Natural Disasters

[Gwommy]

I vote for having it surrounded by a wall like the Abbey, although I like the border that is on the hurricane tile from the Ocean expansion: Turbulent Waters.  And I'd say that it finishes the features that it touches. And the flood tile(s) can count toward the completion of a cloister or shrine as long as that cloister or shrine does not get flooded out, and the dragon should be allowed to move across the flooded area.

[loganmann1]

We could turn the Meteor into a whole Meteor Shower...when the tile is drawn the player fires the catapult with every single chit stacked on top.  Whatever tiles are hit are removed from the game!  

(Totally just kidding)

In all honesty though...concerning the proposed tornado piece...

With the possibility of a tornado piece moving meeples around, were people thinking of this as a one time thing that goes until a meeple is moved or a reoccuring thing like the dragon which would require several tiles with a tornado symbol that shows its on the move again. I'm assuming the latter to justify a piece being introduced.  In that case though, how many tiles would this require to make it useful.

What if there were several tiles with that icon and the player places the tile and then the tornado moves the wood for them and moves around until it hits another meeple and switches them, or just hits an unclaimed feature and deposits them (which isn't really disasterful I guess, just random...so we'll stick with the already proposed switching of meeples).

[Gwommy]

When I came up with the tornado idea, I just thought it sounded like a good idea.  I didn't think too much about how the mechanics would work in the game.  So here's some ideas for the movement of the tornado:

1. It could be moved whenever any natural disaster tile is drawn (that way we wouldn't have to make a bunch of extra tiles for the tornado). In this case, it could move similar to the dragon, or some other method of movement, perhaps an auto-switch with the nearest follower (in case of tie, the player that placed the tile decides which follower to exchange)?

or

2. Have the player choose to move the tornado instead of placing a follower or related action.  Move the tornado 6 spaces or until you get to another follower?

[gunpowdertea]

When I came up with the tornado idea, I just thought it sounded like a good idea.  I didn't think too much about how the mechanics would work in the game.  So here's some ideas for the movement of the tornado:

1. It could be moved whenever any natural disaster tile is drawn (that way we wouldn't have to make a bunch of extra tiles for the tornado). In this case, it could move similar to the dragon, or some other method of movement, perhaps an auto-switch with the nearest follower (in case of tie, the player that placed the tile decides which follower to exchange)?

or

2. Have the player choose to move the tornado instead of placing a follower or related action.  Move the tornado 6 spaces or until you get to another follower?

If it's going to get a lot of use there could be 2 spinnies to determine the strength of the tornado (spaces to be moved) and the direction to be moved



With weather conditions changing its path each time it would be more like a real tornado.

[Gwommy]

That's a great idea too!  I think I like that one, although I'd much rather use dice.  Perhaps a 1d6 for movement, and 1d4 for direction.  Although d4 isn't very common, we could use a d6 for direction, say 1-4=N, S, E, W; 5=it travels the 8 surrounding tiles; 6=it travels to the nearest follower.

[CKorfmann]

Wow, miss one day and there's a lot to catch up on. 

First, I think it would be appropriate to establish the basic idea of the series.  My original idea was to model the mechanics of the Drought and Pestilence expansion.  These tiles are drawn and placed by one person and effect everyone who's features they touch.  The person drawing the tile is unlikely to place the "natural disaster" on themselves.  So in essence, it's a disaster for everyone else (unless, of course, the placement options are so limited that they drawer has no choice by to play it on themselves), and as with real life, you can do little to stop it.  Keeping that in mind...

Regarding the Meteor:
I love the idea of using the catapult even if it was a joke.  Perhaps we could use a projectile to determine the placement of the meteor.
 
Regarding the Tornado:
It does seem logical that an event like a drawn tile should move the tornado.  It also seems logical that there should be more than one of these, but I'm wondering if we could figure out a way to make it work with just one tile.  The spinners look cool and they would work well, but it would be something extra to print and some people (like me) don't have/can't find the chip board for it.  What if it was one tile, the tornado came out just once and worked something like this.  The tornado moves a maximum of X spaces/tiles (the dragon moves 6).  Everyone takes a turn moving it (continuing in game order) and any time it crosses the path of a meeple, it carries that meeple until it crosses the path of another and switches.  The final resting place of the tornado is where the last meeple is dropped.  My initial thought for X was 12 so that everyone has an opportunity to move the tornado twice regardless of the number of players, but that seems like a lot if you're only playing with 3 people.  We could just say that play continues until everyone moves it twice, but then it wouldn't move very far when playing with only 2.  So, shall we solve for X?  (I knew algebra was going to be useful!)  :-]

