Guide 16: Alliance guide

Table of Contents:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

1. What is an alliance?

Alliances are arguably one of the most important parts of Ogame. An alliance constitutes a bond between players, usually with a common goal, or a multitude of other reasons (nationality, protection, crashing, domination, toplists, ACS...etc) or simply because they are all from the same college or workplace, and have real life friendship. Alliances are also a great place to meet new friends, and new enemies!

A strong alliance is not always necessary to become a strong player, top ranked players may be without an alliance. This is fairly unusual, but demonstrates than an alliance is not necessary to get to the top!

2. Types of Alliances: Mass Alliances

What qualifies a mass alliance? Some people call it an alliance with over 25 members, others are a bit more strict and will think the same of any above 20 or even 15 members as a mass alliance and others are more forgiving and won't consider an alliance a mass alliance until they have 40 members.

Mostly, these large alliances tend to pop up at the start of a universe, usually appearing with 180 members, which is a pretty large mass alliance. They hold the number 1 spot for several weeks based entirely on the sheer amount of members.

Tragic Escapes's classification from the original FAQ is as follows:

• 30-50 members: These exist in every universe, and often occupy top 20 spots.
• 50-100 members: These usually dwindle once a universe has been established properly, however, some of the larger single-nationality alliances will sometimes have those numbers.
• 100-200 members: These are the Big Fish, Generally 'catch all' alliances or stronger alliance wings. They tend to last 3 to 4 weeks into a new universe.

Note that there is no hard-coded maximum membership.

So, why all the fuss?

Well, Mass alliances have a special place in the heart of most Ogamers. Members of mass alliances are generally new players, tempted by the fact that the mass alliance is high up in the rankings, and that they will accept anyone. This leads to situations of having 145 newbies and 5 experienced players leading the alliance. This is what could be called a 'catch all' alliance. Recruiting everyone they can, regardless of points, experience or activity.

People can generally do what they want in this case, declaring war amounts to nothing on such a mass, mainly because you can farm these guys without any fear of their alliance attacking you back. Regardless of what their alliance page says. (It is generally regarded as a n00b thing to do, putting something like "We are awesome. If you attack one of us, you attack all of us! REVENGE!" on your external text) With 150 members to manage, nobody can be online enough to organize that, and of course, with so many members you have to disable circulars (imagine allowing everyone to send circulars. This can lead to minimal communication between members.

In this scenario, what happens is that a mass will kick out every player under a certain amount of points and create a wing. Often this will result in a wing overtaking the main alliance.

Not all mass alliances lead to this situation, but this is generally the fate of a noticeable number of mass alliances during the first month or so of a new universe, and why so much finger pointing and yelling 'Noob!' to anyone who joins a mass exists.

So, if masses are bad, why do some masses occupy top spots even in a developed uni?

Well, noone plays in every universe, but from general attitude/revelation on the forum, few mass alliances make it to the top. However...

Some mass alliances do make it. It takes a bit of work from the leadership to hold this together, but it can happen.

So, mass alliances can achieve, nobody will deny that. The simple fact that they have so many members creates a much larger umbrella, and requires each member to have less points to achieve a higher alliance ranking. In the alliance ranking standpoint, mass alliances rule...however, when it comes down to the actual individual member, in some ways, they no longer exist and are simply part of 'the alliance.'

Imagine two alliances, both with exactly the same points. One has 150 members, the other has 15. Individually, those 15 people will be much harder to deal with than the 150. In an ACS universe, mass alliances can pull off some respectable hits. Even in a non-ACS universe, they can quite quickly pull off some spectacular IPM bombardments. However, think of birds all flocking together and moving as one... it makes them easy pickings for the smaller group of hunters on the ground with shotguns.

Get the point? It takes some serious work to make a mass alliance work, but work they can.

3. Types of Alliances: Elitist Alliances

Elitist alliances are composed of a small number of experienced players. These alliances are fast and furious, and the strongest can often end up dominating a universe for a period of time. There are many great examples. You can check your universe's statistics page to quickly find them.

So powerful is each individual member in an an elitist alliance that just one member getting crashed can reduce the alliance's score/ranking by a significant and noticeable amount.

The communication in an elitist alliance can easily be excellent. With a small number of members, they can use any instant messenger program to coordinate attacks/ninjas. This is the greatest strength of a smaller alliance seeking to be elite.

Elitist alliances don't always work. if one or two members go into vacation mode, or for some reason can't keep up the activity, or get crashed, the entire alliance could quickly begin to suffer just because of one or two members. The higher-ranked the alliance and the bigger the points per member (PPM) the bigger these sorts of problems could become.

4. Types of alliances: Something inbetween

Everything that doesn't qualify as a mass or an elitist alliance would generally be considered a 'normal' alliance... somewhere in the vicinity of 20-40 members. These alliances are generally composed of mixed players. Some will be strong and some noobs, or of different nationalities...etc. These will often be composed of good players, but will also often be composed of players just 'going about their own thing.' There is nothing inherently bad about these, and most alliances will fall under this category.

5. I want to start my own alliance. What should I do?

Before starting an alliance, you need several things in order to be successful. Remember, starting an alliance is hard and you will need a certain flair for what's in to get yourself noticed among the multitude of other alliances out there.

Experience.
Experience not only as a leader, but as a player, is important. People are unlikely to follow you without you showing that you are worth being followed. Having a good rank while avoiding a reputation as a flamer, sore loser or farm will definitely help.

