Despite the cute looks and serene atmosphere, this is deceptively one of the hardest expansions! Your goal is to create big Pastures with lots of Farms, but you want only 1 Animal of each type in the same Pasture or you will lose points. In contrast to all other expansions, the Animal pawns you get are tied to a specific column of tiles you get from the central board during the draft phase at the beginning of each round.
Animal pawns must be placed not on routes, like cars, trains, and travelers, but in the “fields” that surround them. Fields connected to each other are called “Pastures” and are separated from each other by highways, railways, towns, and the fences that are marked on the Countryside tiles from this expansion. There is one additional limitation: Animals must be placed on one of the tiles that you are placing in the current round, they cannot be freely placed wherever you want.
Countryside tiles can also have Farms, which act as a multiplier for the points you get from animals at the end of the game: for each Pasture, each Animal it contains is worth 1 point for each Farm in that Pasture. However, there is a limit: if there are more than one animal of the same type (cow, pig, or sheep) in the same Pasture, each duplicate animal beyond the first one must be removed, and for each one you must discard one point as well!
In addition to tiles with Farms, there are also Village tiles, which can become part of a City together with Town tiles, but in contrast to them, they don't separate Pastures.
The key to this expansion is to try to place routes, towns, and fences in a way that keeps fields containing animals of the same type separate to avoid losing both animals and points. Easy to say, perhaps, but succeeding may be more difficult than it sounds.
Just like all other expansions, the Countryside Expansion comes with Objective tiles: for example, the Vineyard wants to be part of an area of at least 5 connected Field tiles with no Animal pawns, while the Hills must have at least 3 Animals around them.
