Boutique Alliances and The Problem Therein

[Thalmor]

A boutique alliance is a special type of alliance. It is generally characterized by a couple of factors:

1 - A low member count, typically either single digit or generally below 20.

2 - Most of such members, will be above-average in city count. These are hard hitters.

3 - Either the alliance as a whole, or key people within them, will be very focused on ideas/slogans of "changing the game," or being "dynamic." Overall, this is an alliance founded, to severely alter what is perceived to be the stagnation that plagues politics in P&W. 

Important Distinction: Some alliances may fall into the top 3 categories, but I would say that they're not "boutique alliance" because they've been around for a long time, and have a distinct alliance culture. A hallmark of boutique alliances is the lack of legacy they leave behind once they're gone. If an alliance leaves any kind of ~significant~ legacy behind that people remember for years to come, they are not much of a boutique alliance.

Such alliances are popular. Everyone loves an underdog that wants to do good. However, I have followed such alliances over the years, and I do not believe such alliances have a good legacy. Many seem to disband before they could do much, and many of the rest seem to just join an larger alliance at the hip, and do what the larger alliance wants. 

And such, that is my problems with boutique alliances. They seem to pull good members from existing communities, for ultimately no good reason. It is an unnecessary disruption. 

Below, I will address what alliances I consider to be boutique alliances, and which ones I do not. 

Alliances that ARE boutique:

Requiem was Partisan's project. It is my understanding that it was comprised of t$ members who were disgruntled with the state of affairs within t$. The alliance did absolutely nothing over its existence. It eventually reformed into The Golden Horse under BourKhan. 

The Golden Horde is Requiem, except under Bourhann. It has 16 members. It is entirely beholden to what Singularity wants (this is not necessarily a bad thing).

The Sword Coast is, as it stands now, a boutique alliance. It is headed up, largely,@Raphaelwho is a pretty significant P&W theorist. 

Alliance that are NOT boutique:

Oblivion is not boutique as their own shtick has been that they're barely active people who just log in when it's time to wreck shit.

Knights Templar is not boutique as they've been around for many years now, has quite a member base, and have pretty much always been committed to unreasonably aggressive action. 

Yarr is not boutique as they are, functionally, a bank pretending to be an alliance.

---

With that said above, I welcome all those who disagree with me to say so below. I consider myself a neutral P&W theorist, and I like analyzing game concept. This is one such attempt, but I am always open to hearing people who believe differently from me.

 

[Horsecock]

tbh i havent even heard of most the aas/players u mentioned

[Ultraodan]

This post was written with assistance from vodka and a broken smoke detector.

[Tartarus]

Are you drunk or something

[Pubstomper]

I knew tapping into top 50 would give us the street cred

 

But forreal, we do plan to recruit at the Sword Coast and have mostly been writing and setting up the internal docs/structure. 

Also, the fact you picked roberts over lefty smh. 

[Uncle Iroh]

I'm curious what Thalmor would blow on a pbt right now

[Zygon]

[Thalmor]

33 minutes ago, Uncle Iroh said:

I'm curious what Thalmor would blow on a pbt right now

Not as much as your mom blew me just now lmao

[Sketchy]

This seems like an oddly specific and therefore mostly useless classification.

Like any alliance, it matters what they do at the end of the day, not who they are comprised of, or their size.

Given the shortage of alliances in the game I don't think I'd be discouraging new ones from branching out. I also don't think its inherently bad for smaller alliances to play supporting roles in larger spheres.

Your examples are also weirdly arbitrary, Oblivion is not boutique because they only show up to fight, TGH is for a similar reason? KT not being one should be obvious because they don't fit the criteria you've set out lmfao, KT is like the 14th largest aa.

I am impressed by how coherently incoherent this is for a drunk rant. Well...done? Maybe?

Edited December 23, 2023 by Sketchy

[Thalmor]

28 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

This seems like an oddly specific and therefore mostly useless classification.

Like any alliance, it matters what they do at the end of the day, not who they are comprised of, or their size.

Given the shortage of alliances in the game I don't think I'd be discouraging new ones from branching out. I also don't think its inherently bad for smaller alliances to play supporting roles in larger spheres.

