Making the spirit tokens more balanced

[John_Cutter]

The one main problem with this game is the butterfly spirit token. It is so much better than the others and is basically a broken mechanic as it's very difficult to win if your opponent has it (2 player games anyway)

The other spirit tokens therefore need to be upgraded to make it easier to compete.

Beaver (small mountains) extra point for every small or medium mountain that touches another one. (So essentially 4 points per
mountain instead of 3 unless you have to make one of them separate to the others then you just lose a point on that one)

Goat (large mountain) 4 points for medium mountain 5 points for large. Plus still get mountain points for separate mountains not touching another mountain.

Cat (single buildings) 4 points as normal but you also get an additional 2 points for buildings touching each other and a bonus 5 points for five separate buildings

Eagle (double buildings) 6 points as normal but get a bonus 2 points for a single building and a bonus 6 points for three sets of two buildings

Dragonfly- scores for each separate two water changed to 7,7,8,8,9,9
So 48 for 6 sets which is very difficult. This spirit token is a nightmare to score well on the terrain side and you also forgo having a long line of water so has to score heavier


Turtle - 2 points per water tile plus instead of a long line you get a score for the size of a pond (because turtles like ponds not rivers) 10 point bonus for water tiles of 4 or more that are touching at least one other water tile, plus 1 point for every water tile in that pond.
So a pond of 4 would be 14 points, 5 would be 15, 6 would be 16 etc. each water tile has to touch two other water tiles though.
In a normal game 5 water tiles scores 10 plus 11 if in a line. In my scoring it's 10 plus 15 and can be grouped together (plus you can still have a gap in the middle for a green or red if you need to)

Owl- 3 points per single green, 4 points per medium green (and 1 point for tall green) 1 point bonus for largest group of same sized greens touching each other

Wolf 1 point per single green 4 points per medium green 5 points for tall green. 1 point extra for largest group of medium and tall greens ( can be a mix of both) touching each other

[raymo2k]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just nerf butterfly? Also I think beaver, owl, cat, eagle, and turtle are perfectly balanced as is.

[tbhp]

Beaver doesn't need to be upgraded, it's already pretty OP as is.

Dragonfly is often pretty weak, but there's cards combos that make it kinda OP.

Cat can be a monster if you design your board well and have the right colors around your buildings.

Turtle is one of the best spirits and can already overtake butterfly in many situations.

I think the game is more interesting when you have to figure out how to beat a butterfly. It adds to the puzzle aspect in my opinion by really making you think how to maximize your points (which you should be doing in every game anyway).

And while playing against an equally skilled player will make it probably hard to win, when playing against someone not quite as skilled as you, the other spirits often have a good chance of winning against the butterfly. Skill differential matters much more than which spirits people get.

[tbhp]

Cat (single buildings) 4 points as normal but you also get an additional 2 points for buildings touching each other and a bonus 5 points for five separate buildings

Eagle (double buildings) 6 points as normal but get a bonus 2 points for a single building and a bonus 6 points for three sets of two buildings

I wanted to add those bonus suggestions sound broken, because the main thing that prevents Cat and Eagle from being on par with the best spirits is that buildings are a rare resource. When they do manage to get a lot of buildings placed correctly, it means they are having a great game so they absolutely do not need to be given bonus points on top of that. The 18/20 points they are getting for all their buildings are already OP.

You have to keep in mind that for Cat and Eagle, their bonus points come from structures that are already worth 5 points on their own, while Butterfly's individual yellows are worth zero. This makes the power comparison more balanced than people generally tend to assume.

[Yippiedada]

I read often that the butterfly is overpowered and makes the game imbalanced, and I agree it is, to a certain extent for a 2p game, both players at similar skill level. For a 3-4p game, I notice poor butterfly getting blocked from everyone else, so I try not to pick it even when presented the choice.

Recently I started playing a game and was surprised to find multiple options, and there was something like “random board excluding board 8 because it is imbalanced”, I thought maybe the same solution could be applied here.

Assuming you’re in the camp where you think the butterfly is OP and that we are not in position to change the game’s point system on bga, you could suggest to add a feature to play “spirits on - excluding butterfly” but but but, there will be some side effects. As you would have noticed, there are 2 spirit cards per landscape element, so we leave the lion spirit card (10 points for 3 or more yellow together) stronger with no competition. And if we add another feature “spirits on - excluding butterfly & lion”, we would overcome this issue but in turn be making yellow tokens neutral with no spirit effects.

Overall I think it’s a worthy feature only if there is a critical mass of Harmonies fans wanting to nerf the butterfly and if this critical mass play it enough to warrant development costs on the options. For this, I have no answer. And just to clarify, the above are options, so gamers favouring original gameplay still get what they have been playing.

