Expansion 2009

[Novelty]

Do you think we will get a new expansion in 2009?  If yes, what do you think we will see?

[Whaleyland]

I am really hoping something in the realm of the forest expansion is made. That fan expansion provides so many new features, but I rather doubt it will be released by HiG. If you look at the previous releases, you may note a pattern:

I&C = bonus to roads (inns) and cities (cathedrals)
River = no change
T&B = bonus to farms (pigs), cities, and roads (builder)
King & Robber = bonus to road (robber baron) and city (king)
Tower = only penalties
River II = bonus to a farm (pig farm)
P&D = only penalties; threat to cities (princess)
Count = bonus to everything, but can be blocked
GQ11 = no change
A&M = bonus to farms (barn) and cities (mayor)
Cult, Siege, and Creativity = threat to cloisters (shrines) and cities (sieges); bonus to farms (sieges)
Catapult = threat to anything, but can miss

The obvious element that has been overlooked over the past is still the cloister, but since they just released CS&C, I doubt they will touch that any time soon and I would rather prefer they didn't. Catapult obviously sent the potential for Carcassonne to entirely new realms, perhaps (definitely) dangerously so. I think there is a lot of potential with the farms still, despite the fact that farms have consistently been tweaked with successive expansions. I believe a new commodity could come out of the farms, but again I doubt HiG will do that just now. Cities, if anything, have been over-done in the past. This leaves really roads as the final element that have remained relatively untouched, only getting Inns in I&C and the Robber Baron. Sure they are effected by things such as the trader and the wagon, but those hardly count as specific road-targeting expansions. Therefore, I think the next expansion may target farms (for something new) and roads (for something different), unless they decide to make Carcassonne: Manhattan Project and blow the entire board to pieces. In which case, I may actually rethink buying it.

[mjharper]

Here's an idea: an expansion of an expansion!

So my (completely off the wall) prediction is that we see Traders and Builders II, and they fix the rules for trade counters.

[Lardarse]

So my (completely off the wall) prediction is that we see Traders and Builders II, and they fix the rules for trade counters.

Fix? What's broken about them?

[Whaleyland]

You mean the fact that when you play T&B with two players, it generally sucks to be the player NOT to have earned the trade tokens?

[mjharper]

So my (completely off the wall) prediction is that we see Traders and Builders II, and they fix the rules for trade counters.

Fix? What's broken about them?

[rant mode]The scoring is fixed rather than relational, which means that they're broken in my book. In more detail, there are a fixed number of trade counters and the person with the majority scores 10 points. That's fine if you combine T&B with only the basic game: 10 points is a lot in that case. But by the time you're playing with seven or eight or fourteen expansions, there are too few trade counters, and 10 points means almost nothing. I've played games where I've score 350+ points, and the effort of completing a city to get the trade counter just isn't worth it. By contrast, the King or Robber Baron stay as important whether you're playing with the basic game alone or with everything you can get your hands on—because the more tiles you play with, the more roads or cities you build, and the more points the King or Baron score. So they aren't broken in my view, because they scale well, no matter how many expansions you play with.
[/rant mode]

Seriously though, wouldn't an 'expansion expansion' be cool? More trade tiles, another cathedral, more volcanoes, more tower foundations, and so on? Something which would be appreciated by long time fans, and encourage newcomers to check out all of the expansions they don't have? The River II had something like that; but I would love a whole 30-tile expansion!

[kjamma4]

[rant mode]The scoring is fixed rather than relational, which means that they're broken in my book[/rant mode]

Probably not too hard to "fix" that. Instead of only giving a fixed amount to the Wine Trader/Grain Trader/Cloth Trader, give them 10 points plus one point for every city that contains their particular symbol. A city containing multiple symbols could be scored once for each different symbol it contained (i.e. a city could conceivably be scored three times - once for wine, once for grain, and once for cloth if it contained all three symbols but multiple wine symbols would not make that city score twice for the Wine Trader.)

Generally speaking, the more tiles you play with the easier it would be to create cities that did not duplicate trade types and therefore the potential points could go up. On the downside, there is still an absolute ceiling on the number of points the traders could garnish (and of course with wine being the most important, it could earn the most points !!!!!)

[Lardarse]

T&B trade counters: What do you think we need? A 4th trade good? More of the other 3? More points for each majority? All of the above?