Your examples are also weirdly arbitrary, Oblivion is not boutique because they only show up to fight, TGH is for a similar reason? KT not being one should be obvious because they don't fit the criteria you've set out lmfao, KT is like the 14th largest aa.

I am impressed by how coherently incoherent this is for a drunk rant. Well...done? Maybe?

I can provide more clarification when I'm sobered up.

You may enjoy the one I did last year more: https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/33838-hof-is-just-the-best-alliance-ever/

[Krampus]

2 hours ago, Thalmor said:

Alliances that ARE boutique:

Did you forget the media? Roberts aa is basically the media, but by roberts

[Cypher]

This wasn’t a conversation people had when KT formed from a handful of ex-TEst members or when GOB split from VE years ago. There’s one thing in common with all the alliances they split from and it’s that they’re no longer around. Now I’m not suggesting tS, Rose, or anyone else will vanish anytime soon but KT and GOB have had years to make and impact to the game. To immediately expect the same from TGH and TSC who have been around 6/7 months combined is pretty unrealistic, especially when TSC haven’t even made an official post on the forums yet.
 

Immediately jumping to “they’ll have no legacy, may as well never be formed” is the wrong mindset to have when seeing these new projects. We should all be embracing new alliances and projects and hope they can make the same level of change as alliances formed years ago.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Cypher

[Andres Garcia]

very interesting.

[Raphael]

6 hours ago, Thalmor said:

A boutique alliance is a special type of alliance. It is generally characterized by a couple of factors:

1 - A low member count, typically either single digit or generally below 20.

2 - Most of such members, will be above-average in city count. These are hard hitters.

3 - Either the alliance as a whole, or key people within them, will be very focused on ideas/slogans of "changing the game," or being "dynamic." Overall, this is an alliance founded, to severely alter what is perceived to be the stagnation that plagues politics in P&W. 

Important Distinction: Some alliances may fall into the top 3 categories, but I would say that they're not "boutique alliance" because they've been around for a long time, and have a distinct alliance culture. A hallmark of boutique alliances is the lack of legacy they leave behind once they're gone. If an alliance leaves any kind of ~significant~ legacy behind that people remember for years to come, they are not much of a boutique alliance.

Such alliances are popular. Everyone loves an underdog that wants to do good. However, I have followed such alliances over the years, and I do not believe such alliances have a good legacy. Many seem to disband before they could do much, and many of the rest seem to just join an larger alliance at the hip, and do what the larger alliance wants. 

And such, that is my problems with boutique alliances. They seem to pull good members from existing communities, for ultimately no good reason. It is an unnecessary disruption. 

Below, I will address what alliances I consider to be boutique alliances, and which ones I do not. 

Alliances that ARE boutique:

Requiem was Partisan's project. It is my understanding that it was comprised of t$ members who were disgruntled with the state of affairs within t$. The alliance did absolutely nothing over its existence. It eventually reformed into The Golden Horse under BourKhan. 

The Golden Horde is Requiem, except under Bourhann. It has 16 members. It is entirely beholden to what Singularity wants (this is not necessarily a bad thing).

The Sword Coast is, as it stands now, a boutique alliance. It is headed up, largely,@Raphaelwho is a pretty significant P&W theorist. 

Alliance that are NOT boutique:

Oblivion is not boutique as their own shtick has been that they're barely active people who just log in when it's time to wreck shit.

Knights Templar is not boutique as they've been around for many years now, has quite a member base, and have pretty much always been committed to unreasonably aggressive action. 

Yarr is not boutique as they are, functionally, a bank pretending to be an alliance.

---

With that said above, I welcome all those who disagree with me to say so below. I consider myself a neutral P&W theorist, and I like analyzing game concept. This is one such attempt, but I am always open to hearing people who believe differently from me.

 

Solid post and I love forum engagement Thalmor. Thanks for taking the time to type out your thoughts here.

I'll start off by saying that I disagree a bit where you're drawing the line, as it seems you're trying to play favorites a bit by distinguishing groups like Oblivion because "well just obviously not them." but for the sake of brevity I won't mire the conversation with this argument.

Secondly, I do generally agree with the thought that alliances who form and stagnate at low member counts will eventually fail to achieve their goals but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. None of these groups founded to be single-digit-member alliances, I think a lot of them just ran out of steam or were created to be places those players joined to exist on their own terms -- be that their own chosen tax methods, different moderation styles, activity levels, etc.

