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Is Joining an Alliance absolutely nescessary?


Ardal Egger
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All the Alliance advertisements i have seen come off like slimy snake oil salesmen and i heard the meta taxation is to just take everything from the members and have them get their resources only through war. Frankly i don't wanna be an alliances money farm and wanna be able to play how i want and attack who i want.

 

And whenever i hear the 100/100 taxers talk about it "benefitting small nations the most" and getting "huge sums of grants" i feel like im looking at a pyramid scheme advertisement.

I also personally don't find it appealing having to go through days of application processes.

 

Is it possible to go solo or will i be easy prey alone?

 

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Even if you aren’t inactive then you are still bound to get attacked a lot

So sadly it’s basically necessary, also outside of an alliance it will take double the amount of time for half of the result as if you were in an alliance.

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28 minutes ago, Ardal Egger said:

All the Alliance advertisements i have seen come off like slimy snake oil salesmen and i heard the meta taxation is to just take everything from the members and have them get their resources only through war. Frankly i don't wanna be an alliances money farm and wanna be able to play how i want and attack who i want.

 

And whenever i hear the 100/100 taxers talk about it "benefitting small nations the most" and getting "huge sums of grants" i feel like im looking at a pyramid scheme advertisement.

I also personally don't find it appealing having to go through days of application processes.

 

Is it possible to go solo or will i be easy prey alone?

 

Homie, this game is basically literally unplayable without an alliance.
Find one that floats your boat, aargh sounds like something for you.
Don't play this game if you're not in an alliance you will be everyone's play toy.

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Ah so the gist of it is:

 

If you want any attempt of success you need to join an alliance where you will pretty much be forced to do whatever the alliance tells you do and give up most of your decisions and resources (the amount depending on the alliance).

 

 

Wish i had known this earlier.

I thought this was a game about doing politics and guiding your Nation forward.

 

Yet now i realize to have any say in my own internal and especially external affairs i need to slave away as a pawn to an overlord for a while. Even then i will never be able to make independent diplomacy.

Getting my arm twisted into Min/maxing the way my Alliance wants it to.

Welp...

But thanks for the insight everyone.

Atleast i was proven wrong with the assumption that i would get replies only from elitists who'd rather scare away new players than be a normal human being.

 

Atleast y'all are nice.

 

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2 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

Homie, this game is basically literally unplayable without an alliance.
Find one that floats your boat, aargh sounds like something for you.
Don't play this game if you're not in an alliance you will be everyone's play toy.

Thank you for the recommendation. Yes arggh looks like a sensible compromise.

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The biggest pro of an alliance is possibly the existence of the feature called Alliance Bank. You can use it to store your funds safely and they wont be taken away from you when you are raided. If you have say 100m$ worth of stuff on you, losing the war would mean you lose as much as 20m worth of this stuff. However if you were keeping it all in the alliance bank, you would lose 0$*(Check Note At last) of it. This is the only pro of joining an alliance in my honest opinion. IF you have experience and have a general know-how of how the game works, you can make a one-man alliance to store your bank in and play solo. 

Other than this, the pro of being in an alliance is when you have no knowledge of how the game works. Most alliances are semi-competent and have a general idea of how the game works. This knowledge can be given to you by alliances. The knowledge levels vary from alliance to alliance and some alliances are known to be superior to others in different fields eg: The $yndicate are great if you want to play the econ aspect of the game while Rose are great when it comes to utilizing Spies. 

As for taxes, the reason alliances taxes you is to stockpile resources in preparation for wars that happen often. A war between even a very small portion of the game can result in well over 50bn in damages eg: Rose vs Knights Templar(~350 nations): Lasted around 10 days while the damages on both sides worked out to well over 70bn, The Lost Empire(and allies) vs Camelot(~300 nations): Ongoing and the damages is almost at 60bn. If you are a single nation, losses from a war might be too much to repair in say a week or two. However, an alliance working together can get the damage repaired considerably within short amounts of time. Eg: Camelot took around 80bn in damages in the last global but had enough resources and cash on hand to be able to repair everyone in around 3-5 days of the war ending. This money comes from taxes.

