Carcassonne Central

This is my first attempt and this is very rough but it’s an idea I’ve been playing with and wondered what thoughts others might have concerning it.

This idea was based on the idea of a vineyard but I see there is a vineyard expansion already in development.  I’m open to suggestions on a new theme but for the sake of this description I’ll call it a vineyard.
With the ever increasing growth in the lands around Carcassonne grows the ever increasing need for religion and refreshment.  Monks requiring sacramental wine and nobility requiring all the wine they can get proves a lucrative market for the local vineyard owners.

The expansion would include 6 to 12 tiles with a vineyard next to a road or as a junction.  The vineyard would be a simple icon much like an Inn on the Lake.  It isn’t claimed by itself but will grant extra points upon completion of the road.  

If a road which has one or more vineyards lining it is completed, then the thief scores an additional 2 points for every pennant in a city connected to the road and 3 points for every cloister connected to the road.  However, if such a road has not been completed at the end of the game, no additional points are awarded during the final scoring.

If playing with the fan made expansion Family Feud and a road with a vineyard connects to multiple cities of opposing family ties the scoring player picks which family to do business with and scores only for that families respective pennants.

I originally thought of this as affecting farms but felt that added the potential for way to many bonus points for the already powerful farmer. So I put it on the road instead. But on a farm it might make some small farm options more worthwhile for those players who never got into a big farm by the end of the game.

I’ve also considered a claimable feature that scores points every time a cloister or a city with pennants is completed anywhere on the board until such time that the vineyard is totally surrounded (or some other ending method).  This idea would include fewer tiles I’d think but could be much more valuable. But that might be to much like gold mines.

Any thoughts? Is this idea worth working with?

Sounds good to me.  I'd agree that making the road a little more powerful would be helpful.  Although, the vineyard doesn't really connect to the road very well.  Perhaps something like a supply cart next to the road would be more suitable?

I think it sounds good. Maybe some sort of storehouse or stable (although there is an expansion that has stable owners already) might be another idea?

I like it. It could also be interesting to vary the value of the wine depending on the month:

http://santamariavisitor.com/cm/wine_country/wine_education/wine_seasons.html (http://santamariavisitor.com/cm/wine_country/wine_education/wine_seasons.html)

...it could be tied in to the Seasons expansion, with a monthly sub-seasonal board for the main tracker board (1 season to 3 months) and have the price of wine peaking and dipping depending on the time of year. Perhaps the longer the road, the older the vineyard, which sells for a better vintage. Could even do little wine bottle tokens in a series of tiers.

quick and dirty e.g:

(http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4350/wine2z.jpg)

I think some sort of trade cart or maybe a building that is the wine cellar would work just fine.  It could just be "Wine Merchant" instead of vineyard.

I do like the idea of the wine "aging" and increasing value. Thats a great chart there gunpowdertea.  Maybe use the vintage idea where vintage 1 is say a 1-3 tile road, vintage 2 is a 4-6 tile road, and vintage 3 is a 6+ road.  Points for pennants and cloisters would be equal to the vintage.  Or maybe pennants are the vintage and cloisters are the vintage +1. It adds more strategy to the expansion in not only trying to connect to specific features but also trying to do it in as long a road as possible.

Any thoughts? Basic points awarded or an aging system?

Perhaps there could be simplified and more advance rules as some other expansions have. Simple being the basic points originally described and advance using the vintage idea.  Actually the vintage idea doesn't seem so hard really as it is.  Maybe that would be simple and gunpowdertea's idea of seasons is advanced...or at least specific to using that expansion.

It may be a little more complex, but I definitely like one of these ideas.

I like the idea of a wine merchant. It could be interesting to have 1 big vineyard tile (maybe a 2x2 tile) activated by drawing a smaller version of it from the bag/tower à la The Lake, with say 6 roads (room for 8 though if it's a 2x2) going out that each player may deploy from as a merchant (would require an extra wagonesque meeple). And I like how the 'vintage' could be determined by pennants and cloisters so the player would get points based on where he was supplying to.

