Little help with new exp

[neosatan]

I have thinking for a while what I am missing in Carcassonne. I would like to give some more life to resources and cloisters. Cloisters is a hard call, but with resources I have an idea.

I want to make a exp that will give wagon an extra ability. So it can move to finished features and resources can be traded. Why such thing? Cause we have 3 diffrent types of resources from traders and buiders, I am playing with mountains and there I have coal resource, and gold resource (gold mines), roads to victory give gem resources, fisherman give fish resource (and the lake exp give some also), there are several resurces in other fanexps. In my games of Carcassonne I have run on problem that I have collected some resources, but someone else with one city win the majority of resources, and what to do with thouse resources that I have been collecting? They turn out useless for me. When we would have opportunity to trade them for another type the game would be more interesting. Wagon is a meeple that is used like the normal one. Special abillity is something little forgoten. With abillity to travel one structure per turn it would give an apportunity to ignit trade. Well, wagon is something that would be used to transport trade goods.

What I like to achieve by this fanexp:
-trade
-give a little more life to wagon
-maybe some more resources gained by other means that completing city. I thought about turning crop into mead or beer by cloisters. You complete cloister and when it is connected to a structure with crop resource it can produce mead or beer. That is very early idea so any suggestions will be nice.
-something like a trade table, to trade resources by values... maybe randomize this a little and do something like JPutty with seasons and do a board with resources and just give values for each resource at the time of one game... This way the game would be diffrent each time.

PS I also was thinking about giving a currecny into game. That players would gain coins from trade and some features and it would add to the final score...

This is a working idea so if You guys have anything on mind just share it

[CKorfmann]

Have you seen the Cocoa Traders expansion?  It might give you some ideas.

[neosatan]

Didn't seen this fanexp before. Well, there is some trade, but still this is a trade players an void, and I want to make trade player and player. But it have interesting machanic trading goods for goods....

[neosatan]

Some new thoughts about the exp. I thinks that randomized table of resource values is a good thing. Maybe something like seasons trackboard.
I come info conclusion that resources have to morph into each other.  So there will be some new resources that will demand some resources. And I will have to produce some new types of resources. So I will have to do some graphic with cities and roads.
Still, I am worried about compatibility with other fanexps...don't know wharf to do with this. Some suggestions?

[neosatan]

First feature of my epx:
Marketplace. Yes, I know that there is such exp. I think that Scott did it. I want to make 6 tiles with marketplace in the city and it would go in some variatnions: CCCC, CCCf, CCCR, CFCR, CFCF, CRCR. Pretty the same graphic. Marketplace would have a new ability. When it is placed, or when city with it would be completed, or when a farm connected to that city would be scored (barn, not end game), in this situations there would be an exchange. Players would exchange with the city or with other plyers. When they prefer to echange with a city then they can sell resources for 3 points, or they can buy resources for 3 points. Sold resources would be gather on a separate stack, so later they could be buoght. When players would prefer to echange with another plyer then cost of resource would be establish by them (bargin), but cost would have to be grether than 1 point and less than 6 points.

Next I am thinking about mechanics similiar to vine trader. There is an object 1 (for draft we will call it vineyard) and object 2 (for draft we will call it field). When vineyard would be attached to road. It would give additional points to the points that give road. It would give 1 point for each pennant in connected cities and 3 points for every cloister connected to the vineyard. Additional when the vineyard would be connected to city with vine resource, there could be perform a trade. Player that finish vineyard can sell barrels to other players for another resource or for points, or he can sell to the cities vine 3 points for one barrel.
Field is something similiar, but for grain.
Ok. Second feature I don't like to the end. I would like to give more meaning to the clisters, and use cities to agregate points by other features. So I think that there will be no points for pennants, but there would be points for special fatures in the cities like marketplaces, resource tokens. I want also give a vine plant resource token. That would score 5 points for majority at the end of the game, and could be morphed to the vine barrels by completing vineyard. Paying 1 point for each morph vine plant to vine barrel to players that didn't complete vineyard. Player witch copleted vineyard could do such morph for free.
Field would go on another set of rules. Completing field would give a grain token. And it would give 2 points for a city connected to the road with field, and 1 point for each cloister.
Third part of exp.
I want to make something like a special cloisters or villages. That would do some trade. In example when special cloister would be completed then it would demand that vine barrel counter could be paid (and put on trade stack) and additional 5 points would be granted on completion of that cloister. villages I wanted to as a sub exp to the fisherman fanexp. But that is next part.
I want to do something like a trading ports on a river tiles. That would do something similiar to the fisherman and lake fanexp (recently translated on english on this forum). Trading docks would do some trade routes. But there would have to be created special tokens (like a castle tokens) of villages. On placing or completing a road that is connected to trading port player could decide to place on an connected junctions of roads a village and put a meeple on that. When a connected road would be completed then owner of that meeple would gain exact amount of points as completed road (just like castle, only for roads). In addition road that are connected to a village would gain 5 additional points (since there would be 3 villages per player, or some other way to obtain village token).
More ideas comming...

