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Messages - danisthirty
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5941
« on: May 04, 2014, 02:54:39 PM »
Fixtures for Round 1 are as follows (check your email for more details):
Carcking vs danisthirty
jungleboy vs jvnoledawg
MrNumbers vs quevy
rfielder vs Rosco
Have fun!
5942
« on: May 02, 2014, 12:46:59 AM »
I couldn't get to sleep very easily last night as I had Carcassonne tiles going round and round in my head (does this ever happen to anyone else?). So I had a bit of a late one anyway, and decided to make the most of it by writing up the second game that Jungleboy and I played. This time we included Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders... JB started this game and immediately drew a cathedral which he placed on the city segment of the starting tile and claimed with his double/ mega meeple. Stealing this city from him, or at least sharing his points became my immediate goal but he put his builder to good use here and seemed to be expanding it with every tile he drew! Eventually I managed to reign him in a bit and his builder stopped being quite so useful, but by the time we'd closed off all the outside edges of the city there was still a tile missing in the middle which would guarantee an equal share for both of us. It was just a case of waiting for it to come along... While this was going on I had been using my builder elsewhere, firstly on a six-tile road (with an inn) and then on what ended up being a rather large city of my own. JB placed a couple of devious tiles which would eventually extend my city northwards with two of his meeples inside it. I tried to stop him from succeeding in this endeavour but was depending on a certain tile which didn't come in time and he ended up outnumbering me by two knights to one. I made one final effort to balance him out and reclaim an equal share in my city but he blocked me with his very next tile and sealed off the city in doing so. It wasn't long before he closed it too, and took 38 points as well as three trade tokens in the process. This hurt, as the successful completion of another two cities of his own (one with the other cathedral) enabled him to build up a lead of more than 50 points by halfway! Because we'd both been so determined to win the two biggest cities, neither of us really had a lot of meeples left for use elsewhere for much of the first half of the game. I regretted claiming a cloister I'd drawn early on but JB had a nearby road which he was gradually building around it for me so I didn't have to work very hard for my nine points when it was completed. With this meeple shortage in mind, I took the opportunity to close the large city with the cathedral in it mostly because I needed my meeples back although the trade tokens I won sweetened the deal somewhat. Despite winning us equal points this was possibly a mistake as it gave JB his builder back although I'm sure he would have done this himself if I hadn't done it for him. Generally speaking there hadn't been a lot of farming going on in the early stages of the game as it wasn't obvious where the biggest farm was going to be until later. JB took the initiative though, and placed a farmer in the north-east farm which ended up netting him 18 points in the final scoring. I attempted to do the same but was less successful in doing so and spent most of the rest of the game regretting the fact that I'd sacrificed a meeple for what would eventually amount to just six points. As we entered the final quarter of the game, it was obvious that both of us were concentrating our efforts intently on the southern farm which ended up serving 11 cities. JB claimed this first and had already got his pig onto the farm before I laid my claim to it with my mega meeple. There then followed a furious farm-war which ended in a draw since neither of us could manage more than four farmers (plus pigs). I did have a fifth farmer camped outside the farm but this was a very desperate attempt to steal onto it as there were only three tiles left to be played when I placed him! Elsewhere in the game I had an incomplete city with my builder in it which I had been using to generate bonus turns more than anything else as I certainly didn't expect to complete it. However, with the last two tiles of the game (the second of these two tiles being my bonus turn) I was able to complete it for 20 points plus enough trade tokens to give me a 20 point bonus in the final scoring. I knew this wouldn't be enough though, as JB had too many other features to score including two eight-point cloisters. The final scores came out in JB's favour again, with me trailing behind by 29 points. There was a 52-point difference between the points we'd won for cities which would have been far less if not for me losing my city to JB's excellent tile placement earlier on. And it could also have been very different if I'd won the 44-point farm, but I certainly had my fair share of good luck too and can't deny that the better player won!  
5943
« on: May 02, 2014, 12:06:53 AM »
Good game! I'm doubly impressed that you managed to play at all with that table cloth! The squares look like they're about the right size for a Carcassonne tile though, was it custom designed?  Speaking of custom designed things, I like your replacement trade tokens! I got a similar set from someone on eBay but they seemed a bit extravagant so I'm quite surprised to see someone else using them...
5944
« on: May 01, 2014, 03:22:46 PM »
I'm happy to report that JCloisterZone worked like a dream and jungleboy and I had two great games over the internet with no difficulties setting it up at all! I've done a write-up of our first game - complete with screenshots - which can be found here: http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=743.0(I may well also write-up the second game but that was slightly longer as we included Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders) @Yellow - you can rotate tiles using the tab key or right-mouse button but once you've clicked to place it (and before you place a follower/ meeple) it can't be moved. I learnt this the hard way but it isn't often a big problem...