As for grants and above mentioned rebuild funds, they are kind of like a debt-trap for nations. You see, most alliances use reserve funds to pay for rebuild and grants. Once they are done paying, they are usually depleted of funds and the money from these comes from nation taxes. If you leave, they wont get any taxes off you so they set time periods where you must stay in the alliance after receiving funds. Usually, this is a long time of atleast a month and a half. In this time, you are just a tax-farm to them and you pay off your "debts".

The new meta that has recently originated is to get people to raid for money from inactive nations to pay themselves for their first 10 or 15 cities. This is generally seen as a method of training people to get familiar with war mechanics however there is a big elephant in the room no one addresses-if you are going to tax me as well as make me get my own cities, why should I pay taxes? The reason is simple: The taxes go to emergency funds/bank building for the alliance. They will be used later on to fund wars and rebuild for people. 

So to get to your questions: Can I play solo? Yes, definitely. You would only need some alliance which would serve as your ally and help you hide your bank(see Note at bottom). Then you can either stay in your alliance and pixel-farm(impossible since you will be an easy target) or raid for funds(most profitable course of action). You can play as you want but joining a real alliance(one that mandates discord for communication, is generally competent and has ~70-80% members who are active), you would enjoy the game way more. 

Tl;dr: Taxation is theft. 

Note: There is a feature called Alliance Bank Loot where you lose a part of your alliance bank when you lose a war. Generally it is small at around 1-2% in most alliances with a reasonable member count. However in one-man alliances, this percent can shoot as high as 40%.

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27 minutes ago, Majima Goro said:

The biggest pro of an alliance is possibly the existence of the feature called Alliance Bank. You can use it to store your funds safely and they wont be taken away from you when you are raided. If you have say 100m$ worth of stuff on you, losing the war would mean you lose as much as 20m worth of this stuff. However if you were keeping it all in the alliance bank, you would lose 0$*(Check Note At last) of it. This is the only pro of joining an alliance in my honest opinion. IF you have experience and have a general know-how of how the game works, you can make a one-man alliance to store your bank in and play solo. 

Other than this, the pro of being in an alliance is when you have no knowledge of how the game works. Most alliances are semi-competent and have a general idea of how the game works. This knowledge can be given to you by alliances. The knowledge levels vary from alliance to alliance and some alliances are known to be superior to others in different fields eg: The $yndicate are great if you want to play the econ aspect of the game while Rose are great when it comes to utilizing Spies. 

As for taxes, the reason alliances taxes you is to stockpile resources in preparation for wars that happen often. A war between even a very small portion of the game can result in well over 50bn in damages eg: Rose vs Knights Templar(~350 nations): Lasted around 10 days while the damages on both sides worked out to well over 70bn, The Lost Empire(and allies) vs Camelot(~300 nations): Ongoing and the damages is almost at 60bn. If you are a single nation, losses from a war might be too much to repair in say a week or two. However, an alliance working together can get the damage repaired considerably within short amounts of time. Eg: Camelot took around 80bn in damages in the last global but had enough resources and cash on hand to be able to repair everyone in around 3-5 days of the war ending. This money comes from taxes.

As for grants and above mentioned rebuild funds, they are kind of like a debt-trap for nations. You see, most alliances use reserve funds to pay for rebuild and grants. Once they are done paying, they are usually depleted of funds and the money from these comes from nation taxes. If you leave, they wont get any taxes off you so they set time periods where you must stay in the alliance after receiving funds. Usually, this is a long time of atleast a month and a half. In this time, you are just a tax-farm to them and you pay off your "debts".

The new meta that has recently originated is to get people to raid for money from inactive nations to pay themselves for their first 10 or 15 cities. This is generally seen as a method of training people to get familiar with war mechanics however there is a big elephant in the room no one addresses-if you are going to tax me as well as make me get my own cities, why should I pay taxes? The reason is simple: The taxes go to emergency funds/bank building for the alliance. They will be used later on to fund wars and rebuild for people. 

