hideaway wrote:before I know it I'm out of the game and someone has my cards. I'm pretty good at 2-5 person games but it seems like the more people get involved, the less I'm able to beat my expected win percentage. At 7 and 8 person games, I suck. I barely win 5% of the time.
How does the strategy change from a 5 to an 8 person game? I'm wondering if anyone can summarize the differences succinctly because I'm not sure I completely understand what I'm doing wrong. Does the focus shift from continent bonuses and attacking to merely fortification and survival for a few rounds?
Ok, considering if I'm trying I'll win about 45-50% of my 8-player games, possibly more when hot (one time I won 11/13 of them), I'll try to give my 2 cents. I'm going to explain a mostly freestyle strategy although it applies to sequential (and on Classic).
Step 1: Don't EVER go after a continent, unless it's Oceania or South America, and even then, only go if you have at LEAST 2 countries. Even if you have two countries, it would be best to try to get into better positioning (spread out your armies) then taking it. Having one country on Central America + one on Brazil would NOT constitute taking South America by the way.
Step 2: Early game, don't ever attack a country with 3 armies, unless you're in round 1 and taking Oceania/South America. In fact, don't even attack a country with 2 armies. Only attack single armies. There are multiple reasons for this. First is, why waste any more armies than you have to? Think about early game, how much is a card worth? A cash in of 4-8 most likely (if you're trying for a card it means you're going to be one of the first cashing). That means each card individually is worth 1/3 of the cash value, meaning that you're attacking other countries to get literally a card that's worth 1-2 armies. Only attack 1's.
Step 3: Get widespread. Try your best to fortify all your armies into one position. NEVER have 3's next to each other without fortifying unless you are planning on splitting in opposite ways (aka, having a 3 on China and a 3 on India. If you're moving the India towards the middle east, the China towards mongolia, it's fine). Try to spread yourself out as much as possible and as said, fortify 100% of your armies if possible. Do not leave 2's either, leave 1's only. No exceptions, unless you have a bonus card for the territory. Spreading yourself out is beneficial in two reasons. Firstly, it makes you harder to eliminate. If you're spread out, that means you're opponent has to be in all those locations as well to eliminate you. If your opponent was stupid and tried to take Africa, then he can kill you in Europe + South America maybe, but he can't get to you in North America or Oceania, thus making him have no reason to attack you in South America or Europe in teh first place. Secondly, being spread out makes it easier to wipe other people out.
Step 4: Don't kill people if you can't midcash. If you have 4 cards and an opponent has 3 cards and you know you can cash and eliminate him - don't unless he hardly has ANYTHING. You'll have to weigh the situation yourself, but chances are, 80% of the time, it won't benefit you. This is because you'll cash - waste your armies on green, then have 4 cards still. This makes it so everyone on the board thus turns their eyes to you. They see "oh this player has 4 cards and can't turn in any more armies, I should try to kill him and get 4 cards, especially because he's weak because he just used all his armies on green."
Step 5: Never end your turn early. Ending your turn early means multiple things. First, it means that you have one more card in your inventory. Going back to step 4, if that person with 3 cards ends his turn, he will then have 4 cards. Then it DOES become beneficial for you to kill him, so you can cash (down to 1 card), kill him, gain his 4 cards, and thus you have 5 cards and can midcash (therefore not dying, having more armies on the field than before, AND you have another cash).
Step 6: Never deploy early, even if you don't have a set. A big thing is psychology. If you have 4 cards, but no set, the others don't know that. They will take their time trying to kill you, they will have to judge whether it's worth it to THEM (if they have 4 cards, and cash to try to kill you, and then you DO have a set and cash, they just cashed early for no reason and only have 1 card and are in a shit position). Therefore, if you don't deploy, the opponent might not cash his set if he thinks you have one, simply because you might have a set as well. If you do deploy, it doesn't matter if you have a set or not, you can't cash, and he can eliminate you.
Step 6: Never try to eliminate a live 5. If someone has 5 cards, NEVER go for them if they've started their turn. They have a set no matter what, you will not be able to kill them before they cash, it's just stupid.
Step 7: When going after someone, flush them out for a set first. For example, if you have 4 cards and your opponent does as well and you ARE going for hte kill (hoping they have 2 pair), then flush our their set. What you do is you cash and deploy next to all their territories, and wait for them to cash. If they don't cash, continue probing them. DO NOT AUTO THEIR LARGE STACKS UNLESS SPEED IS NECESSARY OF THE SITUATION. Instead, use normal attack. hit him once or twice to understand his intention. He will either, in response, deploy his 3 armies because he knows you're killing him anyways, or cash armies, which will say "I do have a set, and now have enough armies so that you can't kill me." This way you didn't auto his stack, waste tons of armies yourself AND his, and then have him cash anyways (so that you still can't kill him).
Step 8: Let others do the work. Try to let others kill the opponent as much as possible and swipe in killing the last territory. Or if needed, block your opponent from letting him get to his opponent. For example if Green is killing Yellow across the map, and Yellow has a country in Oceania and South America, and green has a country in China and South America yet YOU do not, you could use a country on India for example to move a large amount of armies to Siam. This makes it so that he doesn't have enough armies on China to get to Yellow, and thus will stop his attacks. If he does kill yellow in South America like an idiot, you have positioning on Siam now to finish him. So therefore you're keeping him from killing yellow, and thus preventing him from gaining an advantage and sweeping.
There's other little things you'll learn, but it's a lot on strategy. This is of course assuming you're playing speed freestyle escalating, which is the most common gametype played if I'm correct, namely because RISK Hasbro was escalating on classic. Sequential still plays out the same game play with blocking, etc, except it's a little different because you then WANT to target people with 5 cards (because they can't cash!).
I've left out small things and obviously some things apply to freestyle rather than sequential but hope this helps.
