in the beta initial villager batch sometimes spawned farther or closer to my initial hunt than my opponents. they can even spawn and walk away from the hunt on opposite sides of the tc. this requires a player to walk them back towards the tc and then tc hop them on the hunt, giving one of us an initial unearned head start.
initial villager batch should spawn with a herdable under tc that they auto harvest, just like the Africans in aoe3. this enables all players to send a single villager to build a granary on the initial hunt for a more even playing field regardless of where the initial hunt spawned. rng spawn will still have an effect eventually but there will be less initial idle/travel time, reducing its impact.
its important for higher levels of play where saving those extra seconds in the beginning can snowball for tight timings. it would also help lower levels of play since they have more time to find a food source without idling. this makes the game both more approachable and fair.
a better solution might be to have initial hunt consistently spawn right underneath tc and have the villager batch auto hunt them instead, but ill leave that to game designers and balance testers who have better judgement.