The year is 2020. Because of the lockdown, I have played quite a few solo games of GMT Games’ excellent series of COIN wargames. And since Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection by Harold Buchanan is my favourite COIN game (or at least one of my favourite ones), I have played a lot of solo LoD games. And since “British Return to New York” is my favourite scenario set-up, I have played it a lot. Twelve times, actually. Which I think warrants an analysis of the results.
With four Winter Quarters cards and French preparations at 9, “British Return to New York” guarantees that the French are in the war at the end of the first campaign or at the beginning of the second one, meaning the game is going to be meaty soon enough. The length of the game also makes sure that many if not all Brilliant Stroke cards will be played (something I haven’t seen in the sorter scenarios).
Here are the statistics from the twelve games I’ve played; four as the British player, three as the Patriot or the French, and two as the Indian. Each time all other factions were played as Non-Player (NP), with a strict application of the rules (8.0) and of the bots.
Basically, I would play a given faction until I understood how the bots played and manoeuvred them into letting me win— mostly by implementing non-historical strategies, and then I would move on to the next faction.
The table below shows the results of the twelve games in terms of victory margins computed as per section 8.8.
The line in bold corresponds to the faction I’ve played; all the other ones are NP. The green cell corresponds to the winning faction of the game. The difference that I have computed is between the winner and myself (when I’ve lost) or between myself and the second-best player (when I’ve won).
I have taken three severe beatings but globally the difference with the winning NP faction was low as soon as I figured out the NP factions’ routines vis-à-vis my faction. The easiest faction to master was the Indian faction (a victory at the 2nd game); the most difficult one, the British one: it seemed the Indian would always benefit of whatever I would do, as exemplified by the results of the 1st and 3rd games. Also, except for the odd Raid command (3.4.4), the Indian didn’t really help me; on the contrary, its Scout commands (3.4.3) would deplete colonies from much-needed cubes and prevent me from waging battles.
I think the following is more interesting. I have awarded 1 point to each NP faction when it won; ½ when the NP faction won with the same victory margin as another NP faction.
It appears that NP British and Patriot never win (or, in the case of the British, almost never win). Now I have played 12 games so I cannot ascribe the result to luck... I definitely believe that the bots are slanted against the two main factions: the main Rebel faction, and the main Royalist faction. I clearly remember how the bots would almost never target my Indian “ally” when I played the British.
This shows when you look at how often the ‘minor’ factions win, with a great advantage for the Indian (half again as many victories as the French). I believe there are two reasons for that: (a) the fact that the Indian faction is globally left alone by the other NP factions, and (b) the fact that many events are immediately beneficial to the Indian (mostly as added villages on the map) whereas the beneficial events of the other NP factions are usually linked to some condition which may or may not be present at the time the event card is drawn (e.g., free March and Battle if such-and-such condition is met).
I wish someone implemented the Arjuna system to LoD, so as to break the ‘routine’ of the bots, and in particular to have the NP factions take into account which faction is leading and target it.
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