I had a conversation with Affordablecards during a maze game awhile back (while he utterly destroyed me), about strategy vs luck in Maze games.

My thoughts were:

Like cards in the long run it's the strategy, not the dice, but maze maps seem especially frustrating with the dice. Losing 8-1 on the one square that will close your backfield or secure a major line, seems much more painful than say losing a city attack on Civil War. Especialy, since with unlimited fortifies you can defend easier if you get that one last square in your backfield.

On "the Maze" map you can defend an 8 point bonus with a one square choke point. The biggest in Civil War is DC at 5. When you go up to two point choke you are talking in the 20-30 production range protected by only two territories. Can't do that on the non maze maps I've seen so far.

Which brings us around to the original question:

Does luck matter more in Maze games than other maps or does it just seem that way.

If you don't like the extreme choke points of maze maps, you should check out the 'A' series of scenarios for 'Random Mazes':

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Random+Mazes

I think you will be hard pressed to find an 8 point bonus defensible from one territory.  I bet even the 'B' series doesn't have many.

I think your point is more based on a factor of what % of the board bonus can be controlled from a single spot, although I guess Maze maps probably skew way higher than the average map.

Maybe a tangent here, but I've been thinking of writing a statistics generator for maps to pull out some interesting properties from a map.  Some measure like you are describing could be interesting.  Maybe max bonus defensible by 1, 2 or 3 territories.

I was also looking at some sort of centrality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality).  Probably betweenness centrality.  Also maybe Cheeger's constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheeger_constant_%28graph_theory%29).

I either need to find a great graph theory package for python (probably either NetworkX or iGraph), or someone a lot better at math to help me though.

I haven't decided whether I like it or not yet.  Was mainly wondering if it was just me or if the dice really were playing more of a role than normal. I'll check them out though. Thanks.  =)

I don't think luck is more important in maze maps compared to others. Luck is only important in maps where; "if you don't have it, you'll most defenitely lose".

The maze maps I've played so far are big enough to recover from early bad luck. The choke points aren't as important as most people think they are.   

Why do you say that choke points aren't that important? 

I still have limited data, but most of the maze games I played against good people were effectively over in three turns.  Mainly because I couldn't finish or protect my lines. 

The ones I won, were because I was able to choke point my backfield while attacking opportunistically. 

Great quote by btw.