An alliance core.
People will often refer to this. This will usually be a tight-knit group of friends that will stick together no matter what. These people give you a jump-start in several ways, but more importantly, nobody wants to join an alliance with just 1 person in it except for noobs. Frankly, you do want to avoid having noobs in your alliance if you wish to be a top-ranked, competitive alliance. Of course, having these people ready to hop into the alliance as soon as it's started will obviously also give you a good start in the rankings too.

Forming alliances with people you know in life is a great way to get an alliance going. Mates from work, school, neighborhood and etc, these are all great ways to form an alliance. It adds a certain level of trust, interoperability and friendliness. I personally can't think of any top 20 alliances which are formed of RL friends, however I'm sure they must exist somewhere.

Image is Important.
A cool logo, a decent name and a good Tag for your alliance will all help in your recruiting. Some call this 'marketing.' More people will be willing to join an alliance in which the leader expresses him/herself well, spells properly, and the alliance has a decent name (hint: anything with 'death' 'kill' or 'pwn' in the alliance name is usually a mark of a newbie.

6. Diplomacy.

OK, so you've started an alliance and have a few members. You've pushed your way into the top 100. You look around and you see all these other alliance that have Allies, NAPs and Trade Agreements... even (gasp!) Wars.

Friendly Diplomacy
There is nothing binding in having Allies, NAPs or agreeements, at least as far as the rules/code is concerned. This means that you can make and break them at will . However, your alliance's reputation may be tarnished if you fail to uphold any and all of these or you if you have too many.

NAPs are the most basic of these. They are properly called 'Non-Attack Pacts.' A NAP is two alliances agreeing not to target each other, affording both some small degree of safety.

Trade Agreements are the next step up. They can have some restrictions, sometimes in the form of rates that trade are done at or with a built-in NAP.

Alliance Allies are expected to support each other in war-time and revenge, ninjas and attacks in addition to being peaceful towards each other.


These can often avail to little. The larger an alliance and the more agreements it has, the larger the communication breakdown. This can take the form of not getting help/trade from an ally in another alliance. It can also take the form of accidental attacks on someone in another, allied alliance. This is seen many a time, and frankly, it shows how limited in effectiveness pacts can be.

You will find that generally, the top 10 alliances in any universe have very few or none agreements. Five agreements is beginning to push it. Generally, the more elite an alliance, the fewer diplomatic agreements they will have. This is typically because of the fact that these reduce the number of targets available for raiding/crashing for all members of the alliance.


When announcing the dropping or accepting of agreements, alliances will sometimes post in the diplomacy section of their universe's board to announce it.

War?

So it's come to that?

When declaring war, you MUST post in the diplomacy section for your universe. An official war posted will allow bashing to be done between the alliances listed in the war thread.

There are two types of wars.

1. Standard Wars - When the thread has been posted, 12 hours later, the bashing rule is lifted. The other side need not accept the war. Sometimes, in the war declaration, an alliance will state intentions (ex: We will continue this war until we have done 100kk total damage), but they are not binding.
2. Conditional Wars - These are often some form a contest. Both alliances involved in the war must agree on what conditions will end the war. Total damage of X amount? The first alliance to have a hit of X damage? Anything is possible. These can also take the form of restricted wars. Are IPMs not allowed? How about a minimum damage for any war hit to count towards the total damage condition? Again, conditions can be just about anything. These conditions are binding. If a condition ends the war, the war is over. If one side breaks a restriction condition, the war is over and a standard war can be opened to replace the conditional war.

7. An Alliance How To.

How to start an alliance:
Go to Alliance > Form your own alliance. Then enter the alliance name and tag desired followed by clicking Go button.

How to create ranks:
Go to Alliance > manage alliance > Configure rights. Then simply type in the name of the rank you would like to create followed by clicking the Create button.

How to assign rights to ranks:
Go to Alliance > manage alliance > Configure rights. Next to a rank's name there are several check boxes. Click the box for each right you would assign to a rank and then press the Save button.

List of rights:

• disband alliance: Permission to delete the alliance. Simple as that.
• Kick user: Permission to kick others out of the alliance.
• Show applications: When a non-ally wants to enter the alliance, he sends an application. The ones with this permission can see who is applying.
• Show member list: Obvious isn't it? Members with this permission can see and click the members list link from the alliance page.
• Process applications: Remember the 'show applications' right? Well, for those that apply, the ones with this permission can accept/deny them.
• Manage Alliance: Not only the creator can do all of these administrative tasks. Anyone with this right can help out and do some of these things. This gives someone as much power as the founder over their fellow members. Give this right/permission carefully only.
• Show online status in member list: This is pretty simple too. For those that can see the members list, this also shows if they are online or how long it has been since the last activity for that alliance member.
• Write circular message: Those with this permission can send messages to everyone in the alliance or can choose to send to only members of a certain rank.
• 'Right hand' (needed to transfer founder rank): This would be given only to the person/persons that will take over the alliance if you were to step down or leave for whatever reason.

How to assign a rank to a member:
Go to Alliance > manage alliance > manage members. There will be a list of all the members, the final column of which is labeled 'Function.' There are two buttons for each member in that column, for those that have the rights to see both. One is kick user and the other is assign rank. If you hover over the buttons, a tool-tip will show up telling you which is which. If you click on the assign rank button, beneath that person will appear a dropdown box. In that, select the rank you would like to assign followed by pressing the save button.

How to set up your alliance page:
Please see the How to Edit an Alliance Page FAQ.