So what about if a player supplying for example a city received 1 'excellent vintage' token for every pennant in that city as it's completed (or after, if joined on) then can exit the city from another road like the regular wagon can to move to another to sell. There's more tiles with roads going into cities than roads going into cloisters, so maybe the cloisters should be a better vintage; 'transcendent' or 'peerless' or something. Then the bottom vintage for completed roads that lead nowhere from the vineyard. At the end of the game the player with the most tokens in any vintage gets a quality related bonus?

But then it'd be a kind of a travelling salesman take on Traders from T&B, so you might not like that idea.

This sounds like a fun idea, its different enough it could be a seperate expansion possibility in and of itself.  This idea is much more like The Lake but instead of racing to one spot you are racing to "sell" your goods as widespread as possible.  It does raise a few questions in my mind right away.

- How do you keep track of where each trader has been so they don't sell to the same place over and over?
- Can differnent players traders sell to the same cities at differnt times or is everything a one time "sale"?

This could result in a lot of tokens or markers spread all over the board.

I've been trying to keep this expansion to a simple means of making roads more stragtegic and valuable.  I think I'll take the direction of the vintages based on road length if you don't mind me using that idea.  As soon as I get some graphics put together I'll put up a first draft rule set.

Gunpowdertea, you could take this new meeple trader idea though and start a new expansion.  I think they are plenty different enough.

I guess the best way to do it without copious amounts of tokens would to be have a mini-game-inside-the-game where players can battle it out for exclusivity rights to any feature (real life drinking contest ftw!? ^^)


Sounds grand. By all means use that idea, I look forward to seeing a first draft of the rules when you've got it figured :)

I might pursue the meeple trader thing when I've finished pilgrimage, after I've simplified the rules from being the tautological overexplained confusion-fest they are now.

Hey Loganmann, can you edit the subject title of the first post to reflect the name of this expansion?

Done

My thought with this is that the merchants will all be on road segments that don't have ends on the same tile.  There may well be other features on the tiles (cloisters, other roads, cities...) but none that already connect the merchant road to a cloister or city.  This would be so all the merchants have equal potential of getting points at both ends or no points at either.

This wouldn't make it a very wagon friendly tile set.

Am I being too equalizing.  Or would the chance of drawing a tile with a merchant on a road already connected to a cloister or city (though I suppose without a pennant this isn't any kind of guarentee) be good in the mix.  Chance of the draw that you already have some points secured.

Personally I lean towards the roads without ends option, but as this is my first expansion I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on what makes a good mix...equal potential or mixed chances.

I'd go with both ends of the road open. It can usually be placed on a road that has one end completed already anyway.

I plan to add picture examples of scoring, I just haven't had a chance to finish them yet.  But here is the first draft as the rules stand now.

http://www.mediafire.com/?kgtn2yjzmwn (http://www.mediafire.com/?kgtn2yjzmwn)

EDIT: Draft 0.2

It looks good to me.  I couldn't find any typing or grammar errors.  The part about having more than one wine cellar on the road was slightly confusing, but I suppose it does make sense, I just had to read it slowly.  So if I had to make a change, I'd edit that sentence:

Instead, if a road has more than one wine cellar, each additional tile with a wine cellar on that road counts as adding two to the length of the road when calculating Vintage.

That does make it clearer.  I had trouble with that explanation as it was, thanks for the help.  I've updated the file

Version 0.3, with graphics and a few additional clarifications.  

I'd greatly appreciate proofreading/constructive critisism/suggestions etc...

