How can I stop putting the carcass zone in Carcassonne?
July 21, 2015 9:46 AM Subscribe
I need help to stop finishing dead last in Carcassonne without resorting to cutthroat strategies that alienate people. I've researched strategy guides, but none that I've found is written in the "explain it like I'm five" style that I need. Please hope me learn how be competitive.
What rules does your group use for divvying up farmer points? Under some house rules, investing heavily in farms is a dominant strategy.
What's your current strategy -- Do you like to go for big cities? Lots of little cities? Roads?
What do others in your group do - do they aggressively try to join up with and steal your stuff (by having more guys on their part of the joined thing)?
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:52 AM on July 21, 2015
What's your current strategy -- Do you like to go for big cities? Lots of little cities? Roads?
What do others in your group do - do they aggressively try to join up with and steal your stuff (by having more guys on their part of the joined thing)?
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:52 AM on July 21, 2015
Best answer: This might not be what you're into, but I got a lot better at the game after playing the google play version a bunch. Its 4.99 and let me try a bunch of strategies out/improve my decision making IRL.
The AIs aren't the best but far from the worst when it comes to video game adaptations of board games.
posted by lownote at 9:59 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
The AIs aren't the best but far from the worst when it comes to video game adaptations of board games.
posted by lownote at 9:59 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: i personally always try to get farm points. not in the beginning, but somewhere towards the early middle of the game. i just have terrible luck completing cities that those points never end up doubling. farm points add up fast, especially if ppl are making smaller cities. it also ensures you'll get some points even if you never pick good cards.
posted by monologish at 10:00 AM on July 21, 2015
posted by monologish at 10:00 AM on July 21, 2015
My frustration with Carcassonne was that I didn't think there was enough strategy built in to the original game. You get one tile, you put one tile somewhere. I couldn't plan ahead and I hated that.
So my husband and I started playing Carcassonne with "3 in hand" house rules. You get three tiles in your hand at the beginning of the game, and at each turn you play and then draw a tile to go back to three. That allowed for some strategizing and planning.
I hate farm points. I always wind up having my farm stolen from me.
My money is in finishing off tiny cities: put down a tile to create a two-fer city, put the meeple on it, get my 4 points, take the meeple off. Rinse and repeat.
posted by Elly Vortex at 10:06 AM on July 21, 2015
So my husband and I started playing Carcassonne with "3 in hand" house rules. You get three tiles in your hand at the beginning of the game, and at each turn you play and then draw a tile to go back to three. That allowed for some strategizing and planning.
I hate farm points. I always wind up having my farm stolen from me.
My money is in finishing off tiny cities: put down a tile to create a two-fer city, put the meeple on it, get my 4 points, take the meeple off. Rinse and repeat.
posted by Elly Vortex at 10:06 AM on July 21, 2015
Best answer: When I played Carcassonne often with friends back in university, there was one jerkwad who was always super-competitive and trying to screw everyone else over. So I played every game viewing him as my only opponent. Because he played to win, I won most often.
Farm lands were what picked me up the most points, usually. Other people were focused on quick points upfront with small towns, and I played for farm land, which won me huge points in final tallying. Aggressive farming.
posted by lizbunny at 10:28 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Farm lands were what picked me up the most points, usually. Other people were focused on quick points upfront with small towns, and I played for farm land, which won me huge points in final tallying. Aggressive farming.
posted by lizbunny at 10:28 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: What rules does your group use for divvying up farmer points? Under some house rules, investing heavily in farms is a dominant strategy.
We pretty much stick to the rules. I don't think we house rule anything at all right now.
My current strategy (note: I've only played about 5 times) is to try to get a lot of little cities.
We play a pretty much non-interference style: people don't usually try to hijack other people's cities except when there are commodities involved.
I tend to score well as we go along, but at the end of the game, it looks like everyone else gets hundreds of points from their holdings, and I finish waaaaay at the back. This suggests I'm missing something obvious, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Thinking back on it, I would wager that many of the people in my group are using lizbunny's strategy of aggressive farming. Which makes me wonder what the point of the cities is then. :-/
Thanks for all the answers, folks!
posted by lord_wolf at 10:41 AM on July 21, 2015
We pretty much stick to the rules. I don't think we house rule anything at all right now.
My current strategy (note: I've only played about 5 times) is to try to get a lot of little cities.
We play a pretty much non-interference style: people don't usually try to hijack other people's cities except when there are commodities involved.
