@iain Let's say there's you and another player with a FOO factory, and it has (or will have) 4 dice and you're looking at where you want to be in turn order and how much is worth spending to get the turn order you want. How big is that edge?

If you are before them in turn order, by default you'll get the first and third dice in the market and they'll get the second and fourth dice. However if they are before you in turn order, then those positions are reversed. How much better is being first? How much more capacity (and thus money) could you get than them on average?

Of course, there could be three players, then the first player in turn order would be looking at first and fourth and the other two players only second and third. On average, how much better is first in turn order than second than third in that case?

And then other variations. (And of course, the dice when actually rolled, may not agree -- but you are playing each round to setup the next round...and so you're betting on averages and risk postures...)

Then you can start looking at managing cash reserves and capacity across different factories so you can suck up windfalls without compromising your position, and what the risks/stats are on that.

(The rabbithole keeps going)

I don't remember the numbers any more, but they were eye-opening for me at the time.

@iain A game-changer for me was spending a weekend looking at all the founding patterns, like how much better worse first and third of 4D6 is than second and fourth (and then all the other patterns etc). Those shapes were not what I expected...and in turn that revealed the risk-posture basis of the game in ways I'd not thought of until then.

@iain Welcomes to Winsome minimum spanning tree rules! Every word carries more than its own weight.

5P is more skill-demanding and can readily insta-doom the 5th seat (which is why I volunteer to take it). For learning, lower player counts are fine, but I'd tend to look at them as place-holders until the players qualify for 5P, or look at insta-death in 5P as a sometimes happens plus a skill-qualifier (still sometimes just happens). 5P>>4P>3P.

Paper and pencil is fine, possibly recommended. I've always used poker chips.

@iain Oh, I love Lokomotive Werks so much.

So many players just see the single-turn optimisations of maximising income, when that's rote, decision-free, absent agency & control & gameplay, and is just dull & uninteresting. Where the game sits is in managing your personal risk profile & production capacity against the dice market.

One of the most doughty attacks you can do to another player? Leave dice only partially consumed and so not re-rolled. Oh look, I just didn't buy capacity to use that last pip. I could have...but didn't....ooops! Sure, you could have put a capacity there and made some money, but now die won't be re-rolled, that factory will be under-performing next turn, they're positionally heavily committed to it (which is why you did this), you've already moved on in the next turn, and in two turns it will have rusted...

Keeping old factories around to stuff with unused capacity to help buy turn order, only later promoting that capacity up into useful ranges is also nice.

Such a player won't always win (dice rolls remain important), but they'll strongly tend to and they'll weed out opponents like a maniacal combine harvester, quickly reducing the game to them and just one or two contending opponents.