# Money can buy you privates

One of the 1839 playtesters argues convincingly that $2700 is too much starting capital for 1839. When playing, that feels right, it does seem too rich, but the numbers don’t make sense to me. Both games have a non-sellable B&O-type private for$220, so ignoring that:

• Maximal total private sell-in value in 1830 is $(20+40+70+110+160)*2 = \$800$. The privates in a given game of 1839 are semi-random, but the face value of the random portion ranges from$400 to $680 • Smallest maximal private sell-in value in 1839 is $(40+160+160+300+400) = \$1,060$.
• Largest maximal private sell-in value in 1839 is $(40+160+160+300+680) = \$1,340$. That’s variously$260 and $540 more than 1830. In a 4-player game of 1830, privates generally sell as a collective set for a little under a 40% premium over face value, or 70% of maximal sell-in value. 1839’s privates shouldn’t be any worse than 1830’s in sum, and are often better due to useful special powers. That gives baselines for total expenditure: • 1830:$560
• 1839: $742 -$938

Which puts the baseline additional expenditure on 1839’s privates from $182-$378 more than 1830. While I haven’t done a formal permutations analysis as to where the average total value is for 1830, my sense is that it sits around $1,150, which gives$245 more in overage. As such, adding $300 to the game’s starting capitalisation seems not-reasonable. Yeah, a bit rich,$15ea too rich in a 3-player game, but surely not overwhelmingly so? Or is the richness seen more as a product of the dutch auction for the privates rather than 1830’s traditional reservation auction?