Risk Oracle

Win in the game of Risk! Predict the outcome of a battle or invasion before committing yourself.

• Compute mathematical odds.
• Compute experimental odds.
• Conduct virtual invasions.

Background

Risk is a game of battles whose outcomes are determined by the roll of dice. Understanding the odds of winning a battle or an invasion (a series of battles) is essential to making stategic decisions when playing the game. Battles involve offensive and defensive fighting units (battalions). Some variations of the game also allow for bonuses the effect of which is to add 1 point to the highest die. In Lord of the Rings Risk, for example, offense may have up to one bonus (one leader) and defense may have up to two (one leader and one stronghold). To accomodate various versions of Risk, Risk Oracle allows you to set the number of bonuses from zero to one for offense and from zero to two for defense.

Mathematical Odds

Risk Oracle can compute the mathematical odds of success of a full invasion as well as tell you how many battalions you would need (as defender or offender) to have odds at least as favorable to you as your desired odds. For example, if you are considering invading an enemy territory containing 14 battalions from a territory containing 12 battalions you can enter 14 and 12 into the Defense and Offense Battalions fields, touch "Mathematical Odds" and see that you have a 37.1% chance of conducting a successful invasion. "Desired Odds" defaults to 50% so you can also see that you would need 14 battalions to achieve at least a 50% chance of success (actual 53.8%). Your opponent, on the other hand, can see that defense would need only 13 battalions to bring the chance of a successful invasion to 50% or less (actual 43.3%). Enter any number between zero and one hundred in the "Desired Odds" field to match your individual risk tolerance.

Experimental Odds

Risk Oracle can also compute the odds of success experimentally. By touching "Experimental Odds", you may conduct as many virtual invasions as you wish (10,000 is the default). Risk Oracle will conduct that many full invasions (using random dice rolls), keeping track of the number of successes and failures and updating the experimental odds along the way.

Virtual Invasions

Finally, if you would like to try one invasion just to see what it might feel like, touch the "Try it Out" button. Make individual attacks or have Risk Oracle do them automatically. Play by play, you will see one of the many possible invasion scenarios unfold.