[Scott]

I don't want to rain on anybody's parade. I want to be clear about that up front because I think there's a chance you might feel that way when you read my post. I'm going to mostly ignore your ideas, not because I don't like them, but because I didn't understand them. I think you are trying to accomplish too much by tackling resources and cloisters at the same time, and I have a certain amount of concern that the mechanics behind your ideas may be too complicated. If you don't like my ideas, I would be content for us to take our ideas in separate directions.

When I think about resources, I think about Settlers of Catan because that's the first game where I encountered it. (Actually, my parents had Stock Ticker since before I was born, but I didn't know how to play it until after I learned to play Settlers.) In that game you are collecting resources each turn. Though there is a limited number of resource cards that comes with the game, I would be surprised if anybody runs out, and I expect that officially there is not meant to be a limit (same as Dominion). Carcassonne, on the other hand, has a specifically limited number of resources, so there is limited trade opportunities. You mentioned several fan expansions that add additional trade goods, but those are equally limited in their quantities. I think this poses something of a challenge in trying to set up a proper trade system. Another challenge is that ownership of landscape features only lasts until the feature is completed.

Something else that I think about is trade routes in Age of Empires (computer game). In that game you can build a caravan once you've built a marketplace, and the caravan travels between the town where the marketplace is located and another town of your choosing. I think maybe there is the beginning of an idea in that. If you are looking to give more meaning to the wagon, I would change the way it works. I would make it such that the wagon is placed on a road between two cities to indicate a trade route, and that it would no longer count as a follower. I would also change the placement rules of the wagon. A wagon can be placed on any completed road which is connected on one end to a city occupied by one or more of your followers, and on the other end of another city containing one or more trade good tiles. This would mean that you can only trade with that city while your city is not completed, so you are choosing/gambling between accumulating more trade goods vs. completing your city and scoring it's full point value before the game ends. The trade route could possibly be destroyed by the dragon or tower attacking the wagon, but the wagon would not be taken prisoner. (This would run contrary to the rule that the dragon and tower cannot interact with non-followers.) I suspect it would be necessary to remove the limitation on trade good quantities with the creation of a different scoring mechanism to keep track of the number of resources per person. (Something similar to the counter cards from D-Day Dice would work very well.) Now there is a question remaining about rate of trade good accumulation. There are several options:

• You receive one trade good per turn that the trade route exists. If the city contains multiple trade goods, the player may choose which trade good to collect.
• You receive one of each trade good per turn that the trade route exists.
• You must move the wagon along the trade route at the rate of one tile per turn. A trade good is received when the wagon returns to the originating town. (May be difficult to keep track of the wagon's direction of movement.)
• You must move the wagon along the trade route at the rate of one tile per turn. The wagon starts at one end of the route and is removed from play at the other end. (Don't need to keep track of direction, and trade goods are accumulated more quickly because the wagon completes the trip in half as many movements.)

You could then also add another step to the turn order where the player may conduct trade with other players. I think it could be difficult to assign a point value to quantites of trade goods since the value of them is based on having the majority. On the other hand, I'm not sure what impact it would have if trade goods had to be traded for other trade goods. I call this the Monopoly problem; it's difficult to get players to trade properties with you because although they want a complete color set, they don't want you to have a complete color set (unless your set is somewhere between GO and Jail).

[neosatan]

Sadly, I agree. I got the fealing that I want to do too much for one fanexp...
Caravans is a good idea. Still, I don't want to mess with resource rules too much. I come to conclusion that in that sort of trade it would have to exist some mechanics that will require spending goods. Maybe do some structures to be build. Similiar to Pillars of Earth where you build cathedra... But I don't know how to implement some market mechanics into Carcassonne. I really enjoy playing Carcassonne, but there is low complexity of some mechanics. Since I like very complex games (where you build structures with proper order and some smaller structures), I want to do it in Carcassonne. I really want to do more player-to-player interactions, cause even when dragon, tower, bazars, and so on, are present in game they occurs not very often....
Caravans... Hmmm... Maybe do this like that: wagon can go either to unfinish structure (were it behave like a wagon) of it can go to finish structure, and then it have the ability to travel one connected structure each turn. On each market in play place a token with resources. When wagon goes to market it collects this token and it is facec gray side top (so it is inactive), when players wagan reach next marketplace token go colored side up (it is active). When player activate a token then he may take another (if there is a token on market). When all tokens are claimed by players then next round of resources are deployed.
Well... Problem is that I don't know how to keep track amount of resources. Maybe some cards (as Scott said)... Maybe some more token make from diffrent exps... Don't know. But caravan idea is good. Don't think that moving wagon one tile per turn is good, since don't know how to track directions of that wagon. Resource per turn makes similiar mechanic to goldmines. That you get amount of goods each turn witch can be very unconvinient.
Still, it's quite nice to have trade in game, but don't know how to make players to spend resurces... Maybe somthing similiar to bootk, that when you complete some mixes of resources you get points and resoures are spend... or to make some structures that have to be biuld from resources, but such structures had to give more points, cause you risk more...
Thouse strutures seems to be a nice idea... I have seen a game where players build a little city on a board (board was diffrent each turn cause there were tiles and placement were simiiar to tile placement in carcassonne, but less complicated), structures were made from wood pieces, and there were cards that gave plans for structures... Don't know how it was called... Ehhh...
But thanks for criticism, Scott, I needed it...

