British Government

The British government plays a very important role in this part of history:

• The motivation to tax America was to help pay for the growing deficit that the British military was causing, starting with the War with Spain that ended in 1730.
• Specifically, the government wanted the American colonies to subsidize the troops that were over in America, especially after the French and Indian War (which is really just the North American theatre of the Seven Years War with France).

The thought is to contrast the British Government’s relationship with America to the EIC’s relationship with India. The colonies in America started out as commercial ventures, just as the East India Company did. Since the America colonies were not initially profitable, the investors backed out and the colonies became royal colonies, supported by the government.

In the same way that Presidencies oversaw and made decisions about India, the British Government (specifically the Board of Trade and Plantations) made recommendations and decisions about how to oversee the 13 Colonies.

Parliament and the Colonial Office

The higher focus on the British Government means the majority of new positions in this scenario are based on the Government, not the Company. These additional roles compromise the Colonial Office - historically, a part of the Southern Department.

From a gameplay perspective, the Colonial Office acts like a fourth presidency. The positions included are a remix of the offices and abilities that the Company has, using similar mechanics. The familiarity of the actions will hopefully streamline them and not add too much additional length or complexity to the game.

Note

There is a potential confusion around using the word “office”, as the positions in the Company are referred to both as “offices” in the rules. Naming this the “Colonial Department” is historically incorrect, but might be a better name from a rules/gameplay perspective.

Names of the Offices

The following is the envisioned additional roles for the Government (with alternative names listed below them):

Parliament

• First Lord of Trade and Plantations

Colonial Office

• Colonial Secretary
• Commander-in-Chief, North America
• Collector of Customs

Alternate Names

There are some alternate names for the various roles. The choice is to both match the name historically while also distinguishing the roles from each other.

• Colonial Office
  • Alternate: Colonial Department
• First Lord
  • Alternate: Lord Commissioner of Trade and Plantations
• Secretary
  • Alternate: Secretary of State for the Colonies
  • Alternate: Secretary of State for the Southern Department
• Collector
  • Alternate: Commissioner of Customs (Board)
  • Alternate: Customs Agent
  • Alternate: Surveyor of Customs

Acts, Statutes and Tariffs

In the base game, the Law Deck and Prime Minister mechanics are a cynical look at how the British Parliament functioned. Considering the importance of tariffs and trade regulation to this scenario, these elements need to be included in Parliament.

However, adding them to the existing law deck doesn’t work well:

• The current Law Deck is designed to act like tools or instruments, not events. The size of the deck allows the players to see 40-60% of the laws, raising the chance that a particular law or ability can be found. Dilemmas are purposefully kept at 20% of the total size. If the deck size is increased, it would dilute the ability to find a specific law and it would increase the randomness of how present dilemmas are.
• Setup would be more complex, as the additional cards would need to be shuffled in and out during setup. That shuffling in goes against the design goal of being additive.
• We also want laws to be passed that affect India, China and America, as all three are important in this scenario. We don’t want the existing laws mechanisms or likelihood to be reduced.

Instead, the design pushes us to create an additional deck of Colonial Statutes. The statutes are made up of tariffs and other regulations applied to the 13 Colonies. The law, policy and colonial statute will be voted on at the same time, increasing the negotiation space during the Parliament Meets phase.

To manage this, the First Lord of Trade and Plantations will recommend a Colonial Statute to be voted upon. This not only follows history, but helps streamlines the game by having another player manage the additional deck and decide which statute to apply. It also keeps balance by not letting the Prime Minister become too powerful in their decision-making. The First Lord is considered part of Parliament.

Note

Historically, the Board of Trade and Plantations did provide Parliament with advice and recommendations about both laws in the Colonies and worked along with the Treasury Board and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to establishes tariffs and other colonial taxes. All three are being combined here into this position.

Government Leadership

In the game, the head of each presidency is an economic role, who determines the amount of trade and the budgeting of money. For this government office, the head should have a governoring role, one especially that is closer to the military. Thus, the Colonial Secretary is the head of the Colonial Office in game; it functions like a combination of a Governor and a President.

