Would you bid VPs for turn order?

[aaronkw]

Let's say you know what board you are playing and which tiles are displayed in Phase A, but you do not know your dice rolls yet. Would you consider bidding VPs for turn order at this phase to determine who starts the game? Why or why not?

[nandblock]

Not without knowing your dice rolls. If you go first you get fewer workers so even if you want to take desirable tiles you may not get rolls that help you do so. Given the uncertainty it is not worth paying VP for the first crack at the tiles.

[Ra1ro]

Sure. Even without knowing first roll first/second player might have some extra advantage, that could be translated into VP. We could build strong CoB engine/AI that could approximate advantage in VP just like it is done in chess in terms of pawns.
Example1: having exactly 2 ships on the map is + for second player on a map without water region of size 2 next to starting castle.
Example2: 1 strong early game yellow on map 9. No idea how I would rate it thought.

[Pistol Star]

I believe that the 2nd player has on average a good advantage on the highest level.

50% of games will start with 1+ black market ships (most likely 1, if it's 1+).
The first player must hope to roll well or they are right away at a huge disadvantage while the 2nd player nearly always has the opportunity of an extra turn to grab more powerful tiles (mostly a ship or a mine. Sometimes a very powerful economic yellow tile or a castle). So either they roll well right away or they can nearly surely use an extra turn.

The 2nd player will then usually be the first player going into B1 and have the opportunity to grab 3 top tiles, which will most often lead them into getting a ship + ship + mine combo, a ship + ship + something else combo or a ship + mine + something else combo. This is powerful, because the 1st player in A1 couldn't take 3 top tiles right away and more often than not the 2nd player in A1 is statistically slightly better off, as long as the 2nd player starts next to at least 1 ship space, but better next to several ship spaces with hopefully very different numbers to increase their A1 and A2 firing power.

I think I would always want to start 2nd. Even maybe on board 7 I guess. But on that board it's quite close.