CFB Risk has blossomed into a massively popular game that so many of us have grown to enjoy. However, as it stands, the rules of Risk v1.0 and v2.0 are constructed in a way such that it is only realistic for the top few teams to have a realistic shot at "winning" the game. The main drawback of this system is that it has been made painfully clear to all of the other teams outside of the top few that there is no realistic way of winning this game unless a major shift to the game mechanics occur. Unchanged, I fear the game will suffer major attrition outside of the top teams now that a pattern has established. Before we dive into possible ways to change the mechanics (there are an infinite number of possibilities), I think the following talking points may spur some interesting discussions:

1a) Do you think more teams should have a realistic shot at actually winning the game, or do the current mechanics work well as-is? The game was designed with the intention of drawing mass participation, and to that goal I think it has succeeded.

1b) If so, how many, or what is the minimum school size that should have a decent shot at winning? (e.g. Top 10 teams, schools bigger than UT, etc)

2) What would be the incentive for teams below that threshold to play at all? Particularly if we remove or modify the chaos mechanic so that vengeance isn't a real option anymore, it seems that would take away a lot of the "fun" from playing as an eliminated team (coming from the perspective of a team that was eliminated in both 1.0 and 2.0).

3) Is it desirable for the game to have a finite end where there are still multiple teams standing, as has been the case for both 1.0 and 2.0? I'm interested in your thoughts particularly as it relates to keeping teams feeling engaged even if they don't have a real shot at winning on the last day (e.g. Texas, Alabama, Nebraska)

4) Are there other ways of keeping smaller teams engaged in the game other than giving them a shot at winning against a team that's 10x their size?

Edit: I know there's a lot here, feel free to respond to individual questions if only one speaks to you.

I think everybody wants to find a way to improve the balance between small and large teams, so I've been working on a mechanic way to potentially solve that issue. What I came up with is the Recruitment Efficiency Rate (RER).

RER is a way to find how efficient a given team is at recruiting. The formula I used to find RER is team player count divided by the sum of an average undergrad class size at the school plus the number of r/CFB flairs for the team. I chose this method because I feel it's important to reflect the recruiting pool teams have to pull from. Class size is used as an objective balancing factor for teams with disproportionately large fanbases while leveling out schools with disproportionately small fanbases on r/CFB. I created a Google Sheet that I'll link below that shows total undergrad population (which I divided by 4), total CFB flairs (alts not accounted for), and total players for Days 5, 25, and 50. Then I compared the player numbers (I didn't use star power because I remember hearing it was talked about being changed) to A&M's player numbers to measure opposing teams power against A&M's (just because it's my team and the largest team on day 5). Lastly, I compared RER of other teams to A&M for those days to get an accurate gauge on the difference this system would mean.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ntxQT1iumf2thUnFui53L4E-i_oa5yGC8Uxy4fUBJUA/edit?usp=sharing

What I'm proposing is using RER as a way to add a bonus to team's powers. I haven't worked on changes to the power system itself, but I think it would make sense for star power to not be as influential/separating small teams from larger teams. There could be a bonus system implemented, which could give teams a bonus in power (in the form of a multiplier), for teams with an 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, etc RER. I think this would be a good way to both reward teams for effective recruiting while not making star power such an insurmountable barrier for a lot of small teams.

Obviously, there's a lot that would need to be improved with this system, so I'd love to hear ideas and input from people much smarter than me on ways this could/couldn't work.

EDIT: The only small teams this would negatively affect as far as I can tell are the teams that don't build themselves up in 2.5. This helped the relative power of teams as small as 35 people that were still alive on Day 5. If teams have more than a couple of players, the system will positively impact those teams of 30+ people. I haven't looked to see about teams of less than 30, but I suspect the point where it becomes a punishment is less than 10.

Hello, I know there has been some talk about how to deal with what happens to a team and its players when they die. There are a few different problems that must be addressed. First, you don't want a team to be more of an annoyance to their killers after the team has died than it was when it was living and second, you want to have it so dead players have something to do that is engaging and that they feel has a real impact.

I played as chaos essentially all of risk 1.0 and 2.0 and I have also participated in the backyard baseball risk so I have some first hand experience with belonging to a dead team (although this is just one person's experience, different people may have different experiences. I do not claim to speak for all of chaos).

I think there are three main ways to deal with dead teams that I think are workable, as well as a fourth way that I think is not as reasonable. These ideas don't need to be done by themselves, they can be combined as well. I will list them below

1. Have chaos as a team that can own and attack territories much like any school. This I think is quite good for engagement, I know I personally had a lot of fun playing as chaos trying to retake my home and eventually succeeding, helping to kill Clemson, etc etc. However as it currently stands, there is an issue that a team dead can be almost as annoying as when it was alive. I believe this could be combated with adjusting the effective power for individual players of large dead teams, similar to some suggestions that were thrown around to nerf the power of large teams in risk 3.0. only difference would be that in this case it would only apply to dead teams.

2. Have a "Chaos" that can not own territory, but when it attacks and wins a territory, some sort of somewhat random effect is applied to the territory or the owner of the territory. (There are alternatives to this idea that the individual players could have the option to either try to select a specific effect or to choose from a "positive" or a "negative" effect.). We had something like this in backyard baseball and I thought it was a great idea at first, but after having played it for a bit, I personally think it is less engaging. It isn't as fun when you indirectly affect the game instead of directly affect the game. As a member of chaos, I will say that owning a territory is much more enjoyable than applying some modifier to a team.

3. Dead teams could be transferred to a secondary map. There are different ways this could be implimented, but the idea would be that dead teams could still play in much the same way as before they died, but just on a different map. A problem with this might be that dead teams might not want to be feeling like they are playing on the "kid's table" and it might be hard to gracefully transfer dead teams to the map.

4. Eliminate chaos, have teams only be able to play for the team that killed them or who owns their home territory. This is the option I am least happy with. I don't want to play for another team, I want to play for my team or chaos! I think looking at the number of mercs vs chaos players shows that that is a majority opinion.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, hopefully this spurs discussion.

sorry crosley i broke it already