And the world goes around the tuba of your mind

I’ve largely assumed that Colonial Zoo maps will not be symmetrical and/or balanced. Some maps may be based on real world maps (Greece and the Baltic appeal to me), and others will be relatively random or artful designs with more concentration on challenge than fairness across multiple players. I have to assume that some positions on the board/map used will simply be better and will give the players that start there an inherent advantage, and that’s a problem.

Intuitively. Age of Steam’s variant on the classic Dollar Auction may be the right approach. The basic model would be that a turn order would be establish randomly and in that turn order the players would each found a City State by positioning a city centre for it somewhere on the map. Once that was done the player order would be randomised yet again and the players would iteratively bid part of their starting money for the initial turn order.. Bidding would proceed rotationally in turn order and upon their turn a player could either up the bid by whatever factor they wish, or drop. If they drop they would take the lowest currently unoccupied place in the turn order. By upping the bid they would remain in the auction for turn order. Once bidding is concluded the first and second place players would pay the full value of their final bids to the bank, the player last in turn order would pay nothing, and those in-between would pay half their final bid rounded up. Once turn order was resolved, in the new turn order the players would exclusively choose which City State they wanted to adopt as their starting position.