Win at Risk by using systems thinking | Hacker News Reader

Win at Risk by using systems thinking

thesystemisdown.substack.com

412 pointsAndyMPatton237 comments

This article suggests that you should not play too aggressive and not take continents too early (maximizing Reinforcing Feedback), because other players will then unite against you (Balancing Feedback).

However, this article fails to understand that in Risk, most players are not willing to unite. In fact, if player A and player B decide to unite against me and player A had his turn and stopped me, player B is highly likely to backstab player A and then emerge as the winner.

I've found that playing very aggressively, and really get as many continents as possible within the first few turns, is the best way to win the game. I always win if I can get 2-3 continents in the first few turns, and if I fail then the game is usually won by whomever did manage to do just that.

Being a turtle or "mongolian horde" as we call it can be interesting, but your only viable strategy is to wait for an opening while everyone else stockpiles their continental forces. If you wait too long, you're just an annoyance to the other players, but you don't actually have a good chance to win.

In my experience players are happy to unite against me. Usually I take Australia and move into Asia when I’ve amassed enough forces. Then my strategy moves to holding asia at 3 points, while I disrupt the continental bonuses of my opponents between turns. Africa, Europe and North America can be disrupted from this position.

So take it from a young man who spent way too much of one summer playing Risk on the computer, you don't want to take Australia, the problem with Australia is that there is no good way to go from Aussie to anywhere else because the only thing next to you is Asia so someone else can solidify gains somewhere else, and Aussie only gives you 2 more reinforcements, not enough to get you a decisive enough edge to move out of Asia.

The trick is to always capture SA, it is close enough to other things to keep you involved, also you can capture Centeral America and North Africa without having to hold any more territories than you would need to. Then choose NA or Africa and work on seizing the rest of that, when you complete that if it is late enough in the game you'll win almost every time because Asia, and Europe are impossible to hold, North America is to big to capture in the early game and Austraila as noted before doesn't bring a big enough advantage because it puts you in a poor tactical situation.

EDIT: A good point was made below, this applies only to the standard classic Risk map, in standard Classic Risk.

I think this depends on the map. If you're playing with Antarctica, Australia has a good route to South America and Africa

Yes, but if you expand to Africa from SA you have to defend all three northern provinces. That's 4 points you have to equally reinforce. Asia + Aus is only three. SA + NA is 3 too.

Asia usually lacks a strong player while players focus on their relative home continents, often being sabotaged by competitors or me. That said, I rarely get a chance to play people with Risk experience these days.

We played extensively at school, with lots of politics - so games often lasted weeks (played in-between certain classes) as naturally the weak team up against the strong, ad infinitum.

My experience is that people overvalue Australia heavily. I think South America is the strongest start the way people typically play the game. You just keep taking potshots into Africa and expand into North America and end up with +7 armies a turn and 3 borders.

I think if Australia wasn't overvalued it wouldn't be bad because there is no real non-suicidal way to stop the Aussie snowball once it gets going.

South America was nerfed was it not? Haven't played in awhile but I remember they nerfed army reward and added another point of ingress right?

Asia can be held if you can also take (or start from) Australia and take Ukraine iirc. It works out to 3 territories defending the entire space. That's literally the same as defending the whole of the Americas. Europe+Africa can also make a sustainable combination, but neither works on its own.

Every other pair has too many connections and no way to reduce to a chokepoint.

Australia plus something else is good though as it both gives you easy to protect reinforcements in Australia plus the ability to influence the board elsewhere. For example Australia plus South America.

When I read stories like this I always wonder how much of this is groupthink. Speaking as someone who has played a ton of different, complex games over many years, groupthink can be really pervasive and often explains why someone swears a particular strategy is dominant.

I don’t play Risk so can’t speak this specific example. I suspect if you took your strategy elsewhere your get far more boxed results however.

In the ever evolving online game world (eg, hearthstone), group think is basically 'the meta.' Lots of people get the same common advice, or learn a new trick, so suddenly it becomes advantageous to use strategies which defend against the trick or take advantage of some weakness which opens up due to a trade-off... And then repeat.

Afaict, being really good at these games requires a good grasp of the fundamentals, knowing the game itself inside and out, and also having really up to date knowledge of the current meta.

The same phenomenon happens with Diplomacy (board game) as well... Probably any sufficiently complex game with a community ends up with a meta.

When a game is "evolving" in the sense that the rules (or some element of the game which in effect alters the rules, such as player classes or unit compositions and their statistics) are changed periodically, the meta can influence that, mostly in an unfortunate way.

If the general perception is that Bears are too powerful while Geese aren't powerful enough, developers may subsequently alter the game to reduce the power of a Bear's attack, or allow Geese to fly further. These are often called "balance tweaks" but it's almost unavoidable that they'll focus on the meta, rather than addressing a proven flaw in the game itself because most of these games aren't subject to any theoretical underpinning. As a result the meta may change even as the game itself is being changed as a result of influence from the meta. If you announce on Tuesday that from next weekend the overpowered Bear gets reduced damage, and then on Wednesday a renowned player demonstrates that (with the existing damage) Bears are easily overcome by a previously unseen strategy using Geese, the developers look foolish. Cue outcry when the damage reduction takes effect on schedule while at the same time players who favour Bears are now being swarmed by Goose players who've learned the new strategy.

If they stop balance patching the game obviously there's a risk that a degenerate strategy is discovered. Perhaps Bears are in fact just so good that Geese always lose against equally skilled players, and people lose interest in the game. But it's also possible that the meta continues to evolve, Bears dominate Geese, then with a new style of play Geese are destroying Bears, and later the Bears are back on top, even though the rules never changed. This is the case with Chess for example, styles wax and wave in popularity as top players show off one way or another way to play the game and win.

StarCraft: Brood War (by now a very old game) is still played competitively although its meta doesn't evolve as quickly as it did twenty years ago.

> If the general perception is that Bears are too powerful while Geese aren't powerful enough, developers may subsequently alter the game to reduce the power of a Bear's attack, or allow Geese to fly further. These are often called "balance tweaks" but it's almost unavoidable that they'll focus on the meta, rather than addressing a proven flaw in the game itself because most of these games aren't subject to any theoretical underpinning.

This is easily solved with data analysis of actual games.

The only problem is if there are strategies and play styles that weren’t discovered by players.

This only happens for games that are popular online (or for games that are just wildly popular, like Chess.)

Well I've played hundreds of games of Risk, against many different people IRL and also a lot online.

IRL you'll see that people tend to be "nice", don't want to push you too far. And they're also willing to accept deals like "hey, you want to agree that neither of us ever crosses this border here?" rules, because there's a good chance that you'll play again together, so being trustworthy pays off.

Online, the game is played very differently, and it's all about maximizing the results of every single turn, and completely ignoring any metagame or personalities. You might as well be playing against bots.

I tend to do a bit better offline, because I'm a bit of a charmer and people want to make deals with me. But online, I feel like I can try many more strategies without worrying about people thinking I'm "mean" afterwards.

