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Sometimes it can be incredibly difficult to say ‘no’. It is a simple word, but it just feels wrong to say ‘no’ when someone asks for a favour. Of course saying ‘no’ is easy if you don’t care about the person. What if you did care about the person, but you still wanted to say ‘no’ without hurting his feelings.

An example of a Risk game may clarify this. Suppose you are playing Risk online and your strategy is to conquer a continent such as South America. You also have some armies in Europe. A player approaches you and asks you to move your armies out of Europe. You want to say ‘no’. However, you want to say it in such a way that your opponent doesn't become hostile to you. There is no point in making enemies in the process. How do you do this?

In this article you will be introduced to the Enemy Dealing Strategies of the Thirty-Six Strategies.

Strategy 7: Create something from nothing.

Strategy 8: Secretly utilize the Chen Chang passage. (Repair the highway to take the crude path.)

Strategy 9: Watch the fires burning across the river.

Strategy 10: Hide a knife behind a smile.

Strategy 11: Sacrifices the plum tree to preserve the peach tree. (Sacrifice the silver to keep the gold.)

Strategy 12: Stealing a goat along the way. (Take the opportunity to pilfer a goat.)

Thirty-Six Strategies is basically a collection of strategies on battle scenarios in Chinese history and folklore, predominantly of the Warring States Period and the Three Kingdoms Period. The story goes back to Wáng.

Wáng was a Chinese general who lived around 500 A.D. in the time of Emperor Gao. At some point Emperor Ming came to power and decided to execute many members of the royal family. He was afraid that they would threaten his reign and target him directly. Wáng was worried that he will be on the black list and will be the next target and so he rebelled. The son of Emperor Ming became scared of the rebels and decided to escape. Wáng, upon receiving this news, famously said,

“of the thirty-six strategies of Lord Tán, retreat was his best, you father and son should run for sure".

Everyone must have a strategy. Even though everyone agrees on this, knowing exactly what this means has never been clear. There have been many attempts in examining this concept in more detail and various researchers and philosophers such as Sun Tzu and Clausewitz have contributed significantly.

There seems to be a need for a Theory of Strategy that identifies the most important elements and concepts related to a strategy. At the end of the day, the intention is to know what you may do given a set of circumstances. A good system is a system that asks you interesting questions. By attempting to answer those questions, you will construct and understand your strategy in a better way.

Recently, there has been some attempt in this regard. An article by Gregory D. Foster under the title of Towards a Theory of Strategy attempts to provide the building blocks of this theory. Foster aims to define a theory that capture the essence of strategic decision making. The core of his theory is summarised in this article along with examples for Risk board game.

Contents

This article is part of a series of articles that show you how to win in any competition, including Risk. In the previous article you were shown how to be in command of your own mind. Control the mind and you can control everything. Here, the focus is on your opponent's mind. You will learn how to control it or even break it.

Contents

When it comes to competitions, everyone wants to win. The problem is that there can be only one winner. If you want to win, you have to stand out from the competition. Is there a secret behind this? It turns out that there is. After all, not everyone can win.

This series of articles provide a number of techniques that enable you to compete effectively in any competitive environment. Winning in Risk is no exception and examples are provided to demonstrate the key concepts.

The primary nature of any strategy, whether it is military campaign, business, marketing or games, is the relationship between ends, ways, and means. Here, ‘ends’ is the objective, such as global conquest, maximising market share, neutralising a crisis, etc; ‘ways’ is the form through which a strategy is pursued, such as a military campaign, diplomacy, or economic sanctions; and ‘means’ is the resources available such as armies, weapons, international influence and money. It is critical to make sure that the relationship between ends, ways and means is fully understood and thought out. It must be logical, practical, and clearly established from the outset. If this relationship is vague, the entire campaign is seriously flawed and you might be at risk.

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.