Tiles: http://www.mediafire.com/?dmgzqnmvdjd (http://www.mediafire.com/?dmgzqnmvdjd)

Rules: http://www.mediafire.com/?o1jy1y0ummz (http://www.mediafire.com/?o1jy1y0ummz)

EDIT: Links are dead, new draft posted below

I have a few suggestions:

In the Introduction section: "With the ever increasing growth in the lands around Carcassonne ..."
Suggest changing "Carcassonne grows the ever" to "Carcassonne comes  the ever"
To avoid repetition possibly change "and nobility requiring all" to "and nobility wanting  all"

In the Preparation section: "If playing with the Fisherman expansion ..."
Suggest changing "the Fisherman expansion" to "the Fisherman fan-made expansion" to differentiate it from the official expansions

In the Score section: "If a road which has one wine cellar lining it ..."
I was a little confused by the first sentence of this. Perhaps this might be better: "If one or more segments of a completed road contain a wine cellar, the thief earns additional points for each cloister¹ and/or pennant in a city connected to the road."

In the Additional Rules section: "If playing with the fan made expansion Family Feud ..."
From what I understand the British spelling is used in the Carcassone rules, so "colors" should be changed to "colours"

Thanks for helping with the proofreading, DJ.  Although it does bring up two questions that I'm now curious about:

It seems like I've always seen fan-made expansions written as "fan-based Fisherman expansion" (for example).  Is there a specific way or preferred method that they should be written?

And all the rules from RGG uses 'color'. Is there other releases of Carcassonne with English rules that uses 'colour'?  Perhaps from Canada or the UK?  As I've gotten all my expansions from the states.

No problem  ;D

Good question. I was just basing the suggestion on what I've read of the other fan-made expansions on this site, such as The Missionary & The Architect.

Again, I was basing my suggestion on what I've read on this site - I'm by no means an expert here. Your comment got me to thinking so I checked through a few of the Carcassonne Central expansions & found both spellings. The majority of the ones I looked at had the British 'colour' (e.g. The Lake, Monasteries, Roman Road), however I did find some with the American 'color' (e.g. The Architect), and one (The Missionary) even had both spellings. Perhaps someone like Novelty could make a ruling here? Or has it already been made?

There was one discussion about this, the result of which was just to go with the way you know best, as long as you can stick with that (and not change spellings).

Despite my personal preference for the American spellings, I went with the British spellings to be consistent with the CAR.

Thanks for the input djdahmer.

Draft 0.4:

Rules: http://www.mediafire.com/?in1ezelalzk (http://www.mediafire.com/?in1ezelalzk)

Tiles: http://www.mediafire.com/?njwy0wx3xgg (http://www.mediafire.com/?njwy0wx3xgg)

I wonder if a full sheet of 12 tiles is to many for this expansion.  I already defined it so you only use a certain number based on how many expansions you have in though, so maybe thats fine.  Its unlikely to get alot all on the same road that also ends up being a big scorer anyway.

[EDIT: UPDATED DRAFT AND LINKS BELOW]

Good job with the artwork on the tiles.  Here's some more edits/suggestions that I found:

=Preperation
If playing with the fan-based Fishermanmen expansion then add the river tile in with all the other tiles.

=Score
Additional Only one wine cellars on a per road do not can score the same bonus points. Instead, if If a road has more than one wine cellar, each additional wine cellar on that road counts as adding two to the length of the road when calculating Vintage.

=Additional Rules
If playing with the expansion Traders & Builders and a road with a wine cellar connects to a city with a wine barrel icon, then each wine barrel icon counts is scoredlike an additional pennant when calculating points earned.
-(That first sentence still didn't sound right, I think rewriting it this way clarifies things better.)

If playing with the fan-base Family Feud expansion and a road with a wine cellar connects to multiple cities with pennants of opposing family colours, then the scoring player...
-(a comma should be added as shown above)

=Final Scoring
If a road with a wine cellar is incomplete at the end of the game, then the road it is scored in the normal way.

No additional points for the wine cellar will be are rewarded.

Oh hey, this was mine...I need to get on this.  Thanks for the feedback oh so long ago, I'll get to this as soon as I can, it'll be a busy weekend but I'll see what I can do.

I'd like the opinion of the masses...