So to get to your questions: Can I play solo? Yes, definitely. You would only need some alliance which would serve as your ally and help you hide your bank(see Note at bottom). Then you can either stay in your alliance and pixel-farm(impossible since you will be an easy target) or raid for funds(most profitable course of action). You can play as you want but joining a real alliance(one that mandates discord for communication, is generally competent and has ~70-80% members who are active), you would enjoy the game way more. 

Tl;dr: Taxation is theft. 

Note: There is a feature called Alliance Bank Loot where you lose a part of your alliance bank when you lose a war. Generally it is small at around 1-2% in most alliances with a reasonable member count. However in one-man alliances, this percent can shoot as high as 40%.

thank you! This was very informative and also without any sweet-talking of new-player traps.

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3 hours ago, Majima Goro said:

The biggest pro of an alliance is possibly the existence of the feature called Alliance Bank. You can use it to store your funds safely and they wont be taken away from you when you are raided. If you have say 100m$ worth of stuff on you, losing the war would mean you lose as much as 20m worth of this stuff. However if you were keeping it all in the alliance bank, you would lose 0$*(Check Note At last) of it. This is the only pro of joining an alliance in my honest opinion. IF you have experience and have a general know-how of how the game works, you can make a one-man alliance to store your bank in and play solo. 

Other than this, the pro of being in an alliance is when you have no knowledge of how the game works. Most alliances are semi-competent and have a general idea of how the game works. This knowledge can be given to you by alliances. The knowledge levels vary from alliance to alliance and some alliances are known to be superior to others in different fields eg: The $yndicate are great if you want to play the econ aspect of the game while Rose are great when it comes to utilizing Spies. 

As for taxes, the reason alliances taxes you is to stockpile resources in preparation for wars that happen often. A war between even a very small portion of the game can result in well over 50bn in damages eg: Rose vs Knights Templar(~350 nations): Lasted around 10 days while the damages on both sides worked out to well over 70bn, The Lost Empire(and allies) vs Camelot(~300 nations): Ongoing and the damages is almost at 60bn. If you are a single nation, losses from a war might be too much to repair in say a week or two. However, an alliance working together can get the damage repaired considerably within short amounts of time. Eg: Camelot took around 80bn in damages in the last global but had enough resources and cash on hand to be able to repair everyone in around 3-5 days of the war ending. This money comes from taxes.

As for grants and above mentioned rebuild funds, they are kind of like a debt-trap for nations. You see, most alliances use reserve funds to pay for rebuild and grants. Once they are done paying, they are usually depleted of funds and the money from these comes from nation taxes. If you leave, they wont get any taxes off you so they set time periods where you must stay in the alliance after receiving funds. Usually, this is a long time of atleast a month and a half. In this time, you are just a tax-farm to them and you pay off your "debts".

The new meta that has recently originated is to get people to raid for money from inactive nations to pay themselves for their first 10 or 15 cities. This is generally seen as a method of training people to get familiar with war mechanics however there is a big elephant in the room no one addresses-if you are going to tax me as well as make me get my own cities, why should I pay taxes? The reason is simple: The taxes go to emergency funds/bank building for the alliance. They will be used later on to fund wars and rebuild for people. 

So to get to your questions: Can I play solo? Yes, definitely. You would only need some alliance which would serve as your ally and help you hide your bank(see Note at bottom). Then you can either stay in your alliance and pixel-farm(impossible since you will be an easy target) or raid for funds(most profitable course of action). You can play as you want but joining a real alliance(one that mandates discord for communication, is generally competent and has ~70-80% members who are active), you would enjoy the game way more. 

Tl;dr: Taxation is theft. 

Note: There is a feature called Alliance Bank Loot where you lose a part of your alliance bank when you lose a war. Generally it is small at around 1-2% in most alliances with a reasonable member count. However in one-man alliances, this percent can shoot as high as 40%.

As someone with basically opposite views on both taxes and politics, I still absolutely agree and you raise a good point about the beginning raiding - something I never thought of before.

