OT - Reddit CFB Risk Update 6/22: 12 Turns Left

Submitted by AmaizeingBlue on

Not too much changed on the map from yesterday to today. We still have a solo Virginia Tech territory surrounded by us on the west. OSU remains to be a pain in the Atlantic area. Wisconsin is on the ropes in the northeast. Florida is still trading blows with Nebraska. At this point our alliance just needs to remain the status quo and we'll win. With that said, we want to see total domination of the map. The leaderboard is below and the map further down.

Leaderboard_2.PNG

Steps To Play Every Day:

  1. Sign up for a reddit.com account if you don’t have one already
  2. Visit https://flair.redditcfb.com/ " go to “find by conference," click “FBS” then “Big 10” and finally “Michigan” to set yourself as a member of our team. Click “Update Flair” to set it.
  3. Visit https://michigancfbrisk.com/ and click “Get Order!”
  4. Click the blue chessboard beneath the logo that you’re meant to attack/defend to take you to the game.
  5. Scroll down, now, and on the right hand side of the screen, you will see the options that you can attack or defend. Click the school logo that you were assigned to

Do not ever attack any territory that is owned by one of our allies unless specifically told to do so in your orders. Our allies are Clemson, Florida, Georgia Tech, and Texas. If you get an order to attack an ally owned territory then it means we are coordinating with them, so it is acceptable. Otherwise, do not attack allied territories or defend territories that allies border please!

Make sure you aren't flagged as a bot

One potential issue with the influx of new users we had is that some players may have been flagged as a bot and therefore their actions may not be counting. If you are flagged as a bot you will see the image below on vote.redditcfb.com

Bot Flagging.png

If you are seeing that message follow the steps below, otherwise you can ignore this.

  1. Follow the link shown in the screenshot above and fill out the google form
  2. Wait at least one day for the text box to disappear. If it does disappear, you are all set.
  3. If the bot disclaimer message persists after one day, then message the mods of /r/cfbrisk directly. You can follow the link in step 4 below to do this in one easy click.
  4. https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCFBRisk&subject=&message=
  5. Be patient as the mods of the game are busy and they are putting a lot of effort into running this thing.

Daily Map

Risk 5-29 Full_6.PNG

The Granddaddy

June 22nd, 2018 at 10:07 AM ^

Why does it not just go until one school actually wins? That's when things would actually get interesting with needing to strategically break alliances and the like.  Just doesn't seem as good as it could be.

BursleysFinest

June 22nd, 2018 at 10:36 AM ^

Before they changed the rules, including giving it a set end date, it looked like this would never end, with the same territories being taken, lost and then re-taken.  I think having a set end date kept excitement (and probably participation) up and made the players a little more aggressive. 

  (Caveat: I haven't actually been playing, just guessing based on the results as reported here).

Moleskyn

June 22nd, 2018 at 2:05 PM ^

That's right. Without an end date, I'm not sure the game would ever end. The smaller participants would eventually get run out, but with the number of people playing for Michigan, Nebraska, and Florida, those three teams would just continually swap territories. They can't be eliminated.

trueblueintexas

June 22nd, 2018 at 10:50 AM ^

How does a team get knocked out? There should be a logical way of isolation and attack but it seems like schools have been able to chose random territories for escape. At this point, I find it hard to believe it is all RNG luck that OSU always seems to have 7 - 10 shifting random territories. Same for Va Tech, Alabama, and Chaos, 

Birdman

June 22nd, 2018 at 11:09 AM ^

No armies suffer any casualties.

So turn to turn there isn't  any real continuity for lasting effects. Perhaps 'stars' could be destroyed and take turns(or by territory owned) to regenerate to have attacks have lasting effect. While defending would suffer casualties only to the point they are attacked. That would create a game more likely to end. This iteration, its just attrition of interest that would lead to a genuine conclusion.

Still its been an interesting distraction while I study for the CFA... Because basically everything is.

UMFanInFlorida

June 22nd, 2018 at 11:53 AM ^

This is my main issue too is that there's a lot of territory swapping. Look at days 53 & 54. Nebraska and UF swapped Alaska (Chaos) and Washington. In real life this would never happen. The stronger would overtake the weaker and the result would be two territories for the stronger side.

The flip-flopping has happened too many times which unnecessarily extends the game.

As a programmer I imagine this a very easy problem to fix.. If territory[a] attacks territory[b] and vice versa, then follow these rules. If the same territory wins their attack and prevents the opposing attack, take both sides, otherwise which ever side wins their attack with a greater margin of victory wins both sides.

The Maizer

June 22nd, 2018 at 12:32 PM ^

You're right that the mechanics could be changed to be more like Risk, but it is not as trivial as you describe. First, there is no "margin of victory" in the way that a victor is currently decided. It is just a random selection of all the users weighted by star power. Second, there is no territory indicated from which an attack occurs. Sometimes you have multiple territories bordering that which you attack. Third, there are more than two teams involved in many battles for a single territory simultaneously.

jamesjosephharbaugh

June 22nd, 2018 at 2:33 PM ^

It's very hard to eliminate teams for a couple reasons.

1. If you lose territories, you don't lose power.  A team that gets reduced to 1 territory then has every single bit of their firepower concentrated in that one place and only a couple options of things to shoot at.   

2.  Math and the random number generator.  Probability theory says that even if you are a heavy favorite to win several matchups, the chances that you'll win all of those battles is small.  

For example, if Michigan had 4 territories surrounding OSU's 1 territory, our chances of eliminating them if we doubled their firepower in every battle is only 13%.  If we had a 5x advantage over their firepower, the chances of eliminating them are still only 40%. 

All the teams left (except Stanford) have a pretty big army.  Michigan is the biggest and we are roughly 5x as powerful as any of the 3 smallest teams (except Stanford).  It would take a lot of random number generator luck to eliminate any of them even if we could get them surrounded and even if we temporarily abandoned the rest of our battles on the map.  And the likelihood of eliminating any of the more powerful remaining teams is effectively 0.  

CLord

June 22nd, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^

Don't like it.  We should do like they do on Survivor and lay in the weeds in second place until the last few rounds so everyone else can focus on toppling the top guy.

jamesjosephharbaugh

June 22nd, 2018 at 2:35 PM ^

I have a feeling Florida may do that to us.  We have an alleged agreement with them to work together to win and not fight each other.  But if we turned on them on the next to last turn and won 6-7 of their territories, we'd probably ensure a victory.  

It's dirty but we'd probably win.