Post originally by James Stuart at 2004-09-08 12:45:59
Converted from Phorums BB System

I feel like that there is a variety of worth to the buildings in the expansion, but more of the buildings are viable in the PR expansion than the original. (You can also see the same advancing maturity in San Juan, in which virtually all of the buildings are viable).

Yet, some do stand out: the Forest House is the most blatantly over and underpowered building in the game: alone, it's fairly worthless (since it requires two settler phases to provide any benefit, compared to the one for the construction hut, and given that forests are only really worthwhile in combination with quarries, it puts more pressure to settler more, while the construction hut provides the benefit of alleviating the need to settler for quarries). All these disadvantages compared to a building that is generally considered on the low end of possible builds! (at least in the non 5-player version)

Yet, a forest house with a hacienda is absolutely devastating: you can very quickly, through picking the settler phase nearly every turn, reach a situation where every 2VP building and below is free, and even the big buildings cost 1-4. Every time I've managed to pick this up online, the game has been almost brutally easy. If these two buildings do exist, it's almost a necessity for other players to pick them defensively.

The union hall is also dubious, as you point out: it's another building where players have to pick it up defensively if a player is successfully crafting a strategy towards it.

Alexfrog also thinks the church is too powerful, but I'm not quite convinced yet.