Risk Boardgame
From TradeWars Museum
Application
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RISK is one of three primary influences cited by Chris Sherrick in creating the original TradeWars. The others are Star Trader and Hunt the Wumpus.
TradeWars has some obvious similarities to RISK, but there are many important differences.
Map Structure
A sector in TradeWars can be seen as similar to a territory in RISK, with TradeWars "bubbles", large clusters of sectors connected by a few links, similar to RISK continents. Also, both RISK and TradeWars maps use hexagonal linkage. Because of these similarities, structural features in TradeWars, such as tunnels and dead-ends, have the same strategic implications as in RISK.
Early TradeWars games were similar in size to RISK as well, with 60 sectors compared to RISK's 42 territories. However, later games tended to support much larger sector counts, with 1,000 sectors considered small, and a maximum of 20,000 sectors supported by TradeWars 2002 v3. A 20K sector game is the equivelant of nearly 500 interconnected RISK boards. This comparison, however, is misleading, since victory in TradeWars does not require control of every sector on the map.
TradeWars 2 and some variants used pre-defined maps that were organized in a normal hex pattern. Though later versions of these games grew to be much larger than a RISK board, the structure of the map remained very similar. However, Martin's TradeWars differs significantly because the maps are randomly generated and do not adhere to the normal hex pattern. A link could potentially lead to any other sector on the map. Theoretically, a total of 6 links could lead out from every sector, though in practice that is uncommon. Because of the random linkage, the number of sectors N "hops" away in TradeWars 2002 is at most 6^N, while the number of possible territories N moves away in RISK is at most 6*N. TradeWars 2 is somewhere between, with a number of long-distance, one-way jumps spread over a normal hex-tiled map. Though there are positive gameplay implications from the random structure, it makes a graphical map view impractical in TradeWars 2002. Pritchett ran an experimental closed beta with a flat, normal hex grid at around v3.07, using a modified procedural Bigbang, in anticipation of moving toward a more graphical representation of the game. The player feedback was mixed, and the idea was shelved.
The following graphs demonstrate the differences between the maps of RISK, the TradeWars 2 200 sector version, and the latest TradeWars 2002.
RISK
TradeWars 2/200
TradeWars 2002
Turns
In early TradeWars games, much like RISK, players took turns playing "moves". A single player would be allowed into the game at a time, and could play a limited number of moves before turning the game over to the next player. However, there was no set player order, and in fact one player could play several moves, logout, then login later, after others had played, and make more moves. This made TradeWars a more freeform game than RISK. By the time the game had become interactive, with players moving simultaneously, very little of the RISK-like turn resolution remained.
Combat
In a general sense, early TradeWars combat was similar to RISK, with a ship's fighters acting as RISK "armies", and combat resolution essentially a series of "dice rolls". However, because each "roll", which occurred for each attacking fighter, was resolved by a simple 50/50 probability, this could more properly be called a "coin flip" than a "dice roll". Later versions of TradeWars increased the complexity of this combat system, with the TradeWars 2002 system employing unique combat odds for its various ships. In addition, once the game became interactive, combat complexity was further increased by factors such as ship attack speed and fighter wave size.
