At the risk of repeating myself, Carcassonne is the ultimate euro (boardgame) port. No one has done it better to this point. The app is rich in options. In fact, it's so polished it actually had me scratching my head at several points. I'm sure everyone has tried local wifi/bluetooth play of some other games only to discover that it didn't quite work. I decided to play a local game between my iPhone and iPad and I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to initiate the game. Where is the option to play wifi/bluetooth? Not there. You simply define a game with yourself and 0+ AI players and then wait at the game define screen. On the other device you choose New Game -> Local -> Join Game... and it locates and allows you to join the other game. The app negotiates what transport to use (BT, Wifi) and just handles it. Very polished... Internet games are also a little tricky. You can play a game against a random opponent, but if you want a multiplayer 3+ player game you need some friends. I added friends from the TA Carc list and those that accepted are now in my friends list. Then I defined a game with 3 of them and off I went. Very nice. The ELO rating system is also interesting. The push notifications are perfect (with voice notifications, no less) In game chat via push notifications also... Another slight oddity is that it seems impossible to escape from your current game... until you hit the settings button and choose Pause game or Next table. It all seems very natural once you get it... can't say enough good things here.
This is now easily one my top 5 favorite App Store games. I love how the game is very quick to load, it is quick and easy to set up games with the AI or with other human players using the same device, if I don't want to play with anyone else I can quickly start up a game of Solitaire and just go for a good score. Aside from that I also have online if I really want some compitition.
Has anyone noticed strange scoring on fields in the end game - a few times I've had my weeple just vanish with no points even though they were next to completed cities (although perhaps sharing with another weeple). Also, has anyone found any guidance for the Quick Play mode - I thought it would be asynchronous like friend play but... found out the bad way!
You may have been on a field where another player had 1 greater meeple than your yourself. If multiple players have meeples confused on 1 field, road, or city then the one with the most meeples will score the points. If there is a tie all the players with the tie will get the points. Haven't tried quick play but isn't that an online mode where it just pairs you up with a random online player?
I was pretty sure that it was when 3 players were all on the field; instead of all getting points they all just vanished and no points were awarded... Could be my imagination, admitted. Quick Play is with random online players yeah, and it seems to have a timer rather than the asynchronous style of the friend play. All the documentation says that 'online internet play' was asynchronous (meaning you could leave and come back) - however I found that when I went back to the app to check it I had been awarded a loss and my ELO was lower. Frustrating as there seemed to be no warning about this - it didn't look like a bug. Love the game otherwise. More than anything.
Front Page coverage courtesy of Windburn http://toucharcade.com/2010/06/08/carcassonne-review-as-good-as-it-gets-on-the-app-store/
Surely there was one more opponent's meeple so he got all points for that shared field. I was confused by the same thing few days ago and great people on this forum (it's on 19th pages of topic, look for it if u want) helped me out so now i'm fully enjoy strategy. That segment is now actually most important to me, I really enjoying to lure opponents and somehow "pre-place" my meeples so at the end only me pick all score from, possibly biggest with most cities, field. One game at the end, before scoring, I was last of all five players, after scoring complete, I won by this strategy
I have one problem with the game: There's no way to make a custom bot. It would be nice if I could create my own player, but set it as a bot. I want to play a whole match with all the other players being Easy bots, but I can only have the two Easy ones that come with the game It would be awesome if when you create a player, you could make it a custom bot. That would be...awesome.
I'm having a lot of fun with this game. I also have the board game but it was never one of my favorite for some reason. In spite of that, the iphone/ipad version is so much fun. I agree that it is extremely polished. The flow of the game is extremely nice and I also had a lot of fun with the solitare mode. It holds up great on ipad too.
A bug just messed up my game of solitaire that was going quite well I dragged my current tile to a different spot than I placed at first and the game turned a tile I'd already placed, the top tile on the very right in the pic (my current tile is the one at the very top).
Turns out the solitary mode is more complex that the normal mode in some other ways. The rules are not complex but they are hard to master. I like the way European boardgames (can't skip Catan, btw) create great fun without a single bloodshed. I am hooked, to be sure.
Took a gamble on this game and I love it! It's really fun and tactical. Although I've lost all 3 or 4 games that I've played (can't remember how many) I'm certainly getting the hang of it. The closest I've come to winning was my last game, the score was 123/121! So close!
Never played this game before but decided to give it a try. I'm still a bit confused about the scoring system, I guess it takes time to learn it. My only small issue with the game is, that once you place a tile on the board, you can't put it back up. There should be a way to put it back up to the top right, giving you a way to rethink and see the whole board and the tile at play. Otherwise, it's a very interesting game.
once you place a tile as long as you havent pressed the check mark you can move it around to other places just by tapping them and see the whole map by zooming out
You can put it back up as long as you don't go to the meeple menu. If you haven't, you can, and since you dont need to go into the meeple menu to check how many you got left, it is quite handy. I had gotten bored a bit of playing solo, but since I got my internet back online gaming is really awesome.
Won my first game on my fifth go... what a game!!! This is straight into my top 5 apps, it's quick to play and will no doubt take months to perfect... if not years. Fantastic App at a fantastic price. I could say it was somewhat of a 'Canabalt' purchase. One that looks tempting, doesn't seem worth it, but when you take the plunge, you find out that it's much, much more. Great game. Thank you. Can't wait to have this on my iPad.
this game is really doing great. In the german app store it got 750 5-stars ratings and only 50 4-/3-/2-/1-stars ratings combined!! That really shows the great quality of the game...
Yeah, it looks great on my iPad, but how great will the free optimized version for the iPad be later this year?! Can't wait!!!
the global ranking-list for quick online-play is available now: http://carcassonneapp.com/global-top-100.html