Might just be a friend group thing but I will also add on that very few games of risk I ever played didn’t involve some level of ‘meta’ strategy like a husband/wife not attacking each other or that guy that doesn’t like you refusing an obviously mutually beneficial alliance.

I hate hate HATE that behavior. Games are games. Obviously you can be unnecessarily rude or cruel in a way that will sour someone's taste for playing with you or playing the game again. But the point of games is to win. When people refuse to act in their best interest or are "nice" its so frustrating because it makes the entire game pointless.

edit: In a way, it feels like people who wave you on when they have the right of way at a stop sign. It's not nice, just follow the rules and drive predictably. /rant

Nobody wants to ally with the guy who always wins. The game group I’m in has one of those, and so for some games I’m the one who wins the most. They expect him to win, so they drag him down, and I win by default.

It’s important in this dynamic that you pick games with a high wildcard factor, so that other people win occasionally, otherwise nobody wants to play after a while.

> But the point of games is to win

games in themselves have no point. The act of playing games may have a point: it is generally to have fun, not to win.

> edit: In a way, it feels like people who wave you on when they have the right of way at a stop sign. It's not nice, just follow the rules and drive predictably. /rant

you're not nice.

It's not a question of being nice or mean but a question of being competent and predictable to other drivers.

We have roundabouts where I live, and some people will always stop before entering. This is done even to the point of waiting for people to arrive and enter from the other roads, despite the law being to yield. This causes more problems than it solves.

True, people find different things fun. I sympathize with the idea that playing a game not following the rules and not making the best logic choices make the game less fun, because it becomes more about luck than skill. I, for one, have no joy winning or playing something entirely random, whereas beating other people on a skill based game is fun.

I wouldn't have said anything if you concluded "you're not nice" from the first part. But you conclude it because they don't like when someone messes up traffic? That's wrong.

how is waving to the other drivers messing up traffic ?

Because it's their turn to move and they're not moving.

... waving just mean thanking by a move of the hand no ? How is that related to moving or not.

Hell, doing it is even an official recommendation in my country: https://mobile.interieur.gouv.fr/Archives/Archives-publicati... ("faites un petit signe de la main" = to wave)

Are you familiar with the term "right of way"?

The complaint isn't about a friendly wave. The complaint is that it's someone's turn to go, and instead of going they wave at someone else to insist the other person go out of turn.

The wave is an insistence of "you go first", not a greeting or a thanks.

I do this quite frequently with bicycles caught between lanes. Yes, it annoys the people behind me. But it still improves the situation considerably.

Traffic isn't just 'other cars'.

Do you stop on the roundabout to let cyclists enter the roundabout?

No. That is a net negative. But a cyclist in an unsafe position should be given a path to safety regardless of what happens to other traffic. A cyclist that is not on a roundabout yet is perfectly safe, and stopping traffic on a roundabout to yield to traffic that does not have right of way is not ok.

Ah, OK – that makes sense. In my country, it's not a question of being nice but a part of the road rules. Loosely translated excerpt:

> The driver has the following responsibilities: (...) to do his utmost to ensure that other road users are not endangered, especially the most vulnerable (pedestrians, cyclists and electric scooter riders)

If a cyclist ignored the law and entered a roundabout anyway then I would definitely stop. But if they're waiting in front of a yield sign then obviously not.

I'm not, and after checking the website of multiple driving schools in my country, I guess this is a fairly deep cultural difference - they all mention that you can always let the other driver go first by courtesy, and that adaptation to the situation overrides the base ruleset.

The issue is that very often it would only take you a couple seconds to go through anyway, so you end up forcing the other person to adapt in a way that leaves everyone either the same or delayed.

There are definitely places where letting someone go is appropriate, especially if it's leaving a gap so they can make a turn. But if you're on a road and you have to wave them through then most of the time you're not actually helping, and fake-helping is an annoying thing.

If someone waves me on that goes against the right of way, I'll sit there till their arm gets tired.

Unpredictable traffic is dangerous, that's like, driving 101. It's nicer to let everyone follow the rules and stay safer.

I like the ones who stop to wave you out into traffic, not realizing they're only one lane on a 4-lane road, so you can't go without getting hit by at least one of three other cars, and the backup they've now caused behind themselves has closed the entry window you were about to have if they'd just picked "smart" over "nice."

I'm as skeptical about the appropriateness of rules as it comes, but a surprising number of the ones around driving actually do work to make the traffic flow efficiently!

What some people don't understand is that the main factor in having traffic flow nicely is being able to accurately predict what other vehicles are going to do

> But the point of games is to win

Different people, or groups, play games for different reasons:

* Sublimate conflicts (it's probably better than physical fighting)

* Learn / hone skills

* Feel personal challenge, tension, suspense

* Passing the time.

* Experience other players' "game-table-side banter"

* Attention diverter from munching snacks.

* Making a romantic pass at another player (it's been known to happen!)

etc. For some of these, winning is part of how you achieve your objective; for others it doesn't matter; and for others still it's detrimental!

See also the investigation of So Long Sucker in The Trap. Quoting Wikipedia:

>The programme traces the development of game theory, with particular reference to the work of John Nash [...] He invented system games that reflected his beliefs about human behaviour, including one he called 'Fuck You Buddy' (later published as "So Long Sucker"), in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner, and it is from this game that the episode's title is taken. These games were internally coherent and worked correctly as long as the players obeyed the ground rules that they should behave selfishly and try to outwit their opponents, but when RAND's analysts tried the games on their own secretaries, they were surprised to find that instead of betraying each other, the secretaries cooperated every time.

> He invented system games that reflected his beliefs about human behaviour, including one he called 'Fuck You Buddy'

Such a beautiful mind :-(

Wait, I must be missing something here. If people are nice to each other and that's a bad strategy, surely you get to wipe the floor win them (i.e. fulfill your objective of winning) and if people are nice to each other in a way that makes them hard for you to beat, surely it is you who are playing the worse strategy by not doing the same?

In my group of friends, whether it is Risk or Monopoly, being nice makes it much easier to win. People are happier to enter into mutually beneficial agreements with nice people who they know are honest and keep their word.

> If people are nice to each other in a way that makes them hard for you to beat, surely it is you who are playing the worse strategy by not doing the same?

If the arguments that underly the strategy decisions taken during the game purely happen during the game, that's perfectly fine. The issue arises when you absolutely cannot do anything to influence those. Rules of games are designed not designed to account for external behaviours that might favour

Eg: If Alice, Bobo and Charlie are playing a game of Risk and Alice is in love with Bob in real life and won't do anything in the game to hurt him. What can Charlie really do ? The rules of Risk have been designed to give each player with equal skill roughly 33% chance of winning - as they should. But in this case, Bob is almost sure to win and Charlie has very little things he can do to change that. How is that fun for Charlie ?

In this example Charlie has failed to consider the metagame of "don't be a third wheel"

The kind of "nice" in board games that is bad is when a player is willing to lose in order for another player to win. When you play a game, everyone has to play to win for the rules to make sense (I'd argue almost definitionally for a competitive game.) Playing a board game with someone who is not playing to win is like playing tag with somebody who refuses to run away and won't chase you. You should be working on a puzzle together or writing a song instead. Maybe make up new rules every turn and pantomime playing the game, that's fun.

