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

:::: 12 Ratings :::: Sunday, November 29, 2009

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.

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.