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I believe many of us consider current battle mechanic (or throwing dices) as boring part of the game. Well... except when there are some important attacks, but eventually it comes down to waiting for final results.

The problem is (as you probably know) in players passive role in getting the outcome. Here dices do deciding and player has only to roll them, roll them, roll them...

To cut short, here’s my idea:

Use the rock-paper-scissors minigame instead of dices.

OK, now to say why I think this is potentially better:

While still, mathematically, with random throwing (rock, paper or scissors)  there are even chances to win or loose the trick lies in human inabillity to throw totally random which makes room for some tactic in this part of the game.

Here is my (initial) rule:

1. players say with how many armies they are attacking/defending: one army or two armies

2. they throw (rock-paper-scissors or if you feel too foolish playing that way use e.g. risk cards: artillery > infantry > cavalry > artillery); here is win table:

numbers represent: attacker armies  -  defender armies

+--------------++----------------+---------------+-------------+

| armies used  ||  attacker wins | defender wins |     tied    |

+==============++================+===============+=============+

|   1  -  1    ||    0  -  -1    |   -1  -  0    |  -1  -   0  |

|   1  -  2    ||    0  -  -1    |   -1  -  0    |  -1  -   0  |

|   2  -  1    ||    0  -  -1    |   -1  -  0    |   0  -  -1  |

|   2  -  2    ||    0  -  -2    |   -2  -  0    |  -1  -  -1  |

+--------------++----------------+---------------+-------------+

3. players remove number of armies specified in table

4. attacker decide if he’s going to continue attack

Pros & Cons

pros:

• its more interesting

• its simpler than throwing dices (it will speed up game?)

• its more fair (2vs2 armies have equal chances of winning or loosing)

• after a while you can also participate in rock-paper-scissors world tournaments :)

cons:

• it will change current chance rates

• it has less states (there cannot be 3 armieas against 1)

• it can lead to more aggressive play (e.g. -Ha, my paper beats your rock! * *%#!* * -My rock beats your face! ;)

So, lets hear Your word, but please take some time to think about it first.

Thanks for posting. I must say that I have this idea for some time but still couldn’t test it out. Friends (who know and understand Risk game) have the same concerns about the rule as you, so they are not too eager to test it. But it will eventually be tested, maybe in week or in month...

When forming the proposed rule I was governed by two principles: rule must be simple and rule must behave as close as it can to old one. First one makes rule easy understandable and fast to execute. The second is because people generally don't like too much changes in something they used to; it also minimizes side effects to other parts of the game.

As I understood the Risk dice rule, the goal was to make advantage for defender in small battles (that's why on tied dices defender wins) and as battles get larger defender and attacker get even (because of that attacker can throw one dice more). This seems logical to me and, I believe, close to real life.

Comparing cases of Risk dice rule and proposed rule:

• the most common case, 3A vs 2D (with dices) is “equivalent” to 2A vs 2D of the proposed rule. Difference between probabilities is about 4% of attackers win rate. But notice that attacker doesn’t need 3 armies to attack, he only needs 2.

• the 1A vs 1D in proposed rule is mapped from 1A vs 1D of Risk rule. Here defender has win on tie because of the mentioned “small battle” advantage. It has 8% more to defender win rate. The same probability applies to 1A vs 2D case which compared to same of Risk rule has 8% less to defender win rate.

• 2A vs 1D case, as you said, is close to 3A vs 1D of Risk rule, which, with analogous to 3A vs 2D, should be.

As I said, the proposed rule has less states (cases) than Risk rule but the most important cases are there and are not too much away from original probabilities - have in mind that when playing rock-paper-scissors these probabilities do not have the same impact as probabilities in dice game.