Liberty Or Death

Note: This is a HTML adaptation of the Liberty Or Death Game Play Guide, authored by Koei Corporation.

Overview
As Commander in Chief of forces of the American Colonies or the Crown of England, you must win the support of the people and prove yourself a superior strategist upon the battlefld in order to stay in power. To win the war, you must eliminate all enemy held territories from the map within 20 years.

Game set up
If this is the first time you are playing Liberty or Death, we recommend you begin by playing on the American side. Winning the game is much easier for the Americans than it is for the British, as history has proven.

Choose a 1 player game.
Select George Washington as your Commander-in-Chief and play for the Americans.
Set game level to Easy.
Distribute budgetary funds throughout the military. Leave Officer Salaries as is, contribute to the First Fleet, and allot the remaining funds to Regiment Support.
Begin the fight for liberty!

Basic game strategies

The strength of your forces can be summed up in three items: soldiers, food, and powder. When comparing your power to the enemy, make sure you come out ahead in these areas. If not, your losses will be great when you go to battle.
Maintain a balance between Soldiers, Food and Men:
Draft the maximum number of troops possible.
Purchase enough food to equal the number of men in troops.
Purchase enough powder to equal two times the number of men in troops.
If you do not have the funds to draft more men, use the Re-form command to shift men between troops.
Never go to war with less food than men unless you have an obvious advantage over your enemy.
Purchase arms to give each division the maximum possible amount of arms.
Always Recruit allied generals. 50 gold will usually win them over to your side. If the general has low loyalty and attempts to recruit him fail, send a higher ranking continental or loyalist general into the allied district and usurp control from the allied general.
When going to battle, invade with as many divisions as you can. You will suffer fewer losses sending a division into battle with 500 men than you will sending the same division in with 400 men.

Battle tactics
Fleet attacks

Always attack enemy districts by sea if you have fleets.
Once your fleet arrives on enemy territory, place your land-based divisions in a defensive position, using Entrench.
Use your fleet to attack enemy troops and reduce their numbers.
Finish off the weakened enemy troops with your divisions before the fifteenth day of battle.

Entrenching divisions

By effectively using the Entrench command you can maximize enemy troop loss and minimize your own losses in battle.
To Entrench, divisions must be positioned on hills or in a clear area on a plain.
Try to foresee the enemy's tactics and point your troops in the direction of the suspected enemy attack.
When an entrenched unit is attacked, its losses will not be as great as the attacking unit. Whittle down enemy troops by letting them attack your Entrenched units. This tactic is useful when you have fewer troops than the enemy.
Only attack enemy units from an entrenched position when you have superior total troop numbers or if you are running out of time in battle .

Retreating from the Enemy

"He who fights, then runs away, lives to fight another day." This motto is especially true in Liberty or Death.
When troop numbers fall below 50, weakened units should be withdrawn from battle using the Retreat command.
Exception: If there are only two units left on the battlefield, and your unit outnumbers the enemy - youire likely to win - battle to the end

Guerrilla attacks

Guerrilla troops are most effective attacking at night.
When the enemy is on flat land, Guerrillas will do the most damage when attacking from forests, mountains, or hills.

Overall Strategies

The best overall strategy to use in Liberty or Death can be summarized as "Contain and Conquer".
At the beginning of the game you should be able to conquer most enemy held territories through use of the battle strategies and tactics listed above.
Near the end of the game, however, you may notice that certain enemy generals are quite adept at retreating and escaping your grasp. For instance, an general might escape to an adjacent enemy-allied or unoccupied territory when you attack. This general is referred to as a "Slippery General".
A slippery general will continue to escape into adjacent empty or enemy-allied districts until you trap him in a territory surrounded by districts under your control, or by water.
Once you have contained a slippery general, you can conquer the district he is trapped in and imprison him for the rest of the game.