The kind of "nice" that is good in multiplayer board games is strategic. Being "nice" isn't necessarily being nice. If a subset of players collaborate, they eliminate the other players from the game. It's one of the ways most multiplayer games naturally handicap based on the reputations of good players - other players assume that they will get the short end of any deal with a good player, so refuse to collaborate with them.

If you can't beat people who are "nice", doesn't that mean your strategy is bad?

Whoever wins the game is the person who played the right strategy.... you have to account for other people not playing optimally when designing your strategy, whatever the reason for their suboptimal strategy (whether it is them trying to be nice or just not knowing the best strategy)

If you know a player is always nice during a game and won't attack anyone, incorporate that info into your strategy. Part of game strategy is knowing your opponents.

You must be fun at parties.

Games never exist in a vacuum of their own mechanics. That's what makes them interesting. Learn the meta of your opponents, not just the game's if you're focused on winning.

Please don't cross into personal attacks on HN. Your comment would be fine without the swipe at the beginning.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.

Your playing the wrong game. The husband is winning points or at least not losing points with the wife by working with her. The game becomes a proxy for your social relationships.

If you want a fair game, play strangers or a computer

You have just described international diplomacy. For a slightly dumbed down version with working shown: Eurovision Song Contest.

Actually, when I say dumbed down, I'm not too sure! If I was you, I'd embrace the added dimensions that go outside the official rules. Get your Machiavelli on. Get him so pissed he can't see and his alliance with the missus might break down.

Be careful and get some lines that shall not be crossed worked out first if you are going to play Extreme Risk.

International diplomacy is like that, but every now and then some random soldiers in one of your backwater armies get drunk in some podunk border posting, murder some of the other side's soldiers, then suddenly you have to explain to your nutso nationalist press why a great power war is a bad idea.

(The india-china border clashes are a good example of this. Or that one where a NK soldier killed somebody with an axe. Or that time japanese soldiers bribed a triad gang to attack japanese priests so they had could convince their officers to invade more of Manchuria.)

My experience is that capturing and holding smaller continents early on is best. Capturing and keeping North America, Europe or Asia early on tends not to work well when I play.

Agreed! There's often a little jostle during the starting land grab to get Australia: easy to defend and those extra reinforcements really matter in the early game.

Australia and South America, because Australia can be defended in a single territory (Indonesia), against a single territory (Siam) and South America can be defended in two territories (Venezuela and Brazil), each against a single territory (Central America and North Africa respectively.)

In South America, you can get lucky and take North America in 1 or 2 turns. Since North America shares a front with South America, you end up with the same number of fronts you would have if you possessed North America alone, and in a very defensible position. The fewer fronts you have, the more interior you have that doesn't need to be manned with troops.

Yeah in my experience whoever starts in Australasia basically always wins because it's so easy to defend. Risk is a pretty terrible game by modern standards anyway.

In Civ I’m always trying to balance my attacks so that I get the killing blow on an enemy. If I don’t the AI gets the credit and possibly the city (if it’s a city state they raze it).

Seems like in risk you should let your ally “win” so that they feel more satiated. Like playing the long game in poker.

Notably, I've played Risk with two people, one who taught the other. They appear to make the same sorts of moves in similar positions, and they speak the same strategies. Yet, one consistently wins compared to the other. I believe the missing component is that one plays the game against people and wins, while the other plays against the board and wins less.

As they say in poker, "Play the person, not the cards. But also sometimes play the cards."

I was taught early on (in a paraphrased form), "if you can't tell who the loser is at the table, it is going to be you."

Continents are overrated; they are a big source of armies in the early game, but the primary goal of the early game is mere survival, and a skilled player can win without ever owning a continent until the last couple turns. After the early game, cards are where the real threat is in Risk – in particular, the way someone can eliminate an opponent and capture their cards (and when they end up with >5 cards, immediately turn some in in for armies) makes risk a very unstable game when played aggressively.

The best aggressive players wait for the right moment when they can go from minor threat to unquestionably dominant in the span of 1–2 turns, by toppling one opponent after another. The tricky part is the timing (and there is some luck involved with dice rolls and card matches). If you get it wrong and don’t quite take out one of the card-rich opponents along the chain, then (a) that extremely weakened player will be open to easy attack from the other players, and (b) you’ll be completely exposed having used all of your armies on at least one side of your territory in the attempt.

This is especially true on more recent versions which have nerfed south america, that used to be a fairly easy and defendable play with high chance of winning.

Funny, I've never played a game of Risk where a player got wiped out well before the end of the game – probably because I usually played with only 3~4 players. I could imagine with 4+ this would be a more useful strategy.

> In fact, if player A and player B decide to unite against me and player A had his turn and stopped me, player B is highly likely to backstab player A and then emerge as the winner.

The fun in Risk is the other player knows they will be backstabbed, but can't resist the temptation to team up anyway, hoping that they might be the one to do the backstabbing. Everbody knows that backstabbing will occur, and yet, invariably, some players are still willing to team up.

Absolutely. Even if they don't end up backstabbing you, at the very least they'll be like: "Oh, you already dealt with the threat? Well then I think I'll just reinforce this turn."

This reminds me of two strategies of playing Starcraft PvP.

No 1: Play very aggresively in the beginning and use your excellent micro management to make sure your opponent doesn't have enough time to stop your expansion. Sure you are going to lose one or two bases but then you have a full three bases to devastate your enemy.

No 2: Play conservatively, let the opponent expand but grow your available bases (usually only 2) to full potential quickly and devastate your enemy with your big army. The key is to grow your army quickly (you opponent meanwhile is busily expanding his new bases) and to use a lot of micromanangement to harass your opponent (e.g. dropping a squad of marines to kill all drones of a new base).

Ultimately it falls into micromanagement and how familiar you are with the map.

This reminds me of Master of Orion 2, a game I have spent countless hours on.

My typical strategy depends on chosen race and other game configurations, but I tend to prefer a slower pace. Peacefully building my empire while focusing mainly on research and trying to build strong relations with other races.

However, on the hardest difficulty (called "Impossible") the only way I ever win is playing with extreme aggression and conquering everything in reach with force as quickly as possible.

Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt....

In our gaming group, we decided Risk just isn't that good of a game. It's old and clunky and extremely long, there are 100 other better board games now. Our main plays have been Dominion, DnD, Gloomhaven, Wingspan, and Crokinole, all of which we greatly prefer.

Not a good board game, but actually very decent on mobile. Me and my friends have played many rounds in the train or car.

Risk takes forever because setting up and rolling dice takes forever. Same with Axis and Allies.

The moment you put it on a computer it becomes fairly fast and ... actually most of the gravitas goes away.

One person’s opinion.

Similarly with digital Monopoly. It also defaults to having no "house rules" that do nothing but make the game take longer. You can finish a game of electronic monopoly in 20 min. Since the games are shorter the stakes aren't as high and it doesn't feel bad to lose.

