Analysis Paralysis: Founding Fathers Board Game

The harmonic convergence between my love of board games, coding, data analysis, and the holiday break has resulted in the following nerd-worthy dissertation on the Founding Fathers board game.

Founding Fathers is a board game designed by Christian Leonhard and Jason Matthews, and published by Jolly Roger Games.

This analysis is based on games played on Yucata.de, my favorite online board game site. All games played on Yucata.de are publicly available for replay and the format used is not overly difficult to parse for analyses like this one.

I used all games played by the top 10 rated Founding Fathers players (including #9, DangerDon :)), and all games played by the ten players with the highest number of Founding Fathers games played. This adds up to 922 unique games, 413 unique players, and 104,698 player moves.

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The first question most players seem curious about is what makes a good score in Founding Fathers.

The chart is separated into 3-player, 4-player and 5-player games. Most of the games on Yucata.de are 3-player, followed by 4-player and 5-player. The total points scored by all players in a game is pretty much the same regardless of the number of players in the game. The more players in the game, the more players to divvy up the points, and the lower the scores. Winners in 3-player games average 32 points, winners in 4-player games average 26, and 5-player winners average about 22 points. The highest number of points in any of the games was 62.

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The optimal number of influence markers for a player is another question that comes up. Everyone starts with three markers and can add more during the game. Here’s how it plays out in the actual games.

The fewer players in the game, the more turns you will play per round, so the more markers you will need. In addition to the number of players in a game, this chart is also divided into “Winner” and “Runner-up” categories. Winners are players that won the game or tied for first; runners-up are everyone else. On average, winners make do with slightly fewer influence markers than the runners-up.

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At the end of a game of Founding Fathers, the factions associated with the 12 passed articles determine the bonus points awarded for debate tokens. Does the breakdown of the passed articles differ from the default (historic) breakdown? Here is the default breakdown:

Here is the actual breakdown in the played games:

And the answer to our question is… uh, no. After all of the player machinations, the passed articles break down pretty much the same as the historic articles.

That’s not to say that all articles get passed:

These “Convention” articles are the eight articles that are acted upon by the players: four articles in the Assembly Room and four articles in the Committee Room. There is a strong preference for players to pass an article in the Assembly room because influence markers on the Yea side get two points apiece if the delegate faction is the same as the article faction. However, there are reasons to vote Nay, including influencing the faction breakdown for debate bonus points, getting event points for voting Nay, and stopping an opponent from getting “Yea” points. The first four articles, the Virginia Plan, get flipped much more rarely:

Virginia Plan articles can only be flipped by William Samuel Johnson.

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Each player in Founding Fathers is randomly assigned one of the five Planners. Do any of the Planners have an advantage over the others? Each of the Planners are from different states, and they have no faction affiliation. The player with James Madison always goes first, while the remaining order of the players is randomly assigned.

Going first is clearly an advantage in 3 and 5-player games, but not 4-player games. I was hoping to make some conclusions about the remaining Planners, thinking being associated with a particular state would be an advantage or disadvantage. However, the data didn’t cooperate. Sherman beats Patterson in 3-player games, but in 5-player games the situation is reversed. Pinckney has the best winning percentage in 4-player games.

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The meat of a Founding Fathers game is the choices that players make with the delegate cards in their caucus (hand). On average, players perform 36 actions each in a 3-player game, 28 in a 4-player game, and 24 in a 5-player game. Note that this is not the same as the number of turns. For example, when a player chooses to play three delegates of the same faction at one time to move a debate marker up three spaces, I count that as three actions. The player has chosen to use a delegate for a debate action instead of a voting action or an event for three different delegate cards. With a given delegate card or cards, a player can execute an event, vote, debate, or snub (discard). Here is how the actions break down for runners-up and winners:

Both winners and runners-up play events for about 35% of their total actions. But, as we will see below, the choices of which events to play do differ between winners and runners-up.

Winners emphasize voting more than runners-up, 37% to 31%, and emphasize debating less. This matches my experience with the game. While you can’t ignore the end-of-game debate bonuses, a voting marker is a good investment. If you’re on the winning side, that marker can net you multiple points. Even if you’re on the losing side, you might get points from the committee room. You get no points for losing debate markers and you get no points for spending multiple turns pushing a debate marker up a track. There are events that reward you for voting Yea or Nay; there are no events that reward you for having debate markers.

You could argue that each time you push your marker up a debate track, you’re forcing an opponent to use up a turn to counter your move. Beware the situations where you and another player are battling over a debate track while everyone else is picking up points in the assembly room.

Note that the “Debate” actions in these two pie charts do not include events that affect the debate track. Those are Events.

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Speaking of Events, the following table shows how players play each of the 55 different delegate cards. Players have four choices: Event, Vote, Debate, or Snub. The table shows the percentage of plays for each of those four choices. For a given delegate, those four numbers will add up to 100%. The delegates are sorted from highest Event percentage to lowest. The asterisk in Event Abbr denotes persistent events.

