by davypi
1) I would be leveraging your play style against both of you. By being the first person to pick up goods, I would wait until a location has three or four tiles on it, preferably duplicates, and snatching that up. Since all other locations would have fewer good at that point, I would be shipping more goods than you over the course of the game. In relation, there are two tech tiles that give shipping bonuses and a third that allow to pick up goods from two spaces when a boat is played, all of which would penalize your reactionary playing.2) If its really that important to you to retake start player, again it seems really easy to take advantage of your play style. Since neither of you are even picking up boats, on the fifth turn of a round, use your two dice to pick up and play a boat. This makes you start player. On the first turn of the following round, again pick up and play a boat. This puts you two steps ahead on the turn order track and other player doesn't have an option to acquire two boats to catch up.