Do you place the fairy before or after scoring a completed road/city/cloister?

Question

With The Princess and the Dragon expansion for Carcassonne, can I place a tile to complete one of my features, and then move the fairy in to it for the bonus 3 points, or are you supposed to score the city, road, or cloister before placing the fairy?

Answer 1

According to the rules:

Whenever a player places no follower on his turn, he may, instead, place the fairy on any tile where he has one of his followers.

It seems that fairy placement takes the place of follower placement, and happens at the same time. Since follower placement happens before scoring, you place the fairy before scoring the completed feature

Answer 2

More generally fairy movement is an alternative to (and takes place at the same point in the game as) figure placement. After placing his tile for the turn, a player may choose one of:

• deploy one figure into a feature on the land tile just placed (if the dragon isn’t already on the tile because of volcano placement);
• deploy one follower to any tile on the board if the just-placed tile has a magic gate symbol;
• move the fairy to any tile on which he (already) has a follower (even if player has no pieces left or legal placements for them); or
• place a barn, on a just-formed junction of four field segments in a field without a barn.

This is followed by dragon movement and scoring.