Yes there are better games than Risk. That holds for practically all old games. For example, I don’t consider chess a good game. With good players, it usually ends in a draw which is unsatisfying.

The draw rate for the vast majority of players is less than 10%. Only at the highest level do you see most games ending in a draw. If anything the draws make it a less exciting spectator sport, especially for the average person.

With grand masters games are more likely to end in a draw. Partially because they need to maintain their sponsorships, partially because of how most tournaments are setup.

Chess no longer allows draws, and the rules have been updated earlier this year.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/breaking-official-rules-of-c...

That was an April Fools joke.

Gloomhaven scenarios take way longer than one game of Risk IME. Actually one of its weak points...

Game length and fun are not directly correlated.

I can spend 4-5 hours playing a good board game, and enjoy it immensely and go back to it anytime.

Risk is not a great game regardless of length of play. Sure it’s enjoyable playing on PC, but there are still many more enjoyable games tabletop or PC.

This is true, for me at least, due to the fact that it’s fairly shallow plus it involves too much luck. I enjoy deeper games that are less reliant on luck (though I still enjoy games with some luck/randomization).

> Game length and fun are not directly correlated.

Not everyone has time for 5 hours of "fun". Let alone when games like Gloomhaven are best played on a consistent basis until it's completed.

I've found I actually enjoy Risk when played on the computer. Just speeding up army placements and automating the dice rolls, so you can say "attack until N remain", saves an unbelievable amount of time.

oh believe me, i can believe it

oh believe me, I believe you

Believe it or not, I believe you too

Speaking of games that are much quicker in electronic format, the Star Realms app works great for me, and it's my GF's favorite game. She plays it every day.

yeah that was is great

Smallworld is a great Risk alternative. It polishes all the best points while avoiding the pitfalls.

DnD 5E is like the Risk of tabletop RPGs. Just sort of long and meandering without much going on.

Shadow of the Demon Lord, Torchbearer, and Mythras Classic Fantasy are better alternatives depending on what level of crunch you enjoy.

> DnD 5E is like the Risk of tabletop RPGs. Just sort of long and meandering without much going on.

That's...highly table dependent, even assuming the same set of rules options are in place. And I’m not just saying that whether it feels that way is a matter of subjective taste (which is also true), but that the objective qualities of play depend very much on the particular group at the table. That's true of TRPGs in general, but its true of some TRPGs more tha others, and D&D5E is relatively unopinionated (though not so much as, say, GURPS) while some more focussed games zero-in on a more-specific playstyle.

Dungeon World scratches the itch for me, if I'm going to play anything that looks at all like D&D. There's been a huge renaissance in TTRPGs for over a decade now though, powered by cheap DTP and PDF publishing.

The creator of Dungeon World is a big fan of Burning Wheel. He has a video where he explains why it is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E79DDGdX62I

His point is that game mechanics reveal what a game is really about. Using this classification: DnD is about fighting monsters. Dungeon World is about worldbuilding. Burning Wheel is about character development.

Since people are different, this might help to find the right one.

Luke Crane helped make The Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, and Mouse Guard, in descending order of complexity. The latter uses David Petersen’s (Peterson’s?) comix-IP as setting and focuses on “what do you fight for?” Despite that phrasing it doesn’t hinge on bloodshed, since challenges are weather, nature, other mice, and ? (it’s been awhile), and can be a game for young kids as well as teens and adults.

To be fair, we're in a golden age of table top games. I really love Dominion and Inn Fighting. If you can find a copy of Inn Fighting, you'll learn to love its shortcomings because of its rapid pace, dynamic battles, and comic theme.

OK someone explain the downvotes?

Are wargames (simulation of real battles) still a thing ?

Definitely, although the quality of life goes way up with a computer doing admin.

There was a weekly column at Rock Paper Shotgun that covered them (and adjacent stuff like simulation), and lately the writer has taken up residence at a new URL.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/topics/the-flare-path

https://tallyhocorner.com/

Absolutely! Command and Colors for example is a popular contemporary system (for some definition of popular that includes wargaming).

The old school Avalon hill style hex and counter wargames have mostly been replaced by computer games, though. For obvious reasons.

Tabletop miniature wargames are also still going strong, probably more so than board wargaming. Although the historical side of the hobby is definitely aging compared to fantasy/sci-fi themed gaming.

What does "old" matter to whether a game is good or not? And regardless, are you sure you're not expressing ubiquitous consumerism or ageism?

~50 BP - Othello

~50 BP - DnD

~60 BP - Risk

~60 BP - Diplomacy

~70 BP - Stratego

~100 BP - Contract bridge

~200 BP - Mahjong

~200 BP - Double twelve dominoes

~600 BP - Playing cards

~1300 BP - Chess

~2500 BP - 围棋 (Go)

~5000 BP - Checkers / draughts

~5000 BP - Backgammon

There's a lot of obsession with 'new games are better' amongst modern board gamers that they overlook what's good about the classics and why they are still here today.

I admit I was kind of the same way at first, plowing through hundreds of modern games and mostly ignoring older games, but if you take another look at the classics there's some real gems there. A few other excellent games you don't mention are Shogi (500 BP), Cribbage (420 BP), Fanorona (340 BP), Crokinole (150 BP), and Acquire (60 BP).

Although IMO, Double 6 dominoes is where it's at, not double 12. "All Fives" Dominoes and Partnership Dominoes are highly underrated amongst modern gamers, imo.

One of my favorite games of social deduction is Skull. I got the $10 version but it's based on a very old Skull & Roses game. The simplicity is deceiving, which you quickly realize as you have to make meaningful, difficult choices about your bluffs and bets.

Skull has more going on for it than it seems like it should for its super simple components, but at the same time I only ever seem to play it with 6 players, and the game feels to me like it outstays its welcome after about 20-30 minutes and those 6 player games always seem to take 45 minutes to an hour to play out, at least with the various groups I've played it with. I'm usually pretty bored by the end of it.

Coup, while more complicated, is a similar game that never seems to last that long, even with 6 players (usually closer to 10-15 minutes for that).

Skull, unlike modern European-influenced games, doesn't keep everyone in it until the end. But I think I prefer 4-5 players.

I love domino games. I used to play a lot of two-hand sniff (or muggins -- lots of variants). For me there's something aesthetically pleasing about games that use generic gaming equipment -- dominoes, cards, pawns, etc.

What is "BP"? I tried searching the Inernet but couldn't find it.

Before Present? (Just guessing)

My guess is "before present", not sure why you wouldn't use BCE/CE though.

BP (when properly explained) emphasizes that the important aspect of the timeline is its relativity to the current time.

So it saves 2 characters compared to ###y ago but requires an explanation.

    2500 BP
    2500y ago

Agreed, I was explaining a contrast to using BC/BCE.

"ya" is an equally short abbreviation for "years ago".

I've never see that before so I'd have to look it up just like BP.

I can see why it makes sense in archaeology, but using it here without any explanation just led to confusion. Everybody knows BC/AD (or BCE/CE if you're wanting to be cross cultural) so using it is just poor communication in this case.

