How to Score a Game of Carcassonne by Hand

The last tile goes down, everyone leans back, and then the table looks at a board covered in meeples and wonders where to start. Final scoring is the one part of Carcassonne that most rulebook readers rush. It is also where a careless count can hand the game to the wrong player.

This lesson gives you a routine that works at every table and every player count.

When does scoring happen?

Two kinds of scoring happen in Carcassonne.

• During the game, a feature scores the moment a tile completes it. The meeples on it go home.
• At the end, after the last land tile is placed and its own scoring is done, every meeple still on the board scores once.

That means anything still on the board at the end is either unfinished or a farmer. Completed features have already paid.

The routine, in order

Score one feature type at a time, in this order:

1. Roads. 1 point per tile, the same as a completed road.
2. Cities. 1 point per tile and 1 per coat of arms, half the completed value.
3. Monasteries. 1 point for the monastery tile plus 1 for each tile around it.
4. Fields. 3 points for each completed city the field touches.

Two habits make the routine reliable:

• Pick up meeples as they score. Once a meeple has scored, it leaves the board. Nothing gets counted twice, and nothing gets skipped, because anything still standing has not scored yet.
• Fields go last. By then the board is clear of travelers, knights, and monks, and only the farmers are left lying down. It is much easier to trace a field with nothing else in the way.

Who scores a shared feature?

The same rule as during the game. Count the meeples on the feature by color. The player with the most scores the full points. If players tie for the most, each of them scores the full points. Nobody splits anything, and a player with fewer meeples scores nothing for that feature.

A worked example

Picture the end of a two-player game between Red and Blue. Here is what is still on the board.

Walk through it in the routine’s order.

• Roads: Red’s road is 4 tiles, so 4 points.
• Cities: Blue’s city is 5 tiles plus 2 coats of arms, which is 7 at half value. The shared city is 3 tiles plus 1 coat of arms, which is 4. Red and Blue tie on knights, so each scores 4.
• Monastery: the monastery tile plus 6 neighbors is 7 for Blue.
• Fields: the big field touches 4 completed cities, so it is worth 12. The unfinished city adds nothing. Red has 2 farmers to Blue’s 1, so Red scores 12 and Blue scores nothing there. Blue’s small field is worth 3.

Final scoring adds 20 for Red and 21 for Blue. The big field is what kept it close.

How to count a field without mistakes

Fields cause most scoring arguments, so slow down for them.

1. Trace the field with a finger. Roads and cities are its borders, and fields are often bigger, or more split, than they look.
2. Name each completed city it touches. Point at each one and say the running total: 3, 6, 9.
3. Skip unfinished cities. They add nothing to any field.
4. Count farmers by color. Most farmers takes the whole value. Ties all score in full.

One completed city can touch several fields. It adds 3 points to each of them, so it can pay more than one farmer.

Counting slips to watch for

• Paying full value for an unfinished city. At the end, cities are worth half: 1 per tile and 1 per coat of arms.
• Using an old rule for small cities. Under the current rules a completed two-tile city scores 4 points. Some older editions scored it as 2, and players who learned on those boxes sometimes still do. The World Championship rules page calls out the same difference.
• Counting a monastery’s empty spaces. Only tiles that are there count, plus the monastery itself.
• Forgetting the tie rule. Tied players each score in full.
• Losing laps on the scoreboard. Scores often run past the end of the track. Decide before the game how your table will mark a lap, so nobody loses 50 points at the end.

Then the winner

Most points wins, and a tie is a shared victory. Before you pack up, look at which meeples scored nothing. That question is where Level 1 begins.