Carcassonne E-mail game test 1

[Paul]

This first game will be me facing danisthirty.
  Future games will be set up as me being the host for others (two or more players).

Basically I have a script that randomize the tile order and then I will send an E-mail to the players showing them their tile. Afterwards they look at the current board (link below for a preview) and decide where to place it.
  I think I got a good way to manage how to place the tile and where to put any follower or other tokens.

A tile placing reply mail can look like this:

---
Coords: 5,-3 (from starter tile at 0,0 this will be the 5th to the right and 3rd up)
Rotation: 2 (tile rotated 90 degree clockwise; 1 = no rotation, 2 = 90 clockwise, 3 = 180 degree and 4 = 90 counter clockwise)
Token: standard east city (a normal follower placed on a city segment that extends to the right, after tile's been rotated)

Other examples for tokens (i.e. followers, large followers, builder, knight, pig etc.) can be:

standard cloister (a normal follower on the cloister)
pig south (a pig placed on a farm that continues downwards from the tile placed)
  farms usually have several directions and will use a similar compass direction names.
  east-south is a farm extending right and below a (road) segment
  south-east is a farm extending downward on the right side of a (road) segment

This game and future games if this sparks an interest, will be posted here:
http://sydby.com/carcassonne/tournament/

And last but certainly not least, if you guys have any ideas on improvements, post here and let me know!
  Bear in mind the game is delibaretly set to be manually driven to give that flavor of a real game, not to mention to hide tile placement options which usually exist in the digital versions.

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=827.0

[Fritz_Spinne]

Rotation: 2 (tile rotated 90 degree clockwise; 1 = no rotation, 2 = 90 clockwise, 3 = 180 degree and 4 = 90 counter clockwise)

I think for most of us it would be more straight up if no rotation is "0", 1 = 90 clockwise, 2 = 180 (= 2x 90) degree and 3 = 90 counter clockwise (= 3x 90 degrees clockwise)

[Paul]

Rotation: 2 (tile rotated 90 degree clockwise; 1 = no rotation, 2 = 90 clockwise, 3 = 180 degree and 4 = 90 counter clockwise)

I think for most of us it would be more straight up if no rotation is "0", 1 = 90 clockwise, 2 = 180 (= 2x 90) degree and 3 = 90 counter clockwise (= 3x 90 degrees clockwise)

Normally I would have considered this right away as well. I can't for the life of me figure out why I choose 1-4 as programming usually is a lot easier with values / variables starting at 0.
  The change is not hard to adjust to but will take some renaming of files. But I don't see why I can't change it now as we've not yet started, sort of.

The game is already underway and now waiting for danisthirty for his move! 

[Paul]

Beta game started earlier today!

danisthirty having an insanely good start.

Only 3 and a half rounds done upon writing this post and already there's been a lot of improvements as we explore the possibilities. I'm also getting the hang of things, able to prep 'move' E-mail within a minute.

Oh, and it's a lot of fun!

Direct link to actual game which is updated every now and then:
http://sydby.com/carcassonne/tournament/betagame0.htm

 

[Fritz_Spinne]

At the moment both players fight for a 16 tile 40 point city, both have 2 followers in but also have 1 follower waiting to come in.
http://sydby.com/carcassonne/tournament/betagame0.htm

[MrNumbers]

This city now became uncompletable

[danisthirty]

I didn't even realise this thread was here! That was a manic game!

Please can an independent third party re-assess the final scores? Yellow has scored the game 91 - 89 in his favour whereas I believe it is 89 - 88 in my favour...

[Paul]

Yes, it was a crazy game! And it was a lot of fun as well. I am ready to try this again, even as 3 players or more.

The score has been corrected. danisthirty won 89 to 88 which is just an awesome final score for such an intense game. Worthy of spectators!

Was my bad, I miscalculated my own farmer score (added four farms instead of three for myself).

There is a lot of work ahead of me to make this as automated as I can. At least we now know this works and is quite fun. 

 

[danisthirty]

Thanks for the game Yellow (and for correcting the scores)! Here are a few thoughts on how the game itself went from my point of view...

I didn't feel like I'd got off to a very good start but managed to build up an early lead of just 4 points after completing a cloister and a couple of short roads. Elsewhere, Yellow and I had both started building our own cities quite close to each other. I would have been content to have kept them separate but when he joined them together it became a race to get as many knights as possible into the resulting mega-city!

Competition was understandably fierce, but despite my best efforts I eventually lost the city (which became uncompleteable in the process) by three knights to two. I ended up with a further two meeples trapped in another city and Yellow lost a fourth meeple too. Ultimately, we both lost four meeples and it didn't take long to work out that the upshot of this would be a 15-point bonus to Yellow in the final scoring. This was definitely an "ouch" moment for me.

