Profiles

Sovereign ships with three scripted opponent profiles. Each profile is a pure function of visible state — given the same board state, cash, tracks, and lap, a profile always produces the same decision. There is no LLM. There is no hidden state. Every decision logs the rule that fired to the ledger.

The MVP solo configuration is 1 human + 2 scripted opponents (Hamilton + Morris). The third profile (Wright, the Manufacturer / Industry profile) is available in the batch simulation tool and serves as the third opponent in mirror or non-default configurations.

Treasury / Finance (Hamilton, slot 1)

Aspect	Behavior
Asset priority	National Finance > State Debt > Revolutionary Debt > Bank of US > Mint
Upgrade priority	Highest-base owned property first; Tier I before Tier II
Auction cap	0.9 × list cost on aligned (NF / debt / Bank) assets; declines off-profile
Vote: Funding	YES (Rev Debt strengthens own holdings)
Vote: Assumption	YES (State Debt strengthens own holdings)
Vote: Bank Charter	YES — and pays 100 TN force-fee if owns Bank and Charter hasn’t passed
Vote: Tariff	Conditional (yes if owns Revenue System)
Vote: Coinage	YES (Mint windfall)
Vote: Manufactures	Conditional
Vote: Excise Enforcement	NO if owns no Revenue System assets
Cash reserve	≥ 200 TN floor before discretionary buys

Strength. Treasury accumulates aligned holdings early, votes the financial Acts through, and rides the National Finance Credit ≥ 8 endgame bonus. Even after the v0.3 NF Credit nerf and v0.10 cashIP nerf, it wins 59% of canonical games.

Weakness. No infrastructure income — no routes, no Commerce. Vulnerable to the Bank Run card.

Merchant / Infrastructure (Morris, slot 2)

Aspect	Behavior
Asset priority	Routes (all 4) > Commercial Infrastructure > Internal Improvements > Revenue System
Upgrade priority	Commerce Tier I → Improvements Tier I; routes have no upgrades
Auction cap	1.0 × list cost on routes (pays full); 0.85 × on Commerce / Improvements
Vote: Funding	Neutral
Vote: Assumption	Neutral
Vote: Bank Charter	NO (Treasury benefits, not commerce)
Vote: Tariff	YES — and pays 100 TN force-fee if Resistance ≤ 4
Vote: Coinage	NO
Vote: Manufactures	Conditional
Vote: Excise Enforcement	Neutral
Cash reserve	Lower (aggressive route accumulation)

Strength. Builds the route economy fast. Tariff boost compounds Commerce income. Independent of Acts of Congress for most of the game.

Weakness. No industrial Capacity bonuses available. Vulnerable to Shipping Disruption card.

Manufacturer / Industry (Wright)

Aspect	Behavior
Asset priority	Manufactures > Strategic Industry > Internal Improvements > Bank
Upgrade priority	Complete Mfg set → complete Strategic set → highest-base industrial Tier I
Auction cap	0.95 × list cost on Mfg / Strategic; 0.70 × on Improvements; decline elsewhere
Vote: Manufactures	YES — and pays 100 TN force-fee if Capacity < 4
Vote: Funding	YES if owns any debt
Vote: Assumption	YES if owns any debt
Vote: Tariff	NO (raises Revenue rents that aren’t its income)
Vote: Bank Charter	Conditional (yes if owns Bank)
Vote: Coinage	NO
Vote: Excise Enforcement	NO
Setup	Receives Textile Works as a starting Industrial Charter (0 TN, Capacity +1 at setup)

Strength. Capacity ramp through industrial purchases. Industrial set bonuses at endgame stack to +11 IP if both sets complete.

Weakness. Slow start; vulnerable to Shipping Disruption and Bank Run. Even with the v0.8 Industrial Charter, only wins 16% of canonical games — Capacity thresholds ≥ 8 and ≥ 10 remain hard to reach.

Why deterministic profiles, not LLM

A profile that depends on a language model:

1. Can’t be reproduced — different runs may decide differently for the same state.
2. Can’t be inspected — there’s no “rule that fired” for a black-box prediction.
3. Costs money or compute or network — none of those fit a self-contained board game.
4. Drifts as the model changes — last year’s game doesn’t play the same way this year.

Pure-function profiles avoid all of that. Every decision is a small decideX(state, playerIndex, ...) → { result, reason } function. The reason string lands in the ledger. You can read why Hamilton bought Treasury Securities on turn 14 of seed 2026 by scrolling the ledger.

Next

• Reference — full CLI + rules tables + save / load format.
• Design history — how these profiles were balanced over the v0.2 → v0.10 arc.