I tend to score well as we go along, but at the end of the game, it looks like everyone else gets hundreds of points from their holdings, and I finish waaaaay at the back. This suggests I'm missing something obvious, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Thinking back on it, I would wager that many of the people in my group are using lizbunny's strategy of aggressive farming. Which makes me wonder what the point of the cities is then. :-/
Thanks for all the answers, folks!
posted by lord_wolf at 10:41 AM on July 21, 2015
without resorting to cutthroat strategies that alienate people
Could you expand on what these are? Because if it is playing to make it difficult for other people to close out their cities, tell them that The Internet says this is totally a legit strategy. On preview: so is hijacking cities :-)
A more advanced technique is to try and keep track of what tiles are remaining, playing based on the odds of what will come up. This page has an image of the starting set of tiles (scroll down).
posted by exogenous at 10:43 AM on July 21, 2015
Could you expand on what these are? Because if it is playing to make it difficult for other people to close out their cities, tell them that The Internet says this is totally a legit strategy. On preview: so is hijacking cities :-)
A more advanced technique is to try and keep track of what tiles are remaining, playing based on the odds of what will come up. This page has an image of the starting set of tiles (scroll down).
posted by exogenous at 10:43 AM on July 21, 2015
Best answer: I think strategy varies according to how many people are playing, but I think the single best thing you can do is basically count cards. Not literally, but have a decent idea of how many pieces of each type are in the deck. Where that comes particularly in handy is if you have situations where a road will need to be on the same tile as a city - there's only so many of those of any configuration.
Anyway, I only play with my wife 95% of the time. There are 71 tiles in the deck (not counting the starter), so we each get about 35 turns. If you're playing with 4 people, you'll have half that many. So, with a smaller number of people, you'll want to be more conservative with placing your meeples, because you can frequently end up in situations where all your dudes are out and then you pick up a cloister (which is likely 4 points no matter when you play it). With a small group, you'll want to limit your farmer investment, but try to start large cities early on since you'll have plenty of time to finish them. You'll also want to try to maintain divisions between farms - my wife and I frequently end up with the board split between two giant farms.
If you're only going to get 18 turns, large cities aren't going to work unless you're sharing the points with others.
When you get towards the end of the game, like when you have maybe twice as many turns left as you have meeples (this could be halfway through in a 4 person game), just start throwing meeples out on every tile you can. Complete or add on to existing features if you can, but start throwing farmers and thieves anywhere possible. Make separate road or farm elements one tile away from an existing one and then try to connect them up. If you get the "all city" tile early in the game, stick it on someone else's thing - they'll probably never finish it. At the end of the game, it's two free points so use it for yourself if you can, adding it to a city that you're probably not going to complete.
lizbunny's strategy is good too - occupy farms and make sure you're the only one getting points from them. Try to make as many separate farms as possible.
posted by LionIndex at 10:45 AM on July 21, 2015
Anyway, I only play with my wife 95% of the time. There are 71 tiles in the deck (not counting the starter), so we each get about 35 turns. If you're playing with 4 people, you'll have half that many. So, with a smaller number of people, you'll want to be more conservative with placing your meeples, because you can frequently end up in situations where all your dudes are out and then you pick up a cloister (which is likely 4 points no matter when you play it). With a small group, you'll want to limit your farmer investment, but try to start large cities early on since you'll have plenty of time to finish them. You'll also want to try to maintain divisions between farms - my wife and I frequently end up with the board split between two giant farms.
If you're only going to get 18 turns, large cities aren't going to work unless you're sharing the points with others.
When you get towards the end of the game, like when you have maybe twice as many turns left as you have meeples (this could be halfway through in a 4 person game), just start throwing meeples out on every tile you can. Complete or add on to existing features if you can, but start throwing farmers and thieves anywhere possible. Make separate road or farm elements one tile away from an existing one and then try to connect them up. If you get the "all city" tile early in the game, stick it on someone else's thing - they'll probably never finish it. At the end of the game, it's two free points so use it for yourself if you can, adding it to a city that you're probably not going to complete.
lizbunny's strategy is good too - occupy farms and make sure you're the only one getting points from them. Try to make as many separate farms as possible.
posted by LionIndex at 10:45 AM on July 21, 2015
My current strategy (note: I've only played about 5 times) is to try to get a lot of little cities.
