Seating orders effect on Puerto Rico

Question

Within my group its taken for granted that some seats in Puerto Rico are better (if only slightly) than others. There's a general consensus that 3rd and 4th seat are strictly better than 1st, where 2nd and 5th lie is a matter of debate.

I remember stumbling across some hard numbers (data collected from tournament play if I recall correctly) backing some of this up, but can't seem find them anymore.

Basically, does anyone have those numbers?

I'd also appreciate some opinions as to why this is the case.

My personal pet theory is that 3rd and 4th seat are in the sweet spot for both diversified production and an early game Factory. Although that's not a guarnateed victory, it should keep you competitive in most games (all else being equal).

Answer 1

Seating is very important in Puerto Rico.

The seat that wins the most is 1st Corn (based on World Boardgaming Championship stats). Here's one of the tourney pages with stats, if you look around you'll find more.

Here's the compilation of stats from 2002 to 2009:

Seat 1 indigo 41.53 scoring average, 19.9% of wins
Seat 2 indigo 40.73 scoring average, 19.5% of wins
Seat 3 corn   43.48 scoring average, 30.8% of wins
Seat 4 corn   43.35 scoring average, 29.7% of wins

Having corn allows you to produce sooner, and more, so you can make more points shipping. It requires less men, so you can do more with the men you have.

One of the big reasons that it gives an advantage is that it's a simple strategy, just make corn and ship. The other strategies take more thought and hard decisions.

One other factor that comes into play in Puerto Rico is that you have to change your tactics and maybe your strategies based on the player to the left and what he does.

Answer 2

Starting with corn (seat 3 and 4) seems to have a large advantage from stats, but this does not mean necessarily that the game is that unbalanced.

I believe this advantage, something close to a 50% extra comparing to seats 1 and 2, is accentuated by the fast the producing and shipping corn is an easier strategy to grasp and effective deliver. When playing with more experienced players the gap is probably not that wide.

This is similar to the Temple strategy on Tzolkin. It is not that the temple strategy is stronger but it is the easier thing to do without messing your game up, if you don't know what you are doing.

Still, for the new or casual Puerto Rico player, the 3rd seat is the best spot, followed close by the 4th.

This topic on BGG has more stats and balancing suggestions with simulations.

Answer 3

The statistics are interesting and I certainly can't argue with them.

My thinking is that it does not give any lasting advantage. It is nice to produce and ship early but it is also nice to produce a good that has Trade value early on too. In other words your strategy for a particular game may be influenced, for good or ill, by the seating order. Part of that influence originates from the first round effects of seating. However, the seating arrangement/order of play matters at least as much for trading, shipping, etc.; but not because someone got corn or indigo to start. For instance, if the person to my right produces the same items and likes to trade frequently I find that has much more of an impact than that they initially had a corn plantation or an indigo plantation.