Carcassonne Central

Several of the Solazy tiles have been discussed, but one set that has been a little quiet and one I particularly enjoy are the Village tiles.  I quite like the work done on these two tiles.  Surely not all population concentrations would have been confined within city walls, so the concept is kind of obvious.  

The mechanic, however, as stated in the rules is one that has already been incorporated, and I think more effectively, with the Wells series of expansions.  I propose that this be roughly a six tile set, perhaps more if it were also to be adapted to Fisherman, Forests, and Mountains.  The mechanic I suggest would be a bonus to farmer scoring.  Instead of 3 points for the farmer, as with cities, the villages would provide only 2 points.  It could be argued whether they should be augmented by things such as pigs and the pig herd tile(s).

I'm also very fond of the Ranch tile and use it in almost every game.  It allows a farmer placed on the tile to have a strength of 2 (as if it were two normal followers or one large one), the large follower placed here would count as 3.  Normal placement rules would apply.

12 tiles would probably work best.  One ranch, five Six 'normal' villages, two each for Fisherman, Forests, and Mountains.

You can find the original tiles on the Geek, HERE (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/files/boardgame/all?username=solazy).

If you have a ranch I'd personally also want to see a barracks and outpost (or even 2 of each).  I think that a tile that ups the value of a follower is the single simplest mechanic for upping the power of a follower there is (and several fan-made expansions have tried to do that somehow) .  I'd say keep that together.  

As for the villages, in our games farms are always so big and influential already I personally don't see a need for another way for them to score more points, though this thematically makes wonderful sense as you said. I like the idea of using villages but I'm not sure that would be my first choice.

Perhaps the village actually is a negative to a farm since those people need fed too

Having only one ranch tile is pretty limited, especially if playing with expansions, just a 2nd thought

That sounds reasonable.  I think you're right.  I've modified the subject to remove the Ranch and add it to the others in it's own thread.

I might drop the farmer value down to one point per village with the usual adjustments: +1 one for a pig present; two for a barn; no score for farmers attached to a field with a barn. This reduces their impact, because they're much easier points than cities, being contained in one tile with no possibility of being incomplete (and therefore worthless).

Or, playing the devil's advocate here, leave the farms alone, and have villages act like pennants for cloisters and shrines. Lord knows they don't get enough bonuses, plus this would still allow use of a circle-of-stones-as-cathedral mechanic.

I'm inclined to agree with you on the scoring here.  Initially, I was going to suggest a graduated scoring like this, but I too wanted to limit potential.  I like what you suggest, 1 point +.  Also, the can't be affected by Cather/Siege or anything else at this point. 

Admittedly, I mostly like the concept of having villages on the landscape.  I'm open any function that we can agree upon.

Just throwing this out there...what if the villages were a cross feature bonus.  Something like...

+1 for farms (plus bonuses of pig and barn)
+3 for a cloister if its in the 9 tile area
+? for the road it is on
+? for a city it connects to by road or is on the same tile or something.

So you have to really think about placement as it will help many things it touches and you want to maximize your bonus without helping your opponents.  What the bonuses are would be totally up for debate, but just the idea of a cross feature bonus seems interesting to me. 

This could also lead to a tlie which  is somehow a villages opposite with negative effects to all it touches.  Or maybe a mix of positive and negavites on villages and/or an "opposing" feature.

Like I said, just throwing it out there while its on my mind.

The multiple scoring options are interesting. I assume only one option can be scored, even it its placement meets several criteria?

Another option is to score a village like a cloister with the 9 squares acting as a barrier to a farm.

With the multiple scoring idea i see it affecting all 4 (otherewise farms would never get the bonus).  It would be like a pennent in the way it is simply there for whatever happens, and then the bonus would affect any feature affected by it, but in those ways.  If nobody gets a cloister near to it then it doesn't benefit the cloisters, if the city never finishes then again no bonus, but if 3 cloisters all got in around it they'd all get the bonus.  I see it having an affect on tile placement decisions cause everyone would want to get in on the goodness and you'd want to place it as carefully as possible to maximize your bonuses and nobody elses.

I like the multi-bonus idea a lot, and there's precedent for it: siege tiles interact with cities and farms. However, I don't think that the villages need to interact with everything, though. Specifically, I don't think they need to interact with cities. Here's why:

• Cities already have pennants, which serve the same purpose (extra value),
• Affected cities won't necessarily be proximal to the village, unlike farms, cloisters, and roads; this makes the mechanic less intuitive, and less predictable,
• Thematically, villages benefit thieves (more people to rob), monks (more people to preach to), and farmers (more people who need food). Cities, however, are not as easily linked, thematically.

As far as giving bonuses to roads, cloisters, and farms, though: great idea! I'd totally use it.

More questions:

• Should there by any bonus, beyond a purely additive one, to having multiple villages beside one another?
• Conversely, should this be a restriction (not permitted)?
• How many village tiles should there be, and in what forms (e.g., FRFR, FFFF, etc.)?
• Following that, should every village tile have a road (thus having the potential to add to each type of feature) or should they be varied: some with no roads, some with a cloister as an additional feature, some with a village encircled by a road, etc.?
• Should a road which crosses a village tile via a bridge (from BC&B) gain the village bonus?

while thematically I understand it, do farms need more point potential?

I could be argued in those days villagers actually had gardens/chickens etc and fed themselves

I'm fine with not doing a city bonus (it was the biggest stretch) but if people do like the multi bonus I would probably make sure that the roads are on every village tile as I like it benefiting roads and cloisters most, but do think it could be 1 point to a farm (increasable by pigs and barns).  If thats the route people think to take it.

Good ideas so far I think.  I'm in agreement that they should not be bonus for, or otherwise really effect cities at all.  It would be interesting to see them have a positive effect on some features and a negative for others.  The only option for a negative effect I can think of though would be for roads, but it could be argued equally the other way I think (does the villiage encourage or discourage thievery).  It will just come down to making a decision.  Bonus to farms seems obvious, 1 point + buffers.  Bonus to cloisters maybe +3 if on one of the surrounding tiles? 

As for tile arrangement, I think 6 is a good number, one could be a four-way roundabout, one a four-way intersection, and the rest different configurations of roads.  It seems like roads would be essential though.  Perhaps the roundabout could be the smaller version around the well rather than the larger one.  It would be themeatically appropriate to include wells too, but perhaps it would be best to only include them on half for sake of balance.  Perhaps one could have a Inn too. 

Why do you think there should be more than one bonus-giving feature on one tile? I can't think of any official expansions that do that: Cathedrals don't have pennants, and tiles with trade goods don't either.

why not slightly larger set and include 2 vilages surrounded by forest, two set on mountain passes?

There was a mention of the Siege tiles having an effect on both cities (negative) and farms (positive).  I think it began with the idea of it effecting farms because it seems a little obvious, but also roads I guess because they situated on a road.  

Now that I think about it though, I'm not sure about the farms afterall because they are, and will likely be for the new ones too, situated on both sides of the road so they would effect two farms instead of one.  


I don't think it's necessary.  I just think it fits themeatically.  A village should have a well and it wouldn't make sense to include it and not allow for it with the Wells expansions.  I guess the reason it occured to me was considering the use of the four-way roundabout with the well in the middle.  I don't have my heart set on it though, but it would be a cool looking tile.

I like that, actually. It provides more choices to make, making the tile have more of an effect than just an immediate one. Besides, you don't need to make the rest of the tiles have houses all over the tile: there's opportunities to have them on one side only (picture the cloister that the road runs past, not through), or be between roads (e.g., the RRRR tile with only two, curved roads, with the village in the middle), or be encircled by a road (like the catapult tile with the four-way roundabout; no farm would benefit from that village!). Lots of opportunity to make some interesting tiles.

I don't know if every tile needs a well but i think having some with wells and one or two (depending on the final count) with an inn on the lake would be great.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  Out of six tiles, maybe two with a well and one with a lake.

So I gather none for the forests/mountain expansions?

Sorry, keep forgetting about those.  They could possibly include wells.

There could be some put on forest and mountain tiles.  I personally have never printed the forest or mountain tiles (not for lack of wanting but for lack of resources) so those don't intrigue me as much.

Several expansions on the download (ie outposts) have a separate print sheet included that has major fan features like that.  There are also several expansions under the forest, fishermen and mountain families that are adaptations of other fan mades to be on the new tiles)

We could easily do either of these by making a separate sheet with villages and fan made features and post it accordingly. And by easily I mean dependent on those with good graphics skills :)

I would think one sheet with a note that tiles x-y-z are only used with forest or mounatian expansions

That has also been done.  I don't care much one way or the other how that is done.  But I think no more then 6 tiles traditional and maybe 4 forest and 2 mountain?  Just being that forests far outnumber any other expansion ever! :)

I think it should be 6 'regular', 2 each of Fisherman, Mountain, and Forest.  I think I said that before.  We just need someone to do the tile art.  Any takers?  We need to come to a decision on the rules too.  We could wrap this up quickly.

We've had some great discussions going on in the Workshop and this one has slid down the line but I still think it has some great potential.

By summary at this point I think we are looking at a 12 tile expansion (6 regular features, 2 fishermen, 2 mountains, 2 forests). Each tile would visually contain a village along a road (not ending the road).  Some may inlcude wells or an inn by the lake.  The village feature would act as a cross feature bonus (similar to siege affecting cities and farms in some way).  Similar to a pennant it would not be claimable in and of itself but simply be an added symbol on the tile and in no way affect follower placement. Right now it sounds like everyone likes...
No interaction with cities.
+3 bonus to a cloister if its in the 9 tile area
+1 bonus to farms (plus barn and pig bonuses)
? bonus to roads (Thematically it makes sense that thieves would benefit by plundering the village, what kind of bonus hasn't been determined...wells add extra points as they are, inns multiply the roads total score, so what should villages do?)

I'm torn, I honestly don't know what to do with them.  I actually came full circle and thought maybe it could just add one point to the road.  Maybe we could do something like add 3 points total to a completed road. 

The rest looks good to me though.

I'm good with +3 to a completed road.  Though that would make it like a triple well so if you had a well in the village and were playing the wells expansion then it would be a 4 point tile bonus.  Do we like that?

I've got it! How 'bout this.

When the road with Village is completed the Thief "robs" points from the farms connected to it. It's thematically viable as the Thief robs goods from the Farmer while he is supplying the Village. That is, every player with a majority of Farmers on each farm connected to the Village must move back one point on the scoring track per tile of the road, and the Thief moves forward that cummulative amount (in addition to normal scoring for the road). One player could be robbed multiple times as the robbing is settled per farm. In the case of a tie for the farms those in the tie each move back the full points. In the case of a tie for the road those in the tie each move forward the cummulative amount of points.

Example A: In a 5 player game, Red scores a 7 tile road with a Village. He scores the normal 7 points for the road. Then the Village is resolved. The Village is connected to two farms as the road runs through the center. Farm A is currently owned by Yellow with Green having a minority presence also. Farm B is owned by Blue. Yellow and Blue each move back 7 spaces on the scoring track, while Red moves forward 14 points. Green is unaffected with only minority presence.

Example B: For the same road in the same game. Yellow owns Farm A. Yellow and Blue are tied for ownership of Farm B with two Farmers each. Yellow then moves back 14 spaces (7 for each farm she owns while Blue moves back 7 spaces for his share of farm B). Red moves forward 21 spaces (in addition to scoring 7 for the road).

If Red also owns either of the farms he does not rob from himself, however if Red is in a tie on either of the farms the other player(s) in the tie would be robbed as above.

If the farm is owned by one or more Barns then the Thief robs 2 points per tile from the owner of the Barn(s), as opposed to just one.

If the road is not scored then farm robbing does not occur.

It would be good to have Villages straddling 4-way crossings and 3-way crossings to increase the potential of affecting farms. A Village on a crossing only affects the farms bordering the road that is scored (not farms bordering the Village on other roads beyond the crossing).

If a single farm is affected by multiple Villages on the road being scored, the robbing is not compounded. It is settled just once per farm in any case per feature scored. Farms could be robbed multiple times by the scoring of multiple roads with Villages.

I like the idea of the +3 for Cloisters, but I do not like the idea of bonuses for Farms.

Let me know what everyone thinks!

This is an intriguing idea.  The thought of losing that many points for my farm makes me cringe, but that might be a good thing.  It might really appeal to those who complain about farm scoring.  I'm not sure about doubling the penalty for barns though since barns don't typically double the farm value, but I don't have another suggestion.  The interesting thing about this method though would be timing.  If the yellow player has a majority of a farm when the road through the village is complete and the red thief steals points from the farm (through the village), what happens if the yellow player loses the majority later in the game?  I guess they'd just be out of luck!  Could make things interesting.

