Part Five:

Errata & Optional Rules: Discussion

Upon reviewing the rules a bit, naturally the ones that stick out and cause problems are the ones that don’t pertain to RISK’s core combat mechanics.

Indonesia

Let’s say the USSR attacks the Arab League: Indonesia is supposed to stay neutral in this case, but can NATO still influence them, somehow? Does WE have to be the one to do it, or could it be UK? The ‘quick and dirty’ solution would just be to reverse the rule treating Indonesia as a separate entity, and say that the territory sides with NATO, if the Arab League is attacked by the USSR. Since they are aligned with WE, their troops should be replaced with WE (blue) troops, if/when this happens.

An obvious optional rule in this situation might be that Arab League territories join WE but Indonesia joins the UK; chalk this up to representing Singapore, Malaya, etc. or just with the continent of Australia being aligned with UK, in this game.

The alternate solution is to clarify the rule to be “an attack on Indonesia is not treated as an attack on the Arab League, but an attack on the Arab League DOES count as an attack on Indonesia.” I think this probably most closely reflects the intention of the mechanics.

Edit: Given some more time to stew over it, I feel another good simplification might be to allow WE to continue using their influence roll (converting Indonesia on a success) in the event that the USSR takes out the Arab League.

Possibly a better (albeit more complicated) solution would be to allow NATO to use their influence roll towards their affiliated neutral alliance OR towards Indonesia. If they successfully influence Indonesia, they would replace Indonesia’s troops with their own. This treats Indonesia more like a “minor neutral” such as they would be in E&W; the reason I don’t like this is that it creates a new set of rules around a single territory, instead of just conforming to the existing/general rules.

Since the USSR has the option to ATTACK Indonesia, they can always gain the territory that way; this rule would simply address the fact that NATO does not have such a mechanism to gain the territory.
I should probably mention in this space that allowing NATO to use its influence roll to gain Indonesia, would allow for the possibility of the US gaining the territory. This would be an interesting wrinkle, as I’ve often said that in classic E&W the US needs to be able to gain Thailand in the event that the USSR goes nuclear; this would sort of serve to simulate that scenario, of the US needing to use its influence to try and gain a base of operations on mainland Eurasia.

Influence

Since the opening-game balance is presupposed around the OAS being at +1 to US and China being at +1 to the USSR, the obvious optional rule to include would be one not allowing diplomacy until the 2nd round of play. This would reflect the mechanical realities in E&W, of everybody starting the game with no spies in play (barring the USSR spending their “round zero” mobilization cash on spies.)

The rule limiting NATO to influencing only their affiliated neutral could also be changed… Although it might have to be limited to “once you’re already receiving +2 from them” to prevent dogpiling.
The intention of the limitation is to keep the game simple and fast; it’s also meant to avoid some of the pitfalls of E&W’s system, whereby there’s really only one correct choice, so just hammer that option as early and often as possible.

Nukes vs. Capitols

An interesting thing with the mechanic of nuclear weapons being added to a RISK game, is that it creates the possibility of a territory being cleared of armies. Since armies are used to denote territory ownership (serving the function performed by control markers, in A&A-type games) it stands to reason that a territory with no armies on it is controlled by no one. But what if the territory has a capitol on it?

This is an interesting thing, because the existence of a capitol implies ownership of the territory, corresponding to a specific faction, without there being troops in the territory (i.e. which would be the normal way to denote ownership of the territory.)

Obviously, a territory with a city but no armies is not controlled by anyone; this makes targeting cities with nukes more appealing, since it doubles the loss in “income” – similar to how targeting Industrial Complexes with nukes in E&W effectively doubles the reduction in infantry production, on that territory.

So the questions seem to be:

1. Can you place troops on your capitol, if there are currently no troops there?
2. Do you get credit for “controlling” your capitol, if there are no troops in its territory?
3. Does your capitol allow you to get credit for “controlling” the territory it resides in (including the bonus for a city)?

I think my answers to these would be: yes, maybe, and no (respectively.)

If a nuke wipes all of the armies off of a territory without a capitol, my general assumption was that this works the same as if a nuke in E&W reduced the IPC value of the territory to zero – meaning it cannot produce any infantry. The question then is, do capitols provide some immunity to this? Does not providing this immunity make nuking capitols (exclusively) too powerful in the overall meta? Again, these would have to be born out with more playtesting.

Edit: Since I’ve said earlier in the thread that NATO factions would still get credit for their own capitol even if the territory is controlled by an ally… if there are no armies on your capitol, I think you would still get credit for controlling your capitol in that scenario as well. This changes my answer to #2 from a “maybe” to a “yes”
Normally, you have to have your armies in a territory in order to get the benefits of controlling said territory, but we’ve already made this one exception for liberated capitols, so it makes little sense to treat an empty capitol differently; essentially we are saying you always get credit for your capitol, as long as it is not held by your enemy.
Similarly, for question #3 – if your ally liberates your capitol, that ally gets the credit for controlling the territory (and its city) but not the capitol. If no side controls your capitol, no side gets credit for that territory or its city, but you still get credit for your capitol. As such, the control by armies determines who gets credit for territories/cities; control of capitols is made into a binary between friendly/hostile.

Addendum: The answer to question #1 being “yes” makes for the specific stipulation that only in the case of a territory being empty of armies, does your capitol imply ownership of said territory – but this is only for the purposes of troop placement, not troop “drafting”. If nuking a capitol and eliminating all armies there meant that you could not get credit for the territory/city, or the capitol, and that you could not place armies there…? Then this tactic would be way too powerful. I think allowing the owner of the capitol to spawn new troops in the territory (if it is empty) makes it a less desirable target than to just wipe out all of the armies in a territory with a city, but no capitol. This might be slightly over-tuned, and maybe simply allowing them credit for the capitol might be enough, but for now I like the idea that this can be one special thing that capitols can do.

@The_Good_Captain I should be able to. If you don’t see me around the forums, hit me up on Discord.