The Balancing Act

Hi,

I've made a few games now, and this has been the hardest to balance by far. If knew anything about math, statistics or programming, the cards would have been much easier to plan out!

If you haven't checked the game out yet, here is the rundown:

The God Caste is comprised of square cards. There are four resources, many powers, and anywhere from 1-4 arrows on the card, in the cardinal directions of the card. Connecting cards triggers the resource changes and powers.

While balancing, I had to keep a few metrics in mind (I'm having a hard time explaining this):

The distribution  of four, three, two, and one sided cards, as more multi-sided cards means more play options and a larger play area. I also weighted lower-arrow cards with either +2 resource modifiers or multiple-resource/powers so they would be able to make a similar amount of changes as a 3-4 sided card.

Within the number of sides, there is also the equal pattern distribution, such as, three sided cards come in four patterns: Left Up Right, Left Down Right, Up Left Down, and Up Right Down.  The arrow patterns  are represented evenly, so creating three sided cards was done in sets of four.

The cards, even between the two opposing alignments, are not mirrored opposites of each other. I balanced by the powers/resources being represented an equal amount of times in a certain direction. 

I've tried a few different charts/spreadsheets to track patterns, but I still don't completely know what is missing in terms intra-card representation, and by that I mean how many times (power or resource X) is  on a card with (power or resource Y).

 I think I nailed all the resource combinations (like shelter being on the same card as peace, etc.). For the neutral deck, I know of a few missing pieces, but left them open for wiggle room after some more testing.

Here is how I figured the resource/power to side distribution:

I'll update this post with a few charts with what I tried to do to achieve balance.