Win at Risk by using systems thinking

https://thesystemisdown.substack.com/p/how-to-win-at-risk-every-time-by

by AndyMPatton • 5 years ago

412 237 5 years ago

thesystemisdown.substack.com

jlkuester7• 5 years ago

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

Dumblydorr3• 5 years ago

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.

kochikame• 5 years ago

Sounds like you’re playing with sloppy players

1123581321• 5 years ago

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.

prpl• 5 years ago

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

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

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).

GoodJokes• 5 years ago

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

__s• 5 years ago

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

zelphirkalt2• 5 years ago

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".

laurent123456• 5 years ago

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

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

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

qznc4• 5 years ago

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.

chapium• 5 years ago

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.

mod• 5 years ago

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

marcosdumay• 5 years ago

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.

qznc4• 5 years ago

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.

ALittleLight• 5 years ago

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

codeulike• 5 years ago

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.

Dumblydorr3• 5 years ago

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

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

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

fb13• 5 years ago

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

kd0amg• 5 years ago

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

golemotron• 5 years ago

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

dequor• 5 years ago

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

prepend• 5 years ago

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.

zelphirkalt2• 5 years ago

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

Dumblydorr3• 5 years ago

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.

bakuninsbart• 5 years ago

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

whiddershins• 5 years ago

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.

bentcorner• 5 years ago

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.

qznc4• 5 years ago

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.

epr• 5 years ago

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.

iratewizard• 5 years ago

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.

SparkyMcUnicorn• 5 years ago

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...

davedx• 5 years ago

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

jader201• 5 years ago

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).

Groxx• 5 years ago

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.

fridif2• 5 years ago

oh believe me, i can believe it

grasshopperpurp• 5 years ago

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.

x3iv130f• 5 years ago

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.

dragonwriter4• 5 years ago

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.

simonh3• 5 years ago

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.

meristohm• 5 years ago

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.

jvanderbot5• 5 years ago

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.

jvanderbot5• 5 years ago

OK someone explain the downvotes?

wiz21c• 5 years ago

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

msg• 5 years ago

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/

smogcutter2• 5 years ago

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.

failwhaleshark2• 5 years ago

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

cableshaft3• 5 years ago

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.

meowster• 5 years ago

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

aflag2• 5 years ago

What does BP mean in this context?

TchoBeer2• 5 years ago

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.

cableshaft3• 5 years ago

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

smogcutter2• 5 years ago

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.

lou1306• 5 years ago

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.

simonh3• 5 years ago

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.

em-bee• 5 years ago

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

the url works if you % encode the !

distances2• 5 years ago

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.

j1elo• 5 years ago

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

slothtrop2• 5 years ago

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).

wearywanderer2• 5 years ago

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.

emsy2• 5 years ago

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

andrewzah• 5 years ago

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.

uvnq• 5 years ago

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

Jeff_Brown2• 5 years ago

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.

projektfu• 5 years ago

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.

BoiledCabbage• 5 years ago

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?

jameshart• 5 years ago

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.

viburnum• 5 years ago

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

Jeff_Brown2• 5 years ago

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

beaconstudios5• 5 years ago

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.

skybrian• 5 years ago

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

AQXt2• 5 years ago

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.

mathgladiator• 5 years ago

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.

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

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.

jvanderbot5• 5 years ago

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

jcadam• 5 years ago

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.

dragonwriter4• 5 years ago

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.)

cbsmith3• 5 years ago

"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.

teawrecks• 5 years ago

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.

samus• 5 years ago

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.

HWR_14• 5 years ago

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

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

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.

failwhaleshark2• 5 years ago

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.

ineedasername• 5 years ago

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.

protomyth• 5 years ago

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

avereveard• 5 years ago

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.

cbsmith3• 5 years ago

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. ;-)

RobKohr• 5 years ago

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

I-Robot• 5 years ago

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

notjustanymike• 5 years ago

Pretty long article to advocate for turtling

jvanderbot5• 5 years ago

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.

lupire• 5 years ago

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

jvanderbot5• 5 years ago

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

beaconstudios5• 5 years ago

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

SN76477• 5 years ago

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.

paulluuk3• 5 years ago

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.

callamdelaney2• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

cletus• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

paulluuk3• 5 years ago

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.

the_lonely_road• 5 years 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• 5 years 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

gerdesj• 5 years ago

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.

alex_anglin• 5 years 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.

drited2• 5 years 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.

IshKebab• 5 years 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.

hinkley2• 5 years 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.

IncRnd3• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

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

jacobolus• 5 years 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.

fellowniusmonk2• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

wearywanderer2• 5 years 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.

paulluuk3• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt....

corpMaverick• 5 years ago

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?

j4yav• 5 years ago

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

dhosek• 5 years ago

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.

rkk3• 5 years ago

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

fallingfrog• 5 years ago

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.

dcow• 5 years ago

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.

ganzuul• 5 years ago

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.

jfk13• 5 years ago

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

cbsmith3• 5 years ago

'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. :-)

yetanotherjosh• 5 years ago

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.

oever• 5 years ago

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

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

flixic• 5 years ago

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

myth2018• 5 years ago

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.

shoto_io• 5 years ago

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

ja3k• 5 years ago

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.

captn3m0• 5 years ago

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

aphextron• 5 years ago

Or just take Australia

riantogo• 5 years ago

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).

makach• 5 years ago

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?

radley• 5 years ago

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

Jabbles• 5 years ago

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?

einpoklum3• 5 years ago

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

Inconceivable!

pharmakom• 5 years ago

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.

Waterluvian• 5 years ago

I find the same thing.

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

Syzygies• 5 years ago

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?

robertlagrant• 5 years ago

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

suzzer99• 5 years ago

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

jms703• 5 years ago

Rolling sixes is how you win at Risk.

stakkur• 5 years ago

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.

deepkerenl• 5 years ago

i love that Australia strategy, its my go-to

isaacremuant• 5 years ago

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.

skmurphy• 5 years ago

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.

rdubs333• 5 years ago

That is kinda like MTREES.io

bryanrasmussen• 5 years ago

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!

gverrilla• 5 years ago

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.

tehforsch• 5 years ago

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.

Win at Risk by using systems thinking

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