The robber scoring could be tempered some by not allowing the Thief player to move forward the cummulative amount of points. It could just be a penatly to the Farmers with no additional plus for the Thief. The Thief then would gain no advantage over any neutral player.

Also, the Barn could be reduced to just a 1 point penalty like Farmers. I wasn't sure what to do with Barns. They potentially score more at game-end so a more strict penalty seems in line here. Not sure if 2 points per tile is correct. It could stand some game testing.

This might work: Farm with no Barn gets the penalty with no plus scoring for the Thief, while a farm with Barn gets the penalty while the Thief does get the plus.

It would behoove the Farmers to get the road completed quickly so it doesn't grow large. And, interestingly, it might cause a player to "throw" the control of a farm by removing a Farmer perhaps (as in WOF, etc.) Or maybe delay deploying his Barn until the Village tiles have been played. The overall affect could potentially temper the scoring for farms, or rather make it more precious.

Also, I would say if the road is completed with no affect to Farmers or Barns then the player earns 3 points for having the Village on his road. So the Village is worth a base of 3 points.

There could be some interesting game play strategies.

This is a real thought for the village.  A negative to the farms but a plus to the road.  I like that idea as roads get played down so much and farms are so powerful.  While it looks like a rather lengthy description, most of that is clarification examples and such and the principle is quite basic.

More power to the thieves!!!

I like it though.  Its different from just being a suped up well or something, which is a good thing.  I'm also a fan of something that lets you negatively affect farms.  Siege does it for cities...villages could do that for farms.

I would keep element of the robber getting more points...roads need the help I think, and its still based on road size which encourages them to build a longer road.

Agreed.  Do you think the thief should be deployed to the road on the village tile, or could it be anywhere on the road?

Anywhere on the road. The Village tile could be added to a road with Thief already present.

My feeble attempt at some crossing tiles.

Not so feeble.  I think they look nice.

Very nice!  Not so feeble at all.  Do you feel you could complete a set of 12? (2 with mountains, 2 with rivers, 2 with forests?)

I believe I could...and will get to work on it.

For now I will try to work in some cities, and perhaps a cloister.

If the village is going to have the cloister bonus I don't think we should have any villages with a cloister already on it.  Otherwise there is one tile in the bag that happens to be a 12 point cloister and its just luck of the draw who gets it.  I think roads are a necessity, cities are fine either way and cloisters should be left off.  But thats just my opinion.

First crack at a Mountain tile.

I get your point regarding the Cloister/Village tile. I'll nix the idea.

Ooh very nice.  Very nice indeed.

I agree, cloisters aren't necessary.  I don't think cities are either, but maybe one would be OK.

Mountain tile #2.

Except for the strange size ratio of building to mountain, I really like these village tiles. I don't use the mountains expansion, but the villages may get some use, as long as the rules aren't too complex.

Forest tiles.

River tiles.

Very very nice! You put those together well.

With carcking123 knocking out the graphic work (just the other 4 basic tiles to go I think) all thats needed now is putting together a good rule sheet.  The mechanics are simple enough to define I think, but it will probably need a number of examples (hopefully with graphic examples) as did the explanation of the point stealing idea.

Here are the remainder of the tiles.

I can take a crack at the rules. I don't have a PDF writer so it will be in Word.

Well thats fantastic.

I'm going to try to get the tiles loaded up to MediaFire in sheets.

Not having any luck. Keep getting failure notice.

These look great but seeing just how many farms will be affected by these tiles i begin to wonder if the mechanic won't decimate farms.  Every farm on the board might well be hit by one of these. 

I think we'd best be specific about how many tile to mix in the bag.  maybe  2 or 3 for the base game and 1 more for every large expansion (with the forest expansion counting as 2 large expansions)  Just a thought.

I really like the mechanic but I didn't realize how far spread the effects of these could be until I saw graphics.

Remember though, that the affect on a farm is instantaneous at the time of completion of the road. There is no lingering affect and no end-of-game affect. And no compounding affect. My guess is that a number of Village opportunities will be lost due to bad timing and good game play. (some tiles will get drawn before there are farmers deployed, the road will get completed before a farm is occupied or joined, the Thief will get killed or captured, the owner of an affected farm wins control of the road, the owner of an affected farm completes the road at 2 or 3 tiles to mitigate the damage, etc.)

