Scaling for Large Games

[Christopher]

So, I have had a little play with my formulas to reduce the immense number of towers players were receiving. They now work out the number of tower pieces, bridges and castles based on the number of 'vanilla' tiles being used. I am, however, using a special definition of vanilla here. When I took it to mean just city, road, field and cloister tiles, there were startlingly few. So, now, as suggested by Fritz, I am using vanilla to mean any tile which does not trigger an action additional to normal play. They might change the scoring, but they do not require the player to do anything other than play a figure.

This means vanilla tiles are:

• Inns and Cathedrals
• Trade goods
• Rivers
• Cults
• Vineyards
• Hills
• Siege tiles
• Darmstadt
• Ferries
• Fliers
• Games Quarterly
• Monasteries
• Wind Roses

Not vanilla tiles are:

• Princess tiles
• Volcanoes
• Dragon attacks
• Tower foundations
• Abbeys
• Festival tiles
• Bazaars
• Wheel of Fortune spin tiles
• Crop Circles
• Festival tiles
• Halfling Tiles
• German Castles
• Mage and Witch
• Goldmines
• Messages
• Plague outbreaks
• Robbers
• School

The School has two starting tiles, so I'm not counting those as vanilla (and they aren't drawn anyway) and Halflings, Abbeys and German Castles are played from the players hand, which I'm counting as a special action.

Whilst Fliers still only result in you placing a follower, you knock around with a die, too, so I'm counting that as special. The only tiles I'm uncertain about are magic portals. All you do is place a follower, buy they do have special rules. I'll figure it out later.


The numbers are a little nicer now. Players gets additional tower pieces, bridges and castle tokens to account for having extra tiles, but not according to tiles which do other things. That way, it's not so many as to overwhelm everything else that is going on.

Huzzah!

[Christopher]

On to my next matter of scaling then. Individual expansions! I am going to look at adding extra tiles of 'central' expansions in order to increase their prevalence in larger games. For example, in a game with 90 tiles, six inns and two cathedrals are great. In, say, 200 tiles, that's much less. Expansions which are fairly central become diluted in large games. I'm going to look at scaling these features up.

My first question then, is what constitutes a 'normal' large game? At what point do you start scaling up? In a game with the base game and Inns and Cathedrals, obviously no scaling is required. Adding Traders and Builders still required no scaling. Add all other published expansions, and you need to scale. So, when is this tipping point? When to start scaling?

I first looked at the big boxes. Of the five big boxes, three have Princess and the Dragon, three have a river, two have Abbey and Mayor, and all five have I&C and T&B. They also have a similar number of tiles.

• BB1: 174
• BB2: 173
• BB3: 168
• BB4: 168
• BB5: 144

Big Box Five short changes the others a little, but I suspect that this is because of the odd Base Game/Wheel of Fortune combination tiles. You get two expansions without all of the tiles of each. If we exclude this Big Box, and take an average of the other four, this comes out as 170.75, call it 170 for ease of use. This means a 'standard' large game has 170 tiles, and probably contains I&C, T&B, and a River, and possibly P&D and A&M.

So, up to 170 tiles, you can stick with one copy of each expansion. With more than this, you could consider adding more of certain expansions in order to balance them out and reduce the dilution of these features. Not all features lend themselves to or need scaling, so I need to look at which do. I could, also, apply 170 tiles as a limiting factor with my previous calculations, and only calculate additional towers, bridges and castles on tiles above 170.

How does 170 tiles sound for a 'standard' large game? Enough for one game before you start getting to Mega-Carcassonne.

[Hounk]

I'm not sure, what you call "standard". All I know, is that rules from "The Tower" still encouraged, that you could add all tiles together, while "Abbey & Mayor" did not. As far as I know, A&M also had been the first expansion to have watermarks right from the first print run. I also think "The Tower" is a very "concentrated" expansion, with the main feature on all of the 18 tiles, so they might initially had in mind, people will play with all tiles and therefore need a more prominent available feature. And starting with A&M there was a "rethinking", that it might get to much, if you always add expansion after expansion and that's why the watermarks came into play. All mayor expansion tiles up to "The Tower" had been 162. If you count in count, king & river, you get a few more. So probably, you quite hit the mark, when KJW and HiG considered "it is enough" for a single game.