But yeah, even as a proponent of full command economy (100/100), the rebuild part absolutely stands firm - as well as @Solomon Ben-David's points about community.  My game enjoyment comes mostly from chilling with my friends and playing other games like CK2.  I like to think of the "Nations" in this game more like provinces/states, and the "Alliances" more like actual countries (and blocs being actual alliances and so forth).  You would definitely fit better in a low tax alliance like Arrgh as mentioned.

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1 minute ago, BrythonLexi said:

I like to think of the "Nations" in this game more like provinces/states, and the "Alliances" more like actual countries (and blocs being actual alliances and so forth). 

Accurate.

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Is it absolutely necessary? No. Is it going to be the best thing for almost all people? Yes. Should you (and most people)? Yes.

The attrition rate for new players in this game is very high. It is a game that moves slowly in some respects, and requires some investment of weeks to get a handle on things. It is hard to do things very immediately. That attrition rate is higher for those who make some small random micro-alliance, but it is still high for those who join more established alliances. Many people do not stick around long enough to really get into the culture and lore of the game.

A lot of alliances recognize that having good members is important, and you are going to need to recruit them if you want to turn over new leadership and have enough fresh blood. There are alliances that can do without this, but they are for elites, not new players. So if you want to recruit new players, how do you get them into your community?

You give them stuff. You offer them guides to figure out optimal mechanics, community to be involved in, finances to build their nation, and some protection from randoms attacking them. Some alliances do this better than others, but there is the gist. And obviously if you offer more, the deal looks better. That is great! The problem is that such a thing costs time and effort and resources. And as I have said before, attrition of new players is a real thing. Why waste resources on people who will not stick around? A lot of alliances trying to recruit in this way are, flatly, overextending with what they can reasonably offer.

So there is a lot of waste… but if you want the benefits of new players, you have to do do something with recruiting. But look! There is a lot of waste out there. If you are small, there is a lot for you to scavenge. The reason the meta has turned to raiding at the small levels is because of all that waste from the corpses of nations that did not stick around, but received benefits from those alliances trying to recruit new players with generous benefits in an effort to find the best talent in a blind dating scenario.

Does 100/100 taxes work? Probably would work great, yes. Do most alliances that do it turn out to be successful with it? Not as they could be. Does 0/0 taxes work? Can work awesome, yes. Can most alliances actually pull that off? Not in the current meta. The same thing goes for any tax rate in between. But again, giving grants does have a cost, and you usually have to pay for it somehow. Tax revenue is usually the way people do that.

Speaking for myself, as the last Executive to finally relent on allowing new nation recruitment in The $yndicate, because essentially I was holding it back before we launched The Enterprise, I can tell you that t$ is better off today as an alliance because I dropped my objections to the investment in recruiting random brand-new players. Without that investment, t$ would probably be dead, or very stagnant and inactive. Sometimes it would be nice to play in an elite-only alliance, sure. But it not the only way to find success.

The closest thing you will get to success going solo is to join one of the pirating alliances. It is a different way to play from how most alliances do, but it is a thing. It seems in this case, you have decided to do this. As far as your specific earlier quote about a “game doing politics and moving your nation forward”, then you will probably be able to do the latter but not the former, all that much. Having your own say in independent diplomacy is unlikely to be something you, or 99% of this game, will be able to accomplish.

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In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cüm Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

 

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4 hours ago, Zed said:

The closest thing you will get to success going solo is to join one of the pirating alliances. It is a different way to play from how most alliances do, but it is a thing. It seems in this case, you have decided to do this. As far as your specific earlier quote about a “game doing politics and moving your nation forward”, then you will probably be able to do the latter but not the former, all that much. Having your own say in independent diplomacy is unlikely to be something you, or 99% of this game, will be able to accomplish.

Especially on this last point, yes.  Basically the only players who have real say for in-game politics are:

  • Leaders (and, to a lesser extent, 2ICs) of major (top 30 or so) alliances, as they have influence over many players
  • Veterans of the game, as they are very interconnected in the community of the game (those connections are critical for having weight behind your words)
  • Organisers of news Discords like Morf Radio or Royal Orbis News, as they have the ability to nudge narratives in their subtle ways

For 99% of players, they won't be one of these - even if they do stick around in the short-to-medium term.