I do agree that the number of tiles needs to be gauged, monitored. For example, if playing with the two River tiles you might set aside two of the basic set, etc.

I think it calls for some game testing before we make any decisions.

If need be, we can reduce the "strength" of the tiles also. Some of the field sections on the tiles can be made devoid of Village features, also if we eliminate some of the road terminations on the tiles the opportunity for the affect of one tile to recur is greatly reduced, etc. I think we need to game test it before we get to that though.

I think the best option might be to alter the tiles a bit so that the village is typically on one side of the road or the other.  There could be a tile or two where the road is on multiple sides, but not more than that.  Do we still want to include an occasional well or Inn?

Ok, here are some "toned down" versions of the tiles. I guess it's really a matter of preference which ones you use.

Still working on the rules.

Mountains.

River.

Base tiles.

More base tiles.

Final base tiles.

Good job.  I think these look pretty good.

I think I like these toned down ones better.  Great job.

Villages
The quite lanes and back alleys of the local Villages are the favorite haunt of the Thief of Carcassonne! The villagers are careful to be in before curfew and the local farmers must be wary at all times. The Thief is cunning and the Farmer who loses but a day’s wage to him will count himself lucky. Not even the influence of the Church can turn the Thief from his dark ways but the local Monk is thankful to have a thriving congregation of villagers to fill the pews.

Overview
Players make strategic placements of Village tiles in order to “rob” from local Farmers with the Thief. The Village tile also provides a bonus to Roads and Cloisters.

Here's the folder for the Rules and Tiles:
http://www.mediafire.com/?rfsh5y45i2eii

Let me know what you think.

I think it looks great.  Be sure to alter the header at the top of the page(s).  One note, I don't think you should say that it is based on original ideas from you.  There were a lot of ideas from several people that went into this expansion.  I think it might be more appropriate to say, at least, that it was a collaborative effort from those on the site.  It is also appropriate to list those who contributed on the forum thread by name (or user name) all in one section in the acknowledgements.  That way, everyone's contributions are made known.  Check out some of the more recent documents from our download page if you'd like an example.

Good job on the rest though, I think.  I like that you offer both the aggressive and "normal" versions of the tiles.

Great comments CKorfmann! I will point out though that it does say "collaborative expansion" and it didn't say "based" on me, or "by" me...only "with" me. What do the authors usually do then, scan through the comments on the board and pick out all the names? This is new stuff for me and I am open and willing to pick up the pace.
Thanks for the tip on the header, totally missed it.

So it does say collaborative.  I guess all those C's ran together for me.  ::)  Sorry about that.  Now to get nitpicky, which we are prone to do with a CC document.  It looks great. 

• I like the description write-up.  It's clever.  I'm not sure if you meant for it to be formatted the way it is on the page though.  Did you?
• When you say that there are "six landscape tiles for expansions", you should probably say "fan-made expansions."  We usually make that distiction.
• Under "Preperation" you should probably include the Fisherman expansion in the list with Mountains and Forests.  That expansions is designed to mix the river tiles in with the rest as well.  I like the idea of using the river tiles with the River expansions though.  Hadn't thought of that before.
• Example B: You say the road is 5 tiles long, but have the farmers losing 7 points.
• I think it would look better to center the pictures of the tiles on the page.  I really like to see them included.
• My preference is to keep subheadings with at least a little bit of text, etc.  So, I would move the #1 and "Tile Layout" subheadings to the next page.
• The CC logo at the end should be moved to the bottom of the page.  Novelty suggested that to me and I never got why til I started doing it.  It just looks better, IMO.
• You lost the blue border on the second page.  I did that on a few also, but I can't remember how I did it.  I think it has to do with highlighting and removing a bunch of text at one time.  The delete key always messes up stuff for me, but I'm winging it most of the time with formatting anyway.
• Really like the inclusion of KJW, HiG, and RGG at the end.  Not sure if that is your addition, but I think it's a keeper.
• Some people prefer to put Revision History and Acknowledgements on a seperate page, but that just seems like a waste of paper to me.

