Re: [risk] Reinforcements idea

[Eric Shultz <shultz@ici.net>]

All of John's ideas [listed below] would make the game 
smoother and less jumbled, and would balance some of the 
inequalities in Risk.  My opinion on the matter is that Risk 
is fun because it's messy and armies go flying down 
everywhere.  And yeah, it's not accurate, smooth, or fair, 
but who cares?  You want accurate, smooth, and fair, then 
play Advanced Squad Leader or something.  

I think the best idea to implement would be the idea of each 
turn getting a portion of your reinforcements.  The 
difficulty that would need addressing would be the changes 
in territory while the turns were taking place.  I came up 
with an idea.  I'm not sure how good it is.  The plus side 
is each turn you get at least one army.  The down side is it 
would be hard to predict exactly how many armies you were 
going to get each turn.  

Here's the best I could come up with:

Each turn you get the number of reinforcements divided by 
three.  (Three is an arbitrary number.  I chose it because 
at the beginning of most games, people get three armies. The 
system would work with almost any divisor.)

The obvious problem comes when someone gets a number of 
armies not easily divisible.  My solution is that you get 
the absolute value of the number, and the fraction of an 
army gets carried over to the next turn.  When the fractions 
add up to a whole, the player gets that army.  For example:

Player A has 12 countries at the end of turn 1.  at the 
beginning of turn 2, Player A gets 4 armies (because of the 
9 countries) divided by 3 (the arbitrary number) equals 
1.3333333 army.  Player A gets the one army.  The .333333 
gets carried over to the next turn.

Continent bonuses would work the same way.  For example:

Player A captures one country (for a total of 13) and Africa 
and holds it at the end of turn 2.  A the beginning of turn 
three Player A gets 7 armies (4 for owning 13 countries and 
5 for owning Africa), divided by 3, plus the .33333 from the 
previous turn.  All this equals 7/3 = 2.33333 + .33333 = 
2.66666.  Player A would get 2 armies and the .666666 would 
carry over to the next turn.

Again, it's way too confusing for a human to keep track of, 
but the computer could do it.  T





> 
> In order to keep the game moving, we would probably have to do the
> deployment and movement commands at the same time, so some additional
> restrictions might be needed, such as some or all of:
> 
> * Armies cannot deploy and move (ie attack) in the same turn.
> * Continent bonuses must be deployed on the continent.
> * Size of deployment restrictions? ( cannot more than double the amount of
> armies due to deployment, or cannot deploy more than the sum of the armies
> currently in the territory and neighboring occupied territories )
> 
> ~ John Williams
>