Regarding the Flood:
I'm in favor of skipping the 2x2 and going straight to the 3x3 as well.  I think I agree with most of what's been said.  The placing of the 3x3 tile should destroy anything it replaces, but not destroy the things outside it.  I'm thinking though that nothing should be able to be completed that runs into it like a city, road, and for continuity's sake, probably a cloister/shrine as well.  This has no bearing on the tiles that are outside the flooded area though, so the untouched tiles around a cloister could still be scored.  If we are beginning the flood on the river, it's unlikely that it could effect many cloisters anyway.  The flood would obviously be of no consequence to already completed features.  The boarder to me signifies completion as with the abbey, ghetto, etc.  I feel like under the circumstances, we should skip the border.

[loganmann1]

Regarding the Tornado:

So, shall we solve for X?  (I knew algebra was going to be useful!)  :-]
 

What if for X…the Tornado starts on whatever tile begins it and it moves in the traditional manner of the dragon (each player moving once, never cross the same spot), swapping meeples as it goes, until it reaches some given condition.  Several possible would be:
- It reaches a dead end (in which case the still suspended meeple is returned to the player’s supply)
- It crosses an incomplete yet unclaimed feature where it is then deposited
- It moves Y number of meeples (where Y is the number of players or something like that)
This could lead to either very long Tornado movement or very short, which is random but to me that seems okay for a disaster…you don’t know what it will do.  It seems to me this could save having to make extra spinners or add dice, which could both solve the problem but is simply that much more stuff one has to have/make. 

Regarding the Flood:

The placing of the 3x3 tile should destroy anything it replaces, but not destroy the things outside it.  I'm thinking though that nothing should be able to be completed that runs into it like a city, road, and for continuity's sake, probably a cloister/shrine as well.  This has no bearing on the tiles that are outside the flooded area though, so the untouched tiles around a cloister could still be scored. 

The boarder to me signifies completion as with the abbey, ghetto, etc.

Am I understanding correctly then that the flooded area is for all intents and purposes a "dead zone" for points but does NOT stop completion of surrounding features? So if a cloister (C) is middle right to the Flood (F) then it can still be completed but only gets 6 points (5 Point scoring tiles (P) + the cloister itself)?
TTTTTT
FFFPPT
FFFCPT
FFFPPT
TTTTTT
And if a road or a city end up dead ending into the flooded area it is considered a road end or a finish to the city on that side? So all together any feature is open to being flooded and then it still affects size of roads, cities, farms and even cloister scoring area. Am I understanding this right CKorfmann?

[Gwommy]

Flood:
I'm understanding that if a road or city runs into the flood, then it can not be completed.  Also, if a cloister needs a tile that is occupied by the flood, then it can not be completed.  I'd imagine that if there are still followers on the features at the end of the game, then those features would score like normal at the end of the game, with the flood still not being able to count towards points of a cloister.

Tornado:
Moving a tornado in a 2 player game with players taking turns is almost pointless.  For example, the dragon doesn't eat very many followers in a 2 player game unless the player has no option but to move the dragon towards his own follower.  Another option would be to move the tornado from it's current location to the location of the tile last placed that is a natural disaster tile, switching any followers in it's path.  That would give the player placing the tile a little bit of control over the tornado.

Meteor:
I like the idea of using the catapult to determine the placement of the meteor, but it's a pain to use.  Last time I used it just for fun, it took about 10 shots before I even got the catapult token to land on the board!  Plus, I'm going to guess that most people don't have the Catapult expansion.

[loganmann1]

I'm understanding that if a road or city runs into the flood, then it can not be completed.  Also, if a cloister needs a tile that is occupied by the flood, then it can not be completed.  I'd imagine that if there are still followers on the features at the end of the game, then those features would score like normal at the end of the game, with the flood still not being able to count towards points of a cloister.

Personally I like this idea of the features running into the flood being incomplete and meeples getting "trapped" by the flood. This could trap a lot of meeples though and make it much more damaging. It seems that comments in the thread have gone both ways on this issue though the replacing of a 3x3 area of the board with a flood tile is generally accepted. Perhaps we could put that issue to a vote so we can move on to fleshing out this disasters rules.

Option 1: Flood knocks out just the 3x3 grid but then is considered a completion to whatever runs into it.
Option 2: Flood knocks out the 3x3 grid and then is considered an incomplete egde/end to whatever runs into it, trapping any meeples connected.

I vote Option 2.

[CKorfmann]

I'm with you for option 2.  My initial thought was that in the senerio used for example, that the cloister would only be worth 6 points, but that the follower would be returned at that point.  I guess it makes a lot more sense to leave the follower there if the feature is technically incomplete as it would be with a city or road. 

