Tile Laying Game-Carcassone

Carcassone is a bit different than most games.  Instead of the game supplying a set board for you to play on, you and the other players create the board.  Half of your turn is picking a random tile and deciding where to put it in association with the other tiles on the board.  It's impossible to have the same board twice.  The other half of your turn is deciding if you want to put a person on the tile, but your choices are limited by what terrain is on the tile.(castles, roads, intersections, monasteries, etc.)  The players try to gain points by completing castles, thieving roads, farming, and.... having people be monks. (Monking around?) 

There isn't a whole lot of nastiness you can send at other people; you decide if that's good or bad.  In the basic game, once you have your "meeples" (the technical name for the little wooden men) on the board, there isn't anything your opponents can do about it.  The expansions (oh, don't get me started on the expansions!) add the ability to eat meeples with a dragon, use "towers" (a nice way of saying a medieval biker gang throws your meeples into a filthy dungeon until you can pay the ransom.),and anything else you can think of.  I only mentioned the expansions we own here, because there are so many of them.
Sheesh, there's probably a Carcassone: Insurance Salesmen by now.

We own the Inns and Cathedrals, River, Princess and Dragon, and Tower expansions.  River adds some more creative depth to the game, but, as I've said before, my family just isn't ruthless enough to use the Dragon or Tower.  Inns and Cathedrals "ups the ante" on some of your buildings, making them triple points if completed or nothing.  Each expansion (duh!) adds more tiles, which adds to game length.

Carcassone scales well with different amounts of players, but with smaller numbers you have to conserve meeples more.

I've played Carcassone so frequently for so long it's turned into a poorly written sci-fi villain, those ones with the "unison voices".  We are Carcassone.  The universe is us and we are it. Bow to our awesome omniscience or be blown away by our pathetically weak minions.
What I'm trying to say, is that I've played it so much it has become black-and-white.  There is no good or bad, there is It.  But trying to look past that, it's a good, simple-but-complex-enough game to play, especially if you're tired of always having your plans ruined by your younger brother.

If you've noticed that most of the games I've been reviewing are simple-but-complex-enough and I haven't rated any game badly, that's because:
a) I play these simple-but-complex-enough games the most, some members of my group can't handle anything more complex.
b) I'm reviewing the games I enjoy first.

Pros
-Simple-but-complex-enough, like several of the other games I've reviewed
-Board is never the same twice
-Lots of expansions

Neutral
-Not a whole lot you can do to your opponents if you don't have the expansions

I'm giving it an 8.5.