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Link: http://sillysoft.net/ael/
Genre: RISK clone.
Platform: Win32, Mac, Linux.
Rico factor: One.
Multiplayer: 1-4 Hotseat.

Slightly cheating here, since this is shareware - but the free demo portion is sufficient.

Nothing much to say about this.  It's a game of Risk, with a multitude of maps, and progressively less balanced starting locations.

It's got a bunch of mini history lessons built in, which don't add anything.

What it does right



Risk is fun.  You already know how it works, and it adds enough keyboard shortcuts (place 5 armies, keep attacking until I win or run out of armies, place all armies) to make it fast to play.

The AI is varied.  Standard play-types of 'turtle' 'expand' 'take one square a turn' and 'take back any lost territory'.

The maps are interesting and each (and each starting location) requires a different strategy to do well on.

It runs in a window when asked.
It quits quickly.  There's few splash and nag screens.

What it does wrong



The AI is predictable.  Which means they are easy to play off against one another.
Worse, in an attempt to make the difficulty curve work, the AI for a particular colour on a particular map (on a particular difficulty setting) is constant.  So you know which AI turtles and can be ignored.

The AI never uses cards intelligently.  (And it's got the original exponential curve of card value, too.)
If you survive the first two turns (which you won't always) it's pretty certain that you'll win.  The only remaining challenge is to try and get the highest scores.

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Last edited June 17, 2008 1:39 pm (viewing revision 1, which is the newest) (diff)
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