Miscellanious Tips

[danisthirty]

Sometimes it can be difficult/ pointless to make an entire post out of a single tip or piece of strategic advice. For this reason, I’ve created this thread as somewhere to post miscellaneous gems that might otherwise be lost.

So if you’ve got something you’d like to share but don’t have the time/ energy to put it into a new post then please post it here so that it won’t be missed when the first edition of our strategy guide/ blog is finally compiled. Thanks!

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1444.0

[danisthirty]

Something from  to get the ball rolling:

"Let me start off with what is a good strategy when not playing with friends and family: Be ruthless and devious!  "

[danisthirty]

If an opponent is trying to get a meeple onto your road by placing a meeple of theirs on an adjacent road such that any rrxx tile (where x could be any feature) is required to join the two roads, point another road towards the hole where the joining tile needs to go. This will ensure that the roads can not be joined as a 3 or 4-way road will always terminate at the centre of the tile meaning your road is protected from your opponent’s meeple. This applies to the base game only.

[MrNumbers]

Old topic, but still actual:
http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=74.0

Maybe it is worth to move it (and similar topics) to this sub-forum?

[jungleboy]

If an opponent is trying to get a meeple onto your road by placing a meeple of theirs on an adjacent road such that any rrxx tile (where x could be any feature) is required to join the two roads, point another road towards the hole where the joining tile needs to go. This will ensure that the roads can not be joined as a 3 or 4-way road will always terminate at the centre of the tile meaning your road is protected from your opponent’s meeple. This applies to the base game only.

Playing with Expansions:

Several expansions contain tiles that include a curved road and at least one other road edge, making it possible (depending on the exact configuration) that the opponent could still join their road to yours even after you tried to prevent it by adding a third road edge to the required connecting tile. The major expansions that include one or more of these tiles are Inns and Cathedrals (1x), Abbey and Mayor (1x), the Princess and the Dragon (1x), the Tower (1x), the Catapult (3x), Wheel of Fortune (2x) and Hills and Sheep (1x). The minor expansions that include one or more tile of this type are King and Robber Baron (1x), GQ11 (1x), Mage and Witch (1x), Crop Circles II (2x), the Festival (1x), the Goldmines (2x) and the the Ferries (8x, though this could be a non-permanent joining of the two roads given the nature of the ferries).

[danisthirty]

Old topic, but still actual:
http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=74.0

Maybe it is worth to move it (and similar topics) to this sub-forum?

Thanks MrNumbers. I already have copies of the documents compiled by obervet so I will get round to posting their contents here hopefully very soon.

@jungleboy Thanks very much for your extension to my tip. I think that covers the exceptions very nicely 

[Scott]

If you're going to take an action which will benefit another player and you have a choice between which player will benefit, you should at least consider how many points each player currently has, and, time permitting, try to consider approximately how many points they are poised to earn with the followers they have currently deployed.

Having all players sharing equally in the same feature might make everyone feel good, but the points become worthless because everyone earns the same number. When such a situation is forming, at least one player needs to be shut out so that the points retain some value to the others involved.

When placing a cloister (or equivalent tile), find a spot where the largest possible number of sides will be already completed, to minimize the number of turns that your follower will be deployed on the cloister.

[CKorfmann]

I'm not sure if this might be worth it's own thread.  Please move this around with my blessing Dan, if you feel it belongs elsewhere. 

Deploying your Barn

Figuring out the right moment to commit a follower to a farm can be a tricky, especially in a game with few expansions.  You want to get the most bang for your buck without having to lose that follower for the rest of the game.  You also have to deal with other players trying to "glom on" as it's been coined around hear.  The barn adds a layer of complexity since you really only have one shot at it. 

In a normal game, I will usually go through about half the tiles before I decide which farms are the most promising.  This can be difficult when other players play fast and loose with their farmers.  Typically, I do my best to make sure I at least share the points on the largest farm, if not take it over outright. 

When playing with the barn, I try to ascertain which farm has the greatest potential a bit earlier and do my best to develop it early on.  Ideally, this farm lots of small cities and a pig herd tile.  Once I've gotten the farm up to at least four or five cities, I'll then feel pretty good about deploying my barn to my own farm.  This does a couple of things; primarily, it scores this farm for you twice, once early in the game, and secondly, it gives you back whatever resources you had invested in the farm by way of followers and especially your pig.  It's really nice to be able to use your pig again on another farm that might develop before the end of the game. 

From that point, be intentional about developing that farm with small cities for the rest of the game.  I also like to try and glom on to other farms if I can.  Having my barn farm join an opponents farm scores it for them, but at a drastically reduced value than it would at end game. 

[CKorfmann]

How to defeat the frequent farmer.

With the AI of my cellphone being my most frequent and available competition, I've recognized a few things about how it plays.  Typically, a computer player will pick one strategy and go with it, not that these are the best strategies, mind you.  One might be to spend all their followers on roads even sometimes choosing a road over a cloister on the same tile.  Another might focus on cities and have 4 or 5 in the works throughout the game.

Then there is the frequent farmer.  I kind of doubt you'll encounter this in a real game, but if you do, here's how to beat them.  The frequent farmer claims farms early and often.  They do this to be sure that they get the best farms at the end of the game.  Typically you'll see them place a farmer as soon as there are two completed cities and sometimes just one.  Before you know it, they've edged you out of every farm on the board, and sometimes they are able to join up to three or more farmers on one farm.  You'd spend half the game and waste a bunch of opportunities trying to compete with that, but the good news is you don't have to.

Most of the time when this happens, they might only have one or two followers to spare on other features, especially in the later stages of the game.  This is the point at which I will begin claiming and working on several small cities at the same time.  If you can score a hand full of 3 to 5 tile cities (somewhere between 6 and 16 points depending on pennants), you can mitigate the excessive end game scoring of your opponents farms. 

But hold on a minute, you say.  Aren't you just giving them points by completing more cities?   True, there is the potential hazard of shooting yourself in the foot this way, you just have to be careful about where you build them.  Obviously, you'd like to build them well away from their farms if you can.  However, say you give them four six-point cities, you're still coming out on top with twice as many points as you're giving them (most likely). 

[CKorfmann]

Roads?  Where we're going, we don't need roads!... or do we?

If you're like me, you never really paid attention to roads before, but I'm here to say that my opinion of roads has changed a bit lately.  Roads are your friends, and while they don't often have the potential of large payouts like cities, farms, or even a well-placed cloister, roads can do a lot for you.  How many times have you been waiting for what seems like hours to draw that one perfect tile you need to finish, or ensure that you can finish, your big city and feel your heart being chipped away a bit at a time buy drawing straight road after straight road?  Well I say make those roads take you somewhere good.  Granted, the story changes when we play with Inns, but let's say for the sake of argument that we're not. 

Admittedly, I still pay little attention to a road that is made up of less than three tiles.  If I start pulling road tiles though, I'll start making myself a road on the outskirts of the map, away from all the action and when it gets to three or four tiles, if I can spare it, I'll drop a follower on it.   I'll leave him there the rest of the game if I can and every time I pull a road tile that does nothing for me, I'll toss it down on my road to the suburbs.

Those pesky three way intersections tiles (RRRF) don't have to be a nuisance either.  They can actually help score you a few more points here and there if you play them right.  Take a look at the three photos below.  The first will score you four points, the second also four points, but the third will score you six points for the same number of tiles. 

[loki]

I feel one of the areas Carcassonne is rather weak on is that roads are not actively used to link the cities together.  It is an omission that I try to exploit in my own homemade expansions where I create city tiles with functions that can be matched to other complimentary tiles in other cities.  I use the roads to link the cities and score when matches are achieved.