Favouritism Poll #2 - The Base Game Rules

[Decar]

Firstly, sorry for the delay here - I was having it handed to me last night during a Princess and Dragon League game.

But now we're ready to continue the favouritism polls this week by asking you:

What are your favourite Base Game Rules?

As we explore the world of completionism, I think it's also good to take stock of some of the changes that also occurred during the development of Carcassonne.  It's hard to believe over the past 16 years the Carcassonne Rules have been through some subtle enhancements.  Most significantly, the farmer rules.  What I find incredible, is I still go to events and people have to clarify which farmer rules were using.  The last change to farmer scoring was in 2002; but even now Carcassonne is well known for the difficulties scoring farms brings.


Who knows where farmers will be in the years to come?  Carcassonne II has relegated farmers into a special appendix!

I will briefly summarize the differences between editions:

Small City Scoring:



Up until 2002 - The this small city would only score 2-points, not 4 as it does today.

Farming:

The first thing to note is that Farmers would Stand Up like every other Meeple, you can see this, most clearly on the rear of the game boxes:



An option not available today is the 2001 edition, which quickly suggested a playing tip, that farmers should lie down to make it their function clearer, but this rule was only clarified in 2005.  This option is left off because essentially, the same as the 2000 edition.

Farmer Scoring - 1st Edition - 2000

For each completed city, the player with the most farmers touching it gets four points. Tied players all get four points, each.

So in this example:

So for each City going anti-clockwise:
Large City: Red: +4 , Blue: +4 - both players have 2 farmers touching it
Small City1: Red: +4 , Blue: +4 - both players have 2 farmers touching it
Small City2: Red: +4 , Blue: +4 - both players have 1 farmer touching it
Long City: Red: +4 - The Red player have 2 farmers touching it

Red: 16
Blue: 12

Decar's Difficulty Rating: Pretty Simple


Farmer Scoring - 2nd Edition - 2001

The player with the majority of farmers inside that field will score for that field. Tied players all get all points.
A field will score 3 points for each completed city adjacent to the field.
A player can score for a single city one time, and only one time... no matter how many fields and farmers he has next to it.

Back to our example:

North Field: Blue has the most farmers in this field, so may score the Large City for +3
West Field: Red has the majority of farmers in this field, so may score +6 for the Large and Small City.
South Field: Blue may score +6 for both small cities
Centre Field: Red can score +6 for the small and Long City
North East Field: Red cannot score the Long City again.

Red: 12
Blue: 9

Decar's Difficulty Rating: Pretty Fiddly, should that Blue field to the north score the large City, and I have to keep track that the long city was scored once already.

Farmer Scoring - 3rd Edition -2002

The player with the majority of farmers inside that field will score for that field.  Tied players all get full points.
A field will score 3 points for each completed city adjacent to the field.
Each field is scored for itself. Therefore, a city may score more than once for a player.

Our Example Again:

North Field: Blue: +3
West Field: Red: +6
South Field: Blue: +6
Centre Field: Red: +6
North East Field: Red: +3

Red: 15
Blue: 9

Decar's Difficulty Rating:  Simples

Summary

So the significant change between the 1st and 2nd Edition was the switch from 'Majority of Farmers per City' to: 'Majority of Farmers per Field'.  I think the example above shows the difficulty with keeping track of scoring cities more than once.  I had to re-read the rules 3 times to make sure I understood that Blue, being the majority owner in that field, could score the large city - and I'm still not convinced.  Overall though, it seems the 2002 edition does allow for a bigger difference between scores, being 6 points behind, rather than 3 or 4.


Anyway, over to you - Did I make some glaring mistake?   Have you ever played with the older rules?  Do you play with some kind of  variant?  And Most importantly: Which is your favourite?

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2544.0

[Paul]

I went with what we've always used, which is 4 points cities and farmers lay down.

We did use 2 point earlier but somewhere along the way we reverted back to 4 points. I think why we did this was mainly due to so many 2 city tiles variation from expansions that are not counted towards Castles eligibility and thus would confuse most of us in our group.

As far as farmers are laid down, I've always thought this was a core rule from the start. Learned something new!

[dirk2112]

There is no such thing as a standing farmer.  Those are just robbers or knights that shifted when somebody accidentally  bumped the table or shifted the tiles.   

Also, I don't mind 4 point farmers as long as we aren't playing with the pig or barn.

[Paul]

There is no such thing as a standing farmer.  Those are just robbers or knights that shifted when somebody accidentally  bumped the table or shifted the tiles.   

This reminds me of the kids in the library playing chess when I was in school. Then other kids walk up to the table and yell "Åttans spårvagn!" ("The number 8 tram!" in Swedish) and bump the table so all the pieces fell.

[ny1050220]

What's the difference between the 2005 and 2014 rules?

[dirk2112]

This reminds me of the kids in the library playing chess when I was in school. Then other kids walk up to the table and yell "Åttans spårvagn!" ("The number 8 tram!" in Swedish) and bump the table so all the pieces fell.

I'll have to teach my son that for when we play Jenga.  No one cheats as bad as a 7 year old.

The worst thing about Carcassonne is when you run out of table on one side and you have to shift the entire board.  Standing farmers would not work.

[Decar]

What's the difference between the 2005 and 2014 rules?

Farmers have been moved into an advanced variant rules - it is in an Appendix now.

[Decar]

We've only been running this this morning, 16 votes have been cast... 100% prefer the 2005 rules!

Is this because it's what people are used to playing?  Surely someone out there preferred the old rules, and if not why not?

[Whaleyland]

I started playing Carcassonne with the Big Box 1 and the 3rd edition rules. I've only played the 1st edition rules once and I really didn't like them. They're just too complicated. I even convinced an unofficial tournament to stick to the 3rd edition – the heads of the tournament didn't even know the rules had changed (it was in 2014!)!

That being said, moving Farmers to an appendix is just dumb. They are a vital part to the game and all the people that are afraid of them or don't understand them are either a) lazy or b) uninformed because the person who taught them didn't do a good job.

[Decar]

Thanks for the input whaleyland!  I didn't think the 1st or 3rd edition rules were hard to understand at all.  I think the 2nd edition did quite a lot of damage, considering per field per city is very confusing!

[ny1050220]

I voted for 2005. Though I do think it's easier to exclude farmer in the first few games when teaching someone new to the game. I believe this is also suggested by the official rule before 2014.

[kettlefish]

I use the 3rd farmer rule and the score for a small city with 4 points - from 2005.
I started to play Carcassonne with the BigBox 1 in 2006.

[hunnymonster]

The worst thing about Carcassonne is when you run out of table on one side and you have to shift the entire board.  Standing farmers would not work.

Ah, but doesn't it say in CAR that you can't do that - only extend the table... Like I'm not allowed to play on the floor (I still do, I just regard it as a table with zero height legs)

[Decar]

It's looking like a landslide - I'll keep this poll open for a few more days and then we'll look both ways, cross the road and move on.

[jungleboy]

Like (almost) everyone else, I voted for 2005 rules. Like most people here, I discovered the game after 2005 (2012 to be precise). So I just played the rules that were in play at the time. I was vaguely aware that there were previous, slightly different rules, but I didn't know exactly what they were and didn't bother finding out.

As an aside regarding laying down farmers, I have played tournaments in Spain where a player or two has insisted that thieves placed on roads should be placed on their side (not like a farmer, but halfway between a standing meeple and an abbot on a German Monastery). This struck me as weird and pointless!