First player advantage

[aFoxy1]

The first player advantage is that you have the best chance of finding a spot that doesn't limit your second turn (e.g., doesn't neighbor other terrain draws that won't be useful on turn 2).

As you get farther down in turn order your options generally become more limiting and a bad second draw will doom you against good players. In most games, there is also one bonus (farmers, merchants, in particular) that is critical and placing first gives you the best shot at scoring a lot of points with it.

[Cos-]

Speaking as a player with ELO hovering around 500, playing a lot of 2- 3- and 4- player games and sometimes 5-player as well, I have been thinking about this for the past year or so and my opinion is leaning even more towards "there's no advantage in going first on average". The main source of luck in this game, by far, is what colors you draw, and what colors others draw.

The first player advantage is that you have the best chance of finding a spot that doesn't limit your second turn (e.g., doesn't neighbor other terrain draws that won't be useful on turn 2).
As you get farther down in turn order your options generally become more limiting and a bad second draw will doom you against good players.

I think this is only somewhat true when you're a less experienced player, but becomes not true at all once you have enough experience. Once you know the strategies for choosing where to move first in a way that plans for the possibilities of what may happen with your second draw, the difference between being the first player vs. going later diminishes from small to none, IMO. Which color you draw on your first turn makes a much bigger difference, depending on how it relates to the current board layout.

In most games, there is also one bonus (farmers, merchants, in particular) that is critical and placing first gives you the best shot at scoring a lot of points with it.

This is much more about which color(s) you draw first, than about whether you're the first player or not. In a 2 or 3 player game, you do have a lot of power to set yourself up to get the special tiles you want most even if you draw the wrong color on your first turn; in 4 player games the odds are higher that tile will be gone by your next turn if you drew the wrong color first, and in 5 player games you might as well assume you won't get a choice of special tile on your next turn so just go for what you can. But in any of these, the main source of luck is what colors people draw first, rather than what order they play in, and the first player doesn't have much of an advantage on average.

[FastrThanYou]

Most games are going to give an advantage to the first player. Can't really be helped and there is definitely one in KB but I don't think its significant enough to sway the game.. now if you're second player AND you have the same card as the first player yeah you might be kinda screwed. Still depends a lot on second card tho.

If you really delved into it I bet you'd find luck on second card is far more important then anything else. Really just luck with cards.. I lost a game the other day because I draw 5 canyons in a row. Unfortunately the map tiles connected canyons so I couldn't even fill it and I was trying to leave gaps because we were scoring hermits. I had to keep closing those gaps. There was nothing I could do to win that game and it had nothing to do with who went first.

[Cos-]

I lost a game the other day because I draw 5 canyons in a row. Unfortunately the map tiles connected canyons so I couldn't even fill it and I was trying to leave gaps because we were scoring hermits. I had to keep closing those gaps. There was nothing I could do to win that game and it had nothing to do with who went first.

That is not just luck, that is also about how you played. This is what I meant by saying, in an earlier comment, that to some extent you make your own luck. By playing first in a space where you could easily get trapped if your next couple of cards are the same color, you're choosing to take a risk, deliberately (if you're experienced in this game and look at that). It _may_ be a good risk to take if that move is really much much better than other possibilities if you won't get the same color next - because odds are 80% you won't. And odds are only 4% that you'll get the next color twice in a row. But if you're playing your first move on a spot where there is a 4% chance that your next two moves will be complete duds and set you way back, you ought to be doing it because there's a very strong advantage to playing there, strong enough to take that 4% risk of being set back by two moves (and honestly, it doesn't matter much if it's 2 or 3 or 4 - if you're playing against good players, having your 2nd and 3rd moves be useless will lose the game pretty consistently).

If that move doesn't shine brightly enough with big advantages, to make it worth that risk, it's often better to look for another decent move that exposes you to less risk. Think about what the _worse_ next draw you might get is, and then, imagine you draw that card, and think about what the _worst_ 3rd card would be for you if you did draw that worst second one. Can you play defensively against those possibilities? Or are you taking that 20% or 4% risk?

Sometimes you'll make the assessment, decide to take that risk, and lose one game for it. But do it knowingly, deliberately. And try not to lose more than 4% of those games to this kind of bad luck!