First player advantage

[Teprok]

I apologize if this has been discussed before, but it's proven somehow difficult to research. I was wondering if - despite the ticket headstart given to players later in the initial turn order - theere was a significant starting player advantage in Ark Nova. I figured that BGA would be the best place to ask this, since there is such a high number of high-level, competitive games being played - granted, most of them 2-player which doesn't indicate how big the advantage would be in a 3 or 4 player game necessarily, but still. Is there any data available on what the starting player advantage looks like in a competitive setting for Ark Nova?

[Azoken]

i'll quote vikingerik on arena (2players), not sure it can be applied to all games

There's one piece of evidence here. On the player statistics page, there's an entry for "Starting position in first round". For winners, that is 1.46. (I think this is all games, not just Arena.)

If all games are 2-player, that means the starting player is winning 54% of the time. And that 1.46 is slightly inflated by some games having more players, so the real average starting position for 2-player winners is even lower which means the starting advantage is even higher.

That's surprisingly high, higher than I would have guessed, a differential of close to 10% (roughly 55 to 45.) The advantage must come from before the first break. Having the initiative on picking the first partner zoo or university can be significant, and so can having one more action before the first break, including that the second player has to play around that possibility (like playing only one animal sooner instead of taking a second build action in case the first player breaks.)

[demyurge]

Significant advantage but sometimes it's also up to your action order.
If there is a good early game card in the display you're more likely to be able to snap it first.
You're more likely to be able to choose your partner zoo or university before your opponent.
And in my opinion the biggest advantage comes from the way the end game triggers, either both players play the same number of turns or the first players gets to play one more.
The 1 appeal compensation is not enough.

[Teprok]

i'll quote vikingerik on arena (2players), not sure it can be applied to all games

There's one piece of evidence here. On the player statistics page, there's an entry for "Starting position in first round". For winners, that is 1.46. (I think this is all games, not just Arena.)

If all games are 2-player, that means the starting player is winning 54% of the time. And that 1.46 is slightly inflated by some games having more players, so the real average starting position for 2-player winners is even lower which means the starting advantage is even higher.

That's surprisingly high, higher than I would have guessed, a differential of close to 10% (roughly 55 to 45.) The advantage must come from before the first break. Having the initiative on picking the first partner zoo or university can be significant, and so can having one more action before the first break, including that the second player has to play around that possibility (like playing only one animal sooner instead of taking a second build action in case the first player breaks.)

Thank you, that's basically the information I was looking for.

[ArtEntre]

i'll quote vikingerik on arena (2players), not sure it can be applied to all games

There's one piece of evidence here. On the player statistics page, there's an entry for "Starting position in first round". For winners, that is 1.46. (I think this is all games, not just Arena.)

If all games are 2-player, that means the starting player is winning 54% of the time. And that 1.46 is slightly inflated by some games having more players, so the real average starting position for 2-player winners is even lower which means the starting advantage is even higher.

This logic is flawed because it counts solo games, where winning always counts towards the global statistics as 1st player.

Intuitively with how the game is structured, I feel like the 1st player advantage "has" to be there. And BGA two player games would be the ideal place to see that effect. But at least normal users don't have an easy way to extract that statistic.

To quote from the last time I tried to prove it (in BGG discussion)...

From the generic BGA summary probably not, but I tried to test out the theory with a little more manual effort. Looking at the last 30 arena-mode loses for 3 of the top players (90 games total), the average position was 1.59 (53 out of the 90 loses were as 2nd player). I doubt that's enough of a skew to be statistically significant with only checking 90 games, but it doesn't look too dramatic just from that.

I was actually expecting it to be more skewed... it seems like having an extra turn half the time should give an advantage.

So my attempt at "proving" it did show a skew in the direction this thread is talking (1st player maybe has an advantage), but I didn't put in enough effort (look at enough game history) to really "prove" it in the statistical sense.

[Azoken]

i'll admit i didn't think about solo games.

I also think it's a given that the first player has an advantage, the only question remaining is "how much".

And i think it's not as much about the potentiel extra action but more the threat of the break in the first turn, early pick of association (zoo/university) and display.

I hate going second when my sponsor card is at 5 and don't have any to play because if i dare take 5 gold, i might be punished.

[greenjacket124]

I hate going second when my sponsor card is at 5 and don't have any to play because if i dare take 5 gold, i might be punished.

So trade it for an X token. I'll admit there is almost certainly an advantage to going first, but it's honestly not likely to be unbalancing. Definitely not something where the other players need to get X tokens or Clever movements in return.

[MadLow]

i'll quote vikingerik on arena (2players), not sure it can be applied to all games

There's one piece of evidence here. On the player statistics page, there's an entry for "Starting position in first round". For winners, that is 1.46. (I think this is all games, not just Arena.)

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't that old stats? What I see for winner is 1.5, I guess a perfect 50% ratio? I'm probably missing something..

[MasN]

I would like to give my two cents regarding first player advantage.
A lot of people talk about first snap, or first partner zoo, or first university, but these are as much as a byproduct of first player as the random card order in the first round.

Instead, I would like to look at it from a purely quantitative perspective. The player balancing mechanism gives in implicit value of a turn as 2 appeal in 2p, and 4 appeal in 4p.
(Because people keep stating that p2 only gets 1 appeal to start when I argue this, I'm just going to preemptively point out it's 1 appeal in exchange for HALF a turn.)

Now, is a turn worth 2 appeal? Consider an action where you gain 2 appeal (not even move a card, as you would with an X-action.) Would I use this action? Well, there are situations where it may be playable, but I certainly don't think I would be using this on my first turn. In the real game, p2 is forced to use this action 0.5 times on their first turn. As such, I believe the compensation in 2p is insufficient.

Now, I heard some suggestions of giving p2 an extra X-token in 2p, which seems like a reasonable option. However, other people have jumped in to generalize this to giving more X-tokens in 4p. I think that idea is seriously astray. From the quantitative approach above, you will see that in a 4p game, all players (not just p4) are getting 4 appeal as compensation per turn given up. I do not have any experience with 4p games, so take this with a grain of salt, but this seems pretty reasonable to me.