Solo and 2-player Bot

Use the official Li Mu opponent in solo play or as a 2-player automa.

Two-player mode

Use the 2-player bot board and shuffled nine-card deck. Set up four face-down stacks of three Regular Bonus tiles under the turn-order track. After normal setup, give the bot an unused color’s pieces except towers and its special Palace tokens; start its Palace markers at the beginning, and place it third in turn order. It does not join the starting-building/supply draft. Each round, draw three cards and place them face down on its board, turning the second face up. On each of its three turns resolve the leftmost card top-to-bottom; discard it. The bot then passes and stays last in turn order for the whole game.

The bot has no coins, resources, goods or Prestige. Its actions are free; it ignores printed ship, demand, building and bonus effects. Remove any bonus tile it claims, including Palace tiles. It does not take a tile when passing. Its walls and soldiers count during battles, and their placement can affect human players’ contribution rank. Return discarded bot cards and shuffle them during cleanup.

Solo: Li Mu

Play the normal game against Li Mu, who scores from battles, Palace tracks and Jade Figurines. Give him a solo board and color, walls, action markers, Palace and score markers, nine extra meeples of another color, and the difficulty’s card set. No coins, goods, resources, objectives, starting supply/building or towers/special Palace tiles go to him. You choose one of two starting buildings, take 2 coins, 1 stone, 1 wood and 1 rice, and begin first. The solo booklet’s difficulty table controls which basic/advanced Li Mu cards and attack deck to use: Easy, Normal, Hard or Emperor.

Each round prepare and shuffle the specified Li Mu deck, then reveal two cards. Alternate turns with the human player. Roll the die to select the first open card, second open card or top of the deck; resolve its sections top-to-bottom, left-to-right, doing as much as possible. Refill the two-card display after discarding. Li Mu takes four card turns then passes, unless an effect passes him earlier. He ignores resource costs and most printed effects, claims only Jade bonus tiles (preferring a figurine he lacks), gains printed points only on the blue Palace track, and does not lose points when raided. A raided Li Mu governor instead costs you 3 Prestige. He receives 3 Prestige whenever his worker is pushed off a barge. On a tie choosing a Palace track, he advances his lowest track, checking again after each step.

If you ever reach zero Prestige, you immediately lose. Otherwise after four rounds compare final Prestige: you must have more than Li Mu to win. Use the complete publisher solo rulebook for the difficulty card mix and the icon-by-icon card procedures; those card faces are not legible in the available local text extraction and are retained as an image-reading gap.