Topic of the Week: Balance

Boardgames
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First off, setting expectations. I’m not going to put any more topics in for the rest of December. I imagine I am not the only one traveling or all planned up for the Holidays. TotW will see you all in 2025!

For this week: Balance.
Some games are balanced within a hair of their life - Nusfjord. London 2e. It’s clear that there is a mathematical valuation model behind each card or action, or a simulation has been run through thousands of iterations to sand off the edges. Anything that looks too good to be true comes back to center as you begin to understand costs and efficiencies, and likewise anything that looks uninteresting is just a new facet to discover.

Then you have games that are designed without balance. Glory to Rome. Cosmic Encounter. Furnace + Interbellum. Sometimes the intent is that the table will address the imbalance through focused disruption. Sometimes the imbalance is the game, finding who can exploit it hardest and fastest.

The third category is somewhat in between, and I’ll cite Race for the Galaxy. Here the individual cards are immaculately balanced, but there is a game to be had of creating imbalance through synergy and combination.

The last category is, of course, unintentional imbalance. Here I’ll cite Scythe factions, Tapestry, Viticulture visitors (because I can’t pass a chance to pick on Stonemeier.) Kansas City in GWT 1e. Maybe these are a subset of the “without balance” group but just situations that didn’t work out.

Discussion - what do you think of all this? What do you gravitate toward? What are good exemplars in each of the three intentional categories? Is something “best” or are these just flavors?

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People who love Cosmic Encounter (which is a lot of folks) love it because it’s wildly unbalanced and doesn’t pretend to care.

I kinda love 70s Dune for the same reason. So I think if a game leans into it, it’s not automatically a bad thing. It does mean you can’t take the outcome too seriously though.

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Based on your examples, I think that my table leans towards balanced smooth games. Now that I think about it I have heard quite a few complaints about cards/actions/strategies being IMBA.

Cosmic fell flat the one time I tried it. Never tried again even with different people. The sample I tried was representative.

No I think my table leans towards balance and so do I probably.

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Agree. Imbalance is part of the Cosmic dramady.

I tend to value balance less. Im gonna be a bit catty here, but my problem is that theres a significant number of board gamers who dont know shit about balance. They play one title once or twice per year and then call it balanced or unbalanced. The funny thing is listening how balance they say X is and me being aware how imbalanced (which ways and how much) the game is after 30 plays. And so I tend not to care after only a few plays. I literally cannot tell you how balanced Age of Innovation is after raking in over 10 plays. Except for Illusionists. They are too strong.

Also, my games tend to have very strong player interaction so balance is not important in them. Although, player interaction tends not to be the penicillin. You can design a game with stocks and trains but that wont make the game “balance”. Some playstyles and openings will be dominant and only rigorous playtesting under the helm of a talented designer can do that.

Theres also a problem with “too much balance” that whatever you do, everyone seems to be neck on neck. Boring.

In 1830, the C&O company is the best starting corps and the player who float it is in the best position. But that wont win you the game. The game has to have great decisions throughout to swing the game to their favour.

The constant imbalance in game states are what makes these games great. The winner wants to keep their position and keep cashing in, while the others try to upset the board state to their favour.

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omg. yes. which is why I stated that there were complaints… I disagree most pf the time and also after like 2 plays of a game who are we to judge?

150 games of Terraforming later: yes in solo some corps are easier. thats all I can say.

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It’s okay to say Ecoline is a strong corps :crazy_face: (I’m making it all up. I don’t play TFM often enough)

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If a competitive game were perfectly balanced, there would be no point in agonising over decisions because they’d all be just as effective.

I tend to care a lot about balance in capability. I like having different powers and resources from the next player, and if we can also face each other head to head (competitive) or contribute similarly (coop) that’s better too. I’m not so fussed if particular actions are more or less effective in a particular context, but I see people arguing about that too sometimes.

Some competitive setups ask one player to play an entirely different game while still keeping the basics ticking over. Star Trek Ascendancy with the Vulcans, Colt Express with the Marshal. Some of the factions in Imperium: foo. This reliably starts balance arguments.

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This seems like an invalid argument to me. After adjusting points for start player advantage, Go is about as balanced as it’s possible to get. That doesn’t mean all moves you can make while playing Go are equally effective.