Personally I like it when my opponent gets the butterfly, I get all fired up trying to block it, all till the whole table is filled with clusters of sunshine tokens that the fire in me dies, and I come to my senses and realize I have a spirit card too. Oh, I actually need some blues … if only my tears could make that river longer… hahaha

[Yippiedada]

To John_Cutter:

You could introduce your new spirit card point system to your gaming group, there is a lot of thought put into it and it is fun when they get on board. For my group, I made bigger boards to build on, but I later realized we won't have enough tokens to fill it for 4p, so I might have to get another set.

[John_Cutter]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just nerf butterfly? Also I think beaver, owl, cat, eagle, and turtle are perfectly balanced as is.

Yes it would but I wanted to rescore the other spirit tokens to see if it was possible to retain the current butterfly scoring (which is OP but it's quite nice thematically having the small field being the same amount as a field of two)

[John_Cutter]

Beaver doesn't need to be upgraded, it's already pretty OP as is.

Dragonfly is often pretty weak, but there's cards combos that make it kinda OP.

Cat can be a monster if you design your board well and have the right colors around your buildings.

Turtle is one of the best spirits and can already overtake butterfly in many situations.

I think the game is more interesting when you have to figure out how to beat a butterfly. It adds to the puzzle aspect in my opinion by really making you think how to maximize your points (which you should be doing in every game anyway).

And while playing against an equally skilled player will make it probably hard to win, when playing against someone not quite as skilled as you, the other spirits often have a good chance of winning against the butterfly. Skill differential matters much more than which spirits people get.

Beaver still is nowhere near as good as the butterfly imo

Dragonfly is fine IF you get the right missions. Terrain scoring wise though it's still a nightmare with no water line. Typically I score around 35 before missions which is poor, you need about 70 plus to be competitive in animal scoring

Cat is pretty rubbish in a two player game in my experience. It's hard to score 5 different separate buildings well without using another building. Like the dragonfly it can work well if you get the right animals

Turtle is absolutely not one of the best spirit tokens. It's not the worst either it's just not as good as the butterfly or beaver or owl. It's another one where you're hoping you get something good you can put in each coner (single green if scoring water or double green for the double blue Green mission)

Doesn't matter in the two player game, as a 400 ish rated players I will lose to most players if they have the butterfly and if I don't happen to get 4 missions completed (in 9 turns)

[John_Cutter]

Cat (single buildings) 4 points as normal but you also get an additional 2 points for buildings touching each other and a bonus 5 points for five separate buildings

Eagle (double buildings) 6 points as normal but get a bonus 2 points for a single building and a bonus 6 points for three sets of two buildings

I wanted to add those bonus suggestions sound broken, because the main thing that prevents Cat and Eagle from being on par with the best spirits is that buildings are a rare resource. When they do manage to get a lot of buildings placed correctly, it means they are having a great game so they absolutely do not need to be given bonus points on top of that. The 18/20 points they are getting for all their buildings are already OP.

You have to keep in mind that for Cat and Eagle, their bonus points come from structures that are already worth 5 points on their own, while Butterfly's individual yellows are worth zero. This makes the power comparison more balanced than people generally tend to assume.

So you're saying they're not on par? Cat and eagle are two of the worst in the 2 player game for the reasons you stated.

[John_Cutter]

I read often that the butterfly is overpowered and makes the game imbalanced, and I agree it is, to a certain extent for a 2p game, both players at similar skill level. For a 3-4p game, I notice poor butterfly getting blocked from everyone else, so I try not to pick it even when presented the choice.

Recently I started playing a game and was surprised to find multiple options, and there was something like “random board excluding board 8 because it is imbalanced”, I thought maybe the same solution could be applied here.

Assuming you’re in the camp where you think the butterfly is OP and that we are not in position to change the game’s point system on bga, you could suggest to add a feature to play “spirits on - excluding butterfly” but but but, there will be some side effects. As you would have noticed, there are 2 spirit cards per landscape element, so we leave the lion spirit card (10 points for 3 or more yellow together) stronger with no competition. And if we add another feature “spirits on - excluding butterfly & lion”, we would overcome this issue but in turn be making yellow tokens neutral with no spirit effects.

Overall I think it’s a worthy feature only if there is a critical mass of Harmonies fans wanting to nerf the butterfly and if this critical mass play it enough to warrant development costs on the options. For this, I have no answer. And just to clarify, the above are options, so gamers favouring original gameplay still get what they have been playing.

Personally I like it when my opponent gets the butterfly, I get all fired up trying to block it, all till the whole table is filled with clusters of sunshine tokens that the fire in me dies, and I come to my senses and realize I have a spirit card too. Oh, I actually need some blues … if only my tears could make that river longer… hahaha

I feel bad but sometimes the only way to beat the butterfly is grab all the yellows you can. (It's rare anyone in a 2 player game against me will have the chance of getting two yellows out of 3 tiles if I can take them)