5945
« on: May 01, 2014, 03:17:17 PM »
At 9pm GMT today, jungleboy and I had a trial game of Carcassone with no expansions using JCloisterZone over the internet. I'm happy to report that it worked like a dream (although it was a little slow at times) and I was lucky enough to be given the honour of writing the account of our game! So here goes... I went first, but apart from an early 2-tile city which I completed on my second or third turn, most of my early tiles were roads which meant I was slow to start building any reasonably-sized cities but did have a good road for my efforts. JB started a couple of smaller cities which he merged into one, and completed two smaller cities too in the first quarter of the game. He also placed a farmer but I was slow to respond and didn't attempt to join the farm until he was already in the process of securing it with a second farmer. Once the game had settled down a bit it felt fairly friendly, and as much as anything else it was great just to be playing online through JCloisterZone! Mostly it felt like we kept ourselves to ourselves and apart from a couple of attempts to steal into each other's features (one of which trapped two of my meeples as I then spent most of the game waiting for a t-junction) we generally developed and completed our own cities without a lot of interference. Farming became more of a focus as we entered the second half of the game since we were both more prepared to start risking our meeples. JB thwarted an early attempt of mine to get a second farmer onto the main farm but I was fortunate enough to draw one of the two cloisters with roads leading into them which saved the day and gave me a further nine points when I completed it a couple of turns later. This levelled our scores (for a short while at least) and at that point I couldn't have predicted how things were likely to turn out. As we started to run out of tiles, JB completed a 16-point city which he had been adding to but which I didn't think would ever get finished. This was when we both started doing everything we could to win the main farm, or at least secure a draw as it was obviously going to be impossible to win without it. Much of this battle was fought towards the north of the map and with just a couple of turns left each, luck was on my side once again when I drew a tile that enabled me to match JB's four farmers with a fourth farmer of my own. I'd tried to keep my options open and had another two meeples camped on the outskirts of the farm but I didn't manage to join either of these in... Overall it felt like a very close game and the fact that the main farm was a draw made it feel like the final scores could have gone either way. However, it turned out to be a bit of landslide in JB's favour as the final scores were 115 vs 100 to him! An excellent and hard-fought game though, JB was just too skillful for me this time so I won't even try to blame it on the tiles!  Breakdown of our scores - looks like I could have done with a few more cloisters!  The end result
5946
« on: May 01, 2014, 05:17:56 AM »
I just managed to get a game going between my work PC and my laptop at home. Unfortunately nobody was at home to actually play against but the two PCs spoke to each other and got as far as starting the game. This seems like good news.
I too was concerned about firewall problems but didn't have to make any changes to my firewall config at home to get things going, so hopefully this won't be an issue for anybody else either.
I have also produced a "short" document explaining how to setup internet games within JCloisterZone which I will be emailing out soon to everyone involved.
Looking forward to playing a few trial games against jungleboy tonight and possibly Rosco too in the near future!
5947
« on: April 30, 2014, 03:16:48 AM »
Hi all. I have now received replies to all of the individual messages I sent out yesterday and will be emailing everyone again in the near future (hopefully today) with some final instructions/ guidance as to how I see things working. All being well, the league should be operational soon with the first round of matches scheduled to take place from next Monday (5th May). @rfielder - hopefully any concerns you may have over the suitability of using JCloisterZone will be addressed in the email, but please do let me know if they're not Dan
5948
« on: April 25, 2014, 08:59:32 AM »
Well done!
It sounds as though the two you have left were the last two awards that I ended up going for too. "Top-Notch" is the one where you have to reach a total score of 20,000 or more. I've got this now but it took 180 games or so and I've now reached 54,688! "No-Mercy" is the other one but this requires winning 500 games against at least one AI opponent. I always play against a single AI opponent which I have on random and I've worked out that I lose roughly 1 in 12 games. I've won 453 games so far so hopefully it shouldn't be long before I clock this one too. Maybe another couple of weeks.
I don't know what I'll do once I've won this award. Get a life hopefully.
5949
« on: April 25, 2014, 03:39:13 AM »
Hello! Quick update on this as I'm aware that I'm not moving things along very quickly and I don't want people to lose interest. So far it seems we have six or seven interested players (Carcking, rfielder, jungleboy, jvnoledawg, Rosco and I [and MrNumbers?]) which I think is a good number to see how things work out although obviously it's not too late for anyone else to join in if they want to.
