by Coleman on Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:58 am
I've mostly just been playing games against myself as 8 players.
I'm actually kind of embarrassed by how much I've tested this since I've been blowing a lot of people off due to time issues.
First, I ran 8 scenario tests, usually not to completion, just to find out what I wanted to know.
First I wanted to be sure that suiciding to kill someone first turn before they could move was very unlikely, and that when it did succeed the person who did it was actually in a pretty bad position as a result. I did this 4 times. The only suicide that worked to wipe someone out was in the 3rd test game. That person (Mapuche to Comanche) was easily eliminated by the Aztecs and Dutch. I was not very pleased with that, but at least trying to do that turned out badly for them.
I then wanted to make sure that building wasn't a very good strategy for anyone. What I found was that if any Europe country took their Landing Point and then immediately started to play a build game it turned out well for them. Too well. If every Europe country starts building the only chance for the native countries is Alliance with eachother to decrease borders. I learned a lot from this, but I'd rather not go into deep detail.
I then started playing games until each position eventually won at least once. The results of that are as follows:
France 3
Inuit 2
Comanche 3
Britain 5
Spanish 1 (they ended up not in a lot of these games though)
Aztecs 2
Mapuches 2
Dutch 3
Portuguese 2
So yes, it took 23 games for the Spanish to win. I think Spain was in less than half of those though, and the British were in all of them (I think...). Regardless of those excuses I do feel the British might have it too good and the Spanish probably are in the worst position. What to do about it, if anything, is beyond me and the advantage/disadvantage is slight.
My analysis of each position during all of this:
Inuit
Very boxed in. Often drawn into an early conflict with France who is also boxed in. You feel very safe in this position, but if both France and Comanche set their sights on you and the Aztecs and British are drawn south it gets ugly.
Comanche
They feel very open at first but it actually isn't that bad. They need to be careful to leave a majority on their homeland at the beginning because it's pretty easy for all the other natives to sneak up on it if it is poorly defended.
Aztec
Very comfortable to play as coming from Feudal War. Not much else to say about them. Spain (but it might just be the way I play Spain) usually comes after you though.
Mapuche
This might just be my own problem but Mapuche's strength and weakness are the same, they touch a lot of people. Mapuche usually does best doing what I call the gimil starting strategy of taking just one territory at first even though they are surrounded by 1s. A Mapuche player needs to keep their army count up and take things slowly, doing their best to stay in a good position to advance on the weakest person touching them.
France
Unless you want to get fancy with the Atlantic port (which would be dumb if all of the South Americas and British are playing) your best option is to hope the Inuit's think they can head south and move over to eat at them while they are in conflict with the Comanche or other natives. There are a lot of neutrals to eat through for you no matter what you do as your structure is very unique compared to the other Colonies.
British
Easy to move west as Comanche tends to get drawn in conflict with other natives. They often won't miss an eastern territory or two of theirs, allowing you a nice extra army to go after a Europe neighbor. For some reason I never felt drawn to the port as the British until later in the game.
Spanish
These people have what I consider to be the worst position in the game. It isn't that they can't win though, I hope, but they were the last to win in my tests, and I'm not sure if my annoyance at their being the only people left not to win influenced my play. I often ended up with Spain being the ones not playing though...
Anyway, the best thing to do is leave Britain and the Comanche the hell alone and go for the Aztecs. The Aztecs will expect this but Britain is usually too dangerous (nobody seems to like gunning for them so they are free to do a lot) the Comanche are often being targeted by too many other people. Mapuches are also a viable option, but they are a harder target to keep if you get an early victory against them. People don't like letting someone sit with two homelands and almost everyone can quickly reach the Mapuches.
Dutch/Portuguese
I put these together because they play about the same. If everyone around you is playing you are looking at a romance of the three kingdoms style conflict of epic frustration, often resulting in everyone losing as a Northern conquerer rushes down at you once they get a homeland or two. Dice matter a bit too much here. Needless to say if you have bad dice start building and hope the other two fight a while until you are viable again.
Anyway...
I did not do any testing on games with less then 8 people. I did do several 4v4 games with 4 natives against 4 Europe just to amuse myself. The natives won all of these for a lot of reasons. I doubt the lines in 4v4 would fall so exact very often in actual play, so that doesn't concern me too much.
On an individual level some things happened that led me to increase the Europe neutrals from 5 to 6. This had to do with several things I'd rather not share unless you people absolutely force me to. Needless to say that guarantee of at least 3 rolls with 2 dice defensively with 6 instead of 5 (going from 7 to 10 times europe has to go against a 2 dice roll if they want their whole colony) made all the difference.