Alliance Creation for Dummies
Entry posted by Tron Paul
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During my time in CN, I have had two accounts. I have lead two alliances as the unquestioned leader, served as interim triumvir for one alliance, and served other high government roles 4 seperate times. I have written many treaties, helped form blocs, and organized war efforts.
In my 2+ years of CN experience I have developed a tendency to complain, and criticize. Whenever I see DoE's, my rage tends to increase. To limit my rage, I have decided to write this handbook. This handbook contains critical resources and lessons, generally everything that I have learned as an alliance leader and as a diplomat. I have lead failures, successes, seen failures, and seen successes. If you merely follow the most basic instructions you will avoid the severe flaming and trolling that victimizes each failed DoE.
The first thing you should do when forming an alliance: PICK A THEME!
Generally speaking you want a theme that attracts veterans, as they will fill your initial government [more on that later] and certain themes can help the charters write themselves. For people like me who don't think and can't write good charters, I recommend the following rule: Don't pick a retread theme.
If you pick a retread theme, you'll find it a lot easier to write a charter and create graphics but your alliance will literally be useless to the global community. Veteran players [who are so critical for those early government roles] will laugh at your alliance and refuse to join. Retread themes offer absolutely nothing new to the game, and when recruiting you will find that retread themes have a hard time appealing to new nations.
Retread themes include, but are not exclusive to:
- "Order" alliances
- Star Wars
- Communism/Politics
- United States of America [or any similar variants]
- NOD/GDI
- "Imperial" alliances [TGE, British Empire, etc]
- Mario/Nintendo [not totally retread, but I guarantee that MK will troll you]
- Themes named after a sphere color
- "Brotherhood" alliances [TAB, TCB, etc]
- Roman alliances
While I can't promise you will not be trolled if you avoid a retread theme, I can promise that your alliance will be given more respect from the CN community.
The second thing you should do when forming an alliance: Recruit Veterans.
I cannot stress this step enough. The most common factor in the death of CN alliances is a lack of veteran leadership. You say you're a brilliant recruiter? Well, who is going to mentor your recruits? Who is going to aid them? Who is going to assign them military roles? You don't know? I thought so. You need atleast 5 or 6 CN veterans to join your new alliance starting from the moment you declare existence because one man cannot lead an alliance by himself. You will need someone to handle recruiting, someone to handle mentoring, someone to handle military, aid, foreign affairs, etc. People complain about scavenging, offshoots, etc but really this is the only way you can successfully form an alliance. You need atleast 5 or 6 people to help you build the alliance.
If your alliance cannot sufficiently impress 5 or 6 people into joining, then you should go back to step 1 and try again.
Now that you've found a strong theme, and 5 or 6 winning members, you can begin plotting an alliance structure. Pick a structure that fills as many "holes" as possible. If you have 4 members and 3 are triumvirs, something is wrong.
Common alliance structures:
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Republic - A government consisting of a President and Ministers. Ministers will cover all of the affairs for your alliance [internal, External, Military, Growth, etc] while the President will oversee these ministers and sign legislation. A President is elected every few months, who then appoints each Minister.
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Democracy - A republic on steroids. A CN democracy means that the central leader is elected, ministers are elected, and all legislation is voted on by your alliance members.
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Imperial - An Emperor has total authority over the alliance. The Emperor appoints all ministers, signs all legislation, and can declare war.
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Triumvirate - A Triumvirate can be formed in a Republic, Democracy, or Imperial structure. Really the only thing separating a triumvirate from the rest is that there are 3 central figures at the top [triumvirs] instead of one. This is a very popular and very flexible structure.
Now that you've gone this far, it's time to write a charter! With a theme and structure already figured out the charter will write itself, so I'm really not going to go into detail on charters. No one reads them, and you can always modify them whenever you want.
Final step: Creating the Flag
My biggest piece of advice to give to alliance founders is follow the KISS method.. Keep it simple, stupid! Is it fun to go into Photoshop and make a complex, flashy, artistic flag? Yes. Do you see any flags IRL that do that? No. Memorable flags are memorable because they are simple. Ironically, flags that have less in them tend to stand out better. If you can't make a flag without any of the cool GIMP and Photoshop tricks, use MS Paint.
Great examples of simple flags:
- "The Orders"
- Order of the Black Rose
- NADC
- CSN
- Legion
- GATO
- Sparta
- The Order of Paradox
Now that you've got a theme, membership core, structure, charter, and flag, GO DECLARE YOUR EXISTENCE! Have fun, and thanks for reading my blog.
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