[Scott]

Yeah, another difference between Settlers and Carcassonne is that in Settlers you are collecting resources to build things, but in Carcassonne you're collecting resources to get 10 extra points at the end of the game. Carcassonne does not have a lot of incentive to trade. I don't think a Settlers-style construction system would work in Carcassonne without drastically changing the game. If you were playing with the variant where you can have three tiles in hand, then you could maybe assign a cost to each tile. However, I think that would severely slow down a game that can already take a long time to play.

Here's another idea I just had. Instead of dividing up the tower and/or bridge pieces at the beginning of the game, the players need to collect and spend resources to obtain them. This idea could possibly be expanded to include non-neutral figures as well, so that maybe you don't have certain meeples until you collect enough resources to recruit them.

[neosatan]

bridges and towers sounds greate, but buying meeples seems odd :/. I would rather like to construct new strutures, like a fort (build from 6 or 8 fort pieces) where you would have to buy the pieces. And at the end fort would be worth 50 points. Or something similiar. But that is too large idea :/. Maybe smaller forts to protect from dragon? the same tower pieces and bridges... Maybe when we could collect ideas on what wooden structures could be build on board then we can make economics for it (what resources would be nessesary, means to gain them...). Still, as you said Carcassone don't have a lot potential to trade, and for a serious trade we would have to build up an large expansion, or a spin-off...

[Scott]

You could also have players spend resources to upgrade two-tile cities to castles.

[neosatan]

And that's an idea! Not only pay to yupgrade to castles, but to upgrade cities, so You can score more points. Since building resources would not be granted 10 points at end plyers would like to upgrade their cities.
There have to some economics... limited tokens with buildings. Some will do resurces, some will do points... This is still an idea. But still, don't know how resources would be gaind...

[Scott]

I covered my idea for resource accumulation earlier. Do you mean to imply that you would prefer something different?

What should the resource costs be for bridges, castles, and towers?

[neosatan]

That ideas are good, but don't know yet how it would be perform... so I threat them as a draft. I was thinking maybe on some sort of accumulating resources by resources, but nothing came up.

I was thinking to go with something like that:
-bridge 3 stone, 1 wood, 2 coins
-castle 5 stone, 2 wood, 10 coins
-tower 1stone, 1 wood, 3 coins

also I am thinki about some new structures:
-marketplace 1 stone, 3 wood, 1 coin
Marketplace would give coins.
-quary 0 stone, 3 wood, 1 coin
Quary would give stone
-lumber camp 2 stone, 1 wood, 1 coin
Lumber camp give wood.

Each player would be given two random structures at the begining. Or some resources. Don't know yet.
Resources would be gained by wagon (as Scott suggested). When road is connected to a city, or structure that produce one of the resources, then player would be given that type of resource... Resources can't be gained each turn, but in longer period... Maybe each third turn, or add a dice, and in similiar way to Settlers of Catan some resources would be gained on some numers only... well don't know that part yet.

[Scott]

Ah I see your dilemma now. You want to use resources that don't exist yet.

Here's an idea for you: resource dice. The player rolls 2d6 or 3d6 (depending on how fast you want them to accumulate resources). Three of the faces would yield either stone, wood, or gold/coin. The other three faces would yield nothing, so you can get between 0 and 3 resources per turn.

[neosatan]

Yeah... But I want to be dependent from this what is on board. So the caravans idea works for me. Since there is only one wagon per player then players would have to trade amoung them. Road that connect to two resources will be something to fight over, and a road that connects to tree resources would be something really great. Dices are nice idea. One dice per resource. and some blank sides some filled up. That is really nice idea.

And I have an idea that cities, cloisters, rivers coud be extravalued. For exapmle, on river there could be build an extra structure, something like trading post, that could be played like marketplace only with fisherman expansion. Another example would be for cloister. For expample you have a meeple on cloister, and you can build on it a cloister vine cellar. When you complete the cloister you gain one vine token.

I want to do some artwork, and got any ideas for building resource cards?  For now I am thinking a cards in a 2,5 cm x 4,5 cm format, so they would be much smaller from standard cards. Below is a little sample.