builders
Abbeys and Mayors
Princess and the Dragon (sometimes)
Bridges, Castles and Bazaars (although we usually leave out the bazaars)
Hills and Sheep
The River I and II
Cult, Siege and Creativity (without creativity)
The Wind Roses
The Fliers
The Ferries
The Goldmines
The Mage and the Witch.

This adds up to approximately 264 tiles. With this many, some features which I feel are fairly integral end up becoming significantly less  relevant. I can't remember the last time I played a game without Inns and Cathedrals, for example, and so I consider inn and cathedral tiles to be pretty much standard. But compare the ratio of inns to tiles if we were playing, let's say, I&C and T&B. That would be 114 tiles, six of which are inns. At least you stand a decent chance of getting an inn when you have a good road going. But compare that to 8 tiles out of 264? There's almost no point in having them. And forget about your two cathedrals.

The same goes for the minis. Eight lakes feel fairly insignificant in 264 tiles. And with only eight Mage and Witch tiles, which each let you move EITHER the mage OR the witch, it just doesn't happen.

So, my question is this. Does anyone ever play with multiples of these expansions? I'm not decided on the minis, but I was thinking an extra set of Inns and Cathedrals tiles would be very welcome. Or does the fact that with all those expansions included there is so much else going on mean that it doesn't matter? Or if I want to enjoy the inns properly, should I play smaller games?

Thoughts?

Thanks!


Christopher

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