Risk Analysis: Conclusion, sort of

The series of atrociously boring posts is finally over. While I can’t say the analysis was very in depth or interesting, it got me thinking and writing on quite a few different topics. Hopefully this arduous analysis will yield some interesting topics to discuss in future posts. In addition, it got me used to a regular (well, almost) blogging schedule. I can only hope I have not scared away a potential reader with my apparent obsession with Risk.

There actually was one element I had wanted to accentuate in my rendition of Risk: the balance of Now and Later. It is quite common in many other board games, such as Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, the goods produced by your Caribbean colony can be used either for victory points or gold to improve the colony(thus making it possible to produce more goods). If the player spends too long trying to improve the colony to accumulate victory points later, she will not have enough time to accumulate them before the game is over. In Risk, a similar balance must be maintained between attacking and defending. While attacking, a disproportionate amount of soldiers are lost compared to the defender. Yet it is often worth it for the Risk Card and increased territory. Still, if a player overextends her attack over multiple territories, the player’s current military strength will not be enough to defend the new territories. In regular Risk, the player almost certainly attacks too much if more than one territory is conquered, since no additional Risk Cards are awarded. If the player attacks fewer than one territory, she is also likely to suffer an disadvantage, since the Risk cards are very powerful in the early stages of the game. This is the most important reason Risk Cards should be removed, and compensate for the lack of incentives for attack with a combat system that favours the offensive player more.

The inclusion of fleets would also greatly benefit a player on the offensive, as any choke points on the edges of continents would become less significant. Naval warfare would also tie in well with the historical theme. The construction fleets would also be an interesting strategic choice, since the sea zones would yield no extra armies if a player conquers them. The fleets also urge the player to keep armies everywhere in her empire, which would really require new per-unit movement rules. The original Risk movement rules are simple and quite elegant in my opinion, but they are insufficient when dealing with both armies and fleets. As long as all movement is handled in the same turn though, it should still retain the rules simplicity requirements of a family game.

Another aspect that I thought Risk lacked was enough reasons for diplomacy. Since diplomacy is rules-free, it is easy to grasp as long as there are reasons to negotiate with other players.  Thus I wanted to make large empires less viable than middle-sized ones, making an alliance between two players stronger than a player fighting alone, even if that player had more territories and armies than the two opposing players combined. Limiting the movement capabilities, or having each player getting a base bonus (such as giving a base amount of cards or armies) would make alliances more viable.

I also wanted to restrict the playing time of Risk, especially the time where one or more players had been eliminated from the game. My first option was ending the game as soon as one player was defeated, but in the end I think I favour a variation on the Risk Mission Cards, where there often is no time to think about eliminating other players. The removal of a player’s Risk cards offered as a reward for an eliminating player and a new rule supporting struggling players defensively would also deter players from eliminating each other.

Another strategic decision I wanted to add was factory building. The player has the choice at the start of his turn to either build a new factory, or place one army or fleet at all factories he currently controls. This is of course another take on the Now versus Future balance, as you need factories to build armies, and you need armies to protect your factories. To make acquiring territory still interesting, my idea was limiting the amount of soldiers you could feed on a single continuous piece of your empire. This could create interesting invasions and naval blockades to starve out parts of an enemy empire. Still, like many other additions, such as a representation of great generals or important events of the eras, this could become hard for a novice player to handle. A scoring board with maximum versus current amount of armies and fleets might help, but perhaps it is best to have troop recruitment handled the old way for simplicity’s sake.

Lastly, I wanted to decrease downtime by shortening a players turn, as well as making battles shorter yet more interesting. I wanted to use a card-driven battle system, since it would be relatively simple, but the creation and balancing of the cards might be too arduous a task, so a faster, more strategic dice-based combat would be preferrable.

The reason I am so lazy with balancing cards and all those things is that I am currently planning on making this version of Risk a reality (preferrably on a computer), but we’ll see how far I’ll get with that.