The New Road

Real war is not like Risk

I'm listening to Fiasco on iTunes. It's a book about the Iraq war, and the title says it all. The basic premise is that the war was created by a set of pencil pushing academics who have never been in battle. The kind of people who think agressive action is always correct. Primarily because that's what wins paper war games, like Risk. But real war is not like Risk.

To make Risk like real war you would need some new rules. The first would be local attrition. If you take a country that isn't your own, then every turn you will lose a unit in that country if you stay there. This simulates some part of a local insurgency. Actually, to refine the first rule you would need a matrix of countries. So American invading Iraq would leech 3 units a turn, or invading Afghanistan would leech one unit a turn.

Next we would need a rule to simulate public waning and waxing public approval for the war in a Democracy. First, if the ratio of wins to loses is positive then the player gets an extra two units per turn. If negative the player loses an extra two units per turn. In addition the player loses two units the turn after any military movement.

Finally we would need something to simulate the number of troops required to simply hold a country. So that below four units in any country means you can't attack from that country. And below three units means that you lose the territory altogether.

Anyway, with all these changes the game of Risk would be unplayable since nobody could ever attack and hold any countries long term. Hey! That's like real life. Turns out real war isn't like Risk after all.