As for the acknowledgement part, there are several different methods that you can use I think.  Here are a few examples of the different ways they've been done.  From the downloads page, check out the rules sheets for Drought & Pestilence, Natural Disasters, Reservoirs & Graneries, Gold Mines, and The King's Gate.  We all do it a little differently, but it gets the job done, I think.

Again, great job.  Thanks for taking the initiative on this.  :sa

Ok, this is great stuff. I'll get to work on it.
Thanks.

Chris, you might be seeing a different format than I am. A couple of the comments you made below lead me to believe that also. That's likely one of the problems with the Word document. I don't have a PDF creator.
Got it.
Got it. I didn't know about the Fishermen expansion, now I do.
Got it.
Got it.
Formatting?
Formatting?
Formatting?
Yes, this is mine.
Let's stay green.

Thanks for the praise. My pleasure.

That's what I do. It's usually not a large number of people.

I put up the revised rules - Version 0.2.
Can anyone tell me if the link is working correctly? When it uploaded it said "failure", so I tried again - still got "failure". However, I can see it in the folder...just wondering if everyone else can.

Chuck

This is what the format should look like.

I definitely do not see it like that.  I don't know why.  I see all the corrections, but I still see the formatting errors.  I don't know why it would do that.  Scott might know.  There is a free PDF creator called PDF redirect.  You could try that.

I just downloaded the PDF Redirect and converted the file. That is awesome! It also reduced the size of the file to less than a tenth of what it was.

Thanks for the tip CKorfmann. Take a look at it now.

Sorry, it looks the same to me.  It took the same amount of time to download too.  Is it possible it didn't save correctly?

You may have pulled the DOC file instead of the PDF?
I just removed the DOC file to save confusion. Try it now.

Success!  It looks great!

Heh, I've finally arrived in the 21st Century! It felt like a long road...   ::)

Hi cracking123,

Maybe I still in the 19th Century, but I can't download your files of villages and catapult.javascript:void(0);
Therefor I must upgrade and pay for, I can't get the bulk-download.javascript:void(0);
Is it posible to change the sort of download to a normal file!

greetings from germany

I made up another sheet of aggressive tiles with cities on them - for those who are interested.

Here is the link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?rfsh5y45i2eii

That seems to link to your Father Time folder (at least it did for me). Perhaps the correct link is one www.mediafire.com/?fi0sjvd8qjh62 (http://www.mediafire.com/?fi0sjvd8qjh62)?

Thank you for the notice. It should be fixed now.
It is intended to point to the Carcassonne General folder.

Hi!
I find this expansion delicious, but I got I bit of a problem.
I can't print the tiles the right size.
I downloaded the files, jpg format, but they print too big or too small.
What software and/or what adjustments shall I make to print tiles the right size?
Thanks.

Hi koolkat, not sure I can help. I would think that any image editor should be able to resize the file. It may take some trial and error to find the right size. I find myself printing test pages in black and white until I get the size I want. What software are you using?

I like the idea of bonus for cloisters (cause they are forgotten in all bonuses), but the thief thing don't convince me. Village tiles are more agressive than siege tile (they rob you from points, and there are no countermeasures). I would presenta a draft of a variant to village rules:
-cloister that is connected with village by road would be granted +3 points when scorin (but not at the end of the game). This would produce combos (well, not exacly combos) with fanexp well/road to victory/other with more complex roads, cause one road could produce bonus for several cloisters. This is draft, and it need some work.
-no penalty from thief
-The road to victory expansion would give a fine way of getting points. If we place a road post (or whatever it is called) on road that is under influence of village (contains village) the post would score that village for 1 point (when road containing village is incomplete, when complete it would score 3 points)  or village could have an additional bonus.
-Villages could score additiona points (+1 point, with no bonuses form inns, stables and similiar objects) for every well on road.

I like the idea of having another object on road that will give some bonuses, but I would like to have some bonus for cloisters. Rules could be agressive but simply subtracting point from players just don't seem to be a Carcassonne natural way of play. Mayby village could give a -3 points penalty at end of the game? But this dosn't feel right. If the villages could produce food for themself they have no effect on farmers. Thieft in villages also dosn't feel natural way in medival times (peasants wasn't rich enough to steal from them).

Is this done, or almost done?

I'm pretty sure it's finished.

Added to downloads page on the web site and forum downloads area.