Another way to score points in the game is through a Farmer meeple. This is by far the most confusing aspect of the game, and there are several revisions of the rules that attempt to make them clearer. Here I am going to explain the rules that we use. To start with, farmers should be placed laying down on the board, so that it is easier to tell that the meeple is meant to be a farmer. When played as a farmer, a meeple is never returned to you, because farmers are not scored until the end of the game. This makes them a rather large investment, and they can easily swing the game either way if used properly. The rules for placing a farmer are the same as for any other meeple: You cannot place a farmer on a field if there is another meeple somehow connected to the field. Fields are considered to be cut off at the edges of tiles (remember, tiles are never considered to be touching by their corners!), by roads, and by the river. As in road and city building, it is possible through tile placement to eventually have more than one farmer in any given field, and at scoring time, the person with the most farmers in a field scores for that field. Farmers are best left scored after all partial roads, cities and cloisters are scored, to reduce board clutter. Try to score farms that are obviously uncontested (only contain farmers from one player) first, then move on to fields that might be shared. To score a farmer, after determining that a farmer as "won" the field:
Here we will mention the special Pig meeple. This meeple can be placed in any field that contains a farmer for the placing player, but which does not contain a farmer of any other player. This means that you can only place a pig in a field that you currently are the only farmer for (though as always, it is possible for two fields to become one eventually).
If a field has a Pig meeple in it, then every completed city counts 5 points instead of 4.
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