At the start of the war about 30% of the 13 colonies supported the idea of freedom from the Crown. By the end it was about 40%.
If you take this as a starting concept but agree with how Washington felt: Imagine a starved hungry army, winter is arriving, his men are miserable, you just lost a battle with the British, but understand how useless British Army officers are, yet you must keep your men onside to do the right thing.
Outwitting the British Officers will be easy as they are generally stupid but lucky to have our good quality of NCO's, but right now you are stood in a wood: In front are the lights from the fires of many homestead farms, all of whom may offer food: or run to report your arrival, on the other hand, you may end up organising a supply of food for 2% of your army and gain 6 men to join you in the fight for freedom. This game would be a local level game, a single man could represent 100 (eg)on the map, but it would be primarily trying to recreate the desperate times that Washington and his men faced, but yet held it all together and triumpted. It would of course be set on the real USA map and allow full freedom for you, the player to make your own path and choices with a real historical map, who knows, with the lay of the land keys battles of the real war may be laughed at as you study the geography.
My other idea was on a more strategic level where you could play as either the loyalists or the other lot
The US geo-political situation: I will never ask an American again about how they are taught history: it's appalling. Yanks talk of taxation: The US people paid 1/40th the tax a peasant in Britain paid at exactly the same time, one reason the 13 colonies were quickly filling up with angry Englishmen.
The Colonists however also spoke of "no taxation without representation", this was very valid.
The colonists also wanted to settle in the interior and here was the real problem: The British always had a large navy so protecting the coast of America was easy: she just had so many ships to do it. Protecting the colonists who were agitating to be allowed to settle in Indian territory was problematic. The Crown lost money protecting the American settlers throughout the life of the 13 colonies, and knew that more incursions into Indian lands would cost the Government back home even more. The Crown wouldn't budge and neither would the settlers. Britain wasn't prepared to provide the costly garrisons needed and the settlers were getting to the point where they felt they could provide their own garrisons, as where and when, but by having this attitude it challenged the Crown directly, as of course it was one of the primary jobs of the Crown to maintain law and order whilst protecting the people. It was an impasse.
I'd love to see a game that covers this rise of nationalism on a strategic level where you can play either the colonists or the Crown. Media must be included as the Tea smugglers in Boston, once the tax was abolished, with one man especially having two ships full of tea offshore that now cost more than the sale price, and faced with ruin, actually began the real war by rabble-rousing and used the media to good effect.
In short, either game would be good, but I'd prefer the latter, and I've yet to ever see a single game that recreates one of the most single important events in world history, and an event that most would agree changed the planet for the better, especially in the 19th C where this new nation made such an impact, however, I'd just like to try playing the Crown keeping both the settlers and the Native Americans happy, however thankless a task it will be
Any thoughts on how you could angle it towards a full-on strategic game but still make it interesting to play the Crown and not just the colonists as this is where the balance problem is? (Producing goods/trading (inter-connection between the Crown and the Colonies is easy and historical, within the actual period)) Losing money every year as fact isn't easy so perhaps the Carribean colonies might have to be included as they, via taxatation of the plantation owners actually did make money?
Here is a short BBC comment on the actual war that also made a superb 4-part 4 hour series on the war, comparable, to me at least, to perhaps the finest documartary series ever made: the History channel series of the American Civil War. Whilst I haven't read the link, I'm comfortable it will be accurate, as the series they made provided me, for the first time ever, with real American history, not the 'good old USA' version;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/em ... s_01.shtml
We should never forget how the French made such a massive contributution to the victory, without them history would have been so much worse. So when you next think of "Freedom Fries" think of the French, they ensured the colonies became free. (And chips or 'fries' are actually from Belgium, a small nation to the north of France
)