#Is there a better term(s) for “suiciding” in Risk?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

hardy ice
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Note this isn’t the place to discuss whether the word suicide should be used outside of serious mental health discussions, please start another thread if you want to talk about that… I’m talking about whether or not the play behavior that we lump together under the name “suiciding” is actually many different things… “Tit for Tat” “Kamikaze” “Punishment” “cashing out” “rage quitting” “if I can’t win then I’ll decide who will” “secret bounty” and a bunch of other names I’m not thinking of.

What do you think? Some of them seem like totally legitimate strategies or modes of play others seem disrespectful to other peoples time.

fickle mural
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The term works for a broad variety of situations, since it’s common for Risk players and armies to make moves that kill themself.

Whether it’s good is subjective and context dependent

Often it’s not intentional, e.g. a noob suiciding all their troops round 1 into a 0% cap hit might not even know how cap defense works

meager pecan
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Maybe "Crashing (himself)" would work
Works in variety of situations and reasons behind it as well as "suiciding" term, not so offensive to people and some community rules, and at the same time pretty laconic.

fickle mural
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It’s defined as “Deathed caused by oneself”.

If that’s offensive in a Risk context, then the word kill “Cause the death of another living thing” is too

hardy ice
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Thanks… I have no problem with the term and the point about a noob suiciding their whole stack by accident is a good one. Their position is destroyed by their own doing whether they meant it or not. But that does seem to be a completely different thing than when a player deliberately hits every one on the board thinking they are cashing out in some balanced way but actually totally destroy the balance of the game, or when A player suicides a smaller stack into one of their opponents positions to decrease the odds of the opponent completing a kill on their next turn, or when I chain four kills in fixed, feeding the win to the remaining player, just because the definition of victory for me in that moment had changed from a first place finish to collecting the bounty that I put on the fourth player because of their horrible play. Just hard to describe all with only one word.

junior parrot
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It's worth noting that "suiciding" in RISK is a term created by the community over time, it will have been commonplace when various content creators came by / learned RISK - which will have also increased usage of the term.

I don't think there's really any "official" term for the behaviour, though it is often associated with "novices", "noobs", and generally inexperienced players - it isn't restricted to these players either.

Maybe purely from an iZombie appreciator perspective, but I like to think of it as "Rage Mode" 😄

Also "Full Zombie Mode" kinda applies too as that's exactly what zombies do every game already 🙂

maiden patrol
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The word……. is it’s a word. so everyone should just not worry about it.

green stream
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Take you with me is what I call it.

void grail
glad yacht
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maybe “game throwing”?

hardy ice
void grail
fair snow
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“I’m a Kamikaze pilot crashing into everything.” - Eminem

crude sleet
wanton halo
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JUSTICE. “I tried to expand agressively, but this newb justice-rolled me and I went out next…”

J - justifiable
U - unilateral
S - specific
T - targeting
I - increasing
C - chances (of)
E - equitable (outcomes)

Flavor text: “I may not get to decide who wins, but I’ll be sure to decide who loses!”

fair snow
wanton halo
slender viper
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the formal term for this - from a game design perspective - is “kingmaking”

main shard
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But sometimes it does not make a king, only decides who is first one eliminated. So in actuality it would be loser making.

white vine
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We should call it sacrificing or kamikaze

main shard
main shard
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The term suicide doesn't necessarily convey the act of taking out another player with them, which is often the case. It is more akin to suicide bombing than to a mere suicide. However I think the term developed to emphasize that the player doing the suicidal attack was making a strategic error by killing themselves in the process of killing another player, regardless if they succeeded in killing said player their game is now ruined.

I'm not a fan of the term sacrifice or kamikaze bc that implies there is strategy to the attack, which if it were the case is not a true suicide. This is some of what the OP was alluding to, that suiciding is now such a broad term that it does include other uses in game than the typical one of loser making as I previously mentioned.

After thinking thru all of these points. I still land at suicide as the most accurate term, but bc it is shortened for suicide bombing which I feel is the most accurate representation of in game action.

hardy ice
# main shard The term suicide doesn't necessarily convey the act of taking out another player...

Good points! Almost no one replied to the actual question I started with so thanks!!
How bout these:

Kamikaze is a strategic sacrifice of troops without destroying your game entirely.

Suiciding is the strategically dubious play of destroying one’s position in an unretrievable way by smashing into an opponent or opponents troops for no discernible in game advantage.*

Cashing out: Is doing the same in a controlled way perhaps taking two or three kills on the way out. (I sometimes cash out for second place when I only see a winning line two hours in the future and very low probability). I guess that’s still a sort of suicide but it is strategic.

Punishment or Loser Choosing would be the delayed suicide when a player destroys your game and you wait for an opportune moment much later when your game is now completely lost but you can still damage their game in a meaningful way and assure that they go into the endgame with a much lower win probability.

King making / winner choosing would be when you cash out to assist an ally to the win after a long and enjoyable game but when your position is no longer tenable or you are out of time to play.

of course there are: Failed kills that lead to quick death, also a sort of suicide.

