Legal ways to un-trap.

[PapaGeek]

As we continue to play Carcassonne, some of the players are getting more aggressive.  They take longer to place their tiles as they look harder for ways to trap the meeples of other players.  Some of the players are keeping up with the aggression and others are not.

To avoid the collapse of the group, I’m looking for the best ways to, by the rules, defend against an aggressive player’s trapping strategy.

From the rules of the expansions we have so far: one sure way is the Abbey which can be placed in any four sided hole, Bridges can sometimes be used to alter one side of a trap, and Halflings can be used to convert a four sided trap into a two sided hole that might be easier to fill.

Are there any other official ways to defend against an aggressive player who is trapping players who are just trying to have fun with the game?


Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5700.0

[kettlefish]

Some examples: If you use expansions like the Tower or the Princess and the Dragon, than you can put the meeples away from the landscape which are trapped.

[totor66]

Festival would be the best way to retake trapped meeple

You could even make house rule so that everyoine has an allocated number of festival tiles that they could use at any moment like an abbey instead of drawing a tile.

[PapaGeek]

Festival would be the best way to retake trapped prisonner.

You could even make house rule so that everyoine has an allocated number of festival tiles that they could use at any moment like an abbey instead of drawing a tile.

Sorry for the mistake, I meant to say Abbey, not Abbot!  I just modified my original post!

And, yes I do want to un-trap the meeples, but I also want to be able to complete the feature.  Again, this is a way for the non-aggressive players who just want to score points to undo the “damage” caused by the aggressive players who want to stop the non-aggressive players from scoring points!

[DIN0]

So what you are actually asking is not what to use to un-trap a meeple, but how to "prevent" traps. Well that is the art that comes with practice, but if you wish to boost it with some expansions, than the kinds which give you more control over choosing what tile you get and place are one way to achieve it.
This includes abbeys from Exp. 5, Bridges and Bazaars from Exp. 8, Halflings, German Castles, The Gifts (take 2 card). Be warned though, most of these can just as easily be used in order to trap more effectivelly.

[kothmann]

You can also judiciously choose tiles from expansions to eliminate potential holes.  Here are all the hole types in the base game and the expansions that have tiles to fill them.  I put this list together quickly, mostly from memory: the complete answer can be found on WICA here: https://wikicarpedia.com/index.php/Tile_Reference

CRFF (T&B, DF10)
CFFR (M&A, K&S)
CFRF (I&C, DF10, BCB)
CCRF (I&C, T&B)
CCFR (I&C, T&B, GQ)
CRCR (I&Cx2, T&B, P&D, M&A, DF10, GQx2)
CRCF (T&Bx2, GQ)

Cherry-picking at least 2 of each of these types of tiles, along with Abbeys and bridges should help a lot, I would think, by making permanent holes a lot harder to create.  The wheel of fortune base game version also has many of these tiles included, so you could start with that as well.

For the players who dislike being trapped, or have trouble seeing potential traps, they should try to avoid large features, which make better trap targets.  And they should try to cooperate as often as possible, so that they effectively have more ways to draw a tile that closes a hole (everyone who will get points is usually willing to place the tile that fills a hole).  Also, whoever cooperates with the most opponents is often in a good position to win!

In a 4-player game, it isn't that valuable to trap, unless you target the leader in a large feature.  Are the trapping players winning more often because they are trapping?  If not, then the problem is really that some players are not trying their best to win, preferring instead to be malicious, and that can wreck any multi-player game.

I hope your game doesn't fall apart.  It seems like a special thing you have going.  Good luck.

[danisthirty]

It might not apply here for various reasons such as player count and inclusion of expansions, but certainly in 2-player basegame encounters it isn't fair to blame the player who trapped their opponent's meeple(s) if the player with the trapped meeple(s) gave them the opportunity to do so or didn't defend themselves against becoming trapped when they had the opportunity to do so.

Losing a meeple is manageable, and sometimes you might even sacrifice your own meeple if it means you can score more points elsewhere. Losing 2, 3 or more doesn't just reduce the value of those meeples but it starts to affect your ability to compete for key features if your opponent has more meeples available. So trapping is actually quite a key part of the game (if you want to win) which is why it's important to recognise when your meeples are vulnerable, how to avoid them becoming vulnerable in the first place, and how to defend them against becoming trapped.

If you create the opportunities for your meeples to be rescued via certain tiles then it's just bad luck if you don't draw any of those tiles and your meeples remain trapped. If your meeples get trapped because your opponent traps them and you didn't do anything to stop them then you've only got yourself to blame!

[Decar]

And don't forget that if you place a tile so your meeple is trapped that's entirely your fault too 

[PapaGeek]

And don't forget that if you place a tile so your meeple it trapped that's entirely your fault too 

I will accept some of the fault for my meeples getting trapped, but “entirely” goes too far!  Carcassonne itself has to take some of the blame!



There are 8 tiles in the basic game that expand cities in multiple directions. Then you add two Inns that not only expand the directions, but also increase the city’s value during the game plus two Traders that make the city somewhat valuable to everyone: and the game strategy changes!

Now all of the players not only want to complete their features, but they also want to Join yours, or at least finish it to take your tokens!

When multiple players manage to join a city that also contains one or both of the Inns to get the extra point during the game, the remaining players have all of the incentive to trap the completion of that city to not only Trap all of the Meeples and Builders that are on it, but also to make it worth ZERO at the end of the game.

So, the game of Carcassonne has to take some of the blame!

[PapaGeek]

Let me put this another way, this is a quote of the first paragraph of Chapter 8: Advanced Strategies of The Book of Carcassonne:

"Up to a certain point, Carcassonne can be a friendly, peaceful game where all players simply get on and do their own thing. Beyond this point, the opposite is true. While it can feel somewhat heavy-handed against unsuspecting opponents who don't yet know what they've let themselves in for, setting out to trap your opponent's meeples and rendering their features impossible to complete (`killing them off') is a big part of what the advanced game is all about."