It's trivial to Google and then we are part of today's 10,000.

Yes we can easily Google "BP".

BP conventionally being relative to an epoch date of 1 Jan 1950, which is at an ever increasing distance from the actual present, is something of an issue (and while “before actual present” is useful, using BP for it, given the conventional use, is problematic.)

"ya" (years ago) as a suffix is better, in that it doesn't have a conventional use with a particular epoch date.

It normally refers to a timescale called "Before Present" where Present is defined as = Jan 1, 1950. You see it a lot in radio- dating. GP has invented their own dating system with the same name based around ~2021.

Fun fact, there's no corresponding After Present system for dates after 1950. Instead you subtract negative years. E.g. 1957 AD = -7 BP.

That's interesting. The creation date for Dungeons and Dragons (1974) would be -24 BP then.

Talking about abbreviations:

https://blog.mitchjlee.com/2020/your-writing-style-is-costly

What does BP mean in this context?

Newer games are made with the knowledge of older games, so theoretically they should be better. I'd argue they are on average, but there's also the survivorship bias in play with very old games that only the good ones are still commonly known and played.

> theoretically they should be better

Lol anything newer is theoretically better?

Yea I did a double take at that one. The software industry laughs uncontrollably at that statement.

New things are made with the knowledge of old things, and old things aren't. Unless more knowledge about what you're making could lead to a worse product, then newer things will on average be better than older things.

Does this theory hold in practice when you look around you in the real world?

Was the best work of all fields - cinema, art, music, architecture, literature, all from the last year?

I find the production of bad movies to be such an interesting issue. Lot of money, lots of highly skilled people, long time, it still some how you get really bad results fairly often. It is a lesson in humility for any ambitious endeavor I think.

Yes it does, but not from "last year" because art has to age. The best art from 11700 is leagues better than the best art from 10700, or 5000 (we're in 12021 BTW). Obvious caveat that dark and golden ages interrupt this trend.

To people who like area control games like Risk, I highly recommend checking out Inis or Kemet. Tammany Hall, and El Grande are other favorites as well, but are less about dudes on a map than the first two.

Shut Up & Sit Down do a very good job selling Inis: https://youtu.be/ElcG-_-gfxo

Tammany hall is great for the first three elections, and then falls apart in the final round when it’s just about counting votes on the board.

We similarly ditched Risk, or actually, its Italian variant RisiKo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RisiKo!). This variant gives differentiated goals for each player (e.g., "conquer 3 continents", or "defeat the Blue army"), which in principle should make the game shorter. But it also allows the defender to throw 3 dice (if they have at least 3 armies), making battles much harder for the attacker. In our group we theorized that using d10s or d20s instead of d6s should speed up the game, but honestly we never tried.

Edit: sadly you will have to copy and paste the Wikipedia URL, as HN wrongly believes that the trailing "!" is not part of it.

Up to 3 dice for defence is the standard rule. I think the standard game has several different types of victory, but the one you describe is in there in the British version.

> Up to 3 dice for defence is the standard rule.

The standard rule is up to 3 for attack, up to 2 for defence.

https://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/risk.pdf

Doh! Thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RisiKo%21

the url works if you % encode the !

> It's old and clunky and extremely long, there are 100 other better board games now.

And to just put this into numbers, BGG ranks Risk on position 19,955. By this ranking there are just shy of twenty thousand games better than Risk. And I agree, I will never play Risk again as it's not worth the time with the competition today.

Risk Legacy (2011) is ranked in position 368. So if that list is of any use, then this variation of the classic Risk must be immensely better!

To be honest I'm curious. The description of the game seems to imply that the game itself changes every time you play it, because some of the cards used should then be destroyed and thrown away from the game box, never to be used again. That, and the game concept covers complete campaigns, not only discrete games that you play once and then forget about it: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/105134/risk-legacy

Do people actual follow those Legacy game rules that try to trick you into destroying the game?

You're not destroying the game, your changing future playthroughs. Sure you tear up cards but those get replaced with new ones. You change the gameboard, rules, factions every time you play meaning every subsequent game is different.

If you play with the same people it makes those (hopefully friendly) rivalries across play sessions have weight and maybe even consequences.

Sure you might only get 2 dozen games out of it before you've "completed" it and need a new copy but this isn't the 80s where people have a choice of Risk, Monopoly, and Cludeo. 2 dozen games can last years, if not decades.

I normally am very much against the "Legacy" thing, but definitely make an exception for Risk. If you want a copy of Risk that you can play forever and never changes, spend the $2 with your local thrift store or Craigslist seller.

I've played Pandemic Legacy through with a group of friends, and yes we did everything by the book. It's one of my most memorable board game experiences, full recommendation. Got more value for money than with any other of my board games.

We started season 2 too, but ironically that was disrupted by the pandemic.

Basically the game has packets with instructions like "open on game 3" or "open the first time an army is defeated". These packets then have things like extra cards, new rules, new marks for the board.

Speaking of which there are marks you put in the board for different victory conditions, like you can "own" a continent whicheans in future games if you own that continent you and only you get a bonus. Same with naming a country or buffing a country so it has a permanent +1 army.

If you have enjoyed Risk previously and have a group of friends that you can continually play with I'd highly recommend it. It can still work with mixing in new people but half the fun is the shared history and friendly rivalries between game sessions.

Also there is a certain feeling when you tear up game pieces (or burn them as the winner in our case).

Well Gloomhaven is new, but also clunky. Friends aren't too enthused about playing it because the setup is intricate, and the game takes time if you aren't used to it. It's ideal if you can commit to a weekly game (much like DnD I guess).

If Risk isn't a great game, then why do people playing it get so angry when they start to lose? There is something about Risk that makes players get emotionally invested in a way I just haven't seen in other board games.

In most other games I don't care if I win or lose. This is doubly true in the sort of board games my board game 'aficionado' friends play. In those, there are often multiple different ways to win and everybody might have their own unique win condition, that may not be known to other players. I guess this sort of design is meant to minimize conflict. But the way these games minimize conflict seems to be by making people care less about winning.

It’s also highly dependent on Luck and gambling is dumb.

Check out Diplomacy. It has no RNG and each player writes their moves for the turn, which all get evaluated at the same time.

It’s a very long game due to the discussion turns and having to evaluate everyone’s moves… but it allows for exciting politics.

Thanks for the tip, i'll give it a look!

Chess is an awesome game too. Nearly no end to getting good at it, either.

