Agora feels horribly imbalanced

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Nortaggin
Posts: 3
Joined: 29 March 2023, 04:24

Agora feels horribly imbalanced

Post by Nortaggin »

I'm fairly new to the game, but have tried all the various combinations of expansions multiple times at this point. My experience thus far has been that Agora is just horribly balanced and I'm curious if the public opinion is the same.

The conspiracy cards vary by miles in terms of power level. Some games you're receiving practically useless garbage and other games you're claiming an absurdly strong science token like Strategy or Economy on turn 3. Some of these conspiracy effects are stronger than the activation reward for entire wonders and arguably stronger than most of the pantheon cards. It doesn't sit well with me that these cards are both extremely RNG heavy and hidden information as well. This is in contrast to Pantheon wherein the cards are all public information for both players and each player has access to every card.

The Senate portion of the game is very clunky in my opinion. The whole mechanic of placing and moving influence cubes feels awkward and restrictive.
The balance of the Senate passives are also completely out of wack. Some of them can snowball you ridiculously, such as the +2 blue for Senate and +2 gold when selling passives. If you simply happen to get even just slightly unlucky your opponent can easily snowball these passives for the entire game.
The mechanic also feels parasitic. While you have win conditions such as war and science, you rarely have to care too much about them until Age 2 or very often not until Age 3. Meanwhile if your opponent lands a couple good Senate seats you could be completely railed by this mechanic just a couple turns into Age 1.

Agora to me feels like it introduced significantly more RNG, stronger snowball mechanics, and made it all available too early on compared to the other mechanics present in Vanilla or Pantheon. However again, I'm interested in hearing what other people have to say. I'd be happy to have my mind changed as that would mean there'd be more content in this game for me to enjoy.
T72on1
Posts: 671
Joined: 09 October 2019, 12:18

Re: Agora feels horribly imbalanced

Post by T72on1 »

I actually feel quite the opposite about the Agora expansion. I don't know the other expansion too well, so I'm mainly talking about the difference between the base game only and base game + agora. Base game, I feel like you are too dependant on luck in the first age, gaining the resources you want. Agora doesn't have that problem, because the cards are setup in a different way, and there's many more paths to victory.

I do agree that there is quite some difference in power between conspiracy cards. Other than that I really like all that the expansion adds.
Nortaggin
Posts: 3
Joined: 29 March 2023, 04:24

Re: Agora feels horribly imbalanced

Post by Nortaggin »

T72on1 wrote: 31 March 2023, 10:46 I actually feel quite the opposite about the Agora expansion. I don't know the other expansion too well, so I'm mainly talking about the difference between the base game only and base game + agora. Base game, I feel like you are too dependant on luck in the first age, gaining the resources you want. Agora doesn't have that problem, because the cards are setup in a different way, and there's many more paths to victory.

I do agree that there is quite some difference in power between conspiracy cards. Other than that I really like all that the expansion adds.
I agree that the wider board certainly gives you more options in terms of resources, but it adds just as much if not more RNG in the other directions. Someone getting access to a powerful science token or deleting an important wonder can be crippling for the entire game. Likewise the senate has some very powerful passives, specifically the +2 blue, that can snowball the game very early, sometimes as early as turn 0 if the senate wonder is played.

Resources can always be grabbed later on or produced through wonders, a good player has much more agency is solving that problem compared to the ones Agora adds.
silentProtest
Posts: 171
Joined: 26 March 2022, 20:12

Re: Agora feels horribly imbalanced

Post by silentProtest »

Nortaggin wrote: 30 March 2023, 22:05 I'm fairly new to the game, but have tried all the various combinations of expansions multiple times at this point. My experience thus far has been that Agora is just horribly balanced and I'm curious if the public opinion is the same.

The conspiracy cards vary by miles in terms of power level. Some games you're receiving practically useless garbage and other games you're claiming an absurdly strong science token like Strategy or Economy on turn 3. Some of these conspiracy effects are stronger than the activation reward for entire wonders and arguably stronger than most of the pantheon cards. It doesn't sit well with me that these cards are both extremely RNG heavy and hidden information as well. This is in contrast to Pantheon wherein the cards are all public information for both players and each player has access to every card.

The Senate portion of the game is very clunky in my opinion. The whole mechanic of placing and moving influence cubes feels awkward and restrictive.
The balance of the Senate passives are also completely out of wack. Some of them can snowball you ridiculously, such as the +2 blue for Senate and +2 gold when selling passives. If you simply happen to get even just slightly unlucky your opponent can easily snowball these passives for the entire game.
The mechanic also feels parasitic. While you have win conditions such as war and science, you rarely have to care too much about them until Age 2 or very often not until Age 3. Meanwhile if your opponent lands a couple good Senate seats you could be completely railed by this mechanic just a couple turns into Age 1.

Agora to me feels like it introduced significantly more RNG, stronger snowball mechanics, and made it all available too early on compared to the other mechanics present in Vanilla or Pantheon. However again, I'm interested in hearing what other people have to say. I'd be happy to have my mind changed as that would mean there'd be more content in this game for me to enjoy.
omg, here we go again.
If youre "interested in hearing what other people have to say", just read it up in this forum maybe ?
silentProtest
Posts: 171
Joined: 26 March 2022, 20:12

Re: Agora feels horribly imbalanced

Post by silentProtest »

Nortaggin wrote: 31 March 2023, 10:54 ... a good player has much more agency is solving that problem compared to the ones Agora adds.
actually the opposite is true. You get the most player agency in the more complex game versions, as in Agora, or both expansions.

A serious response, Just for fun. Your complains affect the base game even more. The discrepancy in power is probably way more an issue with the standard cards in the pyramid, and the (forced) timing in using up the cards of the pyramid. Timing I wont explain. Standard cards in age 1: yellow ones affect your game in big ways, and it can make other synergies and snowball REALLY hard, just as an example.

In the both expansion version, I guarantee you, one has in 99.999% cases still options. Even if those are long shots, it is almost always impossible to completely control the game as leading player, assuming the other player doesnt screw up a lot of things and/or big things. And in in 0.001% cases one could have insane luck in the start phases, and there isnt much to do, but to hope for bad plays; which could easily be fixed btw ;)
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