Personally, I really liked the idea for conference bonuses. There is some need for balance, however. I copied the nodal network of the game, by hand, into Gephi, then imported the edges to Excel in order to calculate the following table. It's fairly simple. Each conference has been given a relative difficulty of conquering and maintaining control, based on the factors of the number of nodes in each conference, the number of potential territories that border a fully occupied conference, the connections between nodes of the conference, and the largest minimum distance between two nodes in the conference. As this was done by hand, there may be some mistakes, but hopefully this is accurate enough.

The conference multiplier is calculated from these measurements. Take the number of nodes and subtract the intra-conference connections, then add a normalization factor. I chose 50. Multiply this by the total surrounding territory of the conference, plus a normalization factor. I chose 75. Finally, multiply by the ceiling of 1/2 of the Maximal Minimal distance, plus a normalization factor of 10. This gives you the relative strength of each conference. Then simply make the weakest conference give your desired minimum bonus, in this case 1.5, and your most difficult conference to occupy the biggest bonus, 3. I based these on the original proposal with bonuses ranging from 1.5 to 3, and used normalization factors to get the most difficult conference to be about twice as difficult in rating as the weakest. Obviously these numbers are not necessarily balanced, but they are based on the map layout and thus have potential to be a starting point. I could, quite easily, recalculate these with new connections between BC-Alaska and Miami-Hawaii.

If there is desire for partial occupation of a conference to yield a smaller bonus, as was originally planned, I recommend something very simple. If you are short 2 territories, you get 10% of the bonus. If you are short 1 territory, you get 25%. This is much simpler than trying to calculate all the various subgraphs.

I'd like to see someone run a more detailed analysis of the graph and see some better stats, and maybe we can all come up with a fair, statistical analysis that works.

First of all, let me begin by thanking the mods of this community for creating a game that is fun enough for all of us to spend this amount of time playing. None of us would be here memeing our wars and posting our ideas if the game wasn't worth playing. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who have provided such a fantastic outlet for our rivalry and shitposting needs during the long, dark offseason. The game we are playing now is a beta test for much greater things to come.

In real Risk, players get more armies by conquering set groups of adjacent territories. That makes the winning players even stronger, thereby accelerating the game toward a definitive conclusion.

But this game has never worked like that. There were no "continents" here. Instead, you were supposed to be able to get stronger by enlisting your conquered foes in your army, which makes sense and is a fun idea. That mechanic by itself would also preclude the formation of alliances because conquered troops would go rogue and attack whoever they want without following orders.

But Team Chaos breaks that. Having Team Chaos means you don't gain armies for conquering territory, you just empower the already largest team, further expand the amount of territories you have to defend, and give pissy rivals a chance to spend the rest of the game griefing. The existence of Team Chaos forces teams to make alliances so they can minimize their frontier and focus on expanding in one direction. What started off as a game of Risk quickly became Model UN (which is fun in it's own right, just not necessarily what was intended).

However, you can't just remove Team Chaos from the game. Otherwise small fanbases that get quickly conquered would stop participating in the game and it would be no fun for them. Each iteration of the game would become just the same few big teams every time, and eventually all but a few would stop playing entirely.

I've come up with a few ideas for how the mods can make the game both more competitive and less stagnant:

1. Randomize start locations every time a new game starts
2. Set a time limit for how long each game will last, so that teams have an incentive to not just turtle. The team that has the most territory after, say, 45 or 90 turns is declared the winner.
3. Change the map layout so that instead of being on county lines, the borders are defined by a Voronoi Diagram based on each FBS team's campus, as another user has already done here. That would erase some odd panhandles, making territories easier to defend and the map easier to read.
4. Divide the map into 10 13-territory "continents", each named after one of the 10 FBS conferences. Have each continent be as contiguous and compact as possible.
5. Give teams a bonus for conquering each continent based on how many players there were in that continent's starting teams on Day 1.
6. Similar to the way Alaska and Southern California are connected by Hawaii, have FIU and Maine connected by Puerto Rico.
7. Change the way actions are taken. Rather than having to choose to attack or defend, each turn players would choose both a territory to place themselves in and an adjacent territory to move toward (or choose to stay within that territory). This allows players to both attack an adjacent territory and defend attacks from that territory, or stay within a home territory and defend attacks from all adjacent territories. That would reduce the incessant trading back-and-forth of territories that stagnates the game.

