Introduction

This guide deals with the basic functionality and considerations relevant when you chose to set up your own alliance.

Note: Leading an alliance can be an attractive idea for certain players, but before deciding to do so, you should realize it is going to be a lot of work if you want to have a longtime successful alliance.

Setting up an Alliance

To be able to get lots of new members it is important you are in a new kingdom where new players still enter. The younger the kingdom the better.

Before you can do the technical part of setting up an alliance you need to have your stronghold upgraded to level 6, or pay 200 gold. Since time is an important factor you should make sure you either get the 200 Gold, or build up your account to level 6 as soon as possible.

You might consider purchasing a pack, which should get you the 200 gold, but if you also can get one with a teleport you can relocate first to a suitable location before you start your alliance.

Initial Recruitment

There are many people running their own alliance, so you need to make sure you stand out. Chose an attractive name, tag, and fill in your moto (via Alliance - Manage - Settings) with an inviting text. Have your Recruitment Setting Open (also in the Alliance Settings), so that people are free to join your alliance.

Assuming you have thought of an attractive name and motto, your alliance will fill up fast. The first days you need to select on activity quickly, and if you suspect the account is just from somebody playing one time, unlikely to return, kick soon, so that you have place for new people. If you wait too long you will be stuck with mostly inactives, and once there are no more new people joining a kingdom, it will be difficult to grow a small alliance into a success.

Finding Your First Co-Leaders

The members in an alliance have one of 5 ranks. You as the leader are the r5, and generally the ranks 4, r4, are considered the co-leaders of an alliance. A lot of the rights for a r5 and r4 are the same.

At a later stage you might want to look for people for specific roles you have in mind, but early on you should just try to find out whether you have some members in your alliance that have experience playing this type of game. If they have and are interested, make these your r4 as soon as possible, they can help you in the important early stage of your alliance, which is mostly about making sure you get as much active members as possible.

If there is a lack of players with previous experiences, just try to find players that are helpful, pick things up fast and are spending lots of time on the game.

Promotion/Demoting/Kicking

Besides the r4 positions you can also assign ranks 1, 2 and 3 to players. The ranks are a good way for yourself to indicate which players can be kicked, or which players have proven themselves worthy to stay, but do not forget that often players also like a promotion. Early on I suggest to use rank 1 for players you plan to kick out, and rank 2 and 3 for the players that stay, with a power limit to reach rank 3. I suggest to initially use activity and donations as measurements whether to place someone in rank 1 (and ultimately kick them out), as I value activity and involvement with the alliance more than power increase.

It might be tempting to keep players in the alliance, even if they are not logging in for days, perhaps you hope they will come back, or you just like the extra power it gives your alliance, but reality is that if someone hasn't played for a week without informing you in advance, the person very likely quit, and removing such players makes it more clear to others there is plenty of room to join your alliance.

First Hive

The location where the members of an alliance are grouped together on the kingdom map is normally referred to as the hive. With the Alliance Teleport members can teleport to a location close to the leader (unfortunatey you can't seem to indicate exactly where they teleport), so a hive will start to form automatically around you.

Since you will be kicking lots of inactive members early on, you will also be faced with the situation that you have non-alliance members in your hive (as some of these inactives have ported to you). You can attack them many times to get them away from your hive, but you might also just leave them there in case you are planning to move your hive later.

We will deal with the considerations for a hive move in the Intermediate guide. rming a mega hive together. There are pros and cons to consider. Yes you are nearer by to help each other against attacks, but it is actually very hard to do anything against large players teleporting to your hive and attacking smaller players. You should be aware that forming one mega hive might not just make you all a bigger target.

Alliance Tech

Members can Donate via the Alliance - Donate menu, which allows the alliance to do research, and will increase the Alliance XP Level, which will unlock Alliance Buildings. We have a special guide on Alliance Tech and Donations, explaining the details. From early on it is important to promote this and you want to get to a situation as soon as possible that enough is donated so that the alliance can also do research.

Increasing the Alliance XP Level also unlocks more research, and unlocks the Alliance Buildings.

Alliance Buildings

There is a special guide on the Alliance Buildings, please read it for more details. For a starter it is important to place the buildings as soon as they become available. The towers should be placed at the outside border of your area to increase your Alliance Area, while I prefer to have the other buildings inside the Fortress Area, to make it easier to protect and reach them.

Family, Allies and NAPs

Making enemies with all other alliances might not be the best strategy, even if you are one of the larger alliances. Waging war all the time gives your members little time to grow and might result in problems later on.

There are 3 commonly used types of relation between alliances to use for a peaceful collaboration.

A NAP (Non Aggression Pact), typically just means that you do not attack each other. When agreeing on such a relation, make clear whether this includes not recruiting each other members.

Becoming Allies is a more closer relation. No attacks and no recruiting from each other, but typically also it means helping each other fighting common enemies.

Being part of a Family is a yet closer collaboration. Often within one family there is a lead alliance, that ultimately determines what happens in all alliances. If one alliance is attacked it immediately results in action from the other members of a Family. Often the family relation is indicated by a similar Tag and/or Name.

When making such relationships, these are typically published on the Alliance Motto to make them clear to your own members and other alliances.

Rules

As a leader it is good to communicate some rules regarding what you expect from your members, this can be things like: No Tilehits (attacking other players on resource tiles), no talking crap on kingdom chat.

Conclusion

I hope this guide has offered some help when you set up your first alliance. I will add an Intermediate and Advanced Leader guide later, which will go into more details.