Among my group of friends a fun variant has developed using custom maps representing significant regions at various points in history. For the sake of this post I'll use our ancient Greece map as the standard point of reference. As it is, we're playing Risk much as if we were playing Diplomacy, however traditional Risk combat remains largely unchanged {with a few exceptions here and there of course). I'm curious to see other players perspective on our style of play, and to hear from you your opinions on whether or not this is venturing too far afield from traditional Risk. First, however, our rules do vary slightly from map to map, and this is done primarily to facilitate the role-playing or simulation aspects of our game which are expressed through the pertinent history of the region and its given time period. As stated above, I'll only be referencing our Greece map from here on out, just to make this all more coherent and easy to follow. With that said, I'll get into the details now.
The most fundamental differences in our games are the maps we use, which are highly specific to the time period and region we're playing, and these changes (or modifications) allow for many new and unique strategic challenges to the player. On our Greece map we're representing the lands of Lydia and Ionia, Euboea and the Aegean islands, Thrace, Macedon, Epirus, Thessaly, Attica, Aetolia, southern Italy and Sicily, and the Pelloponese. These are the "coninents", if you will, of our game, with the exception of Euboea, Crete, Naxos, and the other Aegean islands, as they do not constitute a continent or privide men to the players that own them in our games, but rather serve as buffer states between Ionia/Lydia and the Greek mainland, thus making them of enormous strategic value. Additionally, we've introduced a 'city' dynamic into the game which makes for some very interesting play styles, but more on that later.
In the mean time, the first step in our games is obviously placement, the order of which is decided by the dice. From there we begin placing individual men into our desired territories by turn as determined by the dice, until all territories on the map are completely claimed. Now, in order to better represent the Polei of ancient Greece, and the subsequent establishing of Ionian and Dorian colonies throughuot the Aegean and southern Italy/Sicily during this period, we've incorporated cities into the map. Cities have tremendous strategic value as we've made the output of owning continents much smaller (the highest being only four new soldiers per turn). Cities, however, counteract this by granting one soldier per turn per city (which has to be placed in the city it came from, and cannot move until the next turn. Thus, owning all of the cities in Attica/Beotia (Locris, Athens, Chalcis, Megara) grant as many units per turn as if the whole 'continent' were controlled, the only catch being that to rally these men into a an acceptable army takes time, as our armies may only move to one adjacent territory per turn. I find this quite enjoyable because it forces all of us not to scramble for our own fully controlled continents during the placement phase, but rather to try and claim strategic cities from which one can expand into full control of a region. The cities on the map are simply represented as a small circular territory within another territory, for instance Athens being its own circular region within the region of Attica.
Because of the size of the map and the small space for soldiers to be physically present on the map, a grid of color coated squares assigned to each city was made on the bottom left of our map as a space to contain the garrison of said city, thus only one army is ever present on the actual space representing the city on the map, we call this soldier a marker, and all regions must at all times have atleast one army on them as a marker (a garrison, to keep the locals in line and simply represent ownership on the map). Now that that's out of the way I can delve a bit deeper into the changes we've made with the placement phase. On the map, every territory and city has a number in it representing its wealth, resources, and value (how many armies it's worth at the start). So, once every territory on the map is claimed, the players place the rest of their armies onto the map according to the number written on it (not including the 'marker piece'). Thus, if I claim Athens and Attica, Athens is worth five, so I would place five armies into Athens making a total of six armies present in Athens at the start of the game including the marker piece. Attica, being the agrarian hinterland of Athens, would be more sparsely population and is thus only worth three, making for a total of four armies present in Attica at the start of the game. Once everything is set up according to the numbers on the map, we'll roll to see who goes first and then go clockwise around the table from whichever player goes first, and then the game itself will begin.
