Auction is needed

[RaptorRed]

I love this game, but my play group refuses to play it any longer because the severe imbalance between the asymmetric characters (and symmetric is far less interesting and strategic). None of the characters are overall unplayable, but the issues are that :

a) certain combos of characters are just not balanced, ie characters that accelerate the game make debt or town center-based characters impossible to win,
b) certain characters are stronger or weaker with different player counts
c) some characters are made very powerful or terribly weak with the right apprentices available.
This is all impossible to balance, and even if it were it, would mean characters with anemic or uninteresting powers.
It is real problem - we can consistently guess the winner at the start of the game as the discrepancy is often big enough.

Fortunately, this problem has long been solved - a points auction (WITH THE APPRENTICE DRAFT VISIBLE) Terra-Mystica-style allows even the weakest characters to be viable. Rather than trying to fix the game balance, just institute an auction draft and the game is competitively fair.

[DBreathwaite]

I’m not following the auction suggestion. Could you explain it more?

[megamoon24]

Which characters do you consistently guess correctly and what are their relative rankings?

[RaptorRed]

I’m not following the auction suggestion. Could you explain it more?

Basically, instead of being assigned a character, you get to select one from the three or four randomly drawn, after seeing what apprentices are available. Then, the simplest case is you bid victory points to go first in this selection. The person who bids the second most goes second.
If you think the most powerful character is ten points better than the second best, you bid ten points. If someone else thinks it is 20 points more powerful, they can bid more. Then you start the game with that many points negative.
This is how it works in Clans of Caledonia, for example.

This means the game is auto-balanced to a degree. It also means you don't have to try and balance the character powers around which apprentices are drawn, since they might be contextually overpowered or underpowered. Auctioning outsources the fine balance to the players, which is actually better since strategies will advance past where the game designers foresaw.

A more advanced auction is like in Terra Mystica where you bid on the individual characters, but this isn't necessary for such a simple game.

[RaptorRed]

Which characters do you consistently guess correctly and what are their relative rankings?

The three characters that get free cards are very powerful (Ada, Caroline and Fredrick), as this is free actions AND not exposing yourself to arrest. The other characters need specific apprentices to match their power. However, even if the other characters get their perfect apprentices they STILL can't compete if the building card characters get any free resources - ie a synergistic apprentice or getting to draft buildings with free resources, or if the Cathedral rolls well and it gives you resources instead of virtue.

The reason for this is twofold - 1) the building card characters are already turns ahead, so if they get free resources the advantage is too large to overcome and 2) the building card characters accelerate the game AND penalise trying to slow the game with arrests (especially the cathedral one), as you get less value for arresting, meaning the characters that rely on building an engine or on arresting cannot be paid off in time.

An auction fixes this, as if the apprentices aren't favourable you can bid 20 points on Fred or Ada and even the game up.

The building card characters are best, then there is a mid-tier of characters with decent bonuses. These can sometimes win against the top characters. Then there is a C tier set of characters with weak and narrow abilities, who can sometimes beat the mid-tier characters but NEVER beat the card characters (eg Rudolf, Hugo, Fara). It's a shame as these characters are actually really interesting to play, but you just won't make as many points. Again, fine with an auction in place - just bid the difference in power level.

Finally, some characters have bugs that affect them (Fara's power doesn't work properly, so she is trash tier and will lose a fair game. Hugo has a bug that stops his ability from triggering sometimes making him weaker than he should be, etc).