Delegate Name	State	Faction	Event Pct	Vote Pct	Debate Pct	Snub Pct	Event Abbr
John Langdon	NH	Fed	72.9%	18.3%	8.5%	0.3%	Caucus is 4*
Pierce Butler	SC	Large	67.4%	23.1%	8.4%	1.1%	+2 Large Debate
David Brearly	NJ	Small	64.8%	18.5%	16.0%	0.8%	Claim Unclaimed Debates*
William Paterson	NJ	Planner	64.4%	10.0%	25.0%	0.6%	+1 Marker
Roger Sherman	CT	Planner	64.2%	11.4%	24.2%	0.2%	+1 Marker
James Madison	VA	Planner	64.0%	10.7%	24.8%	0.5%	+1 Marker
Alexander Martin	NC	Antifed	63.8%	23.4%	11.6%	1.2%	+2 Antifed Debate
John Dickinson	DE	Fed	63.0%	22.5%	13.3%	1.3%	+2 Fed Debate
William Livingston	NJ	Small	63.0%	25.1%	11.0%	0.9%	+2 Small Debate
Charles Pinckney	SC	Planner	61.1%	12.9%	25.6%	0.4%	+1 Marker
Benjamin Franklin	PA	Large	59.0%	18.2%	21.1%	1.7%	+2 Points / Voted State
Alexander Hamilton	NY	Planner	56.3%	14.3%	28.9%	0.4%	+1 Marker
Gouverneur Morris	PA	Fed	53.6%	13.8%	29.6%	3.0%	Vote Plus 2nd Action
Jacob Broom	DE	Fed	53.0%	17.3%	28.0%	1.7%	2nd Vote
Elbridge Gerry	MA	Antifed	43.3%	30.0%	25.0%	1.7%	+1 / Nay Vote*
Thomas Mifflin	PA	Large	42.8%	28.6%	27.7%	0.9%	Play Draw Pool Event
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer	MD	Fed	41.9%	22.4%	33.0%	2.7%	+1 if Yea
James McClurg	VA	Fed	39.0%	30.5%	29.0%	1.4%	+1 / Fed Caucus
George Washington	VA	Fed	38.5%	27.5%	32.2%	1.8%	End Round Now
George Mason	VA	Antifed	36.0%	31.8%	30.6%	1.6%	+1 Marker for Committee Antifed
Jonathan Dayton	NJ	Small	34.8%	38.5%	26.1%	0.6%	All Others Debate – 1
William Pierce	GA	Small	33.1%	36.6%	29.2%	1.1%	Use Top Discard
George Wythe	VA	Fed	32.7%	30.7%	35.8%	0.8%	+1 Point / 3 Markers
Luther Martin	MD	Antifed	32.3%	31.3%	34.6%	1.8%	No More Debates*
John F. Mercer	MD	Antifed	29.5%	33.2%	34.5%	2.8%	+1 / Antifed Caucus
Oliver Ellsworth	CT	Small	28.9%	41.2%	28.8%	1.2%	+1 / Small Caucus
William Blount	NC	Antifed	28.1%	38.8%	30.3%	2.8%	+3 Points if Behind
George Reed	DE	Fed	27.6%	33.2%	38.2%	1.0%	Remove 2 Voted Fed Delegates
Richard Basset	DE	Small	27.2%	36.0%	35.6%	1.2%	Steal Delegate
John Rutledge	SC	Fed	26.9%	38.3%	33.8%	1.0%	+1 Point / GA,NC,SC Winners*
Rufus King	MA	Large	25.8%	41.4%	30.3%	2.5%	+2 Markers to Committee
George Clymer	PA	Fed	25.2%	31.5%	41.3%	2.0%	+1 / Fed Considered Articles
Robert Yates	NY	Antifed	25.0%	42.7%	30.8%	1.5%	Flip Assembly Article
Nicholas Gilman	NH	Fed	24.9%	41.8%	32.3%	0.9%	+2 Points if Final Round
Caleb Strong	MA	Fed	23.8%	38.8%	36.3%	1.2%	Use Available Delegate
John Blair	VA	Fed	21.8%	41.2%	35.8%	1.2%	+1 for Voted Virginia
Jared Ingersoll	PA	Antifed	21.6%	37.0%	38.8%	2.6%	Block all Events*
James McHenry	MD	Fed	21.6%	35.1%	40.5%	2.8%	Replace MD
John Lansing Jr.	NY	Antifed	19.2%	44.9%	33.9%	2.0%	+1 / Antifed Considered Articles
William Samuel Johnson	CT	Small	19.0%	46.7%	33.2%	1.1%	Flip Resolved Article
William Houston	NJ	Small	18.6%	42.8%	37.4%	1.3%	Discard Voted Delegate
Abraham Baldwin	GA	Small	17.2%	43.0%	37.7%	2.1%	+1 For Voted CT
Daniel Carroll	MD	Large	15.9%	41.4%	39.5%	3.2%	Override MD
Hugh Williamson	NC	Small	15.2%	43.9%	39.2%	1.7%	+1 to Committee / NC Delegate
Gunning Bedford Jr.	DE	Small	13.4%	44.1%	39.9%	2.6%	Remove 2 Small Voted Delegates
Edmond Randolph	VA	Fed	12.8%	43.3%	42.6%	1.2%	Flip Voted State
Richard Dobbs Spaight	NC	Fed	11.6%	43.1%	43.3%	2.0%	Your Markers Protected*
William Richardson Davie	NC	Small	10.5%	48.9%	39.7%	1.0%	Can’t Override Your Delegates*
Charles Coteworth Pinckney	SC	Fed	9.4%	49.3%	39.6%	1.7%	-1 Point / voted GA,NC,SC
Thomas Fitzsimons	PA	Fed	8.3%	37.8%	50.9%	3.0%	Discard Voted Delegates to 1
William Houstoun	GA	Large	8.0%	54.0%	35.9%	2.0%	Discard Voted GA
James Wilson	PA	Large	6.6%	45.0%	44.7%	3.6%	Wilson Votes Either Side
Robert Morris	PA	Fed	6.1%	39.6%	51.1%	3.2%	No Washington for Others*
William Few	GA	Fed	6.0%	49.8%	42.2%	2.0%	Discard Draw Pool
Nathaniel Gorham	MA	Large	3.5%	54.2%	39.3%	2.9%	Remove Other Committee Markers