Introduction

In new states there is quite a complicated system of dependencies for extending your alliance territory. This guide explains how to extend your territory and prevent from getting stuck at a certain stage.

Alliance Headquarters, Towers, Alliance Resource Mines

When you start your alliance and don't look too far ahead, you realize that you have to increase the EXP level of your alliance (via donations to Alliance Tech) to unlock your first Headquarters. Once you have done so, you can build the headquarters and you can start extending your alliance territory by building Alliance Towers next to it.

First goal will be to include Alliance Resource mines (first Food, Wood, later Metal) in your Alliance Territory, and a second goal is to extend to several Analysis Centers. Based on this when looking for a place to place your first Headquarters you might look for an area in between several Analysis Centers with plenty of Alliance Mines in the neighbourhood and not any other big alliance nearby.

Makes sense to think this way, but this might get you into trouble later.

Plains, Second Alliance Headquarters, Gas Mines

Once you get to Alliance EXP lvl 7 you can in theory build the Alliance Headquarters (Plains), and it will be good to pay attention to the requirements. Besides the huge amount of Food, Wood (700k) and Metal (400k), there is also the real issue, 200k of Gas.

When I saw this I started to think, which seemed to still be just in time for our alliance, but depending on the state you are in and the time you reach Alliance EXP lvl 7, it might be too late.

Ultimately you want to be able to place this second Alliance Headquarters, so you need this 200k Gas (100k more than you get for free for your alliance). There are only Alliance Gas Mines in the Plains (and Oasis, but that unlocks even later). Conclusion you need to build alliance towers into the Plains area after it unlocks, to add one or more Alliance Gas Mines to your territory to start producing Gas and ultimately be able to build your Plains Alliance Headquarters.

With this knowledge you will realize that it is crucial to somehow have the area of the Wasteland Headquarters reach to the Plains area. It is not necessary to build the Alliance Headquarters right next to the Plains (there are certain drawbacks: low level resource tiles, only being able to extend your territory early on in limited direction, further away from the Analysis Centers), but having a prime spot next to the Plains area obviously also has a big advantage. If not locating next to it, don't locate your Alliance Headquarters too far away from it, and start working on extending your Alliance Territory towards the Plains sooner rather than later.

It is not likely you will be blocked from the Plains area completely. It is larger and you can jump territory (still extend your territory with other alliances territory in between), but it will make things more difficult and especially if you are not one of the main alliances, you don't want to start something with a big alliance during one of the crucial moments in the game. If they decide to disrupt your range of towers because they don't like you being too close, you have a serious problem.

Relocating the Wasteland Alliance Headquarters

If you, like myself, feel like your Alliance Headquarters Wastelands was placed too far away from the Plains and/or the path to the Plains too unattractive, you can always decide to relocate your Alliance Headquarters.

We had around 50-60 active members when we did the relocation, highest level HQ 18. Within one day we were able to rebuild our alliance HQ, 71 towers and our Influencer Trap. In our situation there were already a lot of alliances around the Plains and we had to build quite far to get Alliance Farms, Lumbermills and Furnaces, we only got our production up to 54k/h Food and Wood, and 25.2k/h Metal, but I think this will be enough (at the moment of writing this we are still a little over 1 day away from the unlocking of Plains).

We did research Warehouse Expansion I in Alliance Tech to the 3rd level before doing the relocation. Looking back at it, this might not have been an absolute necessity, because you get resources back from tearing down old towers, which you can use to build new towers, but I feel it did help to start with full stock and you are going to need Alliance Warehouse Expansion anyway (Plain March research requires a little over 250k Food and Wood, and of course the second Alliance HQ a lot more).

There is a half hour cooldown after tearing down the Alliance HQ (and towers) before you can rebuild it. Also do take into account the Alliance HQ takes quite long, for us I believe about 6 hours, and it needs to be completed before you can start on your towers.

State Intel

When a new State opens up the State Intel starts. The State Intel contains a number of mission which are activated in order. Alliances (or the complete State) can be rewarded for completing the missions. Whether or not Missions are successfully completed, certain missions will trigger new functionality in the state. One of them is the Plain area, which will be unlocked after the 7th mission is finished.

Alliance Tech

As if the above isn't complicated enough, there is also Alliance Tech that needs to be completed. Before you can place any tower on the Plains area, you need to research Plain March. To do that you need to complete the 5th level of Alliance Members II, which requires you to do max all 6 projects before it in the Development tree. Besides those prerequisites do keep in mind as well that the Plain March requires quite a large amount of resources (little more than 250k Food and Wood).

In a very active alliance you can probably focus some on Battle as well, but besides Development our focus has been limited to Territory. We had maxed Alliance Tower I quite soon, and later put focus on Warehouse Capacity I (which requires March Speed) (be aware you need 2 levels Warehouse Capacity I to produce enough resources for Plain March). Just before Plains open up we research the first level of Alliance Tower II.

Conclusion

I find this one of the most complicated areas in the game, and if you don't know all the details (of which some are hidden in game until you unlock certain alliance level) it is very easy to make mistakes. I hope this guide will prevent mistakes.