When Gene Billingsley first accepted my Prime Minister prototype as a GMT project, he wanted a solitaire system in our development goals. I was intrigued, but wary. For me, player interaction is a key part of Prime Minister. I also knew the game involved some complex decision-making, especially on the Government side. But I thought the idea was worth a try, and I could see some possibilities. As I explained in the first InsideGMT article for Prime Minister, the game already involves lots of numbers used to track political factors, and bots love numbers. After thinking it over, I told Gene that I thought an automated Opposition was achievable, but I wasn’t sure about automating the Government.

Jason Carr, who heads GMT One (GMT’s new in-house solitaire development studio), talked with me about the objectives for Prime Minister’s solitaire system. We arrived at three main goals: preserve the feel of the multiplayer game; give players a real challenge; and keep the level of complexity in check. We wanted a moderately complex system, commensurate with the moderate complexity of the overall game. These different goals can pull in contrary directions–mostly because the first and second goals are in tension with the third. So I knew at the outset that I would have to balance our goals against each other.

To preserve the feel and functionality of the multiplayer game, I felt we needed to have an automated politician playing in direct competition against the human player. Many solitaire versions of multiplayer games have you play against the board, pursuing certain goals without interference. This works well for some games, but Prime Minister isn’t meaningful if no one is actively opposing you. I also wanted the automated politicians to perform the full range of politician actions available to human players. I settled on creating ten automated politicians–each with its own abilities and strategic preferences–based on the same ten politicians used in the multiplayer game. In keeping with the game’s Victorian theme, I named this solitaire system the “Clockwork System.” It lets you play any politician you like against any “Clockwork” politician–Gladstone against the “Clockwork Disraeli,” for example–which makes for 100 different head-to-head combinations.

To give solo players an adequate challenge, I wanted an automated opponent that–in its highest difficulty levels–could beat its creator (me) about half the time. A logbook of my wins and losses helped me get the right calibration. I also wanted the difficulty to be adjustable, so that it wouldn’t be too frustrating for beginners or any player who wants a more relaxed game. I ended up with not one but two ways of adjusting difficulty. First, borrowing a feature from the multiplayer game, you can flip over your Prime Minister or Opposition Leader player mat and use the easier reverse side for yourself. Second, each Clockwork politician has a difficulty rating of one to three stars. The weakest Clockwork politicians are the Earl of Aberdeen and the Earl of Rosebery, whose standard counterparts are normally withdrawn from two-player games because their abilities are less useful when they’re the only players in their parties.

GMT’s webpage for Prime Minister rates this game as moderately complex, which means it’s about average compared to other GMT games. I’ve seen some less experienced playtesters struggle to learn Prime Minister’s game mechanics, but GMT regulars have grasped the rules pretty quickly. Likewise, the Clockwork System is moderately complex by GMT standards, so if you’ve mastered more difficult GMT solitaire systems like the ones in Gandhi or Space Corp, you shouldn’t have any trouble with the Clockwork System. Once you’ve read through the rules, you can operate the system just by glancing at the values and reminders on your Clockwork politician card, Clockwork player mat, and a brief player aid. The Clockwork responds to conditions you can clearly see on the board, with no complicated flow charts. This allows veteran players to play a Clockwork game rapidly, and focus their attention on their own strategy.

After figuring out how to automate the Clockwork politicians on the Opposition side, I eventually worked out the tougher job of automating the Government side too, so that party control of Government can change hands just as it would in a multiplayer game. Naturally, automation on the Government side is more complex, since the Clockwork PM has to decide how to respond to events, how to select and pass bills, and when to hold elections. So there’s a trade-off here: with an automated PM, you preserve more of the game’s functionality, but the system starts to get a little busy. Knowing that some players prefer to keep things simple, I split the Clockwork System in two: System I automates the Opposition only (you always start as PM and immediately lose if your Government collapses), while System II can run either the Opposition or Government (preserving the game’s standard victory conditions). The System II rules are largely additive, so you can learn System I first and then move on to System II if and when you’re ready for something more complex.

Now let’s take a look at two examples of the Clockwork System’s key component, the Clockwork politician card. Each card has two sides, one side for use as PM and the other side for use as Opposition Leader. Each Clockwork politician card is tailored to the politician’s abilities and has unique instructions on how to spend its action cubes. Here we can see the Prime Minister side of the Clockwork Gladstone, and the Opposition Leader side of the Clockwork Earl of Aberdeen.

Using the game’s iconography, each Clockwork Politician Card lists up to four possible options for each action cube, in order of priority (reading from top to bottom). You simply apply the first option that isn’t “futile,” a term briefly defined with a few bullet points on the Clockwork player mat. For example, Aberdeen as Opposition Leader won’t debate against a bill if it’s outside his “attack range.” If a bill is projected to pass by a wide margin, he won’t waste an action on a futile debate. Nor will he waste an action campaigning in a sector of the electorate where his party’s support is already maxed out. The last option for each action (and sometimes the only option) is to draw from the Clockwork supporter deck, an option that’s always valid. The Clockwork sometimes makes suboptimal choices, but it very rarely blunders. It even knows to tweak its strategy when the game reaches its final stages.

Deciding how Clockwork politicians would interact with the game’s “event” and “supporter” decks was a key design challenge. These decks require human players to weigh a wide variety of choices, usually involving trade-offs. Letting the Clockwork draw from these standard decks would have required complicated flowcharts. I decided instead that the Clockwork would draw from separate “clockwork event” and “clockwork supporter” decks tailored for automation. They mimic the effects of their standard counterparts, but with clearly-stated priorities, if-then conditions, and instructions on when to play supporters immediately and when to hold them face down. These new decks also allowed me to introduce handicaps for the Clockwork politicians, to balance the Clockwork’s occasionally suboptimal decision-making. Handicaps are, to some extent, a compromise–it means the Clockwork plays the game a bit differently than a human player–but it’s a way of challenging the human player without the burden of an overly-complex system.

I think players will find that variety is one of the Clockwork System’s strongest points: 100 different head-to-head combinations of human and Clockwork politicians, two ways of adjusting difficulty, and two systems with different levels of complexity. We’re also developing specific Clockwork scenarios, including a scenario where two human players can play as a team against a Clockwork politician, and another where a solo player can experience the backbencher role while two Clockwork politicians face off against each other as Party Leaders.

If you’re interested in learning more, the complete Clockwork rules are already available in the prototype rulebook on Prime Minister’s P500 page.

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Previous Articles:

The Analog Computer Inside Prime Minister

Roles and Relationships in Prime Minister