Total Diplomacy

Forget About the Last Game

Total Diplomacy — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:01:00 GMT

Scenario 1:

You still clearly remember your last Risk game. It is still fresh in your mind. You won, and won spectacularly. There was a tight moment in the game, but you made a calculated decision to counteract an invasion and turned it on its head. You made a player stretch too far and then attacked his home continent. After that, there was no stopping you.

You think that this was a fantastic strategy and are now about to play another game. Your success in that game makes you think that you can do it again. Your plan is to play the same strategy. It worked so well last time, so why not try again.

How to Maintain the Balance of Power (Part 4 of 4)

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 08:09:00 GMT

In the previous part, you timed the elimination of another player really well and collected his cards. This got you the critical momentum which you needed to deal with the next set of challenges.

Because of your balance management, you made Purple stronger until eventually Purple became too strong even for you. Now you had to confront it. The situation looked like the above.

How to Maintain the Balance of Power (Part 3 of 4)

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:01:00 GMT

In the last part you saw how you managed the balance of power by weakening the strong players and letting weaker players to become strong. You found yourself in the position shown above and were wondering what to do next.

How to Maintain the Balance of Power (Part 2 of 4)

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:50:00 GMT

In Part 1 you saw the initial distribution of armies and despite a good start discovered that you had a competitor who was even in a better position than you. Let’s examine this state and evaluate the move.

Systematic Analysis of All Possible Risk Game Variations

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:53:00 GMT

Risk has expanded greatly in recent years. Risk began its life in the 1950s and the fact that it is still widely available and popular is a testimony to its success. In its relative long history, as far a modern board games goes, Risk rules have been updated countless times and many varieties have been created and use especially when Risk has been introduced in different countries.

As computer technology progressed, official Risk games started to appear on computer games and these in turn introduced a variety of new options and maps that people could use. However, it wasn’t until the advent of unofficial Risk games that Risk and its endless amusing varieties took off. Many Risk game providers simply started their life by introducing classic Risk and an ability for players to play on different maps. Later, they made it easier for players to make maps and suddenly a whole variety of fan made maps from Star Wars, to Lord of the Rings to some elegantly topologies appeared on these sites.

Players liked these new trends so much that they simply started to ask a new question; “if we can change the maps, can we change other rules?” Today, many of competing unofficial Risk games differentiate themselves from one another by the variations they provide as well as the potential options available. Good options get replicated and certain varieties prevail or become the new standard.

This article systematically examines Risk variations and explores all areas were variations have been introduced. This will help those eager players who are constantly in search of making something new to get inspired by these custom Risk games and get more millage out of their games.

How to Maintain the Balance of Power (Part 1 of 4)

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:22:00 GMT

Risk is all about balance. If you become too weak you will be attacked and eliminated. If you become too strong, you will be ganged up on until you become a weak player and we know what happens to weak players.

However, balancing the game is an art. It requires full understanding of the rules, the map, the psychology of other players to some extent and of course impeccable timing. Players who get this right and go on to win, usually feel that they won not because of one crucial clever move or a sound strategy. Instead, they feel more like indirectly guiding a set of people towards the path of their choice without others realising what is happening to them. It is this feeling that makes Risk so enjoyable and so rewarding, not to mention so addictive.

In this series of articles, we are going to examine a complete game and look at the critical moments and various options you have in these situations. Each part of the series raises a number of questions asking you to suggest what happens next. Please provide your inputs and discuss it with the fans. A few days later the next part will be published and you can see the progress of the game and provide your comments.

Suppose you are playing Risk on a non-Earth map. The bigger the continent, the more bonus you get and cards are set as escalating (the cashing sequence is 4,6,8,10,...). The map shown above is your random starting point playing as Red.

What is your strategy? What would you do?

Critical Starting Moves in Risk (Part 2 of 2)

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:55:00 GMT

As you saw in Part 1, the initial start in Risk is quite critical and if you don’t get it right you can fail spectacularly. Opening moves in Risk are much like Chess. They set the pace of the game, define the strategic positions which would come to define the rest of the game. It is always possible to get away with a single mistake, but a series of mistakes is lethal. If you realise you have already made a mistake, beware that you can’t afford to risk anymore and need to play conservatively thinking about all possible consequences before you make your decision. Let’s analyse the game further to see what happened and what went wrong.

Critical Starting Moves in Risk (Part 1 of 2)

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:46:00 GMT

Risk can be surprising and in the course of a game, you may always have a heart sinking feeling of imminent danger and fall. In fact, this is what makes Risk so exciting. Anyone can win which means even experienced players must be on guard all the time otherwise can easily lose.

The opening stages of a game are quite critical. If you start badly or make mistakes, you are very likely to get kicked out and the game and lose. You must pay constant attention to your opponents as well as your own position in comparison with others. The best way to learn opening moves is by example. Let’s consider the game shown above.

This game is played on a non-Earth map. The card sequence is escalating which means that the rate goes up by 2 every time someone cashes a set. We are going to analyse this game in an abstract way, so don’t worry too much about the details. Assume that similar to the Earth map, the bigger the continent or the higher the number of its borders, the more bonuses you get.

