Clarification of rules v6.2 pdf

[Tyroq]

I have been reading through the detailed PDF here with all the updated and expanded rules, and I must say I've learned a lot, some of it quite surprising. I've been playing for years, but the little rule pamphlets that came with the boxes my group has don't cover nearly as much as this...

For example, apparently cathedrals kill cities if they are not completed by the end of the game. This seems to contradict the basic game rules that say all unfinished cities score 1 point per tile/pennant. Same with inns on roads. We've always scored them as 1 point each for unfinished at the end game as if the features simply aren't there. Why is it that inns and cathedrals kill scores like this? 

Also it was pointed out to me that having shrines means you can't put cloisters near them. But the rule pamphlet that came with our box only said that whichever feature finished first scored, nothing about one preventing the other from being placed at all. 

I'm still reading through the rule PDF here, so I'll probably run into more surprising rules changes. Makes me feel kinda like a noob again, finding out about things that change the way we've been playing and didn't know about all this time. 
There are probably a lot of people out there who don't know about these new rules that would be surprised to find out things they've been doing wrong. 

Update: OK these rules for the king and Barron are very different. We've always played that in order to get the king or robber you have to be the OWNER of the largest city or longest road. You can't just cap someone else's feature and win the king or robber that way. You have to own the feature.  We might end up making that a house rule now.

Update 2: we never knew you were only supposed to use one river when playing with both river expansions, and so we've always played with two rivers. Do we really have to stop doing that to be taken seriously now or can we play with two rivers? It's always worked fine for us...

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=223.0

[Tacita]

It is your game. You play it the way you want.

The reason the rules are so complex is that all expansions (with a very few exceptions) were developed only with the base game in mind. This is probably the way it has to be, since as a developer you can not assume that all the previous expansions have been bought, but it sure messes up things. An idea would be that developers make some notes about other expansions and how they work togheter in the rules, which could be done easily enough if there were just a few expansions. Carcassonne, however, has about thrity. It is way way too many, of course, but expect more to come and the rules to become even more bloated and complex.

[Joaquim00]

All the mega-games that you're having sound fun!  (I don't get to play Carc with real people very often...)

The rules of most expansions break the rules of the basic game somewhat.

The Completed Annotated Rules is a good reference, but quoting directly from the rule pamphlets that I assume you have:

Cathedrals:
On the right hand side of the front side of the rule pamphlet for Inns and Cathedrals:
"If such a city [i.e. a city with one or both of the cathedral tiles] is not completed by the end of the game, the knight scores 0 points for the player!"

Cult places [i.e. shines]:
In the third "page", right above the subtitle "The challenge":
"A player may not place a cult place adjacent to several cloisters, nor may a player place a cloister adjacent to several cult places."

Those are the official rules.  But as Tobias said, it is your game.  Play as you like

[Tyroq]

Thankyou both for your replies. Looks like my mistake regarding the cathedral city scoring. We will have to keep that in mind for future games. 

As far as differences go, I think we will be coming up with a number of house rules to handle some of these differences, and I will be happy to share them with you all once we've hammered things down. I really do appreciate the work put into the annotated rules. It has clarified a lot of things we-ve wondered about. And we do want to play consistently. 

I do have a new question, on page 73 of the PDF rules it says that the pig field tile of River 2 does not add an extra point for barn scoring, but then the footnote says it does. Which is the case? We've always counted it as giving an extra point, after all that's what it is for. But should that not be the case?

[kettlefish]

...
I do have a new question, on page 73 of the PDF rules it says that the pig field tile of River 2 does not add an extra point for barn scoring, but then the footnote says it does. Which is the case? We've always counted it as giving an extra point, after all that's what it is for. But should that not be the case?

The English rules are sometimes different to the German rules from HiG.
The basis of the CAR are the German rules from HiG.

In this case stated the German rule at the BigBox3 follows:
German:"Die Schweineherde (Erweiterung "Der Fluss II") bringt keine zusätzlichen Punkte für den Gutshof".

English"The pig-herd tile (from The River II) does not generate any additional points for the barn" - CAR6.2 Page 73

In the English BigBox3 rules by RGG isn't that sentence.
(CAR6.2 Page 73 Footnote 241)

CAR6.2 Page 73 Footnote 242: That is a house rule.
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CAR 6.2 Page 4 - You can find all the different symbols and explanation for the footnotes.
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Greetings
kettlefish