[Christopher]

I'm not sure, what you call "standard". All I know, is that rules from "The Tower" still encouraged, that you could add all tiles together, while "Abbey & Mayor" did not. As far as I know, A&M also had been the first expansion to have watermarks right from the first print run. I also think "The Tower" is a very "concentrated" expansion, with the main feature on all of the 18 tiles, so they might initially had in mind, people will play with all tiles and therefore need a more prominent available feature. And starting with A&M there was a "rethinking", that it might get to much, if you always add expansion after expansion and that's why the watermarks came into play. All mayor expansion tiles up to "The Tower" had been 162. If you count in count, king & river, you get a few more. So probably, you quite hit the mark, when KJW and HiG considered "it is enough" for a single game.

That's a really good way of putting it! 170 tiles is enough for one game. Unless you are intentionally playing 'Mega-Carc,' this is about the spot to stop adding tiles. I drew this number from the Big Box totals and it's further evidenced by the initial four expansions. I think you're right about the Watermarks. Can any of our full-completionists confirm this? Were Watermarks introduced with Abbey and Mayor?

[Hounk]

Were Watermarks introduced with Abbey and Mayor?

That's not, what I actually wrote. I think, I read somewhere here, that they were introduced with Big Box 1. Still, if that was the case, A&M would have been the first expansion to get them from 1st printing on.

[Whaleyland]

Were Watermarks introduced with Abbey and Mayor?

That's not, what I actually wrote. I think, I read somewhere here, that they were introduced with Big Box 1. Still, if that was the case, A&M would have been the first expansion to get them from 1st printing on.

Big Box 1 was the first, followed closely by Abbey & Mayor.

[What If?]

Hello, first poster here!

I´m not sure if I understood you correctly, but my understanding nevertheless gave me some ideas towards scaling my favorite playing mode, mini-mega-carcassonne, that is, as many expansions, including quite a few fan made ones, as possible but still within an affordable time frame.

If you are asking for a ratio between tiles per expansion vis-a-vi number of players and/or total size of game I can tell you that we play with 1 more tile than player from each mini (except we skip all meta-game-play such as messengers, robbers etc), half the monasteries, about 1/2 tiles of large expansions and fan-made ones. Certain fan-expansions require detailed picking of tiles, others can be drawn at random.

This way we play mega-carc with 150-200 tiles whilst the game remains well balanced.

[Decar]

Hi what-if!  Welcome to carcassonne central. Your mini-mega game sounds fun. Especially including lots of fan-expansions.  Maybe if you have time you'd like to share a photo in Quevy's competion over on this thread:

http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2292.0

[SRBO]

Which BB had rivers in it? I know 1 and 5 had it, which one else?

Funny to see this magical 170 number showing up.

[Christopher]

Which BB had rivers in it? I know 1 and 5 had it, which one else?

Funny to see this magical 170 number showing up.

Big Box 2 contains Count, King and Robber so contains the River II.

[SRBO]

Which BB had rivers in it? I know 1 and 5 had it, which one else?

Funny to see this magical 170 number showing up.

Big Box 2 contains Count, King and Robber so contains the River II.

Ah yes ofcourse. I thought you meant that it had a river standalone.
Thanx anyway

[Christopher]

Breakthrough!

I've had a thought which I'm going to apply to my methods of calculating tower piece, bridges and castle tokens. I'm still going to use the base game ratios and probably the 'vanilla' tile methodology, but I'm going to increase the numbers in increments. This will save having to do additional calculations with every game, and will allow smaller large games to remain consistent.

Eureka!

Instead of giving more of each feature as you add tiles, the numbers of features will go up upon reaching a threshold. I'll still use the calculations from before, but you won't add more features until you reach a certain number of tiles. For example, it might be three castles up to 100 tiles, four up to 150, five up to 200, and so on. Those aren't calculated values, just an example to give an idea. I can try to base the numbers around the 170 tile game, too.

I'll post again when I have some numbers!

[Whaleyland]

This means vanilla tiles are:

• Inns and Cathedrals
• Trade goods
• Rivers
• Cults
• Vineyards
• Hills
• Siege tiles
• Darmstadt
• Ferries
• Fliers
• Games Quarterly
• Monasteries
• Wind Roses

I dub these Vanilla+ tiles.

[Christopher]

This means vanilla tiles are:

• Inns and Cathedrals
• Trade goods
• Rivers
• Cults
• Vineyards
• Hills
• Siege tiles
• Darmstadt
• Ferries
• Fliers
• Games Quarterly
• Monasteries
• Wind Roses

I dub these Vanilla+ tiles.

Good idea! Vanilla+ it is. It being any tile which does not trigger an additional action for the player. Probably a loose definition though. The only tiles I wasn't sure about are magic portals and fliers. Technically they're just follower placement, but there's obviously a bit more going on.