4th seat compensation

[Robin]

As many fellow players know, seeing that you're 4th when the game starts is always met with a slight sigh of 'alright, I guess I'll have to see what I can get'. Being 4th in the first round is a huge disadvantage in this game and you are compensated for that by absolutely nothing.

In our real life games we always give the player in 4th position an extra food to start. Even then I would still not want to be 4th, however it makes it a bit more fair. My suggestion is that the food will be 2f/3f/3f/4f for the starting positions.

Curious to see if anybody disagrees or if most people agree that some sort of compensation (an extra food or something else) would be a good way to improve this already amazing game.

[cranesflyhigh]

I think this is reasonable. I have also heard a suggestion that 4th seat just wins end of game tiebreakers, essentially gaining 0.5 points. Whichever way we go, I do think some sort of compensation would be nice to have, as 4th seat generally means you cannot set up a good gameplan for your early game like other strats: harder to Childless, you might not get to play occ for Field Watchman, your Cordmaker might not come in time, etc.

[BogTheClub]

I would agree with the 4th seat player getting an extra food - the simplest change and I think 1 food in R1 is actually significant

[alexwjb]

My vote is for the 4th seat to win tiebreakers. In 4p games, the 4th seat on average scores around 0.5 points lower than the other seats (see Lumin's statistics here). So winning tiebreakers (equivalent to being awarded 0.5 points at the end of the game) makes sense.

I'm not in favour of giving the 4th seat an extra food. It feels strange to me for a player to already be fed for the first harvest at the start of the game. And I'm wary of a change like that without checking balance - that 1 early food could be more or less powerful than half a point. Also personally I prefer food tight games!

[torvaldur_makan]

I doubt the publisher will agree to any of these changes, but I agree that it sucks to be in 4th seat.

It is quite common in competitive Agricola that 4th seat gets a food extra in R5.

[Direful]

There won't be any changes to the game to compensate for this.

Sometimes you get lucky and get to go first or second; sometimes you are fourth.

You are still guaranteed either resource market, 3 wood, or an occupation 1st turn of round 1.

If you are 4th starting position, you may need to adjust your drafting strategy.

[ferion]

....
If you are 4th starting position, you may need to adjust your drafting strategy.

Exactly THIS

[Gaidzahg]

In our live playing group, 4th gets nothing outright. When we play 5ers (which we do as often if not more than 4ers), 5th player does get an extra food, but we agreed that would be too powerful in a 4er.

That said, we do have a couple house rules to make going 4th suck less. One is that the starting player cannot take SP again in Round 1, and the second is that you can't go last the next time we play.

But that's at our house. Neither of these is appropriate for play on BGA, either practically or spiritually. Like Direful said, you just gotta adjust your draft. At least you know going into the draft what your position is going to be. I've played in games where the starting order is decided after the draft, and no thank you.

[Cool_DJ]

How does BGA determine player order? Is it random or is it based on your playing order in previous games? E.g. on chess.com the system ensures you play equally with white and black pieces.

[MasN]

We've been through a bunch of stats threads, and 4th seat has been underperforming consistently every time, across different AAS modes, different banlists, and different draft formats.

In addition, why is the stats even needed to prove this? It is very clear simply by reading the rules that second seat is better than third, and third better than fourth.

I have a friend who even will quit turn 1 when given 4th seat unless they get a very good draft. I am not defending my friend's behavior, but it should be clear the 4th seat problem is bad enough it is negatively affecting the enjoyment of the game.

I think something should be done about this, especially for competitive play, where players should start on an even playing field. +1f, win tiebreakers, all fine.

My preferred solution is the "snake rule", where all players start with 3 food. On turn 1, the first person is played in 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st order. The second person is then played in the normal 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th order, and the normal order is followed for the rest of the game.