Like a governor, the Secretary uses a dice pool to add regiments and ships. Like a president, the Secretary determines the order of operations in America (military and trade administration), and is responsible for managing the treasury, allocating additional funding for local alliances.

• Taxes collected by the Collector of Customs goes to the Secretary‘s treasury.
  • The Secretary can request additional credit to meet the budget or pay for additional military resources.
• All regiments, ships and debt must be paid as expenses during the Revenue phase.
  • If the treasury cannot cover expenses, the government must take on debt to pay the difference.
  • If the treasury has extra money, the Secretary can decide to pay down the debt.

Warning

Unlike a President, the Secretary doesn’t have any direct financial or other incentives, other than pure negotiation.

• What prevents them from just taking on massive debt?
• What incentivizes them to grow or stay the military?

If we’re going to have this, the incentives and dynamic are important to figure out.

British Military

The Commander-in-Chief, North America is a combination of the Commander of the British Army and Navy for North America. It functions similarly to the other Commanders, spending regiments to obtain dice to roll in offensive maneuvers. The Commander-in-Chief can also hire local alliances, assuming the Secretary allocates the funds.

The Commander-in-Chief has the following options:

• The Army can be spent to attack the strength of the Natives, French and/or Spanish (if included).
• The Navy can be spent to reduce the strength of the Smugglers.
• Units can be spent to open an order (or a region), at the risk of unrest.

As in India, any unspent units will be left to defend the colonies from any attack (natives or French).

The differences between the Commander-in-Chief and the other Commanders are the following:

• There is no loot in North America. As a result, there is no direct financial reward* for military actions in the Colonies, only trophies.
• The Commander-in-Chief is also responsible for the Navy, in addition to the Army. This provides additional opportunities for trophies.
• Idea: When attacking the natives or the smugglers, all of the successes are counted, instead of just one.

A direct financial reward*

To include a possible financial incentive, one idea is to include the Land Companies as a statute. Once passed, this would place “loot markers” (or another similar mechanism) for sucessfully invading Ohio and possibly Mississippi.

This would require additional map/board space to represent and may be out of scope.

Local Alliances

Both the Colonists (in the form of both local militia and privateers) and various Native American tribes could be available as local alliances to be hired. This allows us to utilize the mechanics of the Company, while also matching history. The British Army was not as effective fighting in the wilderness of North America as either the Colonists or Native Americans were.

Questions

How does this actually work? If local alliances are available, why would the Secretary not use them? This idea needs some work.

Trade and Customs

With the firms located in America, there needs to be some sort of obstacle or tension to trade. The Company is not providing that tension, like it is for deregulation scenarios in India. The source of tension that makes the most historical sense is represent the other colonial merchants and smugglers.

Normally, the Company (or Firm) President performs a roll to see if a trade is successful. However, it doesn’t make sense to have a player represent the smugglers, as the players represent a British perspective.

A reverse perspective on trade is needed. The Collector of Customs will roll to see if imports (smugglers) are taxed. This will use the same John Company result system as the rest of the game uses.

Roll	Type	Description	Possible Outcomes
1-2	Success	A merchant’s trade is discovered.	An order is not filled, OR An order is filled, with a tariff applied.
3-4	Failure	A merchant’s trade is not discovered.	An order is filled, with no tariff applied.
5-6	Catastrophic Failure	The merchant trade is not discovered and dissension is spread.	An order is closed (instead of filled), OR An order is filled and unrest is added to the region.

Because this is in reverse, multiple dice* are rolled and applied, depending on the number of orders the smugglers are trying to fill. As a result, the odds on this roll are somewhat different than most rolls in the game.

Note: Multiple Dice*

This is similar to the Commander-in-Chief and provides consistency for America: multiple dice are counted when rolling for military and trade prevention, not just the best result.

For each success that the Collector rolls, £1 would be received as a bonus, which represents the percentage that a Customs officer would receive. All applied failures will count towards initiative of the smugglers, giving them improved odds at having a good initiative.

Having to apply a single catastrophic failure to an order does not lead to dismissal. Instead, trade is adversely affected for that order. Only if all dice are catastrophic failures will the Collector be terminated from their position, just like other rolls in the game.

