It's worth pointing out that not all games where Josephine decides the outcome are games that are within 2 points. What I mean by that is, maybe your opponent decides not to break PPR or whatever because of the 2 point difference, and that ends up causing you to win, even though the final score difference is much larger.
You're definitely right that those games should also be credited to Josephine, but I don't think they're several times as common as the regular 1-2 VP wins. And several times more is what you'd need to make the stats people are reporting look respectable for Josephine.
After all, we're taking about adding games where:
- Your opponent chooses not to break PPR (or leave a 3rd pile near-empty, etc) because you're up by 1-2 VP,
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and you eventually end up winning by more than 1-2 VP,
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and you would have ended up losing if you had been 2 VP poorer when your opponent made his PPR decision.
Additionally, we should deduct from Josephine's tally any games where you would have won anyway, but not on that turn (e.g. if you could have bought a Duchy instead of 3-piling with a 1 VP lead).
Also, how much of a difference do most cards make? Like, if you could go back into a game and switch Josephine's bonus to be +$2 rather than 2 VP, how many more games would be decided by that that weren't decided by the 2 VP? I don't think that number would be super high.
This is a clearer issue. The +$2 bonus you propose is a huge deal, and Dame Sylvia is correspondingly far stronger than Dame Josephine.
Imagine if you bought a Silver on T6 and your opponent handed you a Duchy instead. That's a disaster that has a good chance of costing you the game, far worse that failing to acquire Josephine's 2 VP. If your intuition differs, just try modifying a (non-Rebuild) simulator to prefer Duchy over Silver and watch it get crushed.
