Alliances

## Alliance Fundamentals

   This is the main alliance interface. You can access anything relevant to your alliance from here and observe important information including

* Alliance Calendar
* Hostile and friendly relations
* Territory
* Any ongoing, incoming or outgoing battles can be observed in the WAR interface
* Controlled strongholds
* Tech
* Trade

You'll check in here often to contribute to the Alliance Tech, check the calendar, execute trades, etc. Each alliance can officially have up to 3 friendly alliances and 3 hostile alliances. Unofficially though, your alliance may have more than that. Adding an alliance as friendly makes them not targetable and enables you to reinforce them and vice versa.

Your alliance will work together to take control of more and more land of higher and higher level as you progress as long as you can remain competitive. The higher level land you can take, the better resource gathering you gain access to, and the more shrines you conquer, the more benefits you get. You'll also gain access to alliance exclusive events and you'll be protected by your allies and there will be many more benefits for joining an alliance, including alliance gifts, helps, research, rank bonus, and more.

The goals of alliances are different depending on their leadership and how strong and organized they are. Though the ultimate goal any alliance can have is to control the most lucrative land and remain on top. That may require all forms of strategical maneuvers depending on the cunning of your foes. **Never underestimate your opponent, they may surprise you.**

## Macro

On the micro level, you are activating your troop training, completing research, constructing buildings, leveling heroes, etc. Then **on the macro level, alliances are vying for dominance in a hostile environment where only one alliance can be crowned as the ruler.** Interesting revelations may unfold along the way such as

* Betrayal
* Secret alliances (They make you think they're enemies but really they're working together)
* Coercion
* Espionage
* Alternating/unstable relations
* Propaganda
* Exploitation
* defamation

These are all tools to influence the macro game which consists more transparently of the following

* Alliances grabbing territory/objectives such as shrines
* Declarations of war or friendly relations
* Grand strategy moves such as a surprise attack, instigating an attack while having a prepared and planned defense, performing more complex maneuvers like multi pronged attacks, cutting off large or key portions of enemy territory, etc.
* Building an organized infrastructure/plan/system that enables your team to operate more quickly and effectively/accurately
* Alliances dying/New alliances forming/ Alliances merging
* Other such grand narrative revelations

**Even if everyone does their part in the micro scale, it won't matter at all if your teams macro game is weak.** Imagine a large, organized, experienced, advanced army approaches an equally sized unorganized group. Even if the latter group has experience and is just as advanced it won't matter, they're likely to lose. The organization of the former team is the difference between crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, and having a plan A, plan B, and the communication and training to execute those plans effectively and accurately.

**Being part of the leadership team that builds your alliances infrastructure is a lot of never ending work.** It doesn't just involve the mechanical functions of a leader such as installing alliance markers, accepting new applicants, managing members, leading battles and events, but it also involves a lot more intangible work that involves much thinking, strategizing, and planning. Fortunately or unfortunately for most of us, we never have to really worry about the meta game more than observing what we can for our own information/entertainment because the leadership of the alliances will take care of it.

**Although, being aware of your servers overarching narrative is something everyone should participate in because it can be very rich and unique.** Which alliances in your server has the best organization? Which one is the most cunning and devious/causing the most trouble? Based on what's happened recently, what kind of future outcomes might we soon see? Is the rank 1 alliance going to get backstabbed and kicked to the curb? Will a spy influence their enemy to make bad moves or walk into a trap? How many times will the winning hand be passed down? What interesting revelations will you see?

## Gathering Intel

**The world could be blowing up all around you**, everything on fire burning and everyone is in a panic. However, you're in your nuclear bunker. You couldn't care less. Well maybe that wouldn't be so bad but lacking the intel of your surroundings isn't usually unfavorable. Without complete and accurate information you'll be in the dark. You should have seen it coming but your intel was incomplete and now your alliance is down many millions of power and your teams morale is shot because you withstood a great attack that you could have seen coming if your intel gathering efforts were more effective.

So now what? **Let's give up and disperse, we can't recover from this.** We were rank 1 and now we're not even in the top 10 any more! Hold on, I see where we made a mistake and I know what we can do to resolve it. We're going to try again next time and win even from our new weakened state! Then our strategy will be undeniable and many new civilizations will want to join us and we will regain our dominance!