What a clickbait article. I’m really disappointed. The premise is interesting: win every time using a new strategy. Then, discussion about the concept and preview of the “systems thinking” mentality. Not too bad (although the bathtub example was a pretty weak way to advocate for systems thinking, maybe that’s just me but it seems even in that example to be an overly reductive and not terribly insightful method of thought, but it was enough to entertain the next section). However, during the discussion of the strategy everything falls apart. “Let the other players fight each other. Win the game every time by not participating and hoping to inconspicuously amass an incredible army such that you can take over half the board and then turn the tide in your favor in one fell swoop.” If this fails the suggestion is then to play the meta game and beg for pity. Not a single piece of data to back up the claim that this strategy wins every time. In my experience it doesn’t. It also happens to be the strategy that most every player headquartered around Russia-Asia ends up playing because you simply cant control that part of the board early on. No “systems thinking required”. The author also claims hoarding cards is “safe” and wont trigger other players to consider you a threat to the balance of the system. Well, that’s just naive either on part of the author or requires other players to be pretty green to not account for the risk card factor. In reality, another player also using systems thinking would immediately identify you as a threat because they would be tracking unit quantity flow in and out for the players on the board and using that to inform their understanding of what constitutes a threat. I think that’s the disappointment kinda summed up: this strategy doesn't work in a game where everyone uses it because it depends on your opponents not paying attention rather than you making strategic moves to win the game. The author does not sufficiently incorporate all the complexities of the game and people to yield a solved game.

Cybernetics is a much cooler word anyway. Deals with functions, while systems theory deals with objects.

IM!HO, object-oriented thinking doesn't work in complex environments. - You tell a duck by its quack.

Anyhow, if there's a system or strategy that enables you to win every time.... what happens once everyone knows and uses it?

'The author also claims hoarding cards is “safe” and wont trigger other players to consider you a threat to the balance of the system.'

Unlike continents, cards additionally represent an incentive for other players, so it's even crazier to think it is "safe".

In general I share the same sentiments as you. I'm disappointed this article got voted up, presumably because it uses the phrase "systems thinking" in the title.

In defense of the author, if you actually believe it is possible for you to win any player-vs-player game every time by applying a certain strategy, you clearly aren't doing systems thinking. :-)

Even if the execution was flawed in that it did not deliver a successful gaming strategy or sufficiently complex model of the game, I still appreciated the nature of the exercise. I would love to read an article that takes it to a more accurate and effective system model.

The first part of the article can be summarized as:

1. Initiate as few attacks as possible

2. Let your enemies break up each other’s continents;

3. Take only one country per turn

The problem is that it doesn't explain which country to take, and how to attack without being attacked -- which is what makes the game difficult.

But, then, the article suggests something new (at least for me):

1. Find a way to grow in strength by taking lots of countries (but not taking a whole continent)

2. Make sure you get lots of cards for bonus armies

If this is a good strategy, I have always played it wrong -- because I've always tried to take whole continents.

It's a good strategy against those that don't know it. Basically, you are biasing towards consistent growth and avoiding spreading yourself too thin.

> If this is a good strategy, I have always played it wrong -- because I've always tried to take whole continents.

Continents are great, but only if you are in so strong a position that everyone thinks you are never going to lose it before next turn anyway.

Yeah and all that didn't require systems theory, wasn't even that useful with systems theory or as an example of systems theory.

Taking the Americas was always the ideal way to win. Only three borders to defend. The Asia strategy hardly ever worked.

Then there's my personal favorite once you know you can't win: "Turtle up" in Australia to drag the end game out for no reason other than spite.

> If this is a good strategy, I have always played it wrong -- because I've always tried to take whole continents.

Its not a great strategy, because it doesn't work. If you are taking only one country a turn and keeping only a small connected corr of reinforced countries with the rest weak, then anyone playing a “grab lots of countries quickly" strategy is going to steamroller your weakly defended territory, and if you are only taking one country per turn, you’ll never recover from that.

A thick shell/thin-core strategy can work (especially if it is “talr Australia, then expand a bubble out in Asia), and otherwise looks a lot like the strategy this recommends, but you just have to accept that if a strategy can work, people are likely to recognize it; you can't reliably avoid balancing feedback unless you are playing against inexperienced players or naive AI.

(Also, contrary to the article, IME while Australia is frequently taken early on, its also a major balancing feedback trigger.)

"Also, contrary to the article, IME while Australia is frequently taken early on, its also a major balancing feedback trigger."

It turns out that in any decent game with decent opponents, players learn what works and adapt. ;-)

At least in my meta, the main reason why Australia tends to get left alone once consolidated is that defending it is comparatively easy that anyone who tries to take it out without first consolidating an overwhelming advantage will be so crippled by the effort that they'll invariably lose the game. So Australia devolves to being this game of "chicken" between the other players.

I think it assumes you have more than 2 people playing, and the other people haven't read this article. Which...doesn't sound like a sound strategy to me.

I often play against bots in yura.net Domination. These bots seem hardcoded to gang up on players (both bots and humans) whenever they manage to take a continent. It doesn't help that continents that are worth holding are usually difficult to defend. I learned quickly to never hold onto continents, especially with increasing cards. When you are strong enough to hold continents, you have pretty much already won the game.

Take a least one country each turn is the "get lots of cards for bonus armies" strategy.

This basic strategy „get a card each turn and avoid losing armies“ gets you from beginner to intermediate. Once every player understood this it once again is a question of who controls the southern continents. The additional two or three armies each turn add up.

I was thinking this as well. It assumes the other players are naiive to your strategy and will not counter it. If someone were gathering a collection of bonus cards I think this would tip off the other players and awaken the dragons.

Especially since you get their unused bonus cards when you defeat an opponent.

The winning strategy is doing whatever the other players are overlooking.

If everyone decides to follow the advice about the southern continents, the winning strategy is to get all over Asia.

Some years ago I regularly played Risk with three friends. It always started with a fight about the three southern continents. Of course, only three can get one. The left over player tried this strategy to stretch across Asia, Europe, and maybe even North America. Always careful to not cover a whole continent and raise attention. South America and Africa are in constant conflict with each other so they are busy with themselves. The problem is Australia. That player also needs a card every card and will constantly tear into Asia.

At some point the balance between South America and Africa will break and the northern player needs to intervene there as well. So it is impossible to not be dragged into fights and some armies need to be spent.

With four players there is always someone who will point out to your neighbors what they are overlooking. That makes the game drag on because whenever one is about to overpower another player, two others will intervene. Apart from the cards on your hand there is no hidden information in Risk. So if you play for world domination everything is very obvious all the time.

What ends the game is that the card bonus armies become so huge that every turn there is some crusade across the whole board until some is the lucky winner.

If you try to get all over Asia you'll be eaten by the player who took Australia.

This author doesn't have much experience with competitive gaming and it's quite obvious. This is only a strategy he devised to play against his friends and relatives, most probably. He assumes a lot of player behavior, and what other explanation could there be? His bathtub example is very bad because there ain't no players, and when there's players the meta absolutely depends upon who you are playing against. there's not such a thing as an optimal universal strategy at all, in fact it makes a player predictable and low-skilled in most competitive games.

Systems thinking without game philosophy understanding is very shallow.

To illustrate my point of the strategy being entirely reliant upon opponents (meta): in cs:go, most unexperienced players will go through a hot spot (that's probably being targeted by pre-positioned opponents) without jumping, making themselves easy targets. this is the behavior you will find in low ranks. eventually, some of the players will learn that jumping may be a good tactic in these situations instead, to make it harder for opponents to hit headshot, and behavior becomes very common in mid-ranks. Eventually, though, mid-rank players will start to notice this tendency to jumping, and will position their crosshairs looking for a jumping headshot - they will progress in rank by doing so. At high-ranks, however, a lot of times it is expected that your opponent will be waiting for a jumping cross, and therefore the low-rank behavior would be the best one: don't jump. In conclusion, it's impossible to point out the best possible behavior without knowing who you're playing against and their skill in the game.

