Scenarios

Scenario 7: Revenge

Diplomacy, Online, Player Profile, Psychology

:::: 13 Ratings :::: Saturday, June 9, 2007

What if you have a history with another player? This happens all the time. You play a few games and you start to get ruthless as the games progress. You develop a history. Even if you forget what you have done to others, they may not forget it. There comes a time when they want to take revenge and they may attempt this when you least expect it.

Hence, you always need to be prepared and ‘remember’ the history between you and other players. If you suspect that a player is planning to take revenge; you need to contain him or remove him from the game. However, saying this is easier than done. The following scenario illustrates this concept.

Suppose you are Green and you have played with Blue in the last game. You made a move in that game which he didn’t like at all. Now you are together in this game. The board game state is as follows:

Risk Game Scenario 7: Revenge Position A

This situation actually happened in a particular game. From this point onwards, Blue eliminated Black and used the cards to fortify. Red and Green played conservatively and simply reinforced their current positions. In the next move, Blue eliminated Brown as well. At this point the map looked like this:

Risk Game Scenario 7: Revenge Position B

Blue was strong, and he had to make a choice: to go against Red or Green? The obvious move was probably to go against the weaker player which was Red. Green hoped that Blue will go for Red and ends up weak. This might have given Green an opportunity to win or at least become second (the game was score based).

However, Blue was waiting for this moment all along. All he could see was revenge. Blue attacked Green and eliminated him. There were a few cycles of attacks between Blue and Red, until eventually Blue won the game.

Now suppose you go back to the beginning as shown in the first map position. The following table shows the distribution of cards and armies.

Risk Game Table - Scenario 7

Knowing that Blue will make revenge on you one way or another, what would you do to survive and hopefully win the game? All you need to assume is that Blue was quite upset in the last game as a result of your actions and you need to consider this in your overall strategy.

What is your strategy?

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Comments

By Europa @ Saturday, June 30, 2007 6:47 PM

This is an interesting scenario, especially how it played out. What would I do different, assuming Blue and I are allies? Well, if I made a bad move against him last time, is there any hope of reconciliation? What was the bad move about, did I betray him? If I did, another betrayal will cement that reputation and make it difficult to make alliances with any one ever again. Of course, if you did, you could severly weaken Blue and he will want revenge now rather than later. This may prompt him to make some foolish moves, but you will end up losing.

I would consider asking Blue what he would like me to do to help bridge the earlier incident to show how much I wish to repair things. What is difficult to think about is if you are Green, you are slated to go last, according to the turn/card/army chart, if that is the case, you have to wait and see and try to get some allies along the way or at least some treaties. If Green is first to go, and there is an alliance with Blue, punching through Europe is a sound move to shore up your borders, and take out the European continent bonus.

If you ally with Europe, then Asia is you only real option. If you and Blue are not aligned, then you need to hurt him in South America.

In the second map, if Green is to go with 70 armies in the Middle East, and Red has cards, eliminating him would ease the burden on Green while gaining some valuable armies to launch another attack. Once Red is eliminated, assuming the card distribution is such that you have 6 or more cards after eliminating Red, you can attack Blue in all of his continents.

By Lex @ Wednesday, April 2, 2008 9:59 PM

As Green: in any normal game I'd concentrate on Red, since Europe is the natural enemy of African empires. However, since Blue is likely to go on a rampage, the best plan is to go on the offensive *before* Blue does. This is especially true since Blue has no pending sets to fight bach with. This is a bit tricky to implement, since Red's Europe is a giant sword pointed at my continent, but hopefully I can take Brazil and hold out through the multiple counterattacks from the north, west, and possibly even the east (if Blue is sneaky). If the line holds, the next move depends on the card and alliance situation. A Yellow alliance would be nice, to keep Blue put down in Asia - and if Red and Blue ally, well, go home because it's not your day to win. If, however, the third card garners a set- conquer SoAmerica, peace with Brown, and deal with Europe.

Now, looking at what *actually* happens it appears that this blitzkreig into SoAmerica wasn't necessary, since Blue took the long way around anyway. It may have been a viable strategy to take out Europe before going west, but I doubt it. The goal here is to tackle Europe on even footing (5-5 cont. bonus) while at the same time defeating an unpredictable rival.

This, of course, is the "aggressive" mentality, which I have found works better than "diplomacy" in my games. However, I generally only play with friends so we know the exacct trustworthiness of each other - at this point, nil. On-line, it may be possible to reconcile with Blue somehow, securing the western border in order to focus on the north.

By oddball @ Friday, July 11, 2008 2:59 AM

this is a stupid study.
You 're asking to choose between a rock and a hard time.
Because how would you know that If you (green) decide to attack blue immediately in SA (as blue has no cards, and so to help brown to acquire NA as to create a buffer /threat in that corner to both blue and red in europe) that both red and yellow will again play conservatively and not attack /back-stab you /green in Africa ?!?!

But of course you should at least aid brown in his alaska border by eliminating the blue troops in the NE -Asia corner

WHo's turn is it anyway?

By Ehsan Honary @ Sunday, July 13, 2008 10:31 AM

I thought you may like a challenge, hence to choose between a rock and hard place. Yes, that's exactly what this scenario is all about.

You are playing as Green and of course you want to go back and see what you could have done to win the game. So it's your turn.

In Risk, you need to have a strategy and based on that make local moves. Some of your moves may not work as expected, because it's a numbers game. Others may come up with better moves. So you may need to do some reflection to see if you could have done it differently (and what) to do so that you would have won the game. Hope this clarifies.