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I agree, it’s deliberately reductio ad absurdum.

So why do people complain that “action A is unbalanced, this makes it a bad game” when action A is only occasionally useful?

(I am not in general a fan of “sure, you can do A, you’ve just lost the game by doing it” but that’s a separate argument.)

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As I chew on it, I think more and more balance is a “thing” and isn’t good or bad in itself. Implementation is good or bad.

San Juan is a mostly (yes, I know the exceptions) balanced game and suffers from overbalance. With a few exceptions of drawing the right power card at the right point in the game, all paths get you to the same place. Too much balance here saps decisions of meaning.

London 2e is mathematically balanced. But the result is more of a puzzle box. Some cards appear crazy powerful while others appear weak, and every game we’re figuring out how each card fits into the whole. Kew Gardens? Why would anyone play that? Oh, it effectively reduces your city size by 1. Oh, that means I can maybe overreach in the early game? New avenue. When we realized that shops do well sticking around for 2-3 city cycles, despite the poverty hit, new avenue. You’re never going to find a power combo here but the puzzle of context, when and how to use each tool in order to get incremental value, is good.

On the other hand, I’m still struggling with the imbalance in Pax Pamir. Card power can be pretty spread out, and depending on timing, etc some players get a much better hand than others. It’s generally a case of the table needing to respond effectively - not to put a powerful card in reach of the person who needs it, or to set aside grudges to control a runaway faction for a bit - but even then sometimes the game just runs out of the players’ control. Innovation can also run out of control but it works (imho) much better. Maybe because it’s shorter, maybe because there is always the possibility of getting back in the game.

Balance does feel a bit sterile to me. While I like Nusfjord and London, they remain cerebral experiences. I like to play with my heart.

My takeaway: I think I appreciate both ends of the spectrum, as both can be done well. But I veer toward a degree of imbalance just because it’s fun. It’s exciting. What makes imbalance well done? Either “make your own” imbalance, where it’s not dealt to you but you have to exploit timing or synergy - so that accessing imbalance is a result of skill rather than luck. Or equal access to imbalance + tools to respond to imbalance, such as the C&O example @lalunaverde offered.

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In general, I think “balance” in a game can be patronizing. Let’s let players be players and find those fun little things that give them an edge.

I will say, though, that there are some game designs where there are no guard-rails and players can veer wildly off-track. Which is fine. Except where it isn’t – some games require checks and balances from all players at the table to keep each other in check. 18xx is notoriously bad at this; seating around the table matters because the mistake of one player can mean the player to their left runs away with the game.

When people talk about a game being unbalanced, it could be a number of things, but it’s rarely a matter of the game simply not being balanced. The Halifax Hammer strategy for A Few Acres of Snow may be one of the more well-known balance issues in a published game; a degenerative strategy for which there are few effective countermeasures.

But more often than not, it’s simply the fact that one player finds a quirky play/style/strategy and it requires the other group time to find the quirky counter – the longer it takes, the more unbalanced it appears.

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This is all reminding me of an old rubric I had. As others have stated, complaints of imbalance often don’t mean imbalance.

When assessing Neuroshima Hex factions (though it applies to almost anything with factions or cards) I put all the factions on a 2-axis grid.

Axis one: Blunt vs Nuanced.
Axis two: Consistent vs. Volatile

In this case, Blunt would be something like Borgo. Strategy = Go fast. They have high initiative and have augmenters to increase it further, so you go fast and hit first. Very easy to articulate, remember, and implement. Outpost, on the other hand, is nearly impossible to articulate. Protect ranged units, soft control on empty spaces, utilize mobility to incrementally destabilize the board state.

A lot of complaints that Borgo is OP. A lot of arguments about “Outpost is weak” vs “I do just fine with it.” And I think it is really just a blunt vs nuanced strategy. One takes more time to learn and more art to implement effectively.

(LOTR: The Confrontation is similar, with the Shadow army being “high numbers hit hard” and the Light army being “utilize mobility to force the shadow to commit in the wrong place, gather information, and use targeted abilities to weaken the enemy.” First game the Shadow absolutely crushes but with repeated play, and mastery of the Light, it falls into balance).