@jvnoledawg - I know what you mean! Certainly for big games with several expansions anyway, as the AI opponents take their turns so quickly (as you'd expect from a computer) that it's difficult to keep track of everything that's going on and it doesn't help when you can't see the full landscape at a glance like you can when you play in person. I don't think this will be such a big problem when played against human opposition though as the game will be slower and you can take your time to zoom in and out as required before placing a tile. Obviously it varies from game to game, but I've posted a screenshot of a game I played this morning which is zoomed-out to the point that the entire landscape can be seen in sufficient, playable detail (for me anyway).
Similarly, I don't think any level of familiarity with JCloisterZone is going to be a significant enough benefit to anyone such that it would skew any individual results, but there are still alternatives available and at the end of the day it will be up to the two people who are playing against each other to decide how they're going to play. This seems like the fairest, most practical way of making things happen to me!
@rfielder - please let me know how you got on! Did you manage to set a static IP address for the computer you used to host the game and did you open a dedicated port for it as per MrNumbers' advice? If at least half the people in the league are able to host JCloisterZone games then it should be relatively simple for the other half to connect to them.
In other news I am still looking at BSW although I struggled to get this working at first because of silly Java security problems. Even once I'd managed to get into the lobby I wasn't quite sure what to do as I don't speak German for one thing, but hopefully I can work out how to get a game going (advice from anyone with experience of this would be greatly appreciated!) and will be able to present this as another suitable alternative to JCloisterZone, Facebook and the iPhone app.
All being well, I'm aiming to finalise some of the arrangements by 1st May and am hoping that we can get things going properly soon after this. Any thoughts/ suggestions/ advice etc please let me know!
5950
« on: April 23, 2014, 10:00:53 AM »
I did have a quick look at this and it seemed like a convenient way to play but I'd read that it only supported second edition farmer scoring. Does anyone know if this is still the case?
@AlbinoAsian - I like the idea of having a set amount of time for players to arrange a game between themselves, thanks for the tip!
Is anybody else interested?
5951
« on: April 17, 2014, 07:41:47 AM »
Yep. Most officially recognised competitions use just the basic 72 tiles as far as I'm aware.
Starting with either/ both Rivers gives you a lot of options right from the start. This is all very well and good most of the time, but it isn't always what I want from a game. Call me a purist but I like being forced to start small and expand outwards, creating further opportunities as I go.
My first Carcassonne set was the RGG version which didn't include The River. When Z-Man games took over the publication of the English version they brought the river back and bundled it together with the original game.
5952
« on: April 17, 2014, 06:08:07 AM »
The difficulty for something like this (an open league) was always going to be making the actual games take place on a technical level. I believe those with iPhones should be able to play each other relatively easily (I don't know for sure as I don't have one), and it shouldn't be too difficult for those on Facebook either. JCloisterZone seems like a good fit for those who can't use either of the other methods and I'm fairly sure based on what MrNumbers has said that it won't require everyone to be a dab hand at networking, just a few!
5953
« on: April 17, 2014, 06:01:09 AM »
I've entered the UK championships and this is played with the base game only so I've been thinking a lot about it recently. Additionally, if my wife and I want a quick game without any of the extra complications we tend to go for just the base game too, especially since it usually means we can fit two games into the same length of time as would normally be required for just one (with expansions).
Even so, I wouldn't necessarily say this was a moot point. It probably won't change things in the majority of cases, it just seems strange (albeit only slightly) that games should be weighted against whoever goes last, since they've already got the fact that they're last to place a tile against them as well as having one less turn than everyone else!
5954
« on: April 17, 2014, 05:21:46 AM »
@MrNumbers - thanks so much for your advice. If we get more than a handful of people interested in competing then this will certainly make a league decidedly more possible!
As much as anything else I think it will be a good opportunity for forum members to get to know each other a little better/ build friendships/ bring world peace etc.
5955
« on: April 17, 2014, 05:14:43 AM »
72 is a lovely number as it has a lot of factors (mathematical factors). This means it's great for Carcassonne as it can be divided equally by 2, 3, 4 and 6 such that all players in a 2, 3, 4 or 6 player game get an equal number of turns. This doesn't quite work for 5-player games but you can't have everything I suppose!
But because 1 of the 72 tiles is the starting tile, there are only actually 71 playable tiles. 71 is a prime number which means that all players will never have the same number of turns each regardless of how many players there are (unless there are just 1 or 71 players). The result of this in 2, 3, 4 and 6 player games is that whoever goes last has one less turn than everyone else, or in a 5-player game the starting player gets an extra turn.
If the basic game consisted of 73 tiles there would be one starting tile and then 72 playable tiles which would make everything much fairer to all players (although it would probably also increase printing costs as it wouldn't fit onto 12 6-tile sheets making the game more expensive). Does anybody actually include any extra tiles in an attempt to address this or is it generally seen as such a minor disadvantage that it's usually ignored?
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