Hi,
Is there a Hasbro's RISK template that simulates the dice-based board game?

There is a Take Turns mod you can use to make sure turns alternate between players (but maybe that only works for 1v1).

Besides that:

Turn on 100% luck and WR to get that random dice effect

Use a Small Earth map

I forgot how Risk works, but iirc there was no base income in Risk, so set that to 0

If you set base income to 0, maybe give some reinforcement cards from the start so that players can actually complete a bonus at some point

But I only played 1 game of Risk in my life, so dont quote me on that stuff.

Edited 4/6/2022 11:01:18

heh base income is 2 or 3

Yep, risk base income is 3, plus 1 for every three territories over 9.
Also, you might also want to turn on Multi-Attack.
I did make a template once, however I didn't use the take-turns mod, so it wasn't very accurate.
Essentially, unless you use all the right settings + mod, it's going to be a bad simulation of Risk gameplay

and also distribute all the territories and manual distri

Short answer: There is no way to simulate Risk in Warlight or get reasonably close. Although this game illegally marketed itself for 10+ years as "Play Risk Online Free," you ironically cannot use it to play Risk.

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Long answer (scroll down to "you've got 3 options" if you don't want all this detail but read this if you're not convinced by the short answer above):
Risk has non-simultaneous turns where each player distributes, (multi-)attacks, and then does one (multi-)transfer between two territories that are directly or indirectly connected by territories controlled by the player.

The distribution phase features base armies, additional armies based on territories & cities (new addition), bonus income, and income from trading in cards earned by capturing territories. Of these, Warlight can only support base and bonus income and not Risk's territory+capitals formula or Risk's card trade-in system.

The attack phase is the trickiest. In short, Risk is based on 3v2 dice rolls, while Warlight is based on expected value and weighted coin flips. So what? Coin flips and dice rolls are the same thing, right? Nope, they're so different that you can't use one to simulate the other (at least not in this case, although you can sort of use dice to approximate coins).

Let's get into the weeds:
In Risk, you can attack with at most 3 armies at a time and defend with at most 2. So you can think of larger attacks as broken up into (at most) 3v2s.

For each army in this 3v2 group, a die is rolled. Then the highest-valued dice are compared, with defenders killing attackers in case of a tie but attackers winning otherwise. In these 3v2 rolls, the attacker has a ~29% chance of losing both attackers without killing any defender, ~33.5% chance of trading 1 for 1, and a ~37% chance of killing both defenders. In Risk, the 3v2 advantages the attacker but 2v2s and 1v1s advantage the defender (because the attacker doesn't get their extra die roll). Additionally, you have a different kind of multi-attack: the attacker gets to break up their attacks and attack with 3v2 repeatedly but they can also stop (e.g., if the first 3v2 goes badly).

Okay, so what? To understand why this makes Risk impossible to simulate via a Warlight template, you also need to understand Warlight mechanics. In Warlight, there's basically 4 layers to the combat mechanics:

• the expected value ("pure skill"): this is simply (attacking armies * offensive kill rate) and (defending armies * defensive kill rate).
  
• weighted coin flips (luck): for every attacking or defending army, a weighted coin is flipped (this is not the same as rolling a die). Every army has a (kill rate)% chance of killing an opposing army, so basically - with base kill rates - you flip a 60/40 coin for each attacker and a 70/30 coin for each defender. And then just count which ones landed on heads.
  
• the luck modifier: how do you put together the coin flips and the expected value? This is what the luck modifier does. The luck modifier is just the % weight the coin flips have. So 0% luck means that it's all from the expected value and 100% luck means that it's all from the coin flips.
  
• rounding: weighted coin flips always have integer outcomes, but expected value and the combined value (after the luck modifier) can be a decimal. This is where WR and SR come in- SR just rounds using grade-school rounding rules (0.5 and above round up, rest rounds down), while WR flips another weighted coin and rounds up if it lands on heads. For example, if the computed value is 7.3 opposing armies killed, you flip a 30/70 coin and round up to 8 30% of the time.

Okay, whew, that's a lot! So let's put it back together. How does this mean you can't simulate Risk in Warlight?