I completely agree with everything you said, however I'd like to comment on the last thing you said - Just because the best possible strategy changes depending on the skill of your opponent(s) does not mean that there can't be a strategy that cannot be exploited by your opponent. I think the mistake many people make is that they tend to look at games with a "chess mindset" (there is a single move that is the perfect response to my opponents move) when games with hidden information (such as cs:go) will require a "poker mindset" - a strategy isn't given by a single move but by a probability distribution of actions. In your example, there is an "optimal" way to play this scenario in which you aim at jumping height p% of the time and at normal walking height (1-p)% of the time where the value of p depends on many different factors such as you hitting the headshot if you aim correctly, you hitting it anyways if you don't aim correctly etc.

This is not the strategy that will win the the most (if you know for sure that your opponent will jump every time, of course you would never aim at walking height), but it is one that cannot be exploited by your opponent deviating from whatever their optimal strategy is.

Of course, improving your skill enough to see these changes in behavior in your opponents takes a long time, which is why we naturally adapt the more exploitative strategies that you mentioned.

there's about 3 levels of strategic play:

a player can follow the rules

a player can find the optimal strategy within the rules

a player can use the rules to find plays that negate easy access to the optimal strategy to the enemy

this whole article is mostly stuck at level 2, it identifies a workable strategy analyzing a player own options, missing all the more advanced plays that a risk player should know and will need to do to win.

moreover, there's one critical flaw in the analysis, the goal is not to reach your objective, the goal is to reach your objective before other players do, and the time limit influences the risk taking; turtling, as suggested here, rarely wins games.

anyway, risk itself is a insanely complex games, so I'll skip mechanics, which are kind of covered in the article (except combination optimization, which is weird since mechanically speaking it is one major factor driving gameplay) and go at the jugular of the issue:

you win at risk guessing other people goals and making moves that confound your own or even let player think your goal is one of those of your adversaries. mechanically suboptimal moves, like a push into a continent you don't have to conquer but one of your enemy does, will trigger player response, and strategically turning player against each other will both buy you time and reduce the enemy placing too many reinforcements against your actual goal path.

There's a fourth level: a player who can use the rules to find plays that negate easy access to the optimal strategy to a player who can use the rules to find plays that negate easy access to the optimal strategy to the enemy. ;-)

Clearly I cannot drink from my glass as the one in front of you is poisoned knowing that...

Title: How To Win At Risk Every Time By Using Systems Thinking

Disclaimer at bottom of page: The above strategy works “on paper,” but that doesn’t mean that it will work in your next game of Risk.

Yeah this title is clickbait. No strategy wins every time, especially if everyone's cognizant of your one style.

If it doesn’t work, flip the table and start again.

Completely. I erroneously assumed this was referring to startups, which would make a great article.

My sarcastic internal monologue while loading the article: "If multiple players use systems thinking, which one wins every time?"

So this strategy is working for the author until we know the author's name and reputation.

Or play against them two or three times.

I believe it was meant to say - How to win at Risk by using Systems Thinking every time

Every time I've played Risk, two things happened. First, a massive bloodbath over Australia. Second, a long slow slog to a dissatisfying end, where multiple players wind up pissed off, because the Australian ends up winning somehow.

The AU continent is just so easy to hold. With only one country to go through, you can amass a huge army in Siam and no one touches your continent all game.

Sounds like you’re playing with sloppy players

AU is an easy way to get second place, not to necessarily win. Focus on getting cards elsewhere. Card bonuses build up to where the Siam bottleneck won’t matter.

This is why it’s great to focus on Siam if you play with that one person who always focuses on AU.

While everyone else is fighting over Australia, I generally managed to get a win by completely ignoring it (and uh, making use of the people that were so irrationally focused on it).

Coming from an economics background, every presentation I've seen of "systems thinking" (admittedly, not a large number) makes it look ill-defined, incomplete, and obvious.

The basics are feedback and a holistic POV. From there anything can be said. But if your strategy doesn't incorporate feedback, it is not a systemic strategy.

I think his point is that "applying systems thinking" in many cases when at least shared casually like this post, frequently seems like some hand-wave that is extremely porous in its reasoning.

Ie that was a whole lot of formality to deduce and say "other people will gang up on you if you're seen as too strong".

Honestly I'd love to see an example of systems thinking that provides a unique insight that someone wouldn't have otherwise come up with by looking at a problem from more than 2 mins.

An approach for thinking only provides value if it produces something different and better than what an alternate approach would have come up with. Every instance of support for systems thinking has either been used as a justification for an otherwise trivial result, or has been a version of the argument of "this person I look up to uses it therfore it's good". Can noone find an example where it actually demonstrates value?

There’s certainly a big hand wave here between describing Risk in terms of stocks and flows, and the strategies that he then goes in to propose. Honestly the systems thinking analysis here is weak in that at no point does he characterize the opponents or their armies and countries as part of the system - where he actually then relies on their behavior as a component of strategy (getting them to fight among themselves, for example). There’s discussion of how the strategy manages ‘opponent fear’, but he hasn’t explained that as a stock.

Are you kidding? My economics background taught me to assume away all the relevant facts and content myself with toy models of perfect competition.

The most relevant economic model for this context would be Nash equilibrium.

If you want a more rigorous view of systems theory then you'll want to look into the mathematical side of cybernetics, chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. Systems thinking is more of an approach than a rigourous discipline in the same way that reductionism is ("break a problem down into its constituent parts and solve them"), but it is backed by both rigourous disciplines and philosophy.

This is an example of systems theory couched in Risk. You don't gain any special insights into Risk from systems theory as framed in this article.

OP/TFA introduced systems theory, then introduced the usual winning risk strategy, and then introduced a lot of required steps like player management / table top diplomacy, selecting countries to attack, timing card cash-outs, boundary holding, and so on without systems theory.

Isn't that what systems thinking is? A fancy word for "strategy"?

Kind of? I think you're supposed to be able to identify flow rates and limiting factors and back out numerical / quantitative advice.

Systems thinking is to strategy as reductionism is to tactics. It's about holism.

It is better thought of as zooming out to see more entities and how they work together.

This video was my introduction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AKHjwvEufg

Derek Cabrera https://blog.cabreraresearch.org/jf

https://thesystemsthinker.com/introduction-to-systems-thinki...

You can dig deep into this stuff, I find it fascinating to see what others may not see through an understanding of how to visualize the problem as a system within a system.

All of the info about how to play risk in the article came naturally to a few friends of mine and me, over many hours of playing the game with each other and crazy bots, which we all manipulated in helping us out, once a player tried to grab a little too much. The bots mostly acted predictably and we abused that to no end. It is observation of long term tactics and how games were won and all that.