I'm debating about adding some expansion crossover symbols to some of these tiles.  Looking now, there is one tile on a river and thats it.  The rules say just use 6 for the base game and more when you start adding expansions.  I'm thinking about leaving 6 with just this wine merchant hut and cart and on the others having something that ties each to another expansion.

So what I'm wondering from you is...
1) Should I have cross expansion symbols at all? Yes or No
2) If Yes...what symbols (that wouldn't interfere with using the tile for this expansion...ie a volcanoe or tower foundation) would be good? I'm thinking along the ideas of the dragon, princess, inn on the lake, a move the wheel 1,2,or3 and maybe a chivalry icon.  I've already got a river tile so that would make 6 regular and 6 with crossover.  Of course all this would then be dependent on my limited graphic skills :)

There hasn't been much in the way of "masses" around lately...  Anyway, my opinion;

1 wheel symbol (good idea)
1 inn
1 well
1 forest
1 mt
1 river

Wheel, Inn, and Well are good. I'm not a big fan of River. And how many people have actually printed off mountain and forest tiles? My opinion for the other 3 would be a bazaar, a tower, and a magic portal. And maybe even add a dragon to the well tile.

As I don't myself have the forest or mountains printed out (lack of tiles) I would tend to lean away from those simply because I can't use them.  I do enjoy using the river though (and already made a river tile).  So I think I'll do...

1 river
1 wheel
1 well with a dragon (I like that double combo)
1 inn
1 bazaar
1 magic portal

I think that will be a good variety.  Now I'll have to see what I can do.  Does anyone have a high res scan of bazaars or the wheel?  There is a lower quality set of the wheel that I can try and use but I can't seem to find any of the bazaar and I don't yet have that expansion (hoping for Christmas)

I would agree about the mount and forest.  I was just drawing a blank about any other features.  If it were going to happen, it might actually be better for Novelty to accomodate the wine merchant in future mt/forest expansions anyway.

I really like the portal choice, that's one that slipped my mind.  It does make sense to favor published features since they are most likely to be useful.  The well is a good choice because it doesn't demand attention if you're not using it.  I'm tempted to suggest 2 wheel icons.  Not sure about the bazaar though...

How about using a vineyard.  It goes with the theme.  Another idea might be to use a red/yellow pennant from families. 

I suppose more wheels could be on tiles with other features as well.  As for the vineyard, I was planning on adding a note in the rules about use together with this expansion providing either extra points for the road or adding to the vintage.  I hadn't considered putting a vineyard on the tile though.  Hmm...I don't know if my graphic skills could handle that but I'll look into that.  The families pennant would be good too.  I'll have to see what I can manage and make it look decent.

Okay...here is an updated rules sheet with Gwommy's editing corrections from oh so long ago as well as additional rules for interaction with other expansions.
http://www.mediafire.com/?dzwbcse97ojlh8k (http://www.mediafire.com/?dzwbcse97ojlh8k)

And here is an updated tile set to include cross expansion icons on 6 of the 12 tiles.
http://www.mediafire.com/?acu8w9qca5jhme1 (http://www.mediafire.com/?acu8w9qca5jhme1)

The six tiles with other icons include...
1) the river
2) inn by the river
3) cult place & wheel of fortune icon
4) dragon icon & well
5) family fued red and yellow pennant
6) magic portal & wheel of fortune icon

I couldn't find a bazaar icon so I used a cult place.  I use that rather frequently, I don't know if others do.  Is there too much on these?  Both 3, 4 and 6 have multiple expansion crossovers (though the well can just be decoration as in the official game).  I don't want to make tiles too exclusive to the right combinations of expansions to play.  Some seem a little crowded as well.   Thoughts? Edits?  Criticisms?

They are fine.  I actually thought to suggest the cult place instead of the bazzar.  They look good.

I'll do a separate forests and mountains tile if there's demand for them later then.

At the moment, I just need to upload this to the Public Downloads section as completed, don't I?

Keyword: BlueDog <-- for me to do a search later on to pick up things on my to do list...

Unless someone had any more suggestions or edits, I feel good about this being done.