“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” — Benjamin Franklin
How to Play
Choose a side and take command across the thirteen colonies. As the Patriots you fight for independence against a stronger foe; as the British Crown you wield the Royal Navy and an army of regulars to crush the rebellion before France and attrition turn the tide. The other side is played by the AI. (The rules below are written from the Patriot view; reverse them when you play the Crown.)
Treasury (gold) — earned each turn from the regions you hold. Spend it to recruit troops.
Resolve (morale) — the national will to fight. Win battles to raise it, lose ground to drain it. If your Resolve hits zero, the cause collapses.
Recruit — select one of your regions, then press Muster to raise soldiers there (costs gold).
Manpower — each region has only so many young men, set by its population. Mustering draws them down, and the fallen never return to the pool. Populous Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Virginia can field armies; thinly-settled regions and the frontier soon run dry. Gold cannot buy soldiers who do not exist.
March & Attack — select a region with troops, then click an adjacent region. Move into your own land to reinforce, or into enemy land to give battle. Each army may act once per turn.
Generals (marked with a ✦) lead an army and each has his own character. Washington is a peerless defender who spares his men; Greene slips away with his army even when beaten; Gates is a wall that mauls anyone who assaults him. For the Crown, Cornwallis hits devastatingly hard but bleeds his ranks; Burgoyne is bold but courts disaster; Howe is a steady all-rounder. Their attack and defense ratings show in the region panel. A general rides with his troops when they march or assault (you choose), advancing into a conquered region on victory — but a commander whose region is overrun, or whose broken assault is run down, is captured: a grave morale blow with no replacement, so guard them.
Cities (the squares — Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Charleston) sit within their colony's countryside and are fortified ports that produce more gold. New York City and Philadelphia are the two capitals. A city can be held even when its countryside is enemy-held — the British supply New York City by sea — so taking one means besieging it through its countryside first.
Winter punishes armies caught in the open: each year cold and disease thin any sizable field army, and some winters are far harsher than others. Cities are winter quarters — armies sheltering in them are spared. Don't keep a great host in the open through the winter.
The British are relentless. Their colonies are few, but fresh regulars arrive by sea throughout the war — manpower no colony can match — and concentrate to drive on Philadelphia. Spend your men wisely; you cannot replace them as fast as the Crown ships its own.
The sea (⚓) & ships. Three connected ocean nodes form a coastal sea lane linking the ports (Halifax, Boston, New York City, Yorktown, Charleston, Savannah — Philadelphia, up the Delaware, is land-only). Each node shows ship strength as crown–patriot, and whoever has more ships controls it. The controller may move armies onto the node and sail them step-by-step (port → sea → sea → port) to land or mount amphibious assaults, and it blockades enemy ports there (halving their income). Build warships at your ports (and redeploy fleets between nodes) to out-number the Royal Navy and seize the seas — land armies can never fight ships, and an army caught at a node you lose control of is lost at sea. Britain rules the waves at the start.
France may join your cause if your Resolve stays strong past 1777 — bringing gold, regulars, and, decisively, a battle fleet that arrives in the mid-Atlantic and southern seas. With those ships you can out-number the Royal Navy there, sail your own armies, and blockade Yorktown and New York — the turning of the war.
Victory: Drive the British from the colonies or break the Crown's Resolve. Failing that, you must reach 1783 still holding Philadelphia and winning the war of will — a passive defence will not be enough; the Crown holds on unless you have the upper hand. Lose your capital or your own Resolve and the cause is lost.