Value of putting a tile on kansas

[Sombra rose]

So whenever I play against people who r 300 elo plus I always see them go kansas city during their first sell action of the game
And I was wondering why people do it because with kansas being how it is (-6 points for 4 gold) my reaction is why would u go their because ur spending ur first sell action and 6 points to get 4 gold which puts u behind by however big a margin compared to those who don't and so have to spend the next however many rounds getting it back
(In conclusion I just wanna know why high elo players go to kansas when to me it looks like a place I want to highly avoid)

[MasterMystery]

the 4 money can be key to enable
4 builders for high building earlier
4 cowboy and/or purple cow earlier
having enough money to snag up both STMs if good ones
being able to still have money on late spots on the loop if lots of hazards out and many early buildings
-there may not be enough cheap deliveries possible if you need to deliver to 1+4 or kansas later you can as well do it early

with 2n edition its a default move, with 1st it was a most, RTTN enables delivery to 4 if first on loop due to two branches on 2 money each enabler

[Sombra rose]

Ok but dose it enable it early enough to the point where the 6 point Los dosnt matter tho?
Cause while being able to do it earlier is nice in a way u are still down 6 points which imo is still too many to lose for just 4 gold I can get eles where all be it a turn or 2 later

[Corwin007]

Gonna talk about 2nd ed, because 1st ed was even more obviously better. The thing is, you're not only getting additional money by putting a disk on Kansas. You're also avoiding paying money for disks on 4 or 6, or at least 6 because many people would go for 1 and 6 instead.

Also, if you enable live scoring, you'll usually see how quickly one or even two deliveries to Kansas catch up in terms of points. With no Kansas deliveries, unless you're playing a train oriented game and there are a lot of bandits out, you'll have several loops where you're really low on money and/or you make small and inefficient steps, while the players who put disks on Kansas will have the money to hire more workers which let them do better/cheaper actions and more deliveries.

Now, how many disks you want on Kansas, that's a different question. In second ed it's mostly once or twice, while in first edition there were plenty of times where even three deliveries there were a good path to victory. Heck, I've even seen wins with four deliveries there. But I doubt that that's a good plan in second edition, once you have an engine there are probably other sources of money which become better.

[Suoivax]

the money will kickstart any victory path, which will make up for the -6VP eventually.

There's also no payment for the delivery to Kansas (The little red x's between your train and the delivery), so its even more benificial monetarily at the beginning of the game since trains havent moved much.

[MoogV]

as others have mentioned the main benefit is undoubtedly the money aspect - you avoid paying any tolls on your first delivery and get an additional 4 gold, totaling to about 5/6 gold benefit in average on your first delivery

that's the price of a worker or an extra building action, etc - largely impacting your engine

it also helps you narrow down the amount of necessary stops in the early game where you may need to potentially waste actions to get some funds for your strategy helping you set the pace of the game and setting a tempo advantage where you control the worker flow for the 5cost row

the other benefit which I did not see mentioned yet is delivery token placement which actually depends about your strategy - unless you're going cowboys you will run out of potential delivery cities during the game as on average you'll be doing 6 which translates down to 12-10-8-6-4or1-0 most of the time - with a builder strat hitting even 10 is not easy and 12 is out of reach hence usually skipped in favour of a double Kansas delivery