What ended up happening in that proposed free for all late last year


  • Didn’t play many Diplomacy-like games, but what would prevent forming of spontaneous coalitions (even without explicit communication) in a Free-for-all ? Maybe even along historical WW2, driven by geography, accessible enemies and territories of value:
    Germany+Japan vs Russia
    Russia+England vs Germany
    Russia+England+US vs Japan

    Maybe even earlier or alt-history variants (e.g. Japan+England vs Russia).

    Then what happens if 2 powers besiege the third (say Germany+Japan vs Moscow) ? if any one attacks, the other may win easily whoever wins the first one. So the situation would become a stable triangular deterrence ?


  • @Magister:

    Then what happens if 2 powers besiege the third (say Germany+Japan vs Moscow) ? if any one attacks, the other may win easily whoever wins the first one. So the situation would become a stable triangular deterrence ?

    To some extent this happened for a brief time in the 1st game.  Moscow held out for a turn or two when it appeared either Germany or Japan could take the capital, because the other would be able to beat the forces remaining after moscow fell.  But it didn’t last long.  And it certainly wasn’t “stable” because russia couldn’t even pretend to keep up with the other two by that time.

    Two things that surprised be about that game were 1) apparent agreements with little benefit to one side.  Specifically, britain and japan seemed to be cooperating with the US but at least from the outside I couldn’t see much benefit they were gaining from it - especially toward the end when the US was obviously the biggest force to be reckoned with.  2)  agreements that could only end in backstabbing. When I’ve seen good diplomacy in something like Risk, it was best to set non-aggression for a limited period of time, or just across a certain border rather than absolute alliance.  If it’s absolute, you know someone will eventually have to break it because in the end ,there will be only one winner. And if you do many of these you want the reputation of being someone who doesn’t break their agreements (rather than, say, the one who gets their opponent to leave Japan poorly defended, then takes it ;) )  I don’t know exactly what agreements were made, but there definitely seemed to be some backstabbing involved.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Britain and Japan did not have agreements with the United States.  I can state that for a fact because I was the United States.

    What happened was exactly what happened because the United States did not leave room for England or Japan to attack her.

    For instance, there was a 200 point army in North America.  No way a landing could be achieved without an awful lot of resources and if achieved, no way a beach head could be established.  Thus, neither Japan nor England bothered even trying to form landing parties.

    Secondly, Japan was split between attacking Russia and attacking America.  Without German assistance, there was no way he could pull off both, not when America was +4 for Canada so at her full 42 IPC for most of the game and pumping out boats like a mad woman.

    Eventually, the Japanese navy was sunk and with it, any chance of restraining America.  That meant Japan had to go all out against Russia and hope to have enough holdings on the mainland to win without her islands.  Meanwhile, America had to go bananas for islands to get enough firepower to make a mainland landing.

    Unfortunately, Japan did not have enough left to hold Japan and America squeaked out an invasion, which I may add, was against the odds.

    As for England and Russia, I have no idea.  I presume from the banter they had a Kill Germany First pact for mutual benefit.  As I assume that Germany and Japan had a mutually beneficial pact to kill Russia first.  Since they were mutually beneficial, no expressly codified pact was really needed, and I assume never written.

    I do think it important to note that, as America, I at no time even posed a threat to Germany.  I had no ships in the Atlantic after US 1, nor on the left hand side of the board after US 2.  So Germany’s complaints of the entire world against him are really on some shaky footing.  Not to mention, after Japan fell, it was America attacking England with a vengeance in Africa and the Middle East.  (England was the only threat to me at that time, no one else had a navy and I did not need to worry about land invasions as almost 100% of my holdings were islands and distant continents.)  So again, it was not the world against Germany, but rather, Germany and America against England.  If anything, the British player should have been complaining about a one sided fight after the fall of Tokyo!


  • It was just things like Britain not reclaiming empty territories, and Japan just vacating all it’s valuable territories and leaving its capital lightly guarded, it sure seemed like there must have been a promise involved.  Like I said, I don’t know what was agreed upon, I was just going by how it looked.

    It may have been mutually beneficial for Germany and Japan to go towards each other to soak up Russia at first, but at some point attacking each other in central Eurasia becomes counter-productive.  The US was becoming a massive threat in the east that Japan, the only ones in position to do anything about it, did virtually nothing to counter.  I was surprised that Germany and Japan didn’t reach an agreement to lay off each other for a while  and go pick off Britain and slow down the US respectively, but Germany didn’t think any agreements were appropriate, so I guess that wasn’t going to happen.

    And I understand you never went directly after Germany…Of course you didn’t have to since every one else seemed to do it for you, leaving you to clean up the rest of the globe ;)


  • Um, let us correct that…

    USA took Japan after a false alliance was made to Japan by the US.

    Tokyo was left VACANT in an effort to go after Germany in Russian territories.  Then the US WALKED in free and clear.

    Also, that was TECHNICALLY the second FFA since the first effectively ended when UK surrendered to Germany and transfered their holding and units to Berlin.

    I won the first one with Churchill’s capitulation to the Reich :-D

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    We rightly stipulated that a nation could not surrender all its territories to another, Switch.

    And Japan did not leave Tokyo unprotected.  It just put its fighters where it thought they would do the most good.  You, however, kept trying to get him to suicide all his fighters on a kamikazee mission (which would have doomed Japan one turn later instead of the turn it fell.)

    And yes, everyone else was going after Germany, so I did not have too.  But even if they were not, I still would not have since I was in no position to get into that mess.

    As for lightly defended islands, after his fleet was sunk, what did you want him to do?  There was nothing for Japan TO do.  He was effectively out of the game at that point, it was just a matter of his armies getting the notification.


  • Wow, the rehash is almost as tumultuous as the orig. thread. ~ZP


  • @Cmdr:

    As for lightly defended islands, after his fleet was sunk, what did you want him to do?  There was nothing for Japan TO do.  He was effectively out of the game at that point, it was just a matter of his armies getting the notification.

    I was referring more to the end when they completely vacated the asian coast and took all their planes out of tokyo as well.  As an outsider, that looked to me as if Japan was promised it would be spared if they went to contest asia.

    I don’t remember the circumstances of the fleet conflict (who had the numbers advantage/who initiated conflict, etc), but I was also surprised japan didn’t at least attempt to rebuild fleet to cut you off.  Even though you won, I seem to recall your fleet was pretty decimated too.

    Whatever.  All I know is that it was a good read regardless.  :-)

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    He kept asking for promises but I never gave him any.

    He almost had to vacate the mainland coast to stop Germany from over whelming him.  As for Tokyo, that was not so much abandoned since he didn’t have a way to get his forces off Japan.  His fighters were already in Russia stopping Germany from taking Moscow.  It was a catch 22.  He could let Germany win by evacuating Russia to protect Tokyo, or he could have a better fight against America.  America only won because I lucked out and got into that bottom 22% where the attacker actually survived.  He still had about an 80% chance to win, though, I had the forces to do a second attempt later if I wanted too.

    Germany, on the other hand, was telling his ally to not only give up Asia so he could take it but to suicide his planes into America and hope enough hit that the American navy would be set back a round or two.  Not a very good move, IMHO, since the suicide fighters still had a 33% chance of missing EACH and you had to pre-declare all your targets, so you couldn’t even see if the fighters you sent after a specific boat actually HIT that boat before declaring the next one.  That means you’d have to dedicate 4 fighters to sink a battleship, 2 to sink a carrier, etc.  You could send half that much, but you’d be relying on luck.

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