As the game continued I began to slip behind as Yellow put his remaining meeples to good use. An 8-point city and a 7-point road helped to swing things back in my favour but a cloister and a short road for Yellow ensured I didn't get too far ahead! This was definitely a low point for me but I hadn't quite given up despite realising that I needed to use my meeples very carefully indeed in order to keep myself in the game.

The game really changed with the last 20 tiles or so when the mountain I'd been climbing became more of a large hill and I had a fair bit of luck which helped me towards what eventually settled on a 16-point lead (before final scoring). For one thing I claimed a two-city farm which I was able to expand to cover three cities. I also completed a 10-point city and placed a farmer outside it for a further 3 points. The game felt much safer when Yellow placed his last meeple in a city that was unlikely to be completed, and an unusually detailed plan began to emerge after I claimed two more 4-point cities on a new and unclaimed farm.

My last three tiles were exactly what I needed to fulfil my plan as I claimed a 4-point city followed by a 6-point farm and then, with the final tile of the game, joined my farmer at the top of the landscape onto Yellow's farm to take a share in his 9-point farm (netting myself an additional 6 points in the process). When the final scores had been calculated and agreed upon (eventually), I was relieved to see that my calculations had been correct and I won the game by a single point! It certainly wasn't a high-scoring game (89 vs 88) but this is to be expected when you've only got three meeples for most of it...

I've never played Carcassonne by email before but it was a fantastic experience. Yellow has done an excellent job of setting up the board and establishing how to communicate each tile placement via email in a way that can (and hopefully soon will) be processed automatically at the other end. It's a new and exciting way to play (for me) and I can't wait to see how this project develops.

[Paul]

Merit for a wonderful report, and for helping me testing this!

I got all excited just by reading it!

Going thru the game process bar below the board after final scoring, it turns out had I not ruined the chances of city completion, danisthirty would have gotten the very two tiles to actually complete the city for a tie-scoring of 4 vs. 4 followers. One can only speculate how the game would have gone from there. 

If there is an interest to do another playtest, I would be happy to set one up. Preferrably being 3 players or more. Does not have to be me included.

Meanwhile, I will work on scripts to automate a few things starting with the draw pile and a scripted board and progression bar.

 

[danisthirty]

Nobody else interested in trying this out?

[Carcking]

Actually, yes I think it's a fun idea...but I do not have the time to commit...and probably won't until after GenCon.

[Fritz_Spinne]

I'm interested in a multi player game, too.

[Paul]

It's Monday again. Weekend fun and madness over. 

While I'm back to improve this E-mail version of Carcassonne, we can still do another beta run. Anyone interested can message me their E-mail letting me know.

These following days my main work will be the script that randomize the draw pile and then preps the E-mail so I only have to cut and paste the info.
  I see no reason why this is not suitable for mobile phones as well, if you can check your E-mail with it. Then there is also text messaging service, if one could get one for free.
  Here in Sweden we have one we use for our soccer team. I, or anyone in the group, simply sends one text message to this number and pays for one message only (or free as most of us have that by now here) and then this message is delivered to everyone else in the group. Sort of a free mobile phone chat.

 

[tla]

This city now became uncompletable

you need to use the Freels Notation System, devised by Brandon Freels (my husband) just like chess notation, it allows a game to be "replayed" by others, so the strategy can be discussed

ELEMENTS OF NOTATION:
TILE: which tile (A-X) All the tiles do already have letters assigned, so it makes good sense to use them
http://www.hans-im-glueck.de/fileadmin/data_archive/Regeln/CarcKartenliste1_8.pdf
Rotation = how many 90 degree turns clockwise
Location= XY co-ordinates
Meeple= 0 if no meeple is placed, 1-9 indicates which sector of tile (after tile is rotated,relative to the xy co-ords)
 mentally divide the tile intoo 3x3 grid (just like Sudoku)
5 = meeple in the TOWN (you could use another number but I prefer 5 because it is in the middle)
7 = meeple in the FIELD at bottom left
8 = meeple on the ROAD
9 = meeple in the FIELD at bottom right
this works for all of the tile in base set, and MOST of the others. HO tile from the Builders & Traders expansion, it needs another digit to distinctly specify WHICH OF the two fields at bottom right corner. I use 69 & 89. A bit similar to the traditional compass rose, where NNE means North of North East

I use a table to record it, here is 4 turn example, 2 players, basic set

Turn  Tile    rotation  Meeple     Location       POINTS                                                 meeples left     Comments etc
 No   (A-X)   (0-3)      (0-9)        x        y             R=Road  T=Town  C=Cloister

1   D   2             4       1   0             P1=4T                                            7+7
2   Q   1             6       2   0           
3   V   0             5       1   1           
4   K   3             4       2   -1           

Sorry, I cant figure how to paste graphics into this
I also use an end-game photo...numbering the tiles in order of placement. A bit like KIFU for Go, this allows you to look at it & see how the game played out. in 2 player its obvious which player laid which tile but for multi it might need colour-coded numbers to match player colour

enjoy
Christine Freels
2013 Australian National Champion