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[Snorka]

Many card games have power creep, i.e. cards in every expansion being stronger than in the previous expansion. This largely wouldn't make sense for Dominion, but some still wonder if new expansions are stronger than old ones.
I haven't seen anyone do this before, but it's possible. In any case, including Rising Sun in the data is new. I used the data from Dominion Card Glicko, taking the average Glicko rating of Kingdom cards from each expansion. I figure expansions with 2nd editions feel like recent ones enough to put them in order of most recent release. I've included a plot with the sets in order of original release as well to satisfy curiosity.

2nd Edition release order:

Initial release order:

So it looks like expansions have gotten better over time. I suspect the reason is that dud cards nobody wants are much rarer in new expansions. The strongest expansions are Menagerie, Renaissance, Guilds & Cornucopia, and Rising Sun, in that order. That's a bit tentative since the last two haven't been out for very long, but it's what's in the current data. The weakest are Alchemy, Nocturne, and Dark Ages.

If anyone is wondering, the removed 1st Edition cards have an average Glicko rating of -1.66, much lower than even Alchemy. Promo cards have an average rating of 0.37.

[enfynet]

You probably need to sort by cost, too. Otherwise a set with more expensive cards might show up as stronger.

[Awaclus]

You probably need to sort by cost, too. Otherwise a set with more expensive cards might show up as stronger.

Card Glicko already takes that into account, at least insofar as the people rating the cards do (which is clearly at least somewhat, because Chapel is near the top and Forge is in the bottom half).

[MatthewTaranto]

Some of the newer cards do tend to lean on the strong/low-risk side. Tea House comes to mind, almost strictly better than Mystic and only lacking Grand Market's +Buy but being quite a bit cheaper in comparison. Tiara feels very potent and versatile. Litter is another highly tempting card.

By and large though I'm impressed with how Dominion has mostly kept been kept pretty balanced. It's noteworthy how some of the strongest cards are still in the very first set, yet variants on those cards are still fun and interesting to play with. And as far as I know after hundreds of cards there still isn't one that's a straight-up improvement on another, even counting 1Es.

[Titandrake]

Rising Sun is new enough that the data for it from card glicko may not have stabilized yet. Otherwise, this seems largely correct, where Renaissance + Menagerie were huge jumps and future expansions have stabilized it more.

IMO the biggest effect is that a lot of 1st edition cards were just genuinely so, so bad. The replacement of a lot of duds with more interesting effects that you actually want has pushed up the floor by a lot. I don't mind this power creep of removing dud cards, removing those duds was great. I do mind things like Groom, where Groom rushes are a bit too strong and often play themselves.

I'd say Dominion has gotten more imbalanced over time. You don't get as many issues where someone buying 1 wildly over-the-line card denies it from everybody else. However, there's a lot more variance in openings now, where some openings are just so much stronger (like Amass + drawing Pouch in the $4 hand). And general game speed increases favor 1st player more, there's increasingly more boards where being 2nd player can put you at like a 30-70 disadvantage. (With standard first-player-advantage at about 60-40, last I checked.)

The game's still fun but there is quite a bit of variance.