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I just read the diplomacy guide again, and I saw an article recommending against Nailing (nice turn of phrase by the way, I'll have to remember that), or the practice of holding a single territory in another continent to prevent another player getting that bonus.
Personally, I have found it to be very effective, especially in 4-player games and situations when your neighbour will get a bigger continental bonus than you. Yes, he'll probably throw everything at you, and you've definitely made an enemy, but you'll have your bonus and he won't, and it's better than him out-reinforcing you. For example, in a game I played some years back, a friend stopped me getting Africa, defeated me single-handed and won a 4-player game by taking South America and putting all of his forces in North Africa in the 1st turn.
At the end of the day though, there can be any number of mitigating factors, and as such I have to agree with the last sentence of the article, "Consider the trade-off, always get something useful in return for what you are going to give." Sound advice that.

Fuegan

I prefer to do things in this order.

1.form possible alliances with the person unless it is pointless. (not bordering one another)
2.build forces
3. perform complete continental sweep.
4.if unsucessful or too risky, then I use propoganda or ask for help
5. if that doesn't work, then I nail them

Of couse, I usually start out in Europe or North america and can easily overpower smaller continents but i can see nailing used often against an equal force or if starting in a smaller continent.

BALo

The problem with nailing is even though you may slow down that person from getting the bonus armies, you still waste armies that could have been used in a better place. So, unless you are bordering that continent and have plans to invade it (and you nail him to make him use up his forces) then nailing is useless.

 llama54

[QUOTE]
I think you should adress this in your guide.[/QUOTE]

You have a good point and I agree with you. I shall update this section.

You have a good point and I agree with you. I shall update this section.

[/QUOTE]

I think the author did a good job of explaining different behavioral trends that develop - strong alliances, low nailing (although in my circle of friends we call this b****ing), high continent retention rate vs weak alliances, high nailing, low continent retention rate. I never really thought about this before because all my games were more of the latter - and I am glad the author brought this to my attention.

At first I thought what he wrote about nailing was wrong, because my friends find it to be essential and do it all the time, but then I read further and realized that depending on who you are playing with, its usefulness may vary. If people are going to leave you alone, then you don't really need to stick your neck out to nail someone - you should use your energy to secure your own continent. The only reason we nail so much in our game is because we don't think we're strong enough to attempt to hold a continent because we generally don't have as many alliances going on that would secure our other borders.

Engineer

To help illustrate my last reply I made some handy dany maps.

 the first one illustrates good nailing. lets say your green and went first. You took S.A. in one turn and managed to Nail central america. This is good because N.A. is still divided and will take problably two turns to unite which by then will be much stronger. Also because of Yellow Red fighting in Africa that border will be safe for a while.

Risk Map: Nailing-G --- Open Copy in Risk Map Editor

The second map is bad nailing at it's finest.

First of all Green nailing red a is ok because he has the troops to defend it and Black in North America has his own problems.

Red nailing yellow bad. It left him open in Africa and will create bloody fight between them.

Yellow nailing black bad as well because now he has to take back Europe and defend against Black.

Black has to retake greenland and might nail yellow in spite which would be a good move since yellow would have to try and defend two borders at once.

Blue lucked out and is free to slowly expand while building up men good chance of winning.

Risk Map: Nailing-B --- Open Copy in Risk Map Editor