But not better than Council Room, and Stables doesn't require that you put a card on bottom.
Debatable. CR draws more net cards without an initial cost, but it is also terminal and it gives opponents a big benefit. They are different enough that it means one or the other may be better depending on the board, which is what you generally want out of cards at the same price point.
Making it about the same as Stables , right?
Except in very rare edge cases, this Ale House is better than Stables.
Both are non-terminal card drawers that require you to first discard a treasure. Stables gives you 3 cards. Ale House gives you a choice of 3/4 cards, plus deck control in the form of bottom decking. If you have a good card that you don't need this turn, the bottom decking could let you save it for later. Or alternatively, the bottom decking could be used to stack a bunch of bad cards on the bottom so that you can make them miss the reshuffle. Even with the bottom-decking, Ale House and Stables both non-terminally increase your hand size by 1.
So, Ale House and Stables are very similar, but seeing the extra card and getting some deck control will make Ale House generally better. Can you think of any situation where you would prefer to buy Stables? The only ones I can think of are rare edge cases -- having a differently named card for the usual reasons -- Menagerie, Horn of Plenty, Fairgrounds; not wanting to empty the Ale House pile while behind in points; I think that's it. And there are only a few edge cases where you'd prefer to
play a Stables instead of an Ale House -- to increase Horn of Plenty (after having already played an Ale House) or when drawing the extra card would trigger a reshuffle when you otherwise wouldn't want it.
Ale House is just much better than Stables.
There are lots of little tweaks you could do to fix it though. This version of Ale House might be OK at $6. Or the penalty could be a little harsher -- bottom-deck two cards instead of one. I think that would make it quite interesting. This version of Ale House would not increase your hand size, but it would give you a chance to find 2 great cards out of 4. The bottom-decking could open up some interesting strategies involving the reshuffle.