Adding on to what i'm saying, I can use myself for an example.  I've been with the game for just about 10 months, and have had a decent resumé as an ASM Foreign Affairs person as well as co-founding a high-tier micro with friends.  You'd think I would have some level of say over things in Orbis, but not really!  I'm still pretty green compared to the real movers and shakers; and while I do have many friendships (as well as some rivals and foes), I would still say my effect on Orbis is marginal at best.

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On 7/17/2021 at 6:15 AM, Ardal Egger said:

 

.

Is it possible to go solo or will i be easy prey alone?

 

Even if you wanted to go solo you'd still need an alliance to yourself for the bank, and a reliable offshore.  

No alliance means all your stuff is on hand, no offshore means all your stuff is in your bank, either of these things will attract many raiders, even if you yourself are a raider, until you are picked clean to the bone.

 

I understand the opposition to taxes, thats why my alliance doesnt have taxes by default (and even when we do these are just direct deposits into your bank account not ours), however most alliances without taxes expect you to raid for your own money and borrow what you need against your deposits' value.

If you are looking for an alliance that provides grants and aid programs they will have taxes, just be wary of who you join, if they have taxes expect to be there long term as you will be debt trapped and forced to grow out of range of the easy raid profits that could get you out of debt. 

If you are interested in raiding & no taxes join an alliance like mine (NukaWorld), Space Invaders or Arrgh (though arrgh is probably not the best place for newer players to learn) 

If you are interested in grants and more conventional style alliances go with The Knights Radiant, Chocolate Castle, Black Knights, or any top 20 that feels like a good fit (id recommend asking some third parties about anyone before you choose, not just their abilities as an alliance, but also their communities and reputation)

Micros can be fun and are easier to be promoted in, so as a smaller nation you may be attracted to them over the bigs, but most dont know what they are doing and should be avoided, those freedoms they offer you come at the price of you wasting money on bad decisions and never really learning anything. Most of them also have bad banking practices and dont know how to offshore or budget things. Join these alliances only if you are interested in being raided by alliances like mine.

especially avoid micros with taxes and no offshore or protector.

 

 

I actually recommend joining a low tax raider alliance first even if you want to join the grants/conventional alliance later, as you can reach the 100 wars won/lost project slot and build up a sizeable personal wealth stockpile much easier at c5 than at the city counts most alliances will rush you to build to.

Alliances that fund to only c10 are also worthless as far as grants go, as you could've just raided that much in less than 14 days even with just average loot targets at c3 to c5.

 

Edited by Deborah Kobayashi
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Just now, Deborah Kobayashi said:

Join these alliances only if you are interested in being raided by alliances like mine.

Casually acknowledges their place in the Orbis ecosystem

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 7/17/2021 at 7:15 AM, Ardal Egger said:

All the Alliance advertisements i have seen come off like slimy snake oil salesmen and i heard the meta taxation is to just take everything from the members and have them get their resources only through war. Frankly i don't wanna be an alliances money farm and wanna be able to play how i want and attack who i want.

 

And whenever i hear the 100/100 taxers talk about it "benefitting small nations the most" and getting "huge sums of grants" i feel like im looking at a pyramid scheme advertisement.

I also personally don't find it appealing having to go through days of application processes.

 

Is it possible to go solo or will i be easy prey alone?

 

I guess you answered your own question:

This nation does not exist. It was either deleted automatically for inactivity, or the player controlling the nation deleted their account. Visit your nation, or go to the search page.

 

While many people do not join alliances, quite a few of those countries get deleted for inactivity, just as you went inactive, because people are mostly social animals.  And those who congregate in packs often hunt those who are solo, so first you're alone, and second you're being raided and beiged and raided again.     

 

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  • 4 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Almost all alliances fund either PB or IA, so that's a ridiculous reason to say 'join my alliance.'  Better to talk about moving to Hollywood and being a new TKR prot or something.  However, as I noted above, the original poster deleted his nation back in August so he's not joining anything.  

 

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