Introduction
Welcome to the FAQ section of Carcassonne Central! As of March 2008 it's been completely reorganised into a proper FAQ layout which replaces the old 'blog' style. I hope this makes it easier to find what you want.
The FAQ in each section are organised thematically to help you narrow down your search. There is a certain amount of duplication, as when a question relates to more than one expansion it will appear under multiple sections. I haven't clearly marked these cases, although they should be easy to spot.
New to this incarnation of the site are the PDF links in the sidebar: these link to simple documents for printing which contain all of the FAQ on that page. These PDF documents are fully automated by my authoring application, so naturally they don't look as nice as the Complete Annotated Rules; but they should still prove useful.
As to the status of these FAQ, I opted to remove all the references to sources, and the original German. However, I should stress that all of the FAQ on this site (except where marked) are direct rulings from Hans-im-Glück (HiG), the original publishers of Carcassonne. Many of the FAQ for the earlier expansions are translation from the official homepage, although they are no longer available there. The rest are almost entirely from direct correspondence between myself and HiG.
The aim of this site is not to provide one person's opinion about the rules of Carcassonne, but to form the most comprehensive collection of official FAQ possible. It may be possible to debate their status: as translations of correspondence with an employee, they may not have the same authority as if they were officially published. But they are not merely my 'opinion'.
One other thing to state clearly—and a change from the pervious incarnations of the site—is that almost no mention is made of Rio Grande Games (RGG), the American publishers of Carcassonne. This is partly because the original aim of the site was to provide translations of the official FAQ which were inaccessible to the majority of English-speaking players. But it is also because of the difficultly of keeping such sometimes contradictory sets of rules distinct. So this site now assumes that you are using the latest HiG rules, and all that entails—3rd edition scoring, no small city rule, builders and pigs are not followers. There is a great deal of information about the differences between HiG and RGG rules in the Complete Annotated Rules; you should refer to that document for the details.
Well, I think that's it for the moment. Below I've added a discussion of 1st and 3rd edition farmer scoring, without doubt the most difficult and controversial aspect of Carcassonne. If you've unfamiliar with the differences, it might be worth reading that before you go any further.
Have fun!
1st & 3rd edition scoring? What’s that?
In brief, 1st edition farmer scoring is what currently comes ‘in the box’ with the RGG edition, whereas 3rd edition farmer scoring is what the original publishers of the game, HiG, use.
In more detail, 1st edition rules are scored from the perspective of the cities themselves: that is, you pick a city, and count the number of farmers on all the farms touching that city. The player with the most of those farmers scores 4 points. Then move on to the next city.
2nd edition rules followed almost immediately—after Carcassonne won Game of the Year (GotY), in fact. The original farmer rules were considered to be too difficult by the jury and they were changed; although after the change there were calls for Carcassonne to be stripped of the award, since the game that won was not actually the game subsequently sold as the GotY.
The 2nd edition rules changed to scoring farms from the perspective of the farms—pick a farm, count the farmers on it, and the player with the most farmers scores 3 points for every city touching the farm. But like 1st edition rules, each city could only be scored once, meaning you still had to keep track of which cities had scored 3 points and which not.
3rd edition rules came swiftly and removed that qualification, so that each city could now be scored multiple times. The great virtue of the 3rd edition rules is that you don't have to keep track of which cities have been scored, only which farms—and since you should remove the farmers after a given farm has been scored, this isn't overly difficult. Also, in the 1st edition rules, the farms aren't actually scored directly, but only indirectly, making the notion of 'farmer' scoring slightly misleading and difficult to grasp for younger players (this, essentially, was the jury's objection).
But whereas 3rd edition rules have been used in Germany for about the last five years, RGG chose to stick with the 1st edition rules. No-one is quite sure why, but the usual arguments revolve around consistency (it would confuse people to change the rules) and authenticity (1st edition rules are the ones that won GotY, after all).
Where does this site stand?
Logically enough, since its basis is the original HiG rules, this site uses 3rd edition rules. Also, every single FAQ, and every single expansion to the game, has 3rd edition rules in mind. Only one expansion—the GQ11 mini-expansion—was authored by RGG. So, for example, when the RGG edition of Traders and Builders talks about the pig giving a bonus point and bringing the total to 5, that's an adaptation of the original German rules, in which the total is 4. Sticking to 1st edition rules has meant that RGG needed to adapt every subsequent expansion to fit—so even if 1st edition rules are more 'authentic' for the basic game, they become less 'authentic' the moment you add an expansion into the mix.
None of this was really a problem, so long as players are informed about the two possibilities and agree on which to use…
What does the future look like for 1st edition rules?
The release of the fifth major expansion—Abbey and Mayor—may have changed the situation significantly. It was nearly inevitable that at some point HiG would release an expansion which would simply be incompatible with 1st edition farmer scoring; and now we have an expansion that potentially simplifies farmer scoring at the end of the game if you're using 3rd edition rules, but will easily double the complexity if you're still using 1st edition rules. I'll explain.
The new expansion features a barn—one for each player—which can only be placed at the intersection of four farm segments. Any farmers currently on that farm are immediately scored (3 points per adjacent city) and removed. Any farmers which, later in the game, join the farm through connecting tiles are also scored (1 point per adjacent city) and removed. At the end of the game, the barn scores 4 points per adjacent city.
When I first read the German rules, I wondered how RGG would adapt them. Potentially, the farmer removal and scoring could go ahead according to the usual RGG rules, although it would be odd—after all, if only the farmers on one farm need to be removed, why should a city count all the other adjacent farms to produce a score? Possible, but weird. The real problem would come at the end, though—if you score farms from the perspectives of the cites, how would you judge the value or strength of the barn? Clearly, it trumps farmers—is it worth two of them? Does it over-rule farmers on other farms touching the city? Hmm.
Well, the official RGG rules did something I didn't expect: they stuck precisely to the German rules. That is, the farmers being removed score 3 points (or 1 point) per adjacent city, and the barn scores 4 points per adjacent city at the end. The barn, in both HiG and RGG rules, uses 3rd edition scoring.
But there is no indication anywhere in the rules that RGG farmer scoring in general should now follow 3rd edition rules. In other words, at the end of the game, it seems you're meant to calculate the two elements separately, using 1st edition for farmers and 3rd edition for barns. Twice as complicated, as I said.
Compare that with the effect of the barn if you're using 3rd edition rules for everything: the mechanic is consistent, there should be fewer farmers in play (and so less counting) and fewer wars for the majority. The barn should actually simplify the game…
How this will play out in the long run, I don't know. The Big Box allowed both HiG and RGG to streamline the rules considerably in order to take account of unforeseen developments in later expansions—builders and pigs are no longer followers, for example. RGG chose not to use the opportunity to update farmer scoring, and the very next expansion released breaks 1st edition scoring significantly. I could imagine that they might have to officially change the rules now; on the other hand, they might decide that it's only one expansion after all, and so it isn't worth it. Only time will tell.
My advice to players has always been to move to 3rd edition rules—they're simpler, and allow you to play the expansions as intended. And if you're planning to get hold of Abbey and Mayor (which you should do, since many think that it's the best expansion since Traders and Builders), then now is probably the time to take the plunge.