*I would place the caveat that while there is no in game route to the win reason for suiciding or loser choosing there is a tit for tat strategy that would warrant their occasional use not for in game advantage but for multi game advantage. If mutually assured destruction is never carried out then it has no meaning and players can always bully any player to death. If occasionally that type of play results in the sudden destruction of 80% of their troops they might think twice. This is the only real way that guarding with a threat stack works effectively. I hate Australia so much that when given it first turn I’ve sometimes experimented with trying to lose it / guarding it open with a threat stack in Asia and it is surprisingly effective.

fair snow
# hardy ice Good points! Almost no one replied to the actual question I started with so than...

On the note of king making, especially in a progressive game, if cards get high, then that could be used as a proper term, as the next in turn order would win the game default for two easy big trades and snowball, but the term is definitely situational at best.

I like the acronym “J.U.S.T.I.C.E” while not completely accurate I think Kori hit the nail on the head with a decent term to use in replacement. Although I don’t like the idea of saying, “My enemy just went and justiced on my ass.”

😂😂

main shard
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I like the use of kamikaze in that sense. It's the best term I've seen for the strategy to use with an ally against the AUS turtle.

The difference between cash out and king making are too subtle I think for both to catch on. I prefer cashing out as it's more general. Also cashing out describes more of the strategy employed whereas king making describes the outcome more so than the strategy itself.

Suicide would strictly be ruining ones own game for no in-game benefit. This distinction separates it from failing a kill bc one would be ruining their position to advance a spot and get cards as compensation, but failed to do so via poor execution. So I wouldn't consider a failed kill a suicide as it is more of just an execution error, whether it involves running out of troops from bad dice, or not seeing other player's last territory, or bad pathing to prevent them from reaching player's last territory.

Punishment/loser chosing I think is typically the motivation behind most suicides. So again I think the broader term of suicide still fits, regardless of the motivation.

MAD (mutually assured destruction) is a valid strategy that does sometimes end up in a suicide. A threat stack is not threatening if it's always passive. It requires skill to pull off effectively so it doesn't turn into a suicide. But the strategy can have a separate name from the outcome if it does happen to end in the occasional suicide.

junior parrot
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Only other term I'd mention would be "given up with a vengeance"

Applies to the tiresome or frustrated player as having given up on winning, while also emphasising that before leaving they make spiteful/vengeful retaliatory attacks

#

Could you describe making a move for 2nd place as "giving up with hope?"
(E.g hitting another player hard so one player can decide the elimination order)

Along with "giving up with grace" being one massively advantaged player vs two much weaker players, so one player eliminates the other weakest player 😄

Would be hilarious to see the "player state" as:
• General the Blue has given up with grace
• General the Red has given up with a vengeance
• General the Green has given up with hope

(E.g endgame results identifying the final moves of players)

hardy ice
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na_generalthumbsup love ❤️❤️❤️ this! Great suggestions.
Let me try one in a sentence: “My flight got cancelled and after hours of trying I still couldn’t book a replacement flight so now the dread pirate has given up with hope… just like me does all the time in Risk “. Don’t know what second place will look like for my holiday plans… I guess I’ll be playing a bunch of risk…

vague willow
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I think because the word has a broad meaning, for instance, could be an act of mental health, could be political, we should not constrain its definition on this platform. The suicidal behavior in the strategy game is about a giving up strategy, not a reflection of mental health, so I don’t think we should link it to severe depression. It’s good that we live in a world that is growing in appreciation of the negative problems of neglecting social issues and mental illness, but we must preserve words so they can communicate all their meanings given situational contexts.

hardy ice
# vague willow I think because the word has a broad meaning, for instance, could be an act of m...

Yep… you got it. The only issue I was trying to talk over was what are the right terms for different play behaviors in the game. No problem calling some or all of them suiciding. Anyway obviously some folks didn’t get it and thought we were talking about whether or not the word should be used at all… yawn….I and many others who have had real mental health crisis in our lives find this kind of word policing to be absurd… obviously if you are in crisis get help and if you are going to be triggered by a word then you probably need to take a break from the internet. We are talking about a silly board game here, having fun and nerd-ing-out about what are the best words to describe play style choices. Have fun.

But just in case someone needs to hear this. I promise it gets better. It will get better, but I won’t promise that you won’t have more dark days but you will get SO much better at handling then. After many years I now can almost laugh at my darkest moods. Your depression or any of your feelings are not you! You are something deeper. Your feelings and moods will change like the weather pass over you and through you but you can be like a rock in a storm. Feel the storm, watch it be amazed by its power and feel the fear and the beauty. The storm will pass and you will remain. Feel what you feel both good and bad but don’t confuse your feelings with who you are.

Depression is terrible… it is like drowning in tar, but please know your brain is tricking you. The world is much the same on your darkest and lightest day… and it is actually a pretty cool place all things considered. I know you can’t see that sometimes in the darkest hole, but hold on… it is worth it! Pot a plant, wash the dishes, help a friend, go for a walk, watch the wind in the trees, or the ants on the ground, try for a while just to breathe and not think about anything. Just be. And of course if you are in crisis get help.

Now in a thread I started I have gone further off topic than anyone… 🤓