There are a huge number of ways to customize the game to make it more kid-friendly.
Remove half of the tiles to make a much shorter game. I would even recommend this for playing with adults. With all the tiles games of Carcassonne can last 30-60 minutes, but with half removed it's half of that or less. It helps remove the "choice paralysis" that can set in at the end of complex games.
A normal game of Carcassonne gives each player 7 wooden meeples to place and score points. Reducing this to 3-5 gives children a much simpler set of choices, and starts teaching them some of the strategy of deciding between putting down a meeple or keeping it for a better location later.
In a full game of Carcassonne there are many ways to earn points: roads, towns, churches and fields. It's still really fun to play even if you only put down meeple on roads (and not fields).
August 24, 2023