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Comment by callamdelaney | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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