<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>jacobolus</author><text>Continents are overrated; they are a big source of armies in the early game, but the primary goal of the early game is mere survival, and a skilled player can win without ever owning a continent until the last couple turns. After the early game, cards are where the real threat is in Risk – in particular, the way someone can eliminate an opponent and capture their cards (and when they end up with &amp;gt;5 cards, immediately turn some in in for armies) makes risk a very unstable game when played aggressively.&lt;p&gt;The best aggressive players wait for the right moment when they can go from minor threat to unquestionably dominant in the span of 1–2 turns, by toppling one opponent after another. The tricky part is the timing (and there is some luck involved with dice rolls and card matches). If you get it wrong and don’t &lt;i&gt;quite&lt;/i&gt; take out one of the card-rich opponents along the chain, then (a) that extremely weakened player will be open to easy attack from the other players, and (b) you’ll be completely exposed having used all of your armies on at least one side of your territory in the attempt.</text><parent_chain><item><author>paulluuk</author><text>This article suggests that you should not play too aggressive and not take continents too early (maximizing Reinforcing Feedback), because other players will then unite against you (Balancing Feedback).&lt;p&gt;However, this article fails to understand that in Risk, most players are not willing to unite. In fact, if player A and player B decide to unite against me and player A had his turn and stopped me, player B is highly likely to backstab player A and then emerge as the winner.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found that playing very aggressively, and really get as many continents as possible within the first few turns, is the best way to win the game. I always win if I can get 2-3 continents in the first few turns, and if I fail then the game is usually won by whomever did manage to do just that.&lt;p&gt;Being a turtle or &amp;quot;mongolian horde&amp;quot; as we call it can be interesting, but your only viable strategy is to wait for an opening while everyone else stockpiles their continental forces. If you wait too long, you&amp;#x27;re just an annoyance to the other players, but you don&amp;#x27;t actually have a good chance to win.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Win at Risk by using systems thinking</title><url>https://thesystemisdown.substack.com/p/how-to-win-at-risk-every-time-by</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>the_lonely_road</author><text>Might just be a friend group thing but I will also add on that very few games of risk I ever played didn’t involve some level of ‘meta’ strategy like a husband&amp;#x2F;wife not attacking each other or that guy that doesn’t like you refusing an obviously mutually beneficial alliance.</text><parent_chain><item><author>paulluuk</author><text>This article suggests that you should not play too aggressive and not take continents too early (maximizing Reinforcing Feedback), because other players will then unite against you (Balancing Feedback).&lt;p&gt;However, this article fails to understand that in Risk, most players are not willing to unite. In fact, if player A and player B decide to unite against me and player A had his turn and stopped me, player B is highly likely to backstab player A and then emerge as the winner.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found that playing very aggressively, and really get as many continents as possible within the first few turns, is the best way to win the game. I always win if I can get 2-3 continents in the first few turns, and if I fail then the game is usually won by whomever did manage to do just that.&lt;p&gt;Being a turtle or &amp;quot;mongolian horde&amp;quot; as we call it can be interesting, but your only viable strategy is to wait for an opening while everyone else stockpiles their continental forces. If you wait too long, you&amp;#x27;re just an annoyance to the other players, but you don&amp;#x27;t actually have a good chance to win.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Win at Risk by using systems thinking</title><url>https://thesystemisdown.substack.com/p/how-to-win-at-risk-every-time-by</url></story>