Carcassonne Central

Carc Central Community => Strategy Guide => Topic started by: kothmann on September 06, 2021, 11:34:39 AM

Title: Tactical Tuesday -- Let's Build an Online Workbook!
Post by: kothmann on September 06, 2021, 11:34:39 AM
As much as I enjoy general strategy tips, I find myself craving specific example problems to ponder and discuss.  I thought it might be useful and fun to build a library of concrete example problems by starting a weekly series here on Carcassonne Central.  I'll post a problem with multiple-choice answers, and we can use a poll to record everyone's votes.  I'll always include an "Other, please specify" option, so that we can capture the good choices that I overlooked or just don't understand.  Ideally, everyone would ponder the problem and cast a vote before reading other answers.  That way, we benefit from lots of original thinking.  After voting, please post a reply to explain your thinking and/or react to others'.

My model for a "workbook" of realistic, practical problems is the no-limit hold'em poker trilogy by Dan Harrington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrington_on_Hold_%27em).  Another inspiration is the chess Combination Challenge (https://www.amazon.com/Combination-Challenge-Lou-Hays/dp/188067386X) book by Lou Hays.  Janice Kim's series of Go books (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1453632891) also contain lots of specific examples in the form of problems to solve.

By the way, I love
Steve and Dan's book (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086Y4FV9J)--the discussion of farm strategy alone is worth the price--and recommend it to everyone who wants to be better.  But I think a collection of problems would be a nice supplement.

My initial focus will be on multi-player base-game only situations, since that's my preferred game.  But hopefully we'll also branch out into two-player games and also include various expansions.  Please message me if you have ideas for a situation you would like to see posted.  Right now I have maybe a half dozen decent ideas, so I'll need more to keep this going.

Notation
If you choose one of the multiple-choice answers, there is no notation required (unless you want to give a lot of details in your reply).  But if you want to specify "Other", then we to be able to define the move.  I found a
great thread (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=4350.30) on a general annotation scheme for Carcassonne games.  As impressive as this system is, I want to propose a simplified version that I hope will be sufficient and more accessible for these problems.

  • I will put an arrow pointing North on the start tile in each puzzle photo.  That will be [0; 0] and other tiles will be denoted by [east offet; north offset] from the start tile.
  • As far as orientation, let's just list the tile edges going clockwise from North, so the starting tile would be CRFR.  If it were rotated clockwise 90 degrees, it would be RCRF.
  • And then we can just use words to describe what meeple goes where.  For example, on a CCRR tile, you could say, "Place a meeple as a farmer on the field between city and road."
I'll update below with links to each week's problem...

Week 01 (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5462.0)
Week 02 (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5471.0)
Week 04 (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5476.0)
Week 04 (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5483.0)
Week 05 (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5490.0)
Week 06 (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5496.0)
Title: Re: Tactical Tuesday -- Let's Build an Online Workbook!
Post by: Meepledrone on September 06, 2021, 11:50:10 AM
Great initiative!

+1 merit from me.
Title: Re: Tactical Tuesday -- Let's Build an Online Workbook!
Post by: unclewill on September 07, 2021, 01:43:20 AM
Hi kothmann, great idea! +1 from me too.
Title: Re: Tactical Tuesday -- Let's Build an Online Workbook!
Post by: Allograft on September 07, 2021, 12:09:45 PM
Agreed, +1 Merit for the great idea.
Title: Re: Tactical Tuesday -- Let's Build an Online Workbook!
Post by: Bumsakalaka on September 29, 2021, 02:49:54 AM
+1 merit to me