In Hausaland server my alliance had an ally that was unstable due to having relations with some of our enemies. We didn't know who they were going to end up siding with and they were the key to our success or failure. **If they sided against us then we surely were doomed but if they sided with us, we would easily win together.** We were in the dark as to what our future was going to end up like because gathering intel about what they really planned to do was so difficult because their leader was mostly silent.

**Gathering intel is just about building a network of information sharing.** Build points of contact within your alliances of interest. I'm interested in alliances 1, 2, and 3 so I will send a message to 3 people from **each alliance.** Now I've begun construction on 9 points of contact, 3 in each alliance. If no response, repeat until you have 9 points of contact. You can do 2 in each if you want, but you at least need more than 1 perspective from each source alliance preferably. Simply provide them with some slightly outdated or less important information to get the information transfer flowing. You may choose to build rapport first depending on your style you have to find what yields **useful** results. You're really looking for

* **Leadership Status**. What is the general observable state of the leadership of the alliance in question? Are they dormant? Active? Ambitious? Peaceful? Short tempered? Reserved? Mysterious? Flamboyant? Accurately obtain their description, essentially. Which can be an everchanging thing.
* **Member Status**. Are they happy with their leadership? You're looking for points of vulnerability. If they don't like their leadership then performing a coup becomes a less frictional option for example.
* **Look at the world from their perspective**. Make sense of their situation. Find out what they're thinking.
* **Come prepared**. This won't work if there is no mutual benefit to the exchange. You will have to provide information in order to receive information. Prepare a narrative that suits your benefit. Maybe you want your opponent to think you're docile and peaceful, maybe you want them to think you're dominant and assertive, it depends on your grand strategy of choice.

**But wait... How will you know they aren't lying too? Well I guess in that case just scrap everything, let's go play solitaire.**

Jokes aside, this will be no easy task. I'm sure you can gather information but will it even be useful or accurate? It depends on the quality of the source. You're lucky if you have a potent source that is easy and inconspicuous to access due to them not even being a part of the opponent's inner circle. Though usually to obtain such desirable information you need to have access to a source that's close to the core of the target. Such as an R4 or even the leader themself. **So how are you supposed to extract key information from such a target directly?**

**Coercion is one option.** "If your alliance will attack us then let me know, I can prevent it from happening and we will both not benefit from a war, we need to be prepared for the upcoming enemies that we will both have to face together." In this example the comment makes sense, they should not fight if new regions will open soon and they need to be prepared for new potential enemies to be introduced to them in the near future. So sometimes it will be easy to coerce desirable conditions from your target. **It depends on the quality of your points of contact and your quality as an intel operative**.

" The alliance that we will soon be sharing the new region with is ambitious. They may be able to defeat us, do you have any plans?" In the case of this example, you and your ally are anticipating the new region opening soon and you are trying to make heads or tails of the new strong alliance that you will soon be sharing the new region with. Although you also need to gather intel on them, you're not really focusing on that right now you're more interested in finding out if your current ally is really dependable because soon you may have to fight by their side and depend on them for your own survival. So your comment did the following

* Notified your ally of a threat
* Left them open to provide an answer as to what's on their mind/in their strategy

They might answer "We're prepared to fight side by side to our fullest effect until the death!" but little do you know that they've already identified you as the weakest link and they've been building relations with your new enemy for some time already. **They plan to betray you, but how are you supposed to know that?** Even if you knew it, what would you do about it? You're not going to let it go down like that so you need to know the truth immediately. The truth is, in this situation, you are already dead. It's too late now, close your eyes and rest.

**The information gap here wasn't a result of an immediate mistake.** It was the result of a long lasting deficiency. There were already mistakes that occurred before that resulted in your alliance's demise. You needed to either build relations with the new alliance first, or have a stronger bond with your ally. Being in a leadership position and taking it seriously will be tough and can reveal your deficiencies. The difference between a good leader and a bad one is that the good one learned from their deficiencies. They planned, acted, and failed. They absorbed the knowledge provided by making the mistakes they made, and they now have superior strategy. **Rinse and repeat this process a million times and you will be an unstoppable strategic mastermind that will take over the world**. Enjoy the ride while you're at it and learn as much as you can.