<p><strong>Their primary purpose of bridges is to be able to play a tile that you normally could not because of a road.</strong> </p>

<p>You have more options to finish a construction, sabotaging with roads/farms becomes significantly harder.</p>

<p>Second, bridges strongly affect farms. As Nick already pointed out, farms turn out to be massively larger. It's not at all uncommon to have a single, huge farmland that spans the entire map, minus the tiny farms at the edges sealed off by towns obviously. </p>

<p>On the other hand, invading an already occupied farmland becomes a lot easier than before. </p>

<p>For example (assuming only base set + first expansion), without bridges, the only way to cross a street in order to invade a farm was with the cloister + single road tile. For that purpose, the Bridges &amp; Castles expansion not only adds bridges, but also several tiles with broken roads to accomplish the same thing.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-04-30T15:52:27.633Z
Interestingly I've got the official carcossonne on an Android device and farms don't continue under the bridge on there...
Ian
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-04-30T22:56:15.670Z
@Ian That's a bug or a wrongly implemented rule though. I have that expansion at home, and the rules explicitly state that bridges do not split farms.
Hackworth
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-04-29T22:07:37.437Z
2012-04-29T22:07:37.437Z
Hackworth
<p>The bridges help to significantly expand farmland, as farms <em>continue underneath the bridges</em>.  Using them, you can make really quite massive farms, which means a truck load of points at game end.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-04-29T20:54:29.993Z
2012-04-29T20:54:29.993Z
Nick Shaw
<p>I understand how to use the Bridges (sort of), but I don't understand the strategy/purpose. In almost every expansion set the special rules or powers of the pieces makes sense to me but why would I play a bridge piece? If you are playing with the King set I understand there is a bonus for the longest road but other than that, what is the point of a bridge?</p>

<carcassonne>
In Carcassonne, what is the point of a Bridge in the expansion set?
Michelle
# In Carcassonne, what is the point of a Bridge in the expansion set?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2012-04-29)

I understand how to use the Bridges (sort of), but I don't understand the strategy/purpose. In almost every expansion set the special rules or powers of the pieces makes sense to me but why would I play a bridge piece? If you are playing with the King set I understand there is a bonus for the longest road but other than that, what is the point of a bridge?

**Tags:** carcassonne


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2012-04-29. Score: 11

**Their primary purpose of bridges is to be able to play a tile that you normally could not because of a road.**

You have more options to finish a construction, sabotaging with roads/farms becomes significantly harder.

Second, bridges strongly affect farms. As username_3 already pointed out, farms turn out to be massively larger. It's not at all uncommon to have a single, huge farmland that spans the entire map, minus the tiny farms at the edges sealed off by towns obviously.

On the other hand, invading an already occupied farmland becomes a lot easier than before.

For example (assuming only base set + first expansion), without bridges, the only way to cross a street in order to invade a farm was with the cloister + single road tile. For that purpose, the Bridges & Castles expansion not only adds bridges, but also several tiles with broken roads to accomplish the same thing.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Interestingly I've got the official carcossonne on an Android device and farms don't continue under the bridge on there...  
> **username_1**: @username_2 That's a bug or a wrongly implemented rule though. I have that expansion at home, and the rules explicitly state that bridges do not split farms.  

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### Answer by username_3 on 2012-04-29. Score: 4

The bridges help to significantly expand farmland, as farms *continue underneath the bridges*. Using them, you can make really quite massive farms, which means a truck load of points at game end.


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