Harbours of Carcassone

[dwhitworth]

Harbours of Carcassonne - A possible Carcassonne variant

Intro
This is just the germ of an idea and I am soliciting comments and criticisms in the hope that it might eventually bear fruit . . .

Why?

1.   When you use both river expansions you have two tiles to spare – lakes or springs. It seems a pity not to be able to use them
2.   With multiple expansions the relative value of the trading goods tokens (wheat, cloth, barrels) is reduced. There have been a number of variants aimed at restoring the balance and variant this tries to do the same thing.

Theme

The citizens of Carcassone were important traders across medieval France. The traded between cities, but also played a major role in import/export trade from the ports of the country. The game, to date, does not reflect the existence of this wider trading. By introducing harbours we symbolize this activity.


What?

The left-over river tiles become harbours. They have fields on three sides (unless you use the city/lake tile) and the fourth side - where the river or lake is - represents a small harbour – perhaps at the head of a bay or inlet. They enable trade good tokens to score extra points.

How?

The extra river tiles are mixed in with the land tiles in the bag/box/tower and are selected at random like other land tiles.

When these tiles are drawn they can be played only at the outer edges of the existing “board”, but otherwise according to tile placement rules. They may only be placed so that the harbour has a free access to the ocean so that a ship can sail away from the “coast’. In other words you can’t place them inside an open space inside the map that is surrounded by other tiles – i.e. harbours on “lakes” are not acceptable. These harbours  are the very antithesis of Abbeys!

Once placed these tiles limit the placement of other tiles such that the harbour cannot ever be cut off from the ocean. You can have a harbour at the end of a very long “inlet” or fiord, but there must always be an exit to the sea.


Scoring

I have two options in mind here and I am soliciting ideas and comments:

1.   Players place a meeple (small, big, wagon (but no more movement) on the harbour tile when placed and they remain there like farmers (subject to removal by towers and dragons) until the end of the game. At the end of the game the harbour will score two points for each goods symbol of each type in each completed city connected to it by a farm. Multiple tokens of the same type in a city will not count more than once. Multiple cities with symbols will be scored as often as they occur. Meeples can be moved from the castle section of the City of Carcassonne to a harbour at scoring time.
2.   Harbours are scored at the time the tile is placed in a manner similar to that described above, but no meeple is committed. Problem here is that harbours will increase in value later in the game and early placement is probably of limited value.
 
Thoughts, ideas etc.

1.   Farms provide an easier way of “connecting” to cities than roads – even though it is less realistic
2.   Playing the river “backwards” from lake to two springs (we do this all the time) leaves two lakes that represent harbours more effectively.
3.   Volcano lake can trigger dragon when drawn. The harbour is just empty at first and might need a magic portal or Carcassonne city to fill it at scoring time.
4.   If you have both river expansions you could play with only one of them and have three harbours. Or play without the rivers and have a multi-harbour seafaring game . . .
5.   It would be possible to create custom harbour tiles with city and road segments that allowed more complex placement.
6.   Magic portals might allow deployment to harbours – perhaps simulating competition between players in the same harbour . . .
7.   Use of other tiles (inverted scout tiles from K&S perhaps) to simulate harbours if more than a few were desired
8.   Invent a new meeple called captain/explorer/merchant to be placed on the harbour and score more points than a regular meeple.


All comments on this idea gratefully received!

[Novelty]

A few comments...

1. Two harbours seem rather too... few.  To really make this more viable, there should be more harbours?
2. I'm not sure how players are going to like having a tile in the game that would be the ultimate "blocker".  If, for example, there's an outer edge where the geography is just right for the tile to be played so that your oppoent can never ever fill up the adjacent squares to expand out the map.  It seems bad to me somehow that there is no possible solution provided by the tiles out of this.
3. The City and I think Settlers both have "outer edges" sort of mechanics - why not adapt those for play instead?
4. [Plug] Have you read the variant I posted about Row, row, row your meeple in a boat?  Perhaps we can merge both ideas somehow?

[Scott]

I agree with Novelty that two is too few. I think Idea #5 about creating some new harbour tiles is the best way to go. You may find that what you're trying to achieve has already been done. Take a look at these:

http://carcassonne-city.blogspot.com/2004/06/see-fischer-und-leuchtturm-von-carsten.html
http://www.carcassonne.nl/onoff2_vuurtoren.html
http://www.carcassonne.nl/onoff2_zeevissers.html
http://www.carcassonne.nl/onoff2_visserkust.html

If, like me, you can't reach German, you can copy-paste the addresses into Google's translation tools:
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

[dwhitworth]

Thanks for the comments.

@Novelty
Two tiles may be not enough, but I was also trying to provide uses for tiles that we don't otherwise use . . . .
There are a lot of blocking opportunities in the game now, but I take your point that this could be interpreted as somehow "ultimate" in some cases - playtesting may show how serious this is.
I have looked at your row,row,row,  . .  variant and it has some ideas I like. I will try to playtest it and get back to you.

@Scott
Thanks for the references. WOW! They are way more ambitious than what I had in mind. They all involve creating new tiles and I have not yet seen a really easy way to make new tiles that are not touch sensitive when pulling from the bag. I have seen the stuff posted elsewhere on this forum about buying the correct card stock etc. but it seems just too much effort for me and then everyone else would have to be prepared to do it as well. I think that the best variants require minimal extra preparation effort. And anyway my object was to try to use up the tiles we already have 

[canada steve]

Interesting possibility for a variant there. However the idea of placing a tile that stops further expansion of the map around it seems a tad harsh. Also Carcassonne was a totally land locked city, quite some way from any port and was only served by river or road for goods so the addition of a port doesnt quite fit into the overall feel of the game.

Not saying its a bad variant idea, just would be difficult to implement as you would require at a minimum 4-6 port tiles and producing them may be hard.

Try play testing your idea and let us know how it faired.

[Gantry]

I like the concept of how it adds value to goods, but I'm with Novelty in the first two points he makes. 

You might consider that if the point of the variant is to provide a balancing factor for trade goods, you might (despite the cool name) abandon the harbour idea and come up with an alternative to scoring without using harbours.  This would mean that you'd have to abandon your idea of using the unused 2 river tiles, or else use them in such a way as to not have them be blockers (ie use them only at the end of the game). my 2 cents!

[mkebaron]

Here's a thought (going on the idea that Carcassonna was a land-locked city).

Instead of harbors, keep with them being lakes.  My wife and I use both river expansions together and end up with a few variations on how the river turns out (two springs, and a lake, two lakes and a spring, etc., etc.).  So why not give bonus for various combinations?

• If two cities are connected by the river via lakes, they get a farm bonus or trade bonus
• If more than two cities are connected by the river, they get an additional bonus there too

Just some thoughts.