First off, in Warlight, you can never kill more armies than you're attacking with. In Risk, since you're breaking up attacks into repeat 3v2s, a defending or attacking army can kill more than the 1 defending or attacking army from the same territory. You've seen those games in Risk where 5 defenders kill off 10 attackers, right? That's just not possible in Warlight: 5 defenders can beat back 10 attackers but they can kill at most 5 of those attackers. More subtly, Risk dice rolls and Warlight coin flips just don't look the same- and you can't make them look the same just by changing Warlight kill rates to give the attacker an advantage. In Risk, the attacker functionally has variable kill rates (because the attacker may roll more dice than the defender). Dice rolls and coin flips also just don't take the same shape if you plot their outcome distributions.

And finally, let's talk about the transfer phase: this is simple. Risk allows one transfer, to happen after all the attacks have finished (for one player), and it can be between any two connected territories controlled by the player at the end of their turn. Warlight transfers are totally different.

The overall implication? You cannot create a Warlight template that plays like Risk or one where you'd do well by using the same strategies that perform well in Risk.

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So, all in all, you've got 3 options:
1. Get as close as possible on Warlight
You can:
- make it FFA
- use Small Earth Board Map
- use base income, armies for territories (past territory #9), and reinforcement cards
- set luck to 100% (WR vs. SR doesn't matter, rounding doesn't come into play for 100% luck)
- turn on multi-attack
- use the Take Turns mod
- change offensive and defensive kill rates to give attackers an advantage. Maybe try 70/60 instead of 60/70 and then tweak as needed?

This is not going to be very good or anywhere close to Risk! You'll be putting in a lot of effort for no gain, and after writing this post I can tell you that's not a smart thing to do.

2. Create a new mod on Warlight to simulate Risk
You'd basically have to rewrite the combat mechanics and make a souped-up version of Take Turns. Even then, implementing multi-transfer and Risk's distribution logic will probably get tricky. I don't think this is worth the effort.

3. Play a Risk clone
If you want to play Risk online, there's at least a dozen games out there for this. There's the official licensed Risk: Global Domination on Steam (which is limited free-to-play; I wouldn't recommend it's f2p mode since you're capped on multiplayer games per day). And there's a bunch of "Play Risk Online Free" games that actually are just Risk rather than a total reworking of Risk mechanics (like Warlight). There's Conquer Club, Dominating12, Major Command, and LandGrab as the main ones. They're all significantly smaller than Warilght but have enough activity for a MP scene. They're also less free-to-player- usually, things like RT multiplayer games are paywalled behind tokens or premium membership.

Edited 4/8/2022 13:25:02

Good responses & good analysis, but better question is: do you really want to simulate Risk here?

If yes, do option #1 above. That's really the only real option.

But most people find the mechanics here better, so after you play option #1, you'll say "okay, enough of that cruddy game" and just play regular WZ again.

The distribution phase for example ... who actually wants to distribute the whole board, 1 player taking 1 territory at a time? If it's RT, maybe that is tolerable, but for MD, the dist phase alone will take a long time.

Risk really only works imho as a RT game, and preferably in person on a real board. Those mechanics (notably the dice) were in place b/c of the limitations of being RT IRL board game, not b/c they're actually good mechanics.

And let's be honest ... virtual dice just don't have the same feel, it feels empty. If you're not physically rolling 1-3 dice yourself, the joy is gone.

1 player taking 1 territory at a time?

That's reasonably fast. So the Risk clones (like Conquer Club) tend to work around this using something similar to WL's picks, although that also changes the mechanics because you're no longer able to react to which territories other players received (i.e., change your picks on the fly).

better

For 1v1 and team games, WL has undoubtedly better mechanics. For FFAs, though, I'd prefer Risk mechanics because they balance out the diplomacy aspect and early noise of FFA. On WL, FFA with non-rubbish players just becomes a lottery.

not b/c they're actually good mechanics.

They're pretty solid mechanics, subject to the constraints of what works in an IRL game, but not for a strategic game.

Warlight and Risk are fundamentally different because WL pushes strategy. But for the Warlight piggybacking its marketing on consumers' existing familiarity with Risk, the games aren't really connected any more than other board (or virtual board) games that use maps. The resemblance is superficial.

Edited 4/8/2022 13:49:36