Risk Analysis: No strategic depth?

Last weekend was rather busy, so I have moved that week’s post to this weekend instead.

“There is little opportunity for interesting decision making due to a lack of meaningful choices and strategies.”

Is there really no so called “strategic depth” in Risk? Strategic depth can be described as the amount and variety of choices the player can make regarding his overarching plan to solve a problem (i.e. strategy), as well as the way these decisions interact with each other. In Risk, there is one goal, and one problem to solve: Global Domination. The only way to win is to eliminate all other players, and how is that accomplished? By slowly taking more and more of their territories until you produce and control more armies than your enemy, thus increasing your chances of taking more territories faster.

Risk Analysis: Introduction

Risk is most likely one of the most popular board games of all time, but it is also the game every “serious” gamer loves to hate. Perhaps its design can be blamed on the fact that it was created in a time when there were very little experience in designing games. The rules have changed since then, though only minimally. I have decided to improve (or at least change) Risk, not in a fit of hubris, but to analyse a relatively simple game and suggest improvements while keeping the spirit of the original.