Risk-like game with Money? and govt?

You may want to take a look at "Supremacy," and its multitude of expansions.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27

We love Supremacy because there are a few phrases that have repeatedly come up in that game that we seem never to use in any other game. Namely:

"Do you have change for a billion?"

And my personal favorite... Nonchalantly:"I'm going to nuke the Sea of Japan..." :D

Several years ago, my kids and I added some wild stuff to RISK that resembles what you are thinking about. Instead of government types, we let each player choose a unified continent and created a stateless Terrorist faction.

For building stuff, we borrowed a line from the PC games and created a research tree, which you paid for from the income from each country in your continent. You could build research labs, naval bases, nuclear weapons factories and some other stuff that I can't recall.

We sorta glamorized the terrorists, but they had fun destabilizing nations, blowing up silos, etc.

You'll have a blast adding stuff to RISK! I'd like to hear more about your plans for forms of government.

Cheers,

Mitch

[edit] Oh yeah, we had treaties, too. You would ask another player if he wanted to sign a non-aggression pact. If he agreed to negotiate, you both secretly set one die to a number of turns for which you were willing to avoid conflict. If the numbers matched, the pact was signed and you kept track of each turn that it was in effect. If the numbers didn't match, you tried up to two more times.

The cool thing about this negotiating was that the stronger player could coerce the weaker player into a long-term pact, relieving the defense of their shared borders. Of course, nothing stopped you from massing troops at the border, ready to invade as soon as the pact expired.

That's the easy way out! ;) You might try and think of other simpler ways to 'calculate income'. How about (since we're talking about Risk) you get income per continent, per group of territories in the same color or per 'capital' owned (each player might have multiple 'capitals' on the map)? A player might even get some extra money when they win a battle (pillage!).

I'm not a big fan of 'bookkeeping' during the game since it diverts my attention from actually playing, so I would look for something simple that can be easily 'calculated'. Also, be sure not to get too attached to the way the board in Risk is used: the different territories and colours are not sacred things that you cannot touch/change.

It's funny how a post can bring out stories from different people and how they've added variants to games.

My friends and I also made a RISK style game. We used the same map but didn't have continental bonuses.
We started with capitals 2 or 3 depending on how many players. We'd choose facedown territoy cards, 1 more than how many capitals we'd have, and you had to choose where to put them. They couldn't be on the same continent though.

We also had a 'marketplace' where you could buy your special units like fighter jets / bombers / transport / destroyers / subs / aircraft carriers / Barracks / Generals / Assassians etc.

We had event cards and battle cards - which were essentially currency divided into 4 groups. Army , Navy , Air and Diplomacy. You had to get 'x' amount in that particular category if you wanted that technology.

Again, the aim was to take out capitals. Troops were given according to how many capitals and barracks you had. Very easy wat to keep track. No counting territories etc.

Oh yes, we had Anti aircraft guns too! We called it The Game....as it was a seriously long strategic game that pushed people's button. We also had a fun mechanic called the Gladiator Arena.....a luck roll of d20 to win a pick of technology from the market. A game inside a game. Neat.

I'd love to dust it off after typing about. Unfortunately it's back in China. Maybe I'll make a new one.......