First player advantage

[captainyesterday]

After playing a couple games of this, it seems like the first player has a major advantage over the others. I don't think a pie rule would work if it's a game larger than two players. One of my opponents in my last game, timm1, thought maybe increasing the gems taken from players two and three (assuming a game of 3 players). Has anyone else noticed the first player advantage? What about ways to combat it if it is skewed?

(Edited for clarity)

[MoiMagnus]

In the BGG thread about that, they suggest to at least award Nobles at the end of the round, instead of the end of a player's turn, and "duplicating" Nobles if multiple players should get them at once.

I'm thinking about the following: last player starts with a Crown token (which is not a gem, so doesn't count in the limit of 10 gems). At the end of your turn and additionally to your usual action, you can use the Crown token to reserve a card (you don't take a gold, you're still limited to 3 cards reserved). If you do so, you give the Crown token to the player before you (4th -> 3rd -> 2nd -> 1st -> 4th -> etc at 4 players).

[I've not playtested this idea]

[6element]

Arguably, there is the first player disadvantage as well - during the last round the first player (naturally) plays first, and other players can beat him with higher score. Non-first players have more control when finishing the game.

[MoiMagnus]

Arguably, there is the first player disadvantage as well - during the last round the first player (naturally) plays first, and other players can beat him with higher score. Non-first players have more control when finishing the game.

I'm not sure to understand.

If you reach 15 points on round 10, trigger then end game, and someone else after you reach 17 points this same round, then if it was the other way around (and assume the game goes in a similar way), they would have reached 17 points on round 10 and trigger the end game, and you would still have reached only 15 points.

The only difference is that if you're first player, you have to think about whether it's better to end the game this round or to reserve a card to block someone else to delay their win. If you're last player, you don't have that luxury, you can't delay the victory of others if they're already triggered the end of the game.

Admittedly, at low level of play, you can "surprise" the other players by winning and ending the game immediately when being last players, but you can't do it as much when being first player. But against players that keep an eye on what you're doing, unless you made a blind reservation of a card or get lucky with a new revealed card, they already know how much you are able to score this round and there is no surprise to have.

[6element]

When you have an option to finish the game with 15 right now - you just finish the game without worrying about opponents. If you just "trigger the last round" the situation can be different. It might be better to reserve the card which gives your opponent 17, for example.

PS: I'm not an expert in this game (played it maybe five hundred times in real life), but didn't notice any significant advantage of the first player.

[Pistol Star]

First player advantage is clearly a big issue in this game.

The very least what should happen imho is changing the tiebreaker rule about winning the game to whoever was the last in turn order of all the players who reached the same amount of 15+ points when the game end was triggered.

If they score the same amount as the player(s) in front of them in turn order then they have nearly always played better than the other players. There are rare cases where the first player plays correctly and opens up the one card or one of the 2 cards that are the jackpot cards for the player behind them.

I think this would be a fair and easy to implement rule in real life games.
I doubt it would ever be changed on BGA as long as it isn't an official variant.