Carcassonne Central

A Simpler Scoring Rule for the King & Robber Barron.

The King tile starts the game at the side of the playing field. As soon as a player completes the first city, they take the King tile and score 1 point. If, during the course of play another player completes a larger city, then they receive the King tile and score 1 point.

While a player is in possession of the King tile, they score 1 point each time a city is completed (unless another player completes a larger city).

The Robber Baron tile functions in the same way as the King tile, except this applies to roads and not to cities.

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This moves the scoring to throughout the game and gives reasons for players to compete for the King & Robber Baron tiles throughout the game as opposed to fighting over it near the end of the game. It also simplifies scoring.

I've seen this suggested before and I'm curious to try it. I like how it rewards for holding onto the King or Robber Baron and not just rewards the last person to obtain them.

Doenst sound simpler to me :)

We have always fought for the king and robber tiles through the whole game and never left it just to the end. I think that these two tiles make the game far more ocmpetitive and dont need any changes.

But thats just my opinion.

We fight for the tiles too, but the person who has them at the end may not have had them the longest during the game.

Example:
A city of size 3 is completed in five turns by player blue.
A city of size 4 is completed in eleven turns by player red.
A city of size 6 is completed in seven turns by player green.
A city of size 7 is completed in twenty turns by player blue.
A city of size 8 is completed in thirty turns by player red.
A city of size 9 is completed in four turns by player green.
Game ends in five turns.

Blue held onto the King for a combined total of 41 turns.
Red held onto the King for a combined total of 11 turns.
Green held onto the King for a combined total of 25 turns.

Under the official rules, green gets one point per city for being the last player holding the King. If, instead, players score one point per city that is completed while they hold the King, each player will receive a number of points corresponding to the duration which they held the King. Blue would probably get the most, followed by green, and red trailing behind.

The simplification here is that you don't need to count cities and roads at the end of the game.

Also, with the official rules you are scoring more points, since you are scoring for features that may not have been scored for during the game (not scored for many a good reason). This just means there is even more of a blowout (unless you change the official rules anyway by changing the points awarded). It is much more nail biting with the above scoring system for the King/Robber tiles.

However, I must admit that I only use the King/Robber tiles if I am also using Towers. Towers make it a risk to make bigger features, while King/Robber tiles give more incentive to take that risk. Without Towers (or P&D), I find players need no incentive to make bigger features.

The wife and I enjoy scoring each city and road as it is completed for whoever controls the King or Robber Barron at that time.  Awarding 50 points to an individual just because he laid the final tile of the game to make the longest road does not make much sense.

We found that in larger games, counting all the features at the end of the game to be more time intensive, it was easier to keep track of when the feature was completed.

Current King/Barron rules function more like farmers

Proposed King/Barron rules function more like knights/thieves/monks

When we use King and Robber Baron in our games, we also simplify scoring. The person holding the King at the end of the game is awarded 10 points and the person holding the Robber Baron is awarded 10 points. It avoids totalling up the amount of cities and roads (the roads can be quite complicated). In this way the King and Robber Baron works the same way as the trade goods when scoring :)

One point per city all going to one person is definitely too much. Glad to see Joff brought up the ten points suggestion; I saw this on BGG once upon a time. I like how it's consistent with T&B, but I feel that it's not really enough of a bonus. Some players feel it's not worth trying for, or not worth including in the game. I prefer the idea of accumulating points for possessing the King or Robber Baron, though I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons. Perhaps because it feels more... realistic.

10 pts for ing/barron looks to be a bit cheap, the avrage of the points scored by the king/barron in my games are around 14 to 23 pts, so i guess that 15/20 pts per tiles shall be the appropriate value.

We nearly always have scores of 35 points for the king and barron.

Depends on how many expansions you are playing with.

My wife and friends have been playing with 10 points for the king/baron tiles.

We have found they feel more like commdities, and still saves time counting at the end of the game.

We prefer using that method.

In my humble opinion both of these suggested variants are much better!

For simplicity, the 10 points for Robber Baron and King at the end of the game is a nice option, and for the more interesting variation on the original theme, the 1 point per completed feature offers an easier way to track the points and means the points awarded will be more fairly distributed. Does this include completed features that nobody scored from (I presume so).

Otherwise, I've found the points the King and the Robber Baron impart can be very game deciding, plus having large scores being awarded at the end of the game can make determining how close you are to winning (or losing) extremely hard to predict...

I think that personal scoring options for the game are more house rules than Variants.

I am going to chime in on the side of the official rules. My wife and I play with the King/Robber every game and she discovered a long time ago that it was beneficial to close my cities and roads to get or maintain the King/Robber tiles. A new element of defensive strategy emerged where you really keep an eye on the size of roads and cities and score them for the opponent before they get out of hand. Also, this increases the need for tower tiles and princess tiles as they can be an effective eviction strategy to mitigate a huge city. We do play with all expansions, (except Cathars which we desperatey want), and we play with all tiles. The rules as they are work great.

At the end of the game we place pennies on all of the completed cities. We use that to score the King and it assists with scoring farms.
We then remove those pennies and place pennies on all of the completed roads. Scoring is relatively quick and painless.

How about these two variants:

1. Whoever is in posession of the King or Baron on his/her turn gets a point every turn it remains in their posession. It makes you want to get and hold onto the king for as long as possible so that you score as many points as possible. It makes others try to build a city/road a little bigger than the one you built so that they can take posession of the King or Baron and start scoring points.

2. If you want to score even more points you could say that they score as many points each turn as the number of tiles their biggest city/road contains. So if, at the beginning of the game I take posession of the king/Baron with a four tile city/road then I get four points every turn until someone builds a city/road that is five or more tiles in size. This variant makes scoring a big city near the end of the game still profitable though scores may go through the roof.

Any thoughts?

You could do it per #1, but to me it feels disconnected from the intention behind the King and Baron because the player(s) would score even if no features were completed during a turn. From that standpoint I think #2 is better, but I'm still concerned that too many points are being scored. In the end, I still prefer the original suggestion where the king and baron score when a player completes a corresponding feature.

Method number 2 would add a significant influx of points to the game. So much so that I think it would be an imbalancer. The repetitious scoring would really generate a lot of points into the game. the first person to get a city with 4 or five segments would be incented to close every other city, even ones with other player's meeples. It would really shift the focus to closing roads and cities in my opinion.

method #2 is hard f'n core!!!

#1 is too soft core, but maybe very efficient... of course more than 1 points for the completed segment at the end of the game...

I agree that #2 might score too many points so maybe you make it 1/2 point, rounded down, for every tile in your biggest city/road while you possess the king/baron.

Or maybe you do a scale where cities/roads from 3-6 tiles score 3 points per turn, 7-10 tiles score 5 points per turn, and cities/roads over 10 tiles score 7 points per turn. Or make the points whatever you want.

I personally play by the original rules but it is a little bit of a hassle trying to count the roads sometimes. Cities aren't as much of a problem to count.

I know that in our games we already do this in order to retain the king/baron. It doesn't shift the focus but does make it something to think about as you are building your own cities/roads.