Board Game Arena

I think we've all played enough to know a sad truth: The new Olympia is bad to the point of being unbalanced. Its operating at approximately a 5 points handicap to the most basic Gizah side A, and more points compared to other wonders. Not only are its powers situational and weak, but the resource costs are significantly higher than they should be. Side B age 3 stands out as a clear example of poor board design: it is extremely anomalous as a 3rd wonder stage worth only 5 points, while all others are worth 7 or have some special ability.

If anyone has the ability to mine the data here for outcomes, I would be very interested to see what the average win rate with Olympia is, and how many points behind the other board it is on average.

I don't think Olympia is that bad. It's hard for 3p, but going 4p and up it's not even the bottom wonder.
It's very hard to play, because it has only one "standard" play, but other than that you have to improvise.

Thanks for the reply! Which wonder would you consider to be worst in 4P, since thats the current arena and we all have been playing it a lot? My personal list has Olympia in clear last place by a large margin, then Alexandria second worse but close to Ephesos, 3rd worst. Both of those I'm happy to play and can do some unique powerful things in the right circumstances, and I don't consider them far behind the others.

Olympia's abilities let you play cards for free, but 4p has the most abundant brown resources of any number of players because of the age 2 glut of doubles. Its reasonably frequent to get "stuck" playing extra brown resources at the end of age 2 even. This is especially bad for Olympia side B: The last wonder stage requires all 3 greys... but if you have all 3 greys, then the 1st and 2cd abilities are almost certainly worthless (and the second ability is nearly always worthless anyways).

Side A is not as bad because it can go heavy brown/military and try to use its middle ability to get a blue and purple in age 3. But that is a singular path to victory which requires both good card order (either/or browns in age 1 are key but very competitive) and a good guild coming around, and NOT playing blues in age 2 can be a big restriction at times. At absolute best, this ability saves ~12 coins in age 2 (3 greys for palace/pantheon, 3 resources on one of the big guilds): thats pretty good! But it barely ever happens because other players are also gunning for those same cards. A middle ability that in very specific cases gives a decent benefit, but often gives 0 benefit at all, is just plain worse than a consistent 9 coins ala Ephesos A, or 5 points like Gizah, or extra military, or etc etc.

There are also options to just not play wonder cards at all, or only play Side B first card, which is probably the best of all of Olympia's abilities. But this leaves the wonder uniquely vulnerable to "dead" hands last age, and also uniquely bad at countering science because it cannot bury science under its wonder. It is possible to win "without" a wonder, and brick is not the worst starting resource as it unlocks the repeated age 1 military 4P, but its a significant disadvantage that relies on no dead hands to be viable.

Not to say Olympia can't win: it totally can, with the right card order and/or opponent mistakes. But its an uphill battle.

Completely agree with the comments about Olympia being the toughest wonder but I would love to see some stats that prove that. Is there anywhere where we can see which wonder wins the most/least etc?

Barry St Germain wrote: ↑26 March 2021, 15:08 Completely agree with the comments about Olympia being the toughest wonder but I would love to see some stats that prove that. Is there anywhere where we can see which wonder wins the most/least etc?

Its wonder ID is 3 for day and 10 for night. However, since BGA's stats are not practical to use, I've only managed to find my "average wonder ID" (9.2), which kind of pointless.

Some peoples on the Discord (see this thread https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 92&t=16381) have posted their own stats at some point, but there is so many messages I don't find them any more.

The whole "worst" thing is very weird, because it depends if you are just going for wins or for solid placements. For wins I would say Olympia A has a decent 1st% when using the brown-red strat (my video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pml65SYYPA ). For not getting last Olympia B is pretty decent.

It's really hard to get consistent placements with Alexandria and it's usually very hard to win so I'd say that's the worst one. Consistency can be really hard for Babylon (but you can get streak of wins with it) and Giza (you can not be 4th, but getting at least 2nd can be tricky depending on setup - pretty hard to get wins as well). Rhodos is very hard to win against other great players, but it's rarely last.

On the other end of the spectrum 4th with Hali is usually due to bad play or extreme hate and/or bad luck and wins are very common.

Wonders aren't 100% balanced and they will never be, if you remove just one from the pool the situation will change dramatically (if you remove hali right now, Ephe,Babylon&Alex get a boost in winrate). It's up to the players and community to offset the balance with the proper drafting and punishment of stronger ones.

I totally agree, Olimpia A is a decent wonder and I won some games with it, but Olimpia B is simply unplayable, as I see most of the times you get last place even when you get everything you want. It cost too many resources, even more than Giza and it gives half points (10 vs 20). To be playable his wonder stages must be 3-5-7 points each and his abilities are worthless most of the times. Old Olimpia was far better.

I think Olympia A/Day can be OK for a Red/Blue strategy and pairs well with Hali, Babylon & Ephesos who oftern go Green. With Rhodos or Giza, I pick the B/Night side since it's slightly better for Green. While the free Guild with A is not so great, it's a "known" power you get. The B side powers are more random and harder to plan for.

For what is worth, from the perspective of a mid-level competitive player (made elite easily, but I am not competitive with the top players for sure) I find Olympia frustrating to play and definitely underpowered and most importantly not fun at all.