by SpaceTrucker
I have come across some opinions on these boards that some races are not as powerful as others. If that is true, are there any adjustments that can be made to balance them better (like they did for the game Root)? I don’t have enough plays to really know if it’s even an issue. I always like my asynchronous games to be as balanced as possible.
Personally I would suggest to not overrate the really slight differences that possibly/probably exist between some of the factions. On a large scale, those differences are really minor. A stronger player will almost always win, no matter which factions he plays and variable the setup of game also has much bigger influence on outcome then differences in power, can render even the most versatile factions unplayable. Many/most other asymmetric games are quite surely noticeably less balanced. My personal gut feeling is also that Gaia's balance is better than Terra Mystica's (but that's very hard to tell without really a lot of data of experienced players and a well devellpoed meta game).
Another point is that your group will not necessarily find the same factions strongest as other players. Especially in the early phase of the game many different factions were suspected of being over- or underpowered by many different users, also at the current point there is no precise concensus about exact power levels and impact of those slight differences.
Personally I wouldn't take all this too severely, especially if you're not too deep into competetive tournament style gaming. In my opinion, there isn't really actual need, but much more simple fun in theorycrafting and optimizing.
But if you generally like theorycrafting, are open towards houserules, then there's also nothing stopping you to try minor tweaks to squeeze out the last few possible percentages of balance.
Personally, I would suggest to avoid tweaks that change nature/feel of a faction, as factions are not only meant to be balanced, but also - even primarily - to be challenging, different and fun to play.
If you apply some very small scale changes to factions where it feels appropriate for your group, then you'll hardly really ruin the game. Just be aware that it's very hard to find just the right amount without large scale data, so your gruoup will hardly be able to reliably judge if the house rule version is assuredly better and it's much easier to make the game worse than better.
One example for possible houseruling:Many players consider the Ambas faction to be very versatile and slightly (really not much, just slightly) stronger than average factions. It's tough to prove this, as many faction abilities are very different, and the numbers you could put them into sometimes strongly depend on depend on setups, playstyles, player skill,... but at least many players share a common gut feeling and experience here. So if this game were still in playtesting state, a change would probably be tested and they might be a candidate for a houserule now if you like to do this. A little change to slightly tune them down could e.g. be to reduce their starting ore in round 1 by 1 (so they have the same amount of ore as other factions, despite their extra income).
