unforum

[DarkHuman]

i just broke out my risk. My first impression is that there are 42 number strings, and 42 territories.
could the strings just be the number of armies that are in each territory?
could the last numbers be the quadrents the territories are in?

[rose]

I congratulated ilikepucks in the other thread. Well done and thanks!!

As for:

[isca]

rose said:

[ellrabin50]

starting lineup

[isca]

We are assuming that Risk is the place to apply these strings. Are there any other board games played in a similar vain? We know the numbers can't be rolls of the dice as there are no 6's. How about Dungeons&Dragons or Axis&Allies?

Alternatively, can we apply these strings to the territories or police precincts of Perplex City?

Having 42 in the Risk game and as part of the strings seems a coincidence - after all, card no. 69 is

[rose]

[Scott]

[FairmontKing]

I believe there are too many coincidences with Risk to discount it. To recap:

Risk symbols/dice on cards
42 strings = 42 Risk territories
Start of strings: 11 1's, 11 2's, 10 3's, 10 4's = Same as disribution of territories at start of 4 player risk
End of strings: 14 1's, 9 2's, 7 3's, 12 4's = Corresponds to # of territories in SA/Africa/Australia combined, NA, Europe, Asia repectively.

If the 1st and last numbers represent start and finish ownership by each of four players, then it is likely that the middle string represents ownership history. A logical puzzle would be to determine the starting positions of the countries in a game where each player ends up controlling either Asia, Europe, NA, or S. Hemisphere.

Based on the pairings of the first/last numbers in each string, the initial territory ownership distribution would be:
Player 1 (eventually takes over S.Hemi): 1 NA, 2 EU, 4 Asia, 4 S.Hemi
Player 2 (eventually takes over NA): 4 NA, 1 EU, 4 Asia, 2 S.Hemi
Player 3 (eventually takes over EU): 2 NA, 1 EU, 3 Asia, 4 S.Hemi
Player 4 (eventually takes over Asia): 2 NA, 3 EU, 1 Asia, 4 S.Hemi

I decided to play out a risk game where I started with a board layout that met the above requirements and then had each player win their continent(s). I would record the ownership history to see if looked remotely like the strings in length and/or number distribution.

The first step was distributing territories to each player as constrained above. I tried to make it more interesting by having no adjacent territories owned by the same player (classic 4-color map puzzle). Incidentally, it cannot be done (can't have four Player 2's crammed into NA without touching unless you cheat and ignore the water connection to Greenland).

Next step was to place the balance of each player's starting 30 armies in each territory. Hmmm.... If it was a cooperative effort between the 4 players to each control a continent, then each player would place all their armies in the continent(s) they were after and leave just one army in each territory they didn't care about. The 'game' would be over in one round.

This leads me to one of two conclusions:
1) It was not a cooperative effort and each player was truly trying to win. The players got extremely lucky and just happened to find themselves each owning a continent(s) at some point in the game. As others have stated, this is very unlikely if the players were using good strategy.
2) There was some other 'rules' put in place to make the cooperative effort more of a challenge (i.e. "armies must always be distributed equally" or "can't have more than 5 armies per territory", etc.).

So I can't continue with my game until I resolve this as it affects the strategy the players would use to place their initial armies. I am currently leaning toward 2), but have not gone any further. Would appriciate any comments. Sorry for the long post.

[colin]

[Scribe]

I think it's dangerous to assume that just because there's a match of 42, we're looking at a complete game.

Perhaps there *is* some connection with Risk - or, rather, the territories used in Risk, but we're supposed to do something else with them.

*Goes off to look for a list of territories*

[aliendial]

Yeah - following this line - is there a way to assign a territory to each of the cards?

But note - not all the number strings are the same. May mean less activity around a particular territory, but some have periods in them. What could that mean? And what about the .5s?

[rose]

So my take on this is that it wasn't a "game" but a puzzle. A puzzle that is saying, this is how the board ended up - with each player owning a continent, so what initial conditions of territories being held and what battles would be needed to get to this endpoint.

This would result with us knowing which string goes with which territory.

No idea if this is the way to go or not.

[ellrabin50]

 I had an epiphany

[FairmontKing]

Re: I had an epiphany

[rose]

I'm still looking at the number strings from the point of view of the territory. That is the string might say who controls or possilby who is attacking the territory at any point in time. My idea is that the .5 is a withdrawn attack, but I am open to others.