King and Robber Baron: Yeah, they do scale with game size. Generally (from playing on BSW), you get 15/15 with base + I&C, becomes 20/20 with T&B added, and something like 25/25 with P&D as well.

Expansion 2009: So, you want a "Carcassonne Anthologies" expansion, that combines elements from the previous major (and minor) expansions, and maybe even combining them on one tile? Sounds good, and would definitely appeal to the "more of the same, please" crowd.

[Wishmaster]

The Catapult is a worrying expansion - If this is the road HiG are going down then I really don't think many of us will care what they do next. The only positive spin you can put on it is that at least they trying to come up with something different. 

A far as wishfull thinking goes, then forests or mountains as new features - But they would have to offer something new rather than just look pretty. New building features - Possibly Castles. However, all these are unlikely as no new grond features have really been added since the River.

[koolkat]

mjharper, nobody is gonna make an expansion, or an expansion of an expansion just to fix some supposed-to-be-wrong rules. They would just be fixed on the same expansion. That's why from time to time some new rules versions come out. If you are thinking of new counters or a new element in the game to improve the T&B expansion, now that would be a brand new expansion or maybe a mini-expansion. Or would you like some change in order to benefit you game style?

[koolkat]

I completely agree with Whaleyland. An expansion forest-based would be fantastic. Besides I would have to make myself the fan-made one...
You know, bringing a new base element (forest) to the game would make the job of expansion creators a lot easier. Imagine the expansions made based on cities, roads, fields and so on and think the same way about the forests. Now, that would be jolly good, wouldn't it?
But please expansion creators, don't go again for an action-based expansion. I'm sorry to tell that unfortunately it did work with The Catapult. You see, that's what make boardgames different: any present action is not obvious, it's melted in gameplay.

[mjharper]

@kjamma4: The problem with your scoring solution is that there are still only a fixed number of points and tiles. Giving an extra point per city would a) mean that some goods were more valuable than others, which the expansion stove to avoid; and b) having a majority in, say, cloth would still score the same number of points regardless of how many other expansions you use. And that's precisely what I think needs to be changed.

@Lardarse: Exactly! An 'anthology'.

@koolkat: Actually, I disagree. The problem with T&B is not that it is fundamentally broken. It still works perfectly well if it's only combined with a couple of expansion. Instead, the more expansions you add, the less value it has. So the problem isn't really something that has to be changed in the original expansion itself. Rather, a new anthology expansion which contained 'new' tiles from all the old expansions would be the prefect place to address issues of how they all fit together and so on; to introduce some definitive rulings for mega-Carc, saying what's allowed and what isn't, and introducing new rules for T&B to balance better in that—and only that—context.

That's it: I want a mega-Carc anthololgy

[Novelty]

Hmm... how many tiles do you see in the "Anthology"?  Will there be additional rules, or is it just tiles with trade goods and counters?  What else will be in the expansion besides trade goods on cities?  River tiles?  Cathedrals?  Shrines?

[mjharper]

Hmm... how many tiles do you see in the "Anthology"?  Will there be additional rules, or is it just tiles with trade goods and counters?  What else will be in the expansion besides trade goods on cities?  River tiles?  Cathedrals?  Shrines?

I would want the anthology to have three components:

• New tile configurations
• Rules/suggestions/adaptations for mega-Carc
• At least one of every tile element

I think at least one of every tile element would be fair, or? So, I'd want one river tile, one cathedral, one inn, *at least one* of every trade good, one princess, one dragon, one volcano, one shrine, one cloister, one siege (couldn't get permission for The Cathars, I guess), one tower foundation, several pennants, and you get the idea. The only stipulation would be that none of the tiles could have appeared in that configuration before, although I'd hope that more imagination could be used than we saw with GQ11. I guess the risk would be that some expansions would be more highly represented than others—P&D would have more new tiles than The Tower, for example. But still, for old hands who literally want "more of the same", that would be the way to go.

Perhaps we should start a new thread?

And perhaps we should write to HiG?

[Novelty]

And perhaps we should write to HiG?

If by "we" you mean you, then I'm all for it

What you are hoping for seems not to be another expansion, but another GQ11... I was hoping that the HiG Almanac would have included that but oh well, it was not to be.