by darune
Dice rolls is of course a part of the game and some are neccesary (eg. to coup into a region).My thinking about wars/coups/realignment is usually, that while success often mean you gain some momentum; failure gives even more momemtum to opponent. Realignment is a special case and very circumstantiel though (you could have the odds in your favor - hence it is not always as risky as it looks)
Also couping stability 2 countries is on average less effecient than placing influence in non-controlled countries (except with a 1 ops card), also overcontrol is for the most part not really beneficial. So defending agsinst coups(except stability 1 countries) is better.
Example:
USSR coups brazil with 4-ops.
US has 2 influence in brazil.
Roll
1: net -3: 1 us influence
2: net -2: 0 us influence
3: net -1: 0 us influence, 1 USSR influence
4: net 0: 0 us influence, 2 USSR influence
5: net +1: 0 us influence, 3 USSR influence
6: net +2: 0 us influence, 4 USSR influence
The average net in this case is -0.5.
While it is argueable better to end up with 3 or 4 influence (eg. it will help defend against a later recoup)- you wouldn't have place 4 there yourself and in this case probably not 3 either unless fearing an immediate recoup. So in a way that extra influence is not really giving you 'value for money'. This is hard to quantify and is very circumstantial - ie. overcontrol is much more needed in some countries than others (iran, pakistan, thailand for instance).
Of course, in the above example, we are better off couping with a 2-ops or 3-ops card and saving the 4-ops, so we are not 'overspending' in the country. The drawback is now we are more likely to fail or accomplishing nothing - thus loosing any momemtum we could have had.