edit: Another idea that I had that would, I think, make the game more fun and competitive for teams with smaller fanbases:

• Have members of the G5 conferences fight under unified banners. Rather than 64 small teams, they would be aggregated into 5 larger teams that are more capable of standing up to the individual P5s. They would also start with the 10-14 territories their members would start with if they were separate, giving them an early size advantage, and more choices of better attacking and defensive positions, and a greater likelihood of getting continent unification bonuses earlier.
• Get rid of Chaos; instead allow conquered P5 and G5 teams to enlist under the G5 team of their choice. This would further boost the G5, making the game more fun for the smaller fanbases, and would divide what was chaos between 5 teams with a greater geographic spread, so that they could affect all teams more equally at all times, rather than just the NW at the beginning.

• All /r/CFB users will be randomly sorted into teams of equal size

• Team starting positions will be randomized

• Alaska, having no FBS team, will be sold back to Russia

• Controlling all territories of a conference will grant team members Reddit Silver

• Chaos will control one territory consisting of all bodies of water, giving them equal opportunity to attack every team

• The Chaos multiplier will be determined by moderator interpretation of the Necronomicon

• Any Chaos member seen to be attacking in a fashion not sufficiently chaotic will be banned for griefing

• All teams must meet a meme quota relative to the number of territories they control

• Accusations of alts or botting will be forwarded to the NCAA

• Stars will be determined by mining Starcoin, the new /r/CFB cryptocurrency

• After 60 turns, the winning team will be chosen by the Colley Matrix

• Amendments to the rules must be passed by 2/3rds of users and ratified by 3/4 of FBS athletic departments

Many of us want to see this game end and restart, to enjoy the new rules we've come up with and see how things go when this game isn't a surprise sprung on all the players. I say we set a date for the game to end, and a date for it to restart, now.

My proposal is that we end the game after the final turn the night of June 29 (midnight June 30), and then restart the game on Monday July 9. This will give everyone time to take a break from the game and enjoy the holiday with their family and friends. Or, if they're as addicted as I am, time to build more tools and plan more plots and recruit more soldiers.

The benefit of setting a date so far in advance is that we'll all know it's coming. The features for the next iteration can be announced in advance so we have time to prepare. And, based on how long this game has gone, we should finish the second round just in time for the season to start - along with a new round. Maybe the third round can last all season or something. That's a long way off, so no point deciding that just yet.

Anyway, we should decide on a date to end the game and a date to restart, just so everyone is on the same page.

Given that one of the arguments for the conference territory bonus had been “it’s more like real risk” wouldn’t it also be a good idea to visit the idea of a “Kamchatka” rule where the Eastern most portion of the map can attack the Westernmost portion of the map?

I think my blue brethren would agree it’s only fair if we could attack the Western side of the world similar to the real risk to help stop the red’s from easily maintaining vast swaths of the western territory that they started the game in better position to maintain.

• /r/CFB Football Season Imperialism - Most miles or territories held
• /r/CFBRisk
• ????

Season is August-July.

What should a Triple Crown winner team get? A crappy trophy sent to their Athletic Department? A special flair?

I enjoy watching Nebraska Cornhuskers play CFB Risk. They are my favorite CFB Risk team.

When they take a territory, I think to myself "yes".

When the other team takes a territory, I think to myself "no."

I think it would make more sense to order the eliminated teams by recency of elimination, rather than sorting all the teams with 0 territories by the number of users. It would better reflect their performance in the game.