Assume you are Red and the map above was the starting position.

What would you do?

Don't Fight the Last War! Part 3 of 3

Total Diplomacy — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:05:00 GMT

This is the last part of the 3-part series. As you saw earlier, many players suddenly made bold moves and expanded in different directions. The cards meant that the game was unstable and anything could happen. The above shows how the world looked like.

Don't Fight the Last War! Part 2 of 3

Total Diplomacy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:58:00 GMT

As you saw in Part 1 of this example scenario, Brown had a dilemma and needed a compromise. This is how the world looked like. Follow with this example to see what happened next.

Don't Fight the Last War! Part 1 of 3

Total Diplomacy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:47:00 GMT

Every now and then I come across Risk games that stand out in memory for a long time simply because of the way they unfolded and provided sheers entertainment. The following is the story of one of these games.

The game captures the essence of timely decision making. In Risk, players need to be robust and continuously recalculate their position in respect with others. Unfortunately not all do, and as you may imagine this will cost them the game. In effect, they fight their last war and get eliminated!

The following example will illustrates this beautifully. This is the first part of a 3-part series. You are encouraged to suggest solutions. A few days later, the next part will be published and you can all compare your potential solutions with what actually happened.

How can you Stop a Rumour?

Total Diplomacy — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:09:00 GMT

You won! You just keep winning. You must be a great player if not the best. It wasn't easy. Some players in your view were just plain bad. You had some arguments with some other players in the game, but you don't think of it much. You think it's just part of the game.

Sometime later, you go back to the online forum only to discover that there is a whole amount of conversation going on about you from certain players who did not approve of what you did or said in the game. In effect they are spreading rumours about you and your character and trying to destroy your reputation. As you know, winning Risk repeatedly is all about reputation and any damage to that will have all sorts of serious consequences for you when you are online next time to play. So you need to be able to control the rumours. The question is, how?

The situation is the same if you were not playing the game online. Rumours can spread behind your back and when you get back to your friends next weekend to play with them, you realise (quite late of course) that they have already plotted to remove you from the game, perhaps to teach you a lesson.

All of this means that you need to be able to control your reputation and spread of any rumour. Here, you will learn a number of techniques to achieve this.

7 Priorities You Need to Think of if You Want to Win Risk

Total Diplomacy — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:32:00 GMT

New players sometimes think that to win Risk they need to work out a winning strategy and follow it every time. The problem with this approach is that it ignores what other players are going to do. You can’t say I will do these series of manoeuvres and I will do them no matter what. To win Risk, you need to know how to respond to different situations and to know this you need to know your priorities. Sounds very simple, but you will be amazed how many players don’t follow this simple rule. If you ever play online Risk, you are bound to come across many who simply follow a fixed strategy, like ‘Get continents’, ‘Go for cards’, ‘Just keep growing’ and so on. These strategies are good but they are too fixed to get you to win the game. You may get by very well in the early stages of the game and then get kicked out not knowing what hit you.

When Red Met The Fortune Teller

Total Diplomacy — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 08:40:00 GMT

You look at the map. Your current position looks good (you are playing as Red, A). You decide to go for Africa. You have lots of hope. You think in a few turns you get yourself established in the continent and will be ready to make a challenge for others. All is going according to plan. Excellent! Later, just by accident, you bump into a fortune teller who wants to predict your future. She looks at your hand (and probably the map) and says, “My son, I am afraid I have some bad news for you. I see darkness ahead. The more distant I look, the more darkness I see. You ought to be careful with who you deal with. Look around, never lose site of the distant world and try not to get carried away by your own strength.”

The fortune teller leaves you in deep thought. What did she really mean? Not to get carried away!? Distant world? All too confusing. You consider her comments for a moment, but you need to move on. The game is waiting for you. Maybe later you will realise what she meant. Hopefully …

You start with this map and make your move. [These maps are illustrated in BOMS Graphs].

How to Recover From Poor Starting Positions

Total Diplomacy — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:31:00 GMT

Have you ever started a game from really poor random starting positions not knowing what to do and where to go? If you use random initial positions in online games or even the normal board game, you may find yourself in every continent on the planet. What you hoped for was to have a concentration of your armies in a particular area so you could focus on it. Imagine the position illustrated below. You, playing as Red, have no presence in either Australia or South America which are good small continents to start from. For the rest, you are scattered all over the map. What should you do to survive and go on all the way to win the game? What would you do if your initial plan backfired and you found yourself competing intensely with another player over a continent. Should you carry on with the corrosive war or pull out and look for somewhere else?

Top 5: Where to Play Risk Game Online

Total Diplomacy — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:06:00 GMT

You might have been introduced to Risk board game and played a few times with your friends. You liked it so much that you decided to look further for more information on how to play, where to play and how to improve your game. This article attempts to give you a head start on the Top 5 online Risk games, the Top 5 Risk board game variants and the Top 5 books to read to improve your game.