by TimMierz
In my experience after about two dozen plays, there are certainly players who know the game better than others. When people don't know the geography well, it shows. Sure, sometimes people luck out - and if no one knows the geography, a quick random choice as you describe will be as good as a slow uninformed choice. In our games, the scores aren't wildly different from each other, but there is generally a clear winner.The border penalty is supposed to be a penalty, not a sure loss. The situation you describe in point 2 shows that the other players didn't do particularly well in choosing their states either. The game urges you to find states with a "padding" of 1 in between them.
There is also a difference between the US and Europe maps. The Europe map is friendlier, as there are many more states bordering each other. It's hard to get especially long routes. The US map is far less connected, and the routes will be more expensive in general. I'm guessing by your BGG info that you played on Europe. For further challenge, check out my custom Africa map.
The game is certainly not for everyone, but as you're someone who likes geography and maps, I'm surprised it wasn't for you. Do you really think the choices don't matter, or do you suspect that none of you were especially good at it and so you were all playing more or less blindly?