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[Sparafucile]

It’s an interesting point you make but a couple thoughts

There’s a limit on how much “worse” the game will get even with infinit expansions.  Even then it’s not THAT much different.

You can use a constrained randomizer to fix this easily.  “Ensure +buy is pretty trivial”

Subjectively - every expansion has made my experience better.  So while ur math is interesting, it doesn’t really capture “Worse”. 

The game is exceptional in its ability to mix arbitrary expansions and still keep the mechanics feasibly useful.   For a shitty game that is a counter example to this, see the game Ascension.  Not only is that game plagued with infinite loops, huge shuffle luck - but so many cards are keyed off of the existence of other cards or density of expansion specific mechanic - that the game is SUBSTANTIALLY worse as you add expansions in and mix them.

[TinchO]

Beyond the slightly troll-like appearance of such reasoning (mathematically argued though), I have the feeling that next to a sort of climax of complexity in the expansions (the adventure, nocturne & empires sequence basically) Donald has since returned to an imperative of simplicity in game design (renaissance & ménagerie, we'll see about allies).

I guess that beyond the mathematical aspect that you are arguing the complexity aspects plays a role towards shitty kingdoms...

[Nukatha]

Necroposting this even though it is still on the front page.
This was posted August 2021.
Since then we have two expansions, Allies and Plunder, and Seaside/Prosperity/Hinterlands 2nd editions.

Looking at Allies, there are 31 kingdom piles.
Of the normal piles, Bauble and Galleria grant buys.
Importer, Carpenter, Modify, Specialist, and Swap either gain or remodel cards.

Of the split piles:
Town crier and Acolyte can gain specific cards.
Sunken Treasure and Conjurer can gain other cards.
Distant Shore and Territory I guess also gain specific cards.

But the wildcard in Allies are the titular Allies, many of which offer gains (or effects equivalent to gains) under varying conditions.

As far as ordinary buys go, that's only 2/31 piles granting general +buys, which is very low, but Allies offers many other ways to gain cards without +buy.

Plunder:
The Loot deck in Plunder has 22/30 cards that offer +buy or an extra gain (Hammer).
This means that 6 Kingdom cards, 5 events, and 1 trait in Plunder offer the player additional buys by proxy (plus Jeweled Egg and Sack of Loot already offer +buy on their own).
With non-loot-related cards, Abundance, Rope, Buried Treasure, Figurine, and Mining Road provide buys.
Tools, Cabin Boy, Enlarge, Quartermaster, and Silver Mine either gain or remodel cards.

King's Cache and Flagship can also (conditionally) provide, but they require another +buy card.

Finally, Fawning, Friendly, Nearby, and Rich offer additional gains/buys, with Nearby specifically explicitly providing a buy.

11/40 kingdom cards in Plunder thus introduce explicit +Buy cards to the set, which is a very high ratio (27.5%) compared with the 3/26 in the base set.

Now, let's look at 2nd editions:
Prosperity:
Tiara and Collection are explicit +Buy cards, War Chest and Anvil also offer gains.
Removed were Trade Route, Contraband and Goons, which each provided +1 buy (Contraband having a drawback). Talisman could also gain a card.

In pure '+Buy' count, it is a complete wash, as Prosperity 2E dropped 9 and added 9 cards.

Seaside:
Astrolabe is a +Buy. Blockade and Pirate can gain cards.
Explorer was removed (who could gain Silver/Gold), the other removed cards were neither gainers nor +buy.
The net result is a slightly better +buy average than before.

Hinterlands:
Nomads, Cauldron, and Souk
Weaver, Berserker, and Wheelwright gain cards.

Nomad Camp is the only +Buy removed. Noble Brigand could gain cards, and both Cache and Ill-Gotten gains gained cards, but those were copper.
this gives Hinterlands a net +2 Buy cards.

I'm not set up to completely crunch the numbers as faust did in 2021, but I have a hunch that in a random kingdom with 2 extras (Traits/Events/Projects), and other extra set-up things like a random Ally if one or more Liasons are chosen, the odds of a +Buy kingdom must have improved.

[LastFootnote]

I haven’t examined all of your post yet, but Bauble and Galleria are not the only +Buy cards in Allies. There’s also Herb Gatherer, Town, and Marquis.

[faust]

It is worth pointing out that +Buy was just a handily available example and not really crucial my argument. It was simply one of the easiest things to count (providing extra gains might have been a more meaningful metric, but it's harder to count those cards since you run into edge cases).

Still, it is interesting to see the continuing trend of more +Buys per expansion. Seems likely that you'd see this in other metrics as well; there are just more cards (or piles) that can fufill a lot of different functions. Traits and Loot are other ways to inject more different stuff into kingdoms than has been there before.