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

Current Articles | Categories | Search | Syndication

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

By Ehsan Honary - Sunday, November 29, 2009
:: 8 Comments ::

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.

Risk Game Balance

Move 4.

Blue, Brown and Purple all appear to be weak in comparison with you and Yellow. At this point you may think that you and Yellow are going to inherit the world, but as always there is no guarantee that Yellow who is already stronger than you will not give you trouble. Others are not a threat yet. As you know, Risk is all about balance. You have a choice to attack weak players or the strongest. If you attack weak players, they get weaker and you get slightly weaker as well while strongest player like Yellow becomes even stronger relatively to you. You cannot allow this to happen.

At this point, no other player is going to mess with Yellow. Why should they? They have a whole personal agenda and need to get their own continent. It seems that it is up to you to “police” the world and make sure it remains in balance. Your best move is to attack Yellow. This allows other players a breathing room to grow and become strong enough to come and compete with Yellow.

Remember, you don’t want to invade Yellow, just to slow him down. You are hoping that by bringing others back, you can share the job of controlling Yellow with others.

Risk Game Balance

You had an injection attack on an auxiliary continent of Yellow. This should slow Yellow enough. Note that at this point Blue dropped out of the game, though this has little effect on our story.

Move 5.

The breathing room allows Brown and Purple to grow and eventually get their target continents. Meanwhile, you still want to have a cap on Yellow so this time you attack his continent and pin him down (leave a large force in his continent). You want to permanently reduce his progress, even if that costs you. This is what happened next.

Risk Game Balance

You have achieved your objective. The world is now much more balanced. You can rely on Brown and Purple to become competitors. So far, so good.

Move 6.

Next, Purple makes a bold move.

Risk Game Balance

Now, the world looks so different. Purple was undecided when he started the game, but your balancing has let him to grow significantly. Remember, in your mind you are still in charge of the progress of the game, directly and indirectly. You have allowed Purple to grow and you have managed to bring Yellow’s progress to a halt.

Move 7.

Next, Brown makes this move.

Risk Game Balance

Brown has attacked Yellow. Everyone still seems to be afraid of Yellow’s progress.

At this point, the card distribution is:

Red	Yellow	Purple	Brown
2	3	2	5

Next cashing cards is 10.

Given the situation, what should you do next?

How to Maintain the Balance of Power - Part 1

How to Maintain the Balance of Power - Part 2

How to Maintain the Balance of Power - Part 3

How to Maintain the Balance of Power - Part 4

Post Rating

12345

Comments

By Great Alan @ Monday, November 30, 2009 1:58 PM

Why do you ask the others,Ehsan Hosary?You definitely know the answer.

You have implicited the key of victory is at brown,mostly at least,Am I guessed right?

By Ehsan Honary @ Monday, November 30, 2009 2:14 PM

Alan, let's say it's a puzzle and you need to solve it...

By RedzoneRacer @ Monday, November 30, 2009 10:19 PM

Just like you "policed" Yellow before, now I'd say it's a good idea to "police" Purple. At the same time, you want to be in a position to attack Yellow, as I think Brown will come close to eliminating him. This way, you can come in, finish off Yellow, then nail Purple, making you rather dominant in the central areas. Then, you can either move to attack Brown or finish off Purple, depending on the feasibility of these options.

By Dan12 @ Tuesday, December 01, 2009 6:09 AM

Interesting turn of events. I think Yellow will be busy with Brown so wont attack you. Need to keep an eye now on purple, so nailing Purple seems to be the ideal option. This could also stretch you a bit, so need to be careful on counter-attack by all of them.

It's getting more interesting now...mmmm...thinking...

By Great Alan @ Tuesday, December 01, 2009 10:46 AM

I'm more interested in knowing what do you think,Ehsan Hosary.As a wise student know how the marker correct his papers,so he can get a high mark.

What YOU want us to answer is exploiting the conflict between purple and brown to weaken them and then strike,correct?Simple and flawless.

By Ehsan Honary @ Tuesday, December 01, 2009 11:18 AM

Alan, May be, may be not! The questions for you is how you are going to exploit this conflict between Brown and Purple. But then again, is there really a conflict left between them, or Purple simply won that conflict and Brown literally ran away. It's not quite that simple! :-)

By Great Alan @ Tuesday, December 01, 2009 3:13 PM

Simple or not,it depends who is controlling that "magic wand",Ehsan Hosary.

brown suffered from purple,and have no feud with red.Once he stand on the old base of yellow,it's surely a valuable ally of red,with the persuasion of "common emeny" and the words of honey.Not count that purple's control of two continents give the perfect "illusion" to him.

Once brown is secured as red's ally,red would take north-east continent without obstacle.Then red would be more powerful,and dominate the strategic advantage without doubt.

So the key is at brown's attitude.If he "co-operate",red win much easily and quickly.If he bite red instead of purple,then purple is at great advantage.

By Pierre @ Wednesday, December 02, 2009 3:19 AM

Hmm looks interesting, lucky that blue left for purple thats for sure.

The most obvious option is to attack purple, with 9-10 vs 7 you should win and take out his continent bonus.

I cant see brown going after you, he has a trade so it looks like hell either try and secure the southeast continent or go after purple and take out his continent bonus if hes still angry at him.

Yellow looks like he is in trouble, but if he has a set he should trade and take out all of browns troops in the center, forcing him to trade and put all his men in the northwest far away from yellow and open up a new frontier for red, and later purple.

If red does not attack purple, he will have 11-12 reinforcements, either to just build up or even to secure the southeast continent.

Its a tough call for red, if he thinks brown will go after purple then he could just build up and take 1 territory, but if not he had better do it himself.

I think he should attack purple, or else hell become too strong. Take a 2nd territory from purple if possible to limit his reinforcements (13-2=11) 11/3=3 extra men instead of 4.

If Brown comes after you then purple would win hands down.