As we play Risk, we don't use cards, as in my opinion it tends to take away from the immersion of the game when a near defeated player owning only Crete can suddenly drop down thirty armies. The only ways therefore to get new armies in the game are to try to take and hold cities (which is often much more practical than trying to hold onto a whole region, atleast at the start of the game), to take and hold entire regions, or through conquest. In conquering a new territory, the attacking player will upon victory recieve armies equal to half (always rounding down) of the number value assigned to that territory. For instance, if a player is attacking Attica, which is worth three, and wins, he will immediately upon victory recieve one new army (three rounded down to two and then halved), the same goes for cities. Because none of the regions on the map are worth more than five, the most an attacking player will ever recieve upon conquering a new territory is two. This makes advancing into enemy territory very dangerous, as armies can move only one territory at a time, and any armies you receive at the start of your turn from cities or from owning whole territories must be placed in and come from their own respective regions, thus reinforcements are very slow in coming and unreliable as a source of fresh men during a deep push or an invasion. This dynamic leads to fewer but much more decisive battles, raising the stakes significantly for an attacker. Often times the only way to successfully invade another players regions is with the help of an ally, or through trickery and deceit in your negotiations with involved parties. Due to the very nature of our placement process, some players will start out significantly stronger at the start of the game, but this really actually helps the game in my opinion, as players are forced to negotiate and engage in diplomacy: the stronger players desperately trying to make friends early on so as not to be completely ganged up on, and the weaker players trying to consolidate their control over their regions and to make long term strategic alliances to help deter aggression from the stronger players, atleast until you've built up your strength and have a reliable source of armies coming in each turn to bulster your home regions.
As stated earlier, the actual combat dynamics remain largely the same as in classical risk, with a few exceptions, those being assaulting cities or when attacking from the sea (Naxos to Euboea, Crete to Rhodes, etc). When attacking to or from an island all attacking dice have a minus one penalty, making a five a four, a four a three, etc. etc. Likewise, when defending a city, all defenders dice recieve a plus one bonus to their roll. This makes holding the Aegean islands extremely important as buffer zones between Lydia and mainland Greece, whoever controls them holds the figurative 'sword of damocles' over the others head, as the opponent can't reach your mainland without risking extremely high casualty amphibious assaults to claim these islands which again are not part of any continent or region and offer no troops to the owner whatsoever, but exist as staging points to Greece or Lydia from which an invasion can be launched. This also makes conquering an entire region from someone else extremely difficult as the the cities within the region will continue to provide troops to help push out the invaders, and the attacking player is often forced into very risky high casualty assaults on the cities themselves in order to consolidate their gains. All of these challenges lend themselves to a game that is really about diplomacy, and forging alliances and agreements, trading territories peacefully, and even occasionally exchanging soldiers as a form of payment or as a binding contract to an agreement i.e. "If either of us break this agreement, five of your soldiers will immediately become mine", or something like that. Alliances are necessary to your survival when playing the game this way, and it makes for some truly fascinating and brilliant games.
I've tossed around some other ideas in my head that I would very much like to experiment with, such as replacing the troop values of cities, territories, and whole regions with a sort of currency system, which can be used to buy armies, or given to allies, or offered as a deal sweetener during complex negotiations. Also the idea of being able to construct roads within your territories to increase the movement speed of your troops accross your territory seems like a very useful idea, but I haven't gotten into figuring out how to implement any of that yet. Food for thought.
Anyways, hope you guys enjoy our Risk variations, I know it's very far from classical Risk, and this variant makes for some extremely long games, but I've got to say, for me it's much more engaging this way, atleast for myself and my friends that is. Any questions feel free to ask!
-WMS
Edit: I actually forgot to mention how retreating works. If attacked, the defending player has the option to retreat, but only with half of his army, as several troops would have had to stay back in order to cover the retreat. If the defender chooses to meet the attacking army, the attacker can at any time pull his forces back without penalty. Also, an attrition system is in the works that will probably be based on a factor of the territory's number value in order to determine its realistic carrying capacity. Implementing this however has been very challenging, though it still feels necessary. There are still kinks that need to be worked out with implementing an attrition system. Last but not least, and rather importantly, we've switched to using the troop denominations a bit differently: the soldier is still one, the horse now represents three, and the cannon five.
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