However, I needed something more to win games and so I took some time to write myself a risk calculator tool [1] I think I made more educated decisions about risking moves in the game by using the tool. Knowing your chances not only by gut, but also by mathematics can give you that little extra boost :D

[1]: https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/guile-risk-calculator

I always beat my sister at Risk as a kid. Then she was on a bus trip that waited out an epic snowstorm, three days holed up in a church. A Risk board was the only amusement, and the winner got to play again. She never left the board.

"Start in Australia" is all I remember of my strategy. It's a great metaphor for so many problems. Certainly, for HN, as a startup strategy. What's the "Australia" for your imagined market?

I can't think of a worse analogy for my Koala repellant startup.

It seems like this only works against not very good players. Only getting a card per turn while slowly losing armies will not stack against 2-3 players holding continents, getting bonus armies and a card.

Letting the other players fight each other imagined a game where no one notices you.

I always thought that the key to winning at Risk was to avoid getting caught up in a land war in Asia....

Title: "How To Win At Risk Every Time By Using Systems Thinking"

Last paragraph: "The above strategy works “on paper,” but that doesn’t mean that it will work in your next game of Risk."

Too funny. Totally discounts the title... smh

Not to beat a dead horse but the difference between “try to design society to produce positive outcomes for people in the aggregate” and “put the onus on every individual to succeed on their own and have no sympathy for the portion that inevitably fail in a moralistic or Calvinist fashion” is also a difference of systems thinking versus not systems thinking.

It feels like there is a really big, unexplained jump from the principles provided to the strategies that are shared.

So the article describes the reason why taking and holding Australia early doesn't cause the other players to gang up on you (although I have played with people who definitely wanted to take me out of Australia because of the two extra armies and who were willing to go on crazy suicide marches to achieve their goals) but it does not explain exactly why take and hold Australia early is almost a cliche of 'the key to Risk' strategies one sees about.

finally, everyone here seems to argue that Risk is a terrible game but if that's so why do I generally win?! Next you're going to tell me that Stratego isn't any good either!

In my experience the key to winning is endurance: just be the last person willing to play past 2:00 a.m. Then it doesn't matter if you have entire continents or one piece in Greenland: you win.

I think the analysis is deeply flawed because classic Risk 3:2 odds favor the attacker see http://diceroll.stritar.net/risk.html

Attacker wins: 2890 (37.17%)

Tie: 2611 (33.58%)

Defender wins: 2275 (29.26%)

out of a total of 7776 for 5 dice rolled (3 on 2)

On average defender loses 1.08 armies and attacker loses .92 for a 0.16 defender deficit per attack. When two large groups face each other (e.g. 20 on 20 or more) it's much better to be the attacker.

Pretty long article to advocate for turtling

If you’d like a simpler Risk-like game that is over in a few minutes, give Compact Conflict a try. There are temples instead of continents so strategy is somewhat different, but it still pays to stay out of fights when you can, particularly with four players.

https://wasyl.eu/games/compact-conflict/play.html

The Risk equivalent of "how to win at chess every time in 4 moves"...

Wow this is exactly the strategy I've played. I take it to the extreme and put literally all my soldiers on one territory.

The ideal situation is when an opponent ends their turn in a weak spot (likely if everyone is trying to secure territory) with 3-5 cards in hand and you have 5 in hand. Then you can cash in, eliminate them and end your turn with 6+ cards in hand in which case you get to cash in on the end of your turn (sort of a hack. I think the idea is the game designer didn't want it to be possible to start a turn by cashing in twice) and then you can actually secure your new territory.

I think people who try to claim a continent outside if Australia haven't really done the math on how long they need to hold the continent for it to pay off.

Having played Risk on and off for almost 40 years, this article sounds...silly and wildly overthought.

Oh and, my favorite strategy: capture Australia first, then creep outward, deny others full countries, and create opportunities for other players to attack each other.

i love that Australia strategy, its my go-to

Yeah. Risk is broken in the sense that Australia is too powerful if the rest of the world is properly contested so whoever manages it can patiently push upwards and win the game.

I've played variations that have better balances.

> and you can’t really know anything without first giving it a name

Just a side note for the sake of curiosity: there is at least one African language (I don't know its name, unfortunately), which doesn't give a name to the natural environment, since, by their perspective, it is not a separate entity in itself. However, they probably "know" the environment way more deeply than most of us.

Risk seems like a game that an alpha-zero-like AI could be trained on. The major differences between Go and Risk seem to be an element of randomness, more than 2 players, and a small amount of hidden state (cards). Perhaps the hidden state would interfere with the ability to train too much?

I like History of the World these days. A bit more structure but a fun area conquest game. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/224/history-world

Or, just play Diplomacy. No dice rolling at all! And stories of backstabbing I can remember for years.

AlphaZero could not beat humans at Risk half a year ago:

http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1514096/FULLTEXT0...

If you're interested in Risk, here's a list of research on Risk: https://github.com/captn3m0/boardgame-research#risk

This must be how my aunt always wins against, well, everyone. Honestly, she's not the sharpest tool in the drawer, but she plays Risk like the Muzychuk's play chess. She's a damn Risk savant. :D

I wonder how she would fare at Diplomacy. hmm.

Ugh, Stems was the only engineering class I took as an undergrad and the whole thing felt like it was stuck in the uncanny valley between the abstract and the concrete. Maybe 33 years later I’d do better with it.

A great article, but isn’t the strategy just «if you want to win [in RISK] don’t lose.»

I tend to play with the same people over and over and usually we balance who wins. It’s a great game, should I over complicate it?

For Risk a better way is to apply Strategic Thinking. The difference bring, while you might fully control all parts of your system (bathtub) you can't fully control the market (competitors).

I have never played risk. But I have always been curious of the joke where Malcom (in the middle) used to always beat the whole family. Is it about strategy, complexity, random luck?

Hmmm in my experience the benefit of a continent in Risk is too great to pass up. Either you take a continent, hold it and win or lose trying. This makes the game feel very random.

I find the same thing.

I'm not sure what the term is but I find risk has too few mechanics/variables.

Ok, now how do we proceed if every player is doing this? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a risk game in which people didn’t stick with mostly one country per turn.

Poor me who doesn't know the board game "Risk" and thus believed I could win at any Risk by reading this article!

The whole key to early Risk is goading your opponents into attacking each other. It's an art.

Win at Risk simply by going first. The first player always wins through attrition.

That is kinda like MTREES.io

Or just take Australia

Rolling sixes is how you win at Risk.

tl;dr: Always get into a land war in Asia.

Inconceivable!

I dislike games where it’s just a system to win. Kinda defeats the purpose. No actual gamesmanship.

Systematic play is often the first step for beginners to gather experience from multiple similar situations. Nuance comes after that

I feel similar about this, although I have to say, that it disqualifies so many board games, that sometimes I wish, I would enjoy other games more. It is a bit sad. Sometimes friends want to play something and I allow them to convince me, just to not seem like the boring person, who "only wants to play their games".

I avoid these games too but mostly because it feels like work.

I like those games I think. The alternative is chance, and that’s very dissatisfying.

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