I played a lot of Risk in the past. One weird result I observed was whoever won Europe disproportionally won the game. North American normally was not vital.
I wondered whether it was because it was in the center of the board but came to the conclusion it was better located to attack the other continents and getting 5 extra armies made it more important than Africa.
Not sure if others have drawn the same conclusion.
Few things are more painful than stepping on a Risk board piece in your bare feet.
Interesting my strategy was either to take over Australia or South America as a base. You get the continent bonus and have to defend fewer attack routes - and by merely possessing one other territory prevent someone else from gaining a continental bonus (typically mexico or Indonesia).
As to Monopoly I recently saw an article or special about how very rarely are the actual rules followed. If they were the games would actually be much faster. For example: 1) there is an actual limit on houses/hotels if there are no more pieces no one else can buy them. and 2) if someone lands on a place and doesn’t buy the bank is supposed to auction it immediately to the entire player population.