The other axis is consistency vs volatility. Back to NS Hex, Neo Jungle is super volatile. Blunt. “Put all your units together and buff them until you are invincible.” Actually executing works or it doesn’t. If someone nets your base, it’s pretty much a headshot. If they get a unit inside your jungle that breaks the chain, it’s rough. If they don’t, you will crush them so hard it’s almost comical. Contrast to Hegemony, lots of two-hit units (both giving and taking), you’re going to have a pretty predictable game each time no matter what order your units come out.

Essay over. In my thinking, a lot of the illusion of imbalance can be mapped onto this 2x2 grid and understood as such. Sometimes something is more nuanced and you have to take the time to get the value out of it. Sometimes something is more volatile, and it may have slayed this session and will gurgle the next.

More flavor than balance.

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Do I care about balance too much? Probably yes and no.

I don’t care so long as I’m having fun. The truth is, as many have said, I don’t play any game enough for it to matter. Every action should be good even if only situationally, like the action in beyond the sun that lets you readjust your resources.

Talking with a colleague this morning who is playing a 7 Wonders Duel BGA arena thing, they claimed that the game with Pantheon was find Ra and steal a wonder. I’m not convinced that’s always the correct path but it’s where the group think is for that season.

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I guess I only care about balance if it impacts the game negatively. Very asymmetric is fine, as long as that doesn’t mean everyone knows one faction always wins.

Game of Thrones 2nd ed LCG wasn’t balanced and it killed the game.

I’ve avoided Forest Shuffle because the immediate reaction to it at launch was that certain combos are simply too strong and will always win, so you’re either going for X and Y or you lose.

The new 2024 edition of D&D 5e (which I’m giving up on and going back to AD&D 2nd) has one spell in it so overpowered that people wonder if it’s a typo. It scales up more than anything else in the game, to the point that your character creation choices are completely secondary compared to whether you’re taking this one spell or not (conjure woodland beings). [Edit: typo! It’s “conjure minor elementals”.] DMs are banning it in order to not unbalance everything. That’s not fun, and it’s bad for the game.

Do I need all possible routes in a game to be equal? No. But a lot of games have an efficiency aspect, and that needs to be viable and fair for all players.

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Yeah, this is an interesting one. I’ve also seen people say that wolves/deer is overpowered. But I’ve firsthand seen @comaestro absolutely crush a game with pine martens. And, being a shared market, it also sounds kind of like “science is overpowered in 7 wonders.” Yes, if one person focuses exclusively on it and everyone else lets them, they will win. But there’s no reason to ever let that happen.

My personal jury is still out, not having played enough cycles of FS. But I’ve been skeptical of the reports.

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I’ve played a few times, and I don’t think Forest Shuffle really lets you go for a particular strategy anyway; I mean, there have been games where only one wolf and one deer were ever available to me, so waiting for those wouldn’t have done me much good.

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I have only had the one play, but Forest Shuffle feels much more tactical than strategic. I mean, I was making plans on what to do for my next turn numerous times, only to have those plans scuppered as someone else took the card I wanted or the row got filled up and wiped.

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I saw a Dungeon Dudes video recently which suggested that Conjure Woodland Beings was more balanced/“nerfed” in the 2024 rules compared to 2014, but having not played either version I cannot confirm that. I only played Basic D&D and AD&D back in the 80s, and from the rules alone I know that 5e would appeal to me much more, even with a few overpowered spells or combinations, that I wouldn’t consider stepping back so far.

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This game has made me think of Round House. I wanted to love Round House as a game. The double rondel, multiple pawns, the conversion of stuff to points were all interesting. Unfortunately it had a dominant strategy so much of what was there was not explorable in a competitive sense. I think it illustrates something about when balance goes awry. As there was one way of doing things much of the game was redundant so what have it there? I gave up after around 15 games.

How do people see this dominant strategy problem? A different topic or a subset of balance?

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Oh, sorry - it was “Conjure minor elementals” not woodland beings!

Minor Elementals has a +2d6 per level increase which is at least double anything else in the game, and means you’re doing 200%-700% more damage than all other players regardless of anyone’s choices.

5e is much more accessible and appealing than old editions, and it’s got bigger player numbers than ever. But when you get right into the rules the amount of bad design in the v2024 is almost overwhelming (in my opinion).

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