In the present paper, we show that many combinatorial and topological objects, such as maps, hypermaps, three-dimensional pavings, constellations and branched coverings of the two--sphere admit any given finite automorphism group. This enhances the already known results by Frucht, Cori -- Machì, Širáň -- Škoviera, and other authors. We also provide a more universal technique for showing that ``any finite automorphism group is possible'', that is applicable to wider classes or, in contrast, to more particular sub-classes of said combinatorial and geometric objects. Finally, we show that any given finite automorphism group can be realised by sufficiently many non-isomorphic such entities (super-exponentially many with respect to a certain combinatorial complexity measure).