to help cloister & shrines...

[Deatheux]

can the scoring of the cloister / abbey/ shrines can be adjusted??? cuz only 9  points sucks when we can make out some 100pts castles and 15/25 pts a road... and scoring barns & farmers are also so frigging nuts sometimes!

Do carcassonne will print out a master monk to score additionnal points for completed A/C/S in the game(like the king/robber baron) to maybe worth a reason to complete those segments.....

[djwurm]

the beauty of this game is you can adjust the rules/scoring to your likes and use them as your house rules.. so if you want cloisters to count as 12/15/etc.. points then you can.

I have a few house rules that we play with that do not go exactly with the way carcassonne rules dictate such as

river - mix river 2 and 1 into the bag first (before the other tiles) and draw/lay tiles so we never know how long the river is going to be.
Mayor - we make the 1 point for connecting to a barn 2 points
Builder - You can keep drawing tiles as long as you play on the feature that your builder is on.
Fairy - we dont use the 1 point scoring, instead we give a bigger bonus for completed features with the fairy

We have a few more but I dont feel like listing everyone! 

[Deatheux]

our biggest modif. is to take points when we win the challenge in a cloister/shrine, (see variant alleready posted). for the rest, we try to be as the book, to play as the Int. rules. the game is not too harsh to play like that. but i just think that the weaker point is cloister... just give 15 or 12 pts per cloister makes me grind teeth, i'd peefer to fond something more progressive.

[Deatheux]

Do carcassonne will print out a master monk to score additionnal points for completed A/C/S in the game(like the king/robber baron) to maybe worth a reason to complete those segments.....

LOL, i just think: the POPE of carcassonne! 3pts per completed cloister/abbey/shrines.

[RamblingRocket]

I actually made a Supreme monk meeple. In fact, I have Knight Champions, Master Thieves and Specialized Farmers. I even had WarMakers (big meeple armed with 2 swords) roaming the land.

Similar to your thoughts, I had the Supreme Monk give an extra 3 points for scoring a Cloister, although he had other abilities as well. In the end, I dropped all the special rules I had invented for these meeple, since I thought I was just adding complexity to what is really a simple game. I went back to just using mostly regular meeple (Not even using things like the Mayor or the Cart). However, there is nothing stopping you from making your own Pope meeple - a simple halo will do    (Note: in the above picture, it is ment to be a halo, not an afro  ).

Alternatively, if you have the 'Cult' places, you could make it so that a completed cloister which contains a cult tile scores more (and visa versa). This would give more reward for any competition while saving you modifying a meeple.

Edit - I see you have already suggested that yourself in another thread. I guess great minds think alike  . Perhaps you may like the Cloister variant that I suggested within the Tower-variant thread which I put forward.

[Deatheux]

nice meeples!!!

good point here! i like the variant of the super monk!

[rabal]

I have considered playing that the last cloister/shrine completed gives a player something like the King or Robber Baron and that they would score 1 point for each completed cloister/shrine at the end of the game.  Not alot of points but i agree there is little incentive in the monastic ascpect of this game.

[14cross]

What about if, when you lay a cloister down, you immediately get a point for every tile that currently surrounds it and then get nine more points when the cloister is finished?

So if I lay down a cloister that has four tiles surrounding it I get four points immediately. Then, when I complete the cloister I get nine more points.

If I place a cloister that is immediately completely surrounded by tiles then I get 17 points (8 for every tile that surrounds the cloister + 9 for completing the cloister).

[Bixby]

What about if, when you lay a cloister down, you immediately get a point for every tile that currently surrounds it and then get nine more points when the cloister is finished?

So if I lay down a cloister that has four tiles surrounding it I get four points immediately. Then, when I complete the cloister I get nine more points.

If I place a cloister that is immediately completely surrounded by tiles then I get 17 points (8 for every tile that surrounds the cloister + 9 for completing the cloister).

This has merit. The Monks never seem to pose much of a threat (point wise) in our Mega-carc games. This could elevate their worth and remain simple in game terms. At first glance, I do not see any downside to this. Thanks!!!!

[Deatheux]

What about if, when you lay a cloister down, you immediately get a point for every tile that currently surrounds it and then get nine more points when the cloister is finished?

So if I lay down a cloister that has four tiles surrounding it I get four points immediately. Then, when I complete the cloister I get nine more points.

If I place a cloister that is immediately completely surrounded by tiles then I get 17 points (8 for every tile that surrounds the cloister + 9 for completing the cloister).

yes nice!! and if a challenge is win, the player scores the surrounding tiles that the loser od the challenge got...

[Jambo]

I do like the idea of gaining immediate points when playing a monk on a cloister. Indeed cloisters, like trade goods, suffer the more expansions you add to the mix and this might be a good variant to redress the balance a little when playing games of mega-Carc.

[Gantry]

Just a general comment:

In terms of balance, one thing I'd like to point out is that sometimes there is a compulsion to bump up low-scoring features so that they are more in-line with high-scoring features. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea. However, to me this is the difference between checkers and chess.  Making everything score similar numbers is akin to checkers, in terms of strategy.  Whereas if you have many features in Carc that score low points (ie short roads), and a few that score huge numbers (ie farms), this is more like chess because it adds a more depth to a game.  IMHO, it is more fun to deploy many small point-bearing features, hoping your opponent will ignore them, and win, than to win a game by slugging it out with a couple of high-scoring features. In other words, I find winning chess with a pawn much more exciting than with my queen!

[Bixby]

Just a general comment:

In terms of balance, one thing I'd like to point out is that sometimes there is a compulsion to bump up low-scoring features so that they are more in-line with high-scoring features. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea. However, to me this is the difference between checkers and chess.  Making everything score similar numbers is akin to checkers, in terms of strategy.  Whereas if you have many features in Carc that score low points (ie short roads), and a few that score huge numbers (ie farms), this is more like chess because it adds a more depth to a game.  IMHO, it is more fun to deploy many small point-bearing features, hoping your opponent will ignore them, and win, than to win a game by slugging it out with a couple of high-scoring features. In other words, I find winning chess with a pawn much more exciting than with my queen!

I agree with you completely and find your comments insightful. I quite like the chess analogy. The only thing that continues to resonate with me about the monks, is that they hardly ever get used. When we play Mega-carc, we generally remove a couple of meeples each to make sure there is still an issue with resource management. (With all of the expansions, there seems to be an over abundance of followers). Without the over-abundance of meeples, very rarely do Monks even get played in our games, the opportunity cost is too high for what is likely to be a small gain after having a meeple tied up for a long time. If monks are not used, they are not like the lowly pawn in Chess that helps deliver a magnificent victory. There are like pawns that stayed in the drawer and never got placed on the chess board.

[Deatheux]

IMHO i consider comparing Chess & Carcassonne is almost like comparing the 1st class steak to roller coaster(operated by Lumpy)!

again of i can add, as that the rules are, i prefer to ignore the Cloister and use the meeples to scoring castles and roads, strategycally dispose them to score the most farmers & barn points than easte 22 tiles turns to score only "9"! the target to worth a cloister is to be near 15 to 20 points.

My 2nd way to score Cloister is to dispose one in CoC to cash in here & there...

[Jambo]

There's also the issue that a cloister doesn't bring with it any chance of losing it to competition, e.g. an opponent's big meeple. It's points in the bag so to speak. Cities, roads and farms can clearly generate more points but then they are always susceptible to takeovers...

(Although I hear cloister safety may be under threat with the Cult expansion?)