Let's see ...

The entire balance of the game is off, as the aristocrats are just way to powerful. That reduces the valud number of strategies from three (blue, orange, or a balance) to one (orange).

Two cards, the Observatory and the Mistress, are so powerful that drawing them at the beginning when others don't is basically game.

Your ability to score points is essentially the luck of the draw almost the entire game. You can set up opportunities by playing with the number of cards that come out, to a certain amount, but not much. If you need two more aristocrats to win the game, and you only get duplicates, that's it.

There are no choices to be made about playing workers. You buy and play them based on the number of rounds left, that's it. Easy and uninteresting calculation.

And the enitre mechanic is basically repetitious, and the buildings are boring. All buildings either give money, give vp's or reduce cost, with very little exception.

Essentially, the worst mechanic in Eurogames is the card draw from a deck where the power of the cards is unequal. In Amun Re and Goa, I changed the rules so that you draw two and discard one. In Settlers, the cards are pretty much equal, with the rare exception of drawing a Road Building when you can't place them.

Here, the entire freaking game is card drawing. There is almost nothing to do to affect the drawing or who gets first shot at cards, and the point swing they introduce is wildly beyond the point value that you can gain due to tactical play. A few points swing in a many point game is one thing. A large swing in a game due to luck is another.

Lastly, although the game is about 5-7 rounds long, the vast part of the last round is essentially meaningless, and the winner has been decided by round 3.

In theory, I like the card filling mechanism. In practice, it doesn't work well enough. Should have been thrown out and reworked.

Yehuda