I am ready to accept that the "optimal debt at founding", with perfect play from all sides (!), might sometimes reside between debt ticks. Any amount of fear of randomness, however, does not change things. 

If you wait until the risk is 0, you're essentially choosing to win the 1 game where the debt-taker gets wrecked, and lose the other 19 where he doesn't.  Does not sound like a good deal to me. You cannot form your entire founding strategy to play around that annoying power/carbon/whateverelseisimportanttoyouropponent shortage which sometimes indeed does happen, but usually doesn't. WHATEVER the fluctuations, WHATEVER the risk, there is some amount of debt where you can expect to have a good game. If you get the same found with less debt, that's cool, but that's also risky.

Perfect play does not (mainly) concern with the other player's risk tolerance, it plays with your own. You're supposed to found when you think it's profitable to do so: when you think you're better off founding now than later. If someone else is able to found earlier and make you instantly feel like you got robbed, then maybe you need to adjust your views on the game. Feels to me that it's just trying to cheat the other person by founding at the best spot "too late" - something that deserves to get punished. 

"Too damn early" really does not change into "too damn late" between 1 debt tick. 

Veivi, suppose we have Cubit vs Seilore, and we give both players a button that says "you win this game with 80% probability". Seilore would click the button, but Cubit would not. I think this is Galactic Wino's point: when you found with high debt, then random events influence the game a lot more. So when the perfect-play point is 60k, Cubit wouldn't take the 60k because it's too vulnerable to random chance, and then Seilore would be able to snap up the found at 40k. High debt causing problems with random events could be true, but it's hard to say, and I don't really think so.

Veivi, so you are absolutely fine with match outcome being determined by a single gambling act?

I believe Veivi's contention is that founding doesn't have to become a gamble unless you let it become one. I think I'd tend to agree that we (i.e. most players) are conservative about founding with high debt (and our frequent trips into D debt feel like they vindicate that), to the point where we're shooting to get a very large advantage off of founding and losing out tremendously if we fail to get the spot. If we instead plan to found the moment it becomes slightly favorable, then losing the found is never going to set us back much. That said, founding sooner generally isn't viable simply because there's not enough time to process enough of the map to make the decision by the time a more theoretically optimal found time comes up, even ignoring the difficulty of figuring out what that number would be. (I also think I'd tend to disagree with Wino's assessment of the risks of shortages while starting with high debt; your better found means you probably get into power sooner and can make enough extra off the higher power price to offset a fair amount of the extra debt)

I'm sympathetic to the idea that map imbalance can be solved by just founding earlier so that the "one good found" and the next-best option are closer in value, but ultimately I think I'd rather not see those situations at all, simply because they just don't feel enjoyable. Basically, even if you're still in a winnable position due to debt differences, I don't think there are enough good ways to leverage your lower debt to catch up, so you're just stuck trying to get your opponent to debt spiral, which (to me) isn't an interesting way to play. My own experience with being on either side of a more even "one found" map situation is extremely limited, though, so I could certainly be wrong. Playing a series of games on a single map seed with one good found would be a good learning experience.

Blues, whether or not a heavy debt founder choses to make power on HQ 2, the risk of a short or conversely a surplus therafter is the problem. If you were counting on power to pay off debt, then those power tiles were an expensive waste when a suprlus comes. The problem is when you absolutely HAVE to pay off some debt by SOL 3-4 or spiral and lose, your economy is more prone to random event screws than someone who only has to keep upgrading to stay in the game.

This risk of ruin is what makes competetive chess Masters chose to play it safe during tournaments against weaker opposition (for the sake of the prize funds and their ratings). Rather than walking the tight rope and going for a full fledged tactical battle (chaos that tends towards higher risk of defeat), they steer the game into calmer end games. They let their full set of skills throughout the game determine the outcome rather than a limited set (early game tactics).

With a single dominant founding location, we have the chess equivalent of a game determined by opening tactics. Or, the poker equivalent of an all-in pre-flop shovefest rather than thoughful consideration of the action on multiple streets. I prefer the strategically rich strategies that evolve throughout the entire course of the game. This is more possible when both players have access to a diversity of resources.

It's inevitable conclusion if he thinks that a single OP spot is great for the game. Essentially the first person to claim the found determines the outcome. It doesn't matter if he loses or wins at the end. Both players get robbed of a proper game experience since it's mostly game over.  The balance point he was referring to exists indeed but is very hard to impossible to figure out pre-start. And it's really not a point but a range, just not wide enough to allow even experienced players to nail it down. As a result we see no CLOSE games on such maps. And again, I'd rather see close long games than game over upon founding. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaqhEtg5qiM

Second game at 11:00, Yerand takes the founding location at 40k. He can't claim or squish all the aluminum tiles because then the auction system will create another one. That's unfortunate, because I would have squished all of them except for one, then claimed the last, if not for knowing the auction system. Cubit never looks at the spot, so I can't really say if this was possible.

Then: teleportation auction. This is really bad for Yerand.

Then: surplus on aluminum.

The RNG really did screw Yerand over. I guess this is Wino's point: a good founding location usually means controlling some market, and controlling a market puts you at risk of being wrecked by random auctions. But I still don't think high debt was the issue. Yerand didn't want the auction because he was near D, but Veivi was about to make money on power, so debt was cash for both of them.