One thing that I noticed is that there are hardly any forum threads regarding either strategies for particular boards or general strategy discussion.  I know everyone's trying to win, but offering some help to players new to Risk-like games could help with new player retention.  Sure, many new players will still get their butts handed to them at first, but at least they would have a designated place on the forums where they could ask for advice or read strategy articles that veterans have posted.

Seems like the General Discussion forum would be useful for that. Strategy sounds WarGear related :P and that forum is not really used all that much anyhow.
I could potentially see a time when more forums are necessary, but, IMO, smaller compact forums are better than many thin forums.

Oh and you start :D

Agree. Maybe add something about "consult awesome players like asm on strategy questions" to the sub-forum description to encourage this type of post?

I like the ideas Norseman. For articles, it might make sense to place them somewhere else on the site. I'm concerned that if you post "Norseman's extremely well-written strategy guide for beginners", it will get lost among other posts. A beginner browsing through titles in an article section could more easily find what they are looking for.

For discussion or debate of strategy, I like the idea of a separate section within the forums. A designated place could go a long way towards fostering discussion.

Do you see this being more of a forum for people to ask questions about strategy or more of a place for players to post their strategy guides? Or both?

In the short term, both. In the long term, I think it would make organizational sense to separate guides (mapmaking guides as well) from the forums.

Sorry, I made my original post and then promptly forgot about this thread. I think having a place where people could feel free to ask questions is the most important. It would be nice to have a place where people could post strategies, though a stickied thread with links to strategy posts in the General forum would probably do just fine (once there are a couple guides to link to, of course).

Here's an example of the sort of new player support another site provides: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=341&sid=0c44357e387f1c1fc022d2926f93485e

Me thinks it would be cool to have a separate forum dedicated to strategy.

I am sure people would not want to give away their secrets, but a place where "newbies" were encouraged to ask for advice would help ease people into the site - especially with the "weirder" games. (No offense to any of you creative types.)

How about if you could link into specific turns in a game? Imagine a post like this "Here is where I was in game X [link]. What I did didn't work, any idea on what I should have done.?"

The forum now exists and we even have posts. Linking into specific turns would be nice, but you also have the option of looking at the history and giving a move number.

Amidon37 wrote: Me thinks it would be cool to have a separate forum dedicated to strategy.

I am sure people would not want to give away their secrets, but a place where "newbies" were encouraged to ask for advice would help ease people into the site - especially with the "weirder" games. (No offense to any of you creative types.)

How about if you could link into specific turns in a game? Imagine a post like this "Here is where I was in game X [link]. What I did didn't work, any idea on what I should have done.?"

That's a great idea! This sort of thing is one of the reasons the forums were purpose built for the site rather than taking an off the shelf product.

I'll add in some forum code so you can embed an image of the state of the board at a specific turn.