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An Idea to attract and retain new players


Sabcat

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What the title says. A kind of nursery for new nations.

It takes time to grow a nation, tech selling certainly helps with that. I'm mooting the idea of creating a neutral tech selling alliance that will provide guides to players on how grow their nations and underwrites tech deals - a nation deletes owing tech the alliance will cough up.

In addition to the guides and tech selling any and indeed all alliances are welcome and encouraged to recruit from within the alliance via embassies and open forums on the tech selling alliances boards by promoting themselves, their history and their visions.

I realise there's very little flesh on the bones of that idea but I believe there's enough for people to give their opinions.

So, what do you think?

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[quote name='TehChron' timestamp='1322762507' post='2858277']
I think its been tried before, with little success.

I think youd need to at least ensure that it wont be raided, first off. When this has been tried in the past thats kind of been a problem.
[/quote]

If it can be accepted as a netural alliance that's beneficial to the game as a whole that any alliance can recruit from within I'd hope it would be fairly straightforward to get protection/non agression agreements.

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[quote name='Enamel32' timestamp='1322763583' post='2858292']
How is this any different from joining any alliance? I think every alliance in the game makes their nubs deal tech at least for a little while, and on top of that they offer them as much if not more services than what you have outlined there.
[/quote]

What's on offer is time to grow and make an informed decision about the alliance they join when they decide they're ready to do so.

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[quote name='Sabcat' timestamp='1322763799' post='2858298']
What's on offer is time to grow and make an informed decision about the alliance they join when they decide they're ready to do so.
[/quote]
A counterpoint to that, is most people don't need time to make a decision about which alliance to join. When most people start playing they don't care about the politics at all. Furthermore, Most people don't care about the reputation of their alliance anyway. They just join an alliance they see, and then they get hooked in by the community within that alliance. If they don't get hooked by the community, they quit. Alliance reputation is almost completely independent of an the tolerability of an alliances community. I mean, if people chose alliances by reputation, why would anyone have joined GGA back in the day? Obviously, the community had something that people valued enough to stay there. I don't know anybody that plays this game because they actually [i]like[/i] CN, lol.

An independent tech selling alliance, probably wouldnt have that community and might actually make people quit faster..

Edited by Enamel32
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[quote name='D34th' timestamp='1322764792' post='2858320'][quote name='Sabcat' timestamp='1322763471' post='2858289'][quote name='D34th' timestamp='1322763397' post='2858288']The name Green Protection Agency rings a bell?[/quote]
Can you got to their forums and recruit on behalf of the NpO?[/quote]
Yeah, if I wanted to, NSO already did it once.[/quote]
Of course [i]on the GPA forums[/i] you can't. You can do it with other means, but then you'd have to accept political consequences - which might be feasible/fun/etc, but which still is something different from this idea. Which I like, by the way.

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[quote name='Buzz Lightyear' timestamp='1322785051' post='2858652']This idea sounds like GPA, but with a little more emphasis on tech selling/buying. So why not just have them join GPA and sell tech?[/quote]
Be it known that I fully support a scenario in which everyone sends recruits our way and they then sell tech.



To us.

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Hey wait a minute, no offense jerge dear, but you are not the only neutral game in this town, you're only the green game.

Pax welcomes all new players who want a haven to grow, sell tech and be a part of the rockin' black team

:)
[IMG]http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/cerridwyn_IK/peace.jpg[/IMG]

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I've seen a variant of these named Feeder Alliances.

They are very hard to do correctly and even worse when the "Pilot" (i.e. leader) would selectively steer recruits to one alliance or another.

Eventually they'll just start a war over something. They'll make some alliance mad, that alliance will overreact and kill them, etc.

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GATO has one. I think most people either do or have had one. And then there are protectorates.

We offer the option to those who dont wish to be political/war/blah they can mooch over there.

Although it comes to the point where, you might as well just join GATO for all the other benefits.

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The issue isn't the neutrality part or the tech selling part. The issue are with the generic messages in the format of:

[code]
Impersonal Greeting,

Welcome to Cyber Nations! Join us for military protection, X million dollars, and some guides.

Signed: Recruiter Person
[/code]

If you're lucky they copy and paste your name into the subject field to make it a little more personal.

A more useful way to do this would be a neutral alliance that anyone could mentor or recruit for. Just make it wide open and let everyone send whatever recruiting message they wanted and mentor anyone they wanted. The community could break away from the cookie cutter recruitment and move into more tailored recruitment. Maybe people just recruit 5 or 10 nations a time. Lots of followups. Start the first message out with links to the forum guides, etc. Said alliance could also have 100% public forums. Basically make the focus not "recruitment of nation X to my alliance" but rather "teach nation X the basic game mechanics and community standards". Yes people would try to steer recruits, but that is better than losing community members.

What I'd do though is suggest we cap membership in said alliance at say 90 days and/or certain national benchmarks. Make it clear it is a warm up alliance only. If you want to be neutral for life, head for GPA, TDO, etc. It isn't a place that established nations can go hide and rebuild from war. It isn't a place you can camp until your nation is fully militarized and ready to roll. Say you have to leave after 90 days, 2k infra, or 500 tech: whichever comes first. Any nation with a wonder is automatically booted etc.

Then establish standards like say: anyone over 115 days, 2,200 infra, 550 tech, or with a wonder is fair game for raiding/senate sanctions (I'm giving the nations a bit of a grace period here in case their application stalls somewhere). No one has to ask permission to raid said nations, just grab a screenshot as proof of the violation and hit them. On the flip side in exchange for opening the door for automatic raids, all illegal raids would be an automatic 15 million dollar rep payment (or some other set amount). We'd be dealing with smaller nations here, so I'd argue for a flat but fairly punitive rep payment to discourage people from getting sloppy with their raids.

The whole alliance would work on being public and having kind of a public DoN type statement that everyone signed and agreed not to raid or to protect it. It's kind of win-win for everyone. For the non raiders they get a secure pool of new nations they can mine for tech. The raiders get the guys who failed to move on when their time was up. Nations that of course were fattened up via tech selling so they're more lucrative raid targets.

Simply put the idea would be for there to be a common first level academy for everyone alliance out there. Basic nation building and history could be taught. Newbies could learn about the treaty web, rivalries, and get emotionally invested in the entire thing. Then they pick a side and head off to get their military training and move forward. Also recruitment for this kind of thing might sound more legitimate to knew nations since they could be told "Everyone does this. Everyone!".

As an aside to the GPA and other neutrals. I realize this kind of infringes on your turf. However thing of this solely as a first level type of thing. It's a good place for people who might want to be neutral as they get a lay of the land, but eventually plan on being warmongers. Such people might join you for a few months, but sooner or later they'd get bored and bail.

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