Ephesus is too weak!

[tyranno25]

I dread getting Ephesus. It hardly ever wins and often comes in last. It has the least number of total victory points after Babylon and it has three random draws. And the problem with the random draws is that you have no idea what you will be drawing. Ephesus needs an extra random draw, perhaps at the lowest level, or an extra victory point or two at one or two of the stages.

[Gngrman]

I dread getting Ephesus. It hardly ever wins and often comes in last. It has the least number of total victory points after Babylon and it has three random draws. And the problem with the random draws is that you have no idea what you will be drawing. Ephesus needs an extra random draw, perhaps at the lowest level, or an extra victory point or two at one or two of the stages.

I agree!! Definitely needs some upgrades to make progress worth it

[robadub]

So funny enough, I just played you playing Ephesus.
I'm not convinced it has an advantage over playing Olympia, where its opponents also know at least one of the cards Olympia is getting, so if you're an opponent you can snatch those away if you don't like Olympia having it. If Olympus is way down on shields, and is forced to take too horns, that nullifies his 2 bonus card advantage entirely. The biggest weakness with Olympia, I find, is its 4th layer bottleneck.

Also, Ephesus does have a structural advantage over the other wonders, where you can complete the three middle layers in any way you want. Its even possible, though rare, to complete the match 3 layer first, getting the dreaded bottleneck layer out of the way early, if you get the right progress token bonus.
I think the biggest disadvantage Ephesus has with its ability is not the potluck, but the fact that since we players tend to favor the shared card pool, there's a chance that it might be depleted when you finish that fourth layer.

Anyway, I seem to win reasonably often with Ephesus, as with the other underrated Wonder Colossus. I'd like to see BGA put out statistics on the win-frequency of these wonders.

[cosmosis]

I'd also like to see statistics. Ephesus for me is just usually a wonder rush strategy, and it seems to work pretty well.

[tyranno25]

Funny thing. Since I first posted and started this thread, I’ve actually started playing better with Ephesus. The first step is to stop fearing it . The next is to recognize that its three random draws are like built in bonuses, like if you would if you had a green disc that gave an extra draw. Occasionally you can win with a speedy race to finish the wonder, and sometimes you can recognize when that can happen. But one has to be aware of the low total victory point value and not race to the top without sufficient other ways of getting victory points. To this end, one probably should play a patient game at first and see what victory point advantages one can be assured of first, and then count on the extra draws to help you to finish. To this end, it’s generally better to not use the side decks to finish a stage to generate an extra draw, because you could gain a better advantage by drawing from the central deck. The stage is likely to be completed by random draw from the central deck anyway, and you might get a special advantage from the subsequent extra draw.