I'm new to the whole on-line risk scene, and I'm wondering how often people team up and discuss tactics in the games?  Apart from the Team games, I was wondering just how actively people are at helping each other out, ganging up on the leading player, making deals, etc.  I've really seen very little of it, although a lot of people seem to be familiar with each other in the forums, so I was just wondering how often it happens?

It will probably end up happening a fair amount, but it really depends on the individuals in the game.

On Warfish (the other Risk site that many of us came from), I never really seen all that much. A lot of the time it is somewhat assumed that players need to keep the leader in check or else the leader gets an easy pass. While it does and will happen, there are some players that hit up secret messages/allies quite a bit, and the more you play with them, the more you are able to guess if they are plotting something with another player :P.

Number 1 rule though should be that you should watch your own back, no ranking except down for second place.

Yertle wrote:

there are some players that hit up secret messages/allies quite a bit, and the more you play with them, the more you are able to guess if they are plotting something with another player :P.

Another good hint is if their handle is 'asm'.

And as far as a lot of us knowing each other, if anything that works to the advantage of the outsider (bad term). We're all here to win games (except Cram) and we'll often concentrate on players we know to play well.
For example, I usually leave asm alone in games as I see him as a non-threat towards my march to victory.

I have actually seen quite a lot of this on Warfish, but not as much here. In all honesty though, the truly great players can beat a double team in a three player scenario by controlling their opponents growth from turn one, not over extending themselves, and knowing when to get balls out aggressive. This is something Andernut and Kobra Kai are especially good at.

The times when I lose are the times when I ignore Riskyback. He is the greatest threat on this site and should always be the first target if you want a chance at victory.

I tend to use secret messages to harass and critisize the moves of other players - so I use them a fair bit.

I can count on one hand the number of games where it was an "I won't attack you" type of message and I have some 1000 games.

Team-games are great though, heavy communication should be used in actual team-games!

That's funny. I harass and criticize exclusively using public messaging.

Yes, but I don't like going back and seeing 50 public messages by Andernut and 3 public Messages by other players. I try to keep my public messages down to a 10:1 ratio with other people in the game.

Private messages are when I berate someone for not doing something that I don't want Mr. Leader to shore up their defenses on.