Winning the Coup endgame

Hint: plan your moves early to avoid an unwinnable endgame

Coup is an amazing hidden identity game (think werewolf) where players attempt to eliminate other players by using powerful abilities granted by the influences they claim to have. The last player alive wins.

If you play this game often, you’ll notice that the endgame often comes down to a 1 influence vs 1 influence scenario, where both players have strong suspicions about the true identity of each other’s card.

In these scenarios, the outcome is predetermined based on the influence and coin amount of each player. Therefore, a good player should always be manoeuvring their way into a good endgame position.

But what exactly is a good position? Most players know that the Captain is powerful in 1v1, but what are other winning/losing scenarios?

To learn exactly this, I’ve mapped out the outcome for all the possible combinations of roles and coin distribution except Ambassador. These tables assumes it is currently your turn and all players are playing rationally.

Playing as Captain: wins 163/196

Captain win against other influences

Playing as Assassin: wins 134/196

Assassin win against other influences

Playing as Duke: wins 110/196

Duke win against other influences

Playing as Contessa: wins 74/196

Contessa win against other influences

Data in google sheets. Code on Github