This is why you are losing. The people who are winning against you probably own all the farms around your very many cities. If your opponent is making small cities, try to make sure you own the farms around them. This is where the big points come from. This is also where my husband and I start swearing at each other (lovingly, of course) when someone sneaks in the extra farmer to give him/her control over the big farm.
posted by jillithd at 10:45 AM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
This is why you are losing. The people who are winning against you probably own all the farms around your very many cities. If your opponent is making small cities, try to make sure you own the farms around them. This is where the big points come from. This is also where my husband and I start swearing at each other (lovingly, of course) when someone sneaks in the extra farmer to give him/her control over the big farm.
posted by jillithd at 10:45 AM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
With two players, connect separate farms to nullify your opponent's points. This does depend somewhat on which tiles are left in the deck.
Cloisters can make all the difference too. Relatively easy to rack up a wad of points.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:45 AM on July 21, 2015
Cloisters can make all the difference too. Relatively easy to rack up a wad of points.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:45 AM on July 21, 2015
Reframe "hijacking cities." It's merging. While it may seem aggressive at first, it can be the game's most cooperative feature. Two players are much more likely to complete a big city than one, for a ton of points that put you both ahead of the other players.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:16 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:16 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
We always start out a game playing competitively but part way through one by one we switch to playing to ensure that (name redacted) wins. This is because the first few times we played she won by an absurd margin, so it has become a tradition.
You might want to consider playing the game cooperatively instead of competitively. Depends on who you are playing with, of course.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:10 PM on July 21, 2015
You might want to consider playing the game cooperatively instead of competitively. Depends on who you are playing with, of course.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:10 PM on July 21, 2015
Best answer: One thing I try to do is to maximise my tile placement. I go for the best position that lets me do more than one thing (e.g., make my road longer AND add to my cloister; merge into someone's city/field/road AND open up the board a bit).
Another thing I like to do is to make things difficult for my opponents in a non-obvious way. I like to own roads near their cities so that I can control traffic and cut off their field if I need to. I like to add pieces near their cities that make it really hard to finish them and get their meeple back (because they'll require a very specific piece to do so). I'll add a piece to their cloister if it means that they have to finish my city to finish their cloister (and get their meeple back). Really, anything to get them low on meeples and dependent on specific pieces to restock is good. Especially if they need the SAME type of piece in two places. Now they have a choice they must make if they get 1 of those types. If I can steer that choice, even better.
Also get good on merging into people's farms, cities, roads. Do so if they stand to gain a considerable amount of points; you need to level that playing field asap. If it only costs you a meeple, it's worth it. Especially if you can get that one back on their tile (you're both sharing a city now but they need their meeple back; they'll finish that city out of desperation. Either way, it's sunk cost for them … they either share the points or they sink another meeple into it. At that point, make it unfinishable and then the sunk cost is doubly worth it).
Basically, you want a slow rolling hurt that gives you a slight advantage over time. Then make sure you have at least 2-3 meeples available at the last several tiles. You want to lay those down as farmers in strange pockets of the board where you can pick up at least 6-9 points for each one placed.
Oh, and use your opponent's turn to mentally play along. Where would you put that tile if it was yours? Where are you hoping they absolutely don't put that tile (cause it would screw you over)?
posted by iamkimiam at 2:44 PM on July 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
Another thing I like to do is to make things difficult for my opponents in a non-obvious way. I like to own roads near their cities so that I can control traffic and cut off their field if I need to. I like to add pieces near their cities that make it really hard to finish them and get their meeple back (because they'll require a very specific piece to do so). I'll add a piece to their cloister if it means that they have to finish my city to finish their cloister (and get their meeple back). Really, anything to get them low on meeples and dependent on specific pieces to restock is good. Especially if they need the SAME type of piece in two places. Now they have a choice they must make if they get 1 of those types. If I can steer that choice, even better.
Also get good on merging into people's farms, cities, roads. Do so if they stand to gain a considerable amount of points; you need to level that playing field asap. If it only costs you a meeple, it's worth it. Especially if you can get that one back on their tile (you're both sharing a city now but they need their meeple back; they'll finish that city out of desperation. Either way, it's sunk cost for them … they either share the points or they sink another meeple into it. At that point, make it unfinishable and then the sunk cost is doubly worth it).
Basically, you want a slow rolling hurt that gives you a slight advantage over time. Then make sure you have at least 2-3 meeples available at the last several tiles. You want to lay those down as farmers in strange pockets of the board where you can pick up at least 6-9 points for each one placed.
Oh, and use your opponent's turn to mentally play along. Where would you put that tile if it was yours? Where are you hoping they absolutely don't put that tile (cause it would screw you over)?
posted by iamkimiam at 2:44 PM on July 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
I pretty much ignore farms completely and focus on churches and cities, peppering in those little roads when they're easy to pick up throughout the game.
posted by phunniemee at 9:50 AM on July 21, 2015