So, I gave the game the components it should’ve had from the start!
I started by scanning, printing, and mounting the player boards onto chipboard, so they’d have the same weight and thickness as the tiles in Century: Eastern Wonders.
Then, I hit up www.spielmaterial.de and replaced the meeples with reasonable ones.
While the boards are more a tactile upgrade than a visual one, they’re still a big aesthetic jump. The meeples, though, are an absolute necessity. They just work better.
I love upgrading my games, but it does frustrate me sometimes when my upgrades effectively raise the quality of the game to “standard” rather than “deluxe”. That said, I love the way this upgrade turned out.