The tornado movement is still a mystery to me.  I agree that I  find the dragon just about useless in a two-player game.  Here is one of my earlier ideas, what do you think of it?  Everyone moves the tornado two spaces at a time (typical dragon type movements).  Total number of spaces could be 12 or two times around, which ever comes first.

[Gwommy]

I think I was the only one that brought up option 1, but option 2 is fine.

For the tornado, let's keep it like the dragon where it is moved 6 times, except each player can move it 3 spaces, so that's a total of 18 spaces.  Although it would move a lot farther than the dragon, it's still not quite as devastating since it just moves pieces around, and doesn't eat them.

[CKorfmann]

18 seems a little high to me.  Depending on when the tile shows up, there might not be 18 spaces.  What does everyone else think?

[Gwommy]

Maybe 18 is too many?  Can you tell I've been playing too many games of Mega-Carcassonne?

[loganmann1]

18 is pretty powerful potential for changing the game.  But at the same time it sounds like the tornado is just going to happen once (not repeatedly as considered at one point) and even with moving 18 I'd still think its not as damaging as the flood disaster idea.  Honestly I'd be okay with 18, without ever hitting the same tile twice, and each player moving 3 each time it comes to them (though that could well give one person the easy power to dead end this if they want to...hmmm). If its decided the tornado is triggered multiple times then I would vote for less.

This does put flood and tornado on a slightly higher level of chaos, mass panic, social reform, fire and brimstone then drought and pestilence I would think from reading their rules, but I haven't played those yet so perhaps not.

[Gwommy]

Time to re-cap.

Here's a list of the suggested tiles and quantities:

1-Meteor
1-Earthquake
1-Flood(+9 for 3x3 tile)
?-Drought
?-Pestilence
?-Locust
?-Volcano Eruption
?-Eclipse
?-Tornado or just the wooden tornado disc.

Next, let's figure out what each tile/piece is going to do.  I tried to compiled a list of the suggestions, it is somewhat rushed, so I may have missed some:

1. *METEOR*
1A. Tile is placed like an Abbey, all surrounding features are completed.
1B. Tile can be used to replace any tile in play (except special start tiles such as City of Carcassonne or Wheel of Fortune).
1C. Catapult a handful of tokens at the board as a meteor shower.
1D. Other?

2. *EARTHQUAKE*
2A. Separate the playing area into two sections spreading them far enough apart to fit a landscape tile between them.
2B. As earthquakes are more likely to destroy buildings, each player should remove a knight from a city (if they have one).
2C. New idea: Split the area into two sections with a straight line, treat this line as if it was a single Abbey wall, any features that touches the line are considered ended.  A cloiser against the wall may only score 6 points.
2D. Other?

3. *FLOOD*
3A. Play as 1x1 tile.
3B. After next turn, switch it out for 3x3 flood tile.
3C. Flood tile may only be played on a river space.
3D. Flood spaces trap followers and makes features unable to be completed.
3E. Other?

If we were to use just these 3 features, then technically, that's 12 tiles.  Then we'd just need to figure out a condition that is to be met for figuring out the movement of the tornado, like every time a city is completed, or choosing to move the tornado instead of placing a follower.

4. *DROUGHT*
4A. Causes a farm to score -1 per completed city.
4B. Tiles should be different from the original expansion.
4C. How many tiles to use for this?

5. *PESTILENCE* (Rat infestation)
5A. Causes followers and builders to remain in a city even after it is completed.
5B. Would this still be consindered a natural disaster?
5C. How many tiles (if any)?

6. *LOCUST*
6A. Remove a farmer from the field that it is placed in (similar to the princess tile).
6B. How many tiles?

7. *VOLCANO ERUPTION*
7A. Possible destruction around surrounding tiles.
7B. Omit?
7C. Other ideas?

8. *ECLIPSE*
8A. Each player removes a monk when played.
8B. New idea: Using the scoring from the Wheel of Fortune, each player gets +2 for each monk/heretic for a solar eclipse, and -2 for lunar eclipse. (Although chances are that this will probably even itself out)
8C. How many of each tile?
8D. Other ideas?

9. *TORNADO*
9A. Acts as a neutral meeple, represented by a wooden disc.
9B. During it's movement, 6 players take turns moving it 2 spaces each.
9C. It carries followers until it reaches another follower, then the two followers are swapped.
9D. Swap with the nearest follower to the tornado?
9E. Have a symbol on each of the tiles above to determine when the tornado moves?
9F. Other