How do you balance your game? How do you determine the scaling of different numbers such as damage, health, or gold cost? If your game has effects, how do you decide their power relative to other values or abilities?
I work on a lot of card games. The method I use to balanced my cards is called ABV (Allotted Balance Value). I find a 'base' value in the game, something that I can set at a 1:1 ratio for scaling.
Generally this base is my resource in the game (energy, gold, etc.). I would weigh this negatively against positive effects (as spending your resource is generally considered a bad thing). A positive effect might be attacking, defending, moving, performing additional actions, drawing cards, etc.
Let's assumed that 1 gold is equal to (-1) ABV and 1 attack is equal to (+1) ABV. A card might cost 1 gold but provide 1 attack; 2 gold = 2 attack; 3 gold = 3 attack; and so on.
Also, I tend to use a lot of simple formulas. I especially like [2X-1], as it provides interesting scaling. If I somehow determined that gold should be more important, I might make gold hard to get but allow other effects to scale better. Maybe 1 gold = 1 attack, but 2 gold = 3 attack, and 3 gold = 5 attack.
What methods do you use?
Sure, all of those things must be factored in, but I always keep the same ABV system. Nearly every game has some resource, whether it's money, energy, cards, health, actions, board position, points, etc. Weighing your additional effects positively or negatively against these resources is where balance comes from.