Prices of sequins

The dollar auction model mentioned below is attractive but may not be enough. I’m also concerned that the early stages of the game will be relatively uninteresting as the player’s only opportunity is to invest in/build their starting cities, and given the action point bonus of operating in multiple cities, their unfailing interest will be in linking the city states as rapidly as possible with transports.

A new proposal for initial setup:

1. Setup map
2. In random order have players place city markers on the board, one per player. There may be spacing limitations.
3. In that same order conduct a standard auction for turn order. as each player passes/drops they take the lowest available turn order slot.
4. In the new turn order have players select their starting cities.
5. Give each city cash proportional to the square of the turn order bid of the player in the inverse position in the turn order. Thus the first player’s city gets cash equal to the square of the last player’s final bid, the second player’s city the square of the second to last player’s bid etc.
6. The players may then invest this money in buildings and actions freely, producing products and transports, and having the city consume/place/etc them until the money is exhausted.
7. Start the actual game.

The square may be too high a proportion. It may also be necessary to force the last/low bidder’s payment to $0 in order to prevent excessive bid inflation: All players bid high in order to flood the setup with early cash. It isn’t clear that this would be a problem however.