I understand the problem with the player sink alliances, so im fine with making a credit or a test or something before making alliance, i just have a problem with arbitrarily decided score or time requirements, its up to us as a community to conduct better politics and war against these alliances (and stop protecting every bloody one swamp lite!) and maybe train them, its not impossible for noobs to learn to run an alliance quickly.
We really need to fix the tutorial to better explain concepts to players, but we also have to remember that some people join the game with the intention of creating something new, for me thats the only point to play, some people are fine being a cog and getting stuck in a forced grant program and tons of debt but others are not.
I really dont know the solution, maybe make discord mandatory to create an alliance, maybe make a test to prove some level of competence.
I'd prefer a city count requirement of 10 instead of a time or score requirement. While the credit thing is a good idea on the surface, this creates a problem for offshores and directly governed extensions.
I dont think any of these solutions will end this problem, there is also long time established alliances who fit the requirements like FARK and others that give members outdated information and are just as much of a player sink.