Similar to other trade, the placement of the filled or closed orders would be determined by the Collector, with restrictions indicated by the tariffs. This could lead to in game negotation (bribes) based on the placement of those orders. Considering that the customs officers were often accused of bribes, this fits well mechanically and thematically.

Flavor: A risky position

The customs officers were not popular in North America and the position was inherently dangerous. There are several historic examples of the officeholders abandoning their posts after pushback or retribution from the colonists. This office could start with an attrition cube (like the Chairman), or have some other mechanism in place to represent that risk.

Hiring and Attrition

Caution

In the hiring of these offices, there are two considerations that need to be addressed.

1. Where are the possible candidates?
2. What are the barriers to prevent one player from dominating all of the positions?

It doesn’t really make sense for the candidates to come from the EIC’s Indian presidencies. The government positions are not lucrative enough to pull from the London management of the Company either. The one exception is the officer pool in Military Affairs.

The First Lord would be selected by the Prime Minister and would be responsible for hiring the Secretary. Similar to the Prime Minister, the First Lord never retires and does not roll for attrition. They would be removed when the Prime Minister is removed.

Because the Secretary is both a administrative and a military position, it could be selected from either the Collector or the Commander-in-Chief, allowing a ‘promotion’. If both are empty, the current thought is to utilize the current pensioners* as the candidates. The First Lord would make the hiring decision.

Hiring for the Collector could also use the pensioners*, although negotiatiation should be encouraged, with the Secretary benefiting. Both the Secretary and the Collector officeholders can retire, just like the Company officeholders.

Using pensioners*

Retirement of family members is the source of tension and motivation in the game. That must not be removed. If the pensioners are to be used in this way, there needs to be limitations placed around this. The current limitations are:

• Pensioners don’t stick around. If they aren’t retired or immediately hired by the government, they are lost (like before).
• There are only 2-3 total positions that could hire from the pensioner pool. If none are open, then the pensioners act like they always have.

This is worth playtesting and the idea should be be thrown out if it removes too much retirement tension.

---

If this doesn’t work, an alternative is to establish a Tea House as a holding area for government administrative positions. When placing writers, one could be placed in the Tea House instead.

The Commander-in-Chief position will function similarly to the other Commander positions. If no pensioners with trophies are available, a candidate will be chosen from the officer pool. Nepotism is not a factor for hiring the position. The Commander-in-Chief never retires and does not roll for attrition.

Both the Commander-in-Chief and the Collector would be hired by the Secretary.

Contrast with the Company

As stated, one of the goals of the Colonial Office is to have it contrast with the Company Presidencies. The changes should highlight both the similarities and differences between the Company and the Government. The hope is that it feels familiar and still flows relatively quickly, despite the differences.

Warning

One of the questions of the design is how far to lean in this direction. The “too close but not quite” can slow the game down, if it’s too confusing. This fourth presidency shouldn’t take so long that it is the length of the Indian presidencies combined.

The table below is a high-level comparison between the Presidencies and the Colonial Office:

	India	America
Authority	President determines the order.	Secretary determines the order.
Hiring	Director of Trade hires the President. Office of Military Affairs selects a Commander. The President hires the Governors.	The First Lord hires the Secretary. Secretary hires both the Commander-in-Chief and the Collector.
Hiring Pool	The writers or officers in that Presidency.	The current pool of Pensioners who didn’t retire and officers-in-training.
Administrative Role	Governor taxes, builds ships or commissions army.	Secretary commissions army and navy.
Taxes	Governor rolls to tax.	The First Lord brings tariffs to Parliament. Collector rolls to tax smugglers.
Trade Roll	President rolls to trade.	Collector rolls to prevent trade.
Trade Bandwidth	Number of ships - regions.	Smuggler strength.
Trade Dice	Amount of £ spent.	Determined by smugglers, tariff and navy.
Army Roll	Commander determines.	Commander-in-Chief determines.
Army Attack	Army attacks regions to take control, clear orders and unrest.	Army to clear orders, reduce native strength and possibly take control.
Army Defense	Army defends against various conflict events.	Army defends against various conflict events.