Expansion: Barriers and City Walls (was Walls and Fences)

[Gwommy]

For this expansion, I was thinking about just making a mini-expansion of perhaps 6 new land similar to the Abbey except that there would only be walls on one or two of the sides of tile.  The walls can be placed anywhere and close off any feature, although the other 2 or 3 sides still have to match tiles as normal.

The other half of this expansion would require wooden pieces for fences, perhaps 10 or 12, similar to the wooden road pieces in Settlers of Catan.  Ideally, the pieces should be about half of the length of a land tile.  These wooden fence pieces can be used to seperate fields, or cut off an opponent's farmer or shrink an opponent's field.  They can't be used in the cities or to seperate roads.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to distribute the wooden fence pieces.  Having player just start out with a certain number of fences seems boring.  And I don't want to add another icon to the land tiles.  So the best idea I've got so far is that you get a fence piece if you are the player that finishes a city with 2 or more pennants in it.  If there are 4  pennants in a city that you finish, then you still only get 1 fence piece.  Even with all the regular exapansions, there's like 25 pennants total, so that'd be a max of 12 fence pieces available.  Although this may still need to be play tested(which can be done without the 6 wall tiles).

As far as deploying or building a fence goes, I'm going to say that you can place a fence piece on between any two tiles that are connected by a field and this is done instead of moving the wood.

I'll make the wall tiles later(possibly tomorrow?), but it's getting late tonight.  In the meantime, how about some feedback?

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EDIT=Changed Subject Title

[meepleater]

Looks interesting. On the same idea, how about bridge pieces which allow a field to another connect over a road? Connecting and separating would balance each other out...

[CKorfmann]

That is an interesting idea.  Not sure how I'd feel about the bridge pieces though since there are plenty of tiles with that feature on them, especially in some of the fan-made expansions.  The fence idea is pretty cool.  I think it would require the fence to stretch all the way across a field section to be successful though.  As to how that would be determined (what direction they lay in, etc.), I'm not sure. 

The wall idea is pretty cool.  Some will probably say it's unbalanced, but I think if there were only six in different configurations and various numbers of sides walled, it might be good.  They should be put in the draw pile too, but I think that's your intention. 

Have you seen solazy's walls.  I like the idea he had for them.  There's a thread with a link somewhere on this board.

[Novelty]

It's a good idea.  meepleater had a variant of it earlier as well.  I would think 6 is too few though   Also, you might want to make the rule that when the tile with the fence/wall is placed, the wall(s) must be placed next to an existing tile similar to how the abbey can only be played in holes.  That will make it more challenging and allow for future expansion of the idea.

[Gwommy]

I made a two sample tiles:



For the first sample, I used Solazy's idea and I actually like it, but I'm now I'm thinking that since it's a city wall that it can only be placed next to a city piece to end a city and that you can not put a follower on the wall to be in that city.  I could make 6 of these pieces as well as 6 wall pieces.

For the second sample, I don't like how the second one turned out with the city wall bending right next to it like that, but that was best way I could figure out to get them to combine together.  I think I'll refrain from putting the thick walls next to the city walls for future pieces.

@Novelty: I think I understand what you're saying about the placement of the wall pieces.  Basically, you have to connect all sides that have a wall to a tile already in play, and that it can be any tile.

Has anyone played the Abbey with the Mountains, Forest or Ocean expansions?  I'm guessing that the Abbey can't be played in the middle of an ocean?  I'd say it's questionable whether the Abbey can be played against mountains or not, and I'd say it's probably alright to play an Abbey against a forest, ya?

@CKorfman: Yup, the intention was for the tiles to be drawn.  And as for the fences, I was thinking that you could earn a couple pieces if you wanted to block off bigger areas.  Although even with a single piece of fence being half the length of tile and only being able to play fences on the seams of the tiles, it should still be enough to block someone off, it just may not be where you want it to.

@Meepleater: Connecting farm lands together is a good idea even though I don't like the bridge idea either.  So I was thinking about it, and the best thought that I came up with was to make a tile with a road as a tunnel.  The tiles would smaller pieces with a short tunnel to allow to place it on top of an existing road.  But the bigger question would be how would you earn the tile or should everyone should start out with one?

