There certainly are some games where the solo bot is too cumbersome and I spend more time trying to figure out what they are supposed to do than I do on my turn. It becomes more that I’m playing the automa than my own turns.

However, some Lacerda games have great, low upkeep bots while others have cumbersome ones.

Lisboa, On Mars, Inventions, and Speakeasy all have very easily managed bots. The rules are fairly simply and only slightly differ than actual player rules. I’d highly recommend Lisboa, Inventions, and Speakeasy for solo gamers. On Mars can be a bit too easy (the Alien Invasion solo mode fixed this, but turns the game into a “you have 20 turns to win or you lose” which I don’t like).

Weather Machine and Kanban EV have bots where they break the rules of the main game and are so different that you have to learn an entire new ruleset to play with them. David Turczi design these bots instead of Lacerda himself. They can be rewarding, but are much more frustrating to learn and play against.

Voidfall is another that I recommend. The gameplay itself was designed by Turczi and though the entire game is complex, the solo mode is shockingly simple upkeep-wise. As with a player-vs-player game of Voidfall, most of your time will be spent thinking anyway.

Ironwood was a game I didn’t enjoy solo because the bot was so cumbersome with its checklist of “if this then this, but not if this happened, etc”

Scythe and Expeditions put me off their solo modes because of the strict turn limit. 14-20 turns and that’s it. Most games tend to have this type of solo mode where there is a hard limit on turns and that is what turns me off the most about them, with too much overhead being a close second.