What are good standard strategies for Carcassonne ?
Strand your opponents Meeples

When you place a piece, of course try to make it advantageous to yourself.  But if you can, place it to hinder your opponent.  If he is trying to complete a city and you weren't able to figure out a way to share it, then place a tile next to the potential closing piece.  This will limit his options.  By slowing down the rate that his meeples return you will gain an advantage.

Often times, it is possible to leave an empty space that no tile can be placed in.  If your opponent has an unfinished city or road that connects to that empty space then his meeple will not be returning to his hand and will generate a sub-standard score.

There are 2 main empty squares that cannot be filled using pieces from only the base set.


There is no tile containing 1 road, 1 city, and 2 field sides.
There is no tile containing 1 road, 2 city, and 1 field sides.


With a little practice it is pretty easy to get this to work against even moderately experienced players.  I played a game online recently that followed this general sequence


My opponent had a couple pieces towards a city
I played a city tile with a meeple to try to encourage sharing the city.
He played another city+meeple to defend and was able to connect his 2 before I could share
I was able to complete my city while surrounding an empty square, making it unplayable.
As a bonus, he also had an unfinished road running into the empty square.


My opponent had 3 meeples stranded and it we were only 1/3rd of the way through the game!  He stood no chance to win the game at that point.