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

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.

callamdelaney 5y ago
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.
- hpoe 5y ago
  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.
  - ghostly_s 5y ago
    I think this depends on the map. If you're playing with Antarctica, Australia has a good route to South America and Africa
  - callamdelaney 5y ago
    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.
  - faeriechangling 5y ago
    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.
    - fellowniusmonk 5y ago
      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?
  - ummwhat 5y ago
    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.
  - 5y ago
cletus 5y ago
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.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  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.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    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.
the_lonely_road 5y ago
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.
- 0xRCA 5y ago
  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
  - hinkley 5y ago
    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.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > 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.
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      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.
alex_anglin 5y ago
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.
- drited 5y ago
  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.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    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.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  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.
hinkley 5y ago
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.
IncRnd 5y ago
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.
- AncientPC 5y ago
  As they say in poker, "Play the person, not the cards. But also sometimes play the cards."
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    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."
jacobolus 5y ago
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.
- fellowniusmonk 5y ago
  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.
- rattray 5y ago
  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.
wearywanderer 5y ago
> 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.
- paulluuk 5y ago
  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."
markus_zhang 5y ago
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.
Agentlien 5y ago
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.
sjg007 5y ago
Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt....

callamdelaney 5y ago

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.

hpoe 5y ago
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.
- ghostly_s 5y ago
  I think this depends on the map. If you're playing with Antarctica, Australia has a good route to South America and Africa
- callamdelaney 5y ago
  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.
- faeriechangling 5y ago
  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.
  - fellowniusmonk 5y ago
    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?
- ummwhat 5y ago
  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.
- 5y ago

cletus 5y ago

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.

sdenton4 5y ago
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.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  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.

the_lonely_road 5y ago

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.

0xRCA 5y ago
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
- hinkley 5y ago
  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.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > 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.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    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.

alex_anglin 5y ago

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.

drited 5y ago
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.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  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.
IshKebab 5y ago
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.

hinkley 5y ago

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.

IncRnd 5y ago

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.

AncientPC 5y ago
As they say in poker, "Play the person, not the cards. But also sometimes play the cards."
- IncRnd 5y ago
  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."

jacobolus 5y ago

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.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago
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.
rattray 5y ago
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.

wearywanderer 5y ago

> 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.

paulluuk 5y ago
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."

markus_zhang 5y ago

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.

Agentlien 5y ago

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.

sjg007 5y ago

Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt....