SpielByWeb

[Dvd Avins]

Consider if during the province auctions, whatever you bid for a province, you may not later make a lower bid on another province. All bids after your first must either be lateral (same price, different place) diagonally up (more expensive place) unless you have the card that lets you re-bid in the same province (obviously at a higher price).

Obviously, you'd get a lot more early bids on less valuable provinces. And sometimes you'd get in cutthroat fights for an expensive province while a much worse province will be overpaid for by the loser. It would make the re-bid card much more valuable than it is now. You could also introduce a power card that lets you break this rule.

[yakboy]

A clever idea, but I think it would horribly unbalance the game.

As it stands, getting left with an undesirable province is balanced out by the fact that you can get it for free. The best provinces can cost a lot of gold, and so each player gets their share of the goodies - a desirable province, a cheap province or something in-between.

Under your proposed change, the people with the best provinces still pay the most, sure, but the people with the worst provinces end up paying almost as much for them. Suddenly the advantage is massively in favour of the auction winner - and chances are that this will translate into greater and greater advantage as players that win early auctions will likely end up in a better financial situation long-term, allowing them to win mid-game auctions, which help them win end-game auctions, which help them win the game.

It would become a pretty un-fun grind for the player that got shafted into paying 15 gold for Mendes on turn 1.