Golem and familiar is insane too get tons of extra action and deal out a few curses to other players all in the same turn, sure scrying pool could do that but golem would give you extra actions throw in another golem and throw in another attack like torturer. At least scrying pools attack isn’t as potent as other attacks. If you had no villages it would be pretty hard to play 2 torturers in a turn, but golem can help you play both in stride. Especially if you had more than one golem and more than one familiar. With that combo they would get 5 curses each in a turn, or 3 curses and one card left in their hand. Golem may be weaker on its own. But there have been times I’ve done more damage with golem than I ever did with scrying pool. Cause remember scrying pool doesn’t guarantee that you get Actions, frankly it’s really hard to get a lot of action cards if you play scrying pool just once. However you play golem just once and you have a lot of attack cards which means one thing danger danger danger for the other players. Golem forces you to play all cards too.
Just add a game with golem, no +2 Actions, 5 attack cards in the supply no reactions. And see what happens, I had a game online once except it had 4 attacks and it did have a reaction beggar and necropolis. It had margrave too, it had no other potion cards, but it did have maurader, and sage, soothsayer, fortune teller. Everyone else ignored the potions since golem was it, they also focused on just soothersayer, fortune teller and maurader, and didn’t buy more than one each. Half the curses were gone. I had a couple of soothsayers and sages, a couple of maurders and a couple of margraves and had 2 golems half the provinces were gone I only had one. But one powerful turn. Thanks to golem necropolis first then golem, soothsayer, sage, then played another golem another soothsayer another sage. Sage gave me margrave. Played margrave, margrave game maurader, and used my last action with maurader. After that it was all over they so many curses and and victory cards they didn’t have enough to buy a duchy. Played golem again times more throughout the game and was able to buy up the rest of the provinces and won. The only way to trash cards was rats and there quite a few rats gone. So they had a bunch of turns with victories, curses, ruins and rats. After that one awesome turn they started buying beggar but it was too late. I had bought beggar a couple of times prior to keep rats in check. And it helped me buy a golem once. One player said I hate golem I haven’t been able to play a (bad word) turn in forever and then resigned. That’s why I’m surprised you guys think golem is weak. However I’m sure you would think twice if you were on the receiving end of that game. That’s the problem with random game your stuck with whatever you randomly get. However if you chose the cards you could make it balanced. They use to have a randomizer online that could make it balanced, problem was it never got updated so it didn’t have anything past adventures.