Meeple development

[Scott]

I just had an idea while reading RamblingRocket's post regarding limited followers. It might be interesting to make players earn extra meeples instead of giving them at the start of the game.

Big Meeple - player must complete a feature with two regular meeples
Builder - player must complete a road or city
Pig - player must make a farm with two farmers
Wagon - player must complete a road between two cities
Mayor - player must complete a city with a pennant
Barn - player must deploy their pig

In all situations, the feature being completed must belong to the player. Completing a feature belonging to another player will not cause anyone to gain special meeples. This partly deters people from completing other players' features to gain meeples quickly, but could also encourage players to finish each other's features to prevent another player from gaining a special meeple. Alternatively, completing another player's feature could cause them to gain the corresponding special meeple, in case the prevention thing seems too evil.

[Joff]

This is an interesting idea  :

[Tobias]

This is an interesting idea  :

Why the rolling eyes? I think this is a neat idea as well

[RamblingRocket]

Sounds like a viable alturnative. Means that players do not need to make hard choices at the beginning of the game compared to the way I play. But I would still limit followers at least a little, and make them swap out one of their ordinary followers to get the special follower once the conditions have been met (kind of like upgrading the meeple).

[canada steve]

Nice idea Scott, I like it as an alternative ruling. Maybe we could add it into the site.

[Joff]

Why the rolling eyes? I think this is a neat idea as well

Sorry, they weren't meant to be rolling eyes!!!

[mkebaron]

The only issue I see with this variant (which I think is great overall) is this:

"Big Meeple - player must complete a feature with two regular meeples"

If a Big Meeple already represents two followers (regular meeples), then what's the benefit of "upgrading"?  Shouldn't there be something that the Big Meeple gives a bonus to by having the two meeples on that completed feature?  Or is the benefit simply to use that Big Meeple and get those two regular ones back in your stockpile?  I suppose I could see the benefit in that, but it seems small.

[Scott]

If you completed a city with two of your own meeples in it, you would gain the big meeple in your stockpile. If you wanted to play with the upgrading method, only one of the two meeples would be replaced with the big meeple, and the other would go back to the stockpile.

The upgrading idea is an interesting one for those who want to keep the number of meeples at seven.

[Gantry]

I like the idea too... you could consider it a population explosion!  The big thing that would have to be determined in my mind would be, for each of those possibly-earned meeples, is it worth actively trying to earn them?  The specific one I was thinking of was the pig - is it worth sacrificing 2 farmers on 1 farm? Eventually it can release both a pig and a barn, but that would have to be a strategic decision at any given point in the game.

[Scott]

It's been my experience that ending up with 2 farmers on one farm is somewhat common just through ordinary tile placement without trying to make it happen.