Here's a sample piece of the tunnel that you'd get to place:



I'm starting to feel like this should be two seperate expansions now. =b

[elmendalerenda]

About the idea of the walls and fences, dont not exactly if it would be really useful. There are plenty of tiles to separate fields.

Not sure when the peasants were allowed in France to build fences to separate the land. Found this in wikipedia:

History
Servitudes are legal arrangements of land use arising out of private agreements. Under the feudal system, most land in England was cultivated in common fields, where peasants were allocated strips of arable land that were used to support the needs of the local village or manor. By the sixteenth century the growth of population and prosperity provided incentives for landowners to use their land in more profitable ways, dispossessing the peasantry. Common fields were aggregated and enclosed by large and enterprising farmers—either through negotiation among one another or by lease from the landlord—to maximize the productivity of the available land and contain livestock. Fences redefined the means by which land is used, resulting in the modern law of servitudes.

Any way in case the idea goes forward, the walls should not be like the city walls. The fences were to keep cattle out of the land and to separate different fields, so shouldnt be as high as a city walls, definitely not crenellated, and most of the time were made with rocks without masonry so the texture definitely is not like a city wall.

My 2 cents

[meepleater]

Maybe *borrow* the fences from wheatfields for the tiles? I like the tunnel-thing. I think each player should be fiven one at the start of the game.

[elmendalerenda]

Rock fences were cheaper and sturdier than the wooden ones, but can be an option.

If using the wood fences, then maybe a sawmill tile can be created, the player who draws it can get a fence marker and put it in a field. If using the rock ones, maybe a quarry tile can be created for the same purpouse (too many ideas sorry).  Other option is creating a variant with quarrys and sawmills that give wood and rock comodities.

[CKorfmann]

If using the wood fences, then maybe a sawmill tile can be created, the player who draws it can get a fence marker and put it in a field. If using the rock ones, maybe a quarry tile can be created for the same purpouse (too many ideas sorry).  Other option is creating a variant with quarrys and sawmills that give wood and rock comodities.

Wow, that's a bunch of good, really big ideas at once.  I'm not sure how the introduction of comodities would go over with the general populous, but it could be interesting.  I like the sawmill/quarry tile idea and providing materials to build fences.  That could be pursued.

[elmendalerenda]

Thanks,  :

About the sawmill, the player who draws it gets a wood fence (Catan road) that can deploy in any later turn, instead of moving wood to separate two fields in a tile (also think it would be an option to be able to put the fence in an already existing field). To create the sawmill tile, I think that the drawing of the bakery can be combined with a log cabin and that can be easily a sawmill.

The quarry will give the player who draws it a stone token. That stone token can be used later to get and extra action if the prevously drawn tile contained a city (think in using the stone token to build the city for free), as in other variants this extra action cant be used with other extra action tiles or abilities. For creating this tile guess the catacomb drawing can be used but some other thing shall be added.

Any further ideas are wellcome

[Gwommy]

Alright, here's what I'm thinking...

I'll just make this a tile expansion using the city walls and thick walls.  I'm not sure whether to call this expansion, "Walls" or "New Walls" or something else altogether, but I think that's direction I want the rest of this thread to go in.

@Elmendalerenda, do you want start a new thread for the sawmill and quarry and work together on it adding the fence and tunnel to that expansion?

[elmendalerenda]

ok, if the rest of the people is interested in the sawmill and quarry expansion, somebody can create the new post. Also i would like to know what programs people use to create tiles, this way i can give it a try

[meepleater]

I use photoshop, but not everyone has that.

[Gwommy]

Photoshop is probably better, but it has a higher learning curve.  I learned on Paint Shop Pro years ago, so I still use that.

How does Barriers And City Walls sound for this exapansion?  


I've got the tiles created as well.  
As long as the new title sounds good, then I'll go ahead and get some rules written up.
Here are links for the tiles I created:
http://gwommy.tripod.com/carcassonne/CityWalls.jpg
http://gwommy.tripod.com/carcassonne/Barriers.jpg

================EDIT=====================
Alright, I went ahead and did a write up anyways.  Thoughts, comments, corrections?
http://gwommy.tripod.com/carcassonne/BarriersAndCityWalls.pdf

[elmendalerenda]

so you draw the new icons on top of scanned tiles?

Guess that makinf the new icons is a very time consuming job