We are a group of 4 where some of the players still want the game to be "friendly", but it seems that ALL of the published expansion to the basic game are designed to make the game more "heavy-handed".

So, to restate my original question in another way:  Are there any expansion or optional rules that try to keep the game "friendly"?  The groups of players who want to be "heavy-handed" can ignore these expansions and optional rules if they want, but it would be nice to have a published list of ways to keep the game "friendly" for those who want to continue playing that way!

Or is the purpose of Carcassonne: If you can't be heavy-handed, stop playing our game!

[kothmann]

I’ve seen similar threads to this one on BGG that often diverge from the original request (tips for making the game less aggressive/combative/mean) and move toward trying to convince OP that the request is misguided and the alternative is that players who perceive some aspects of the game to be bad should simply learn to play better.  As someone who is on CC mostly (*see below) to learn and discuss what it means to play better, I enjoy these exchanges very much.  I especially enjoy exploring how the game changes with number of players, expansions, and tile mix.  But I think the original request is important on its own terms.

When my family plays, my kids will sometimes ask me, “how many CRRF tiles are left?” because they are contemplating a trap or farm invasion or whatever.  But my wife will never ask me that.  She doesn’t want to play that way.  She humors me and does politely listen to my strategy tips, but the game has other appeals to a lot of players.  Fortunately for them, multi-player Carc rewards players who cooperate with lots of other players, even if they aren’t “paying too much attention”.  A couple of months ago, my daughters’ friend almost won her very first game with us just by avoiding conflicts and sharing points for a lot of features with different players.  It was a great fit to her personality.

But of Course @papageek’s point is right.  The “all-or-nothing” nature of Cathedrals and the tendency of those tiles to create large cities makes them inherently higher risk-reward.  I think one of the points @danisthirty and @Decar are making is that players have choices when they place those tiles: if you get into a Cathedral city, you are accepting the risk of getting trapped.  If you put the tile on someone else’s city, you are accepting the risk that they complete a big city.  So, if you don’t like that, you can either omit the Cathedrals or change the rules (e.g., we play proportional scoring in all cities with a CCCC tile, to lower the stakes to a level that we enjoy).  These are both great options and the fact that the game is so easy to tweak in this way is for me perhaps it’s greatest strength.  It won’t do much good to cling to the official rules and have players get frustrated or disappointed.

I think it would be great if @papageek collected “wisdom for lower-conflict Carc” on his group’s website.  I know I would use it when playing with new players.

Thanks all.

*okay, I’m also here to share crazy variant ideas, of course.   

[Snearone]

That's the beauty of it. You either put cathedral into your city to increase its value and do everything to protect it from other players, from invading and sabotaging it, or you place it in most inconviniat place on opponents city, and than sabotage it yourself

[Challa007]

... and sometimes, really, players just don't "fit" together....

If you have 3 players who like to play nice and one who wants to play aggressive, then maybe that person should look for another group.

Sometimes it really just comes down to personality. In the game, all is possible, that's the real nice thing.

I am just now developing my own fan expansion and only after the first test plays I realised that my idea could lead people to play really really mean. I was devastated because I don't like mean play at all! Then began a search for ideas how to give people incentives not to play mean. That was really fun and you get lots of ideas if you are really looking, so I agree, you can invent some house rules (if you want to keep the aggressive player  )

[DIN0]

I tend to agree with kothmann's and Snearone's assessment. The original question is interesting on its own and I did my part in answering it. But more general discussion around this topic is also valuable.

To add to that which others have said, it is not always preferable to be too agressive in either 2-player or multi-player game. Tiles spent overly trying to create multiple traps are better spent elsewhere. The point of creating traps is multiplefold, but most notably: 1) to barr certain features from being finished and/or expanded further, 2) to gain a meeple advantage which is then utilized for increasing your point momentum, 3) to block farms.
If you spend too much resources to set up and create traps, you won't have enough to capitalize on it.

For illustration purposes, imagine the extreme scenario where one of the players sets out to trap as many of your meeples as possible. He/she chases you around the map setting up traps and making unfinishable holes and eventually succeeds in trapping all your meeples. By the time the agressor achieves this goal, it is almost the end of the game and they have scored 0 points. You can no longer score becasue of your trapped meeples, sure, but the agressor doesn't have enough scoring opportunities left for them to match, let alone surpass the amount of points you were able to score in between thier blocking attempts. The entire initiative went to drain.
Of course all of this is circumstantial and there are many factors at play, but it is not always the best idea to go into the game guns blazing. Not to mention there is also a psychological factor to all this - certain players may be provoked by agressive plays of others and retaliate with even greater force or team up with others against you. In an ideal game, you would spend as little resources for trapping as possible and let the others do the work for you. In this dream game, each of your tile placements would always serve multiple purposes and always have something useful to do.

I guess the takeaway message is situation evaluation and resource management.

[PapaGeek]

... and sometimes, really, players just don't "fit" together....

If you have 3 players who like to play nice and one who wants to play aggressive, then maybe that person should look for another group.

That is exactly the situation that our neighborhood group of 4 is trying to avoid!  We do not want to force the aggressive player out of our group!

One of the suggestions made by kothmann in another post was the use of Gates and Walls from one of his personal expansions.  Something that our aggressive player is against, “personal expansions?”!

What we are looking for is a way to play every other game with, then without, a set of expansions and features that counteract the aggressive players moves. Closing a four sided hole with a two sided Halfling or a Abbey in every other game is a good way to play the games from both angles!

All we are asking the group is for suggestions on other “legal” ways to defend against the aggressive moves!