 

So the problem isn't these entrepreneurial groups trying to push innovation and change, the problem is that almost every larger alliance is a stagnant beast where players feel lost in the miasma of disengagement. The average player has very little to look forward to in any given alliance and at least part of that is caused by leadership who have lost sight of what it means to be a leader.

Leaders should eat last, serve those underneath them, and represent their membership. Far too many governments in this game have goals that horribly misalign with their members and I think that's why we keep seeing new alliances form.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Raphael

[Victor Truchev]

I always enjoy your takes, Thalmor. I think this is a worthwhile topic if only to highlight the need for context that is sometimes absent when observing from any top-down perspective. In this case, overall, the context is the culture within these alliances.

As someone who watched from afar, The Media was an exciting thing to watch and always had my attention for sake of the names I knew in that alliance. Its culture was what mattered in that moment and they held a degree of influence by virtue of attention they held. What informed their motivations is entirely lost on me as I've admittedly not pursued the "why" to any measure. 

But that's the missing point. The context. The culture of the members which drives the Alliance expression. @Raphael and @Cypher speak well for the context which informs at least a portion of TSC. And if that happens to leave an indelible mark on the players that participate then it was all worth it. If it happens to impact the scope of more than just the realm of The Sword Coast, then perhaps the boutiquey pop-up shop is actually a bit more fashion than trend. 

Meanwhile, I have had to stop myself from making too many high-fashion industry puns, so thank you for that. 🫠

[Shiho Nishizumi]

This isn't much of a coherent post if I'm frank.

8 hours ago, Thalmor said:

A boutique alliance is a special type of alliance. It is generally characterized by a couple of factors:

1 - A low member count, typically either single digit or generally below 20.

2 - Most of such members, will be above-average in city count. These are hard hitters.

3 - Either the alliance as a whole, or key people within them, will be very focused on ideas/slogans of "changing the game," or being "dynamic." Overall, this is an alliance founded, to severely alter what is perceived to be the stagnation that plagues politics in P&W. 

The top two characteristics are usually outlines for the smaller whale alliances, which is definitely a fairly reduced niche to occupy. As for three, yes some attempt to change things politically. Stressing the "attempt" bit as it's the most relevant.
 

8 hours ago, Thalmor said:

Important Distinction: Some alliances may fall into the top 3 categories, but I would say that they're not "boutique alliance" because they've been around for a long time, and have a distinct alliance culture. A hallmark of boutique alliances is the lack of legacy they leave behind once they're gone. If an alliance leaves any kind of ~significant~ legacy behind that people remember for years to come, they are not much of a boutique alliance.

Such alliances are popular. Everyone loves an underdog that wants to do good. However, I have followed such alliances over the years, and I do not believe such alliances have a good legacy. Many seem to disband before they could do much, and many of the rest seem to just join an larger alliance at the hip, and do what the larger alliance wants. 

This isn't coherent with the first outlines. Those outlines don't discriminate how long they've existed, just their makeup and intended purpose. An alliance having an internal culture doesn't translate into legacy left behind; the latter is an external factor and far more related to how much power or influence that alliance can project for the period of time it did exist. A flash in the pan alliance that only existed for a relatively brief period of time that influenced politics for said brief period of time is going to have more of a legacy left behind than an alliance that exists for years and does little to no projection, even if the latter does (and probably indeed has) have more of an internal culture than the former.
 

8 hours ago, Thalmor said:

And such, that is my problems with boutique alliances. They seem to pull good members from existing communities, for ultimately no good reason. It is an unnecessary disruption. 

Below, I will address what alliances I consider to be boutique alliances, and which ones I do not. 

Alliances that ARE boutique:

Requiem was Partisan's project. It is my understanding that it was comprised of t$ members who were disgruntled with the state of affairs within t$. The alliance did absolutely nothing over its existence. It eventually reformed into The Golden Horse under BourKhan. 

The Golden Horde is Requiem, except under Bourhann. It has 16 members. It is entirely beholden to what Singularity wants (this is not necessarily a bad thing).

The Sword Coast is, as it stands now, a boutique alliance. It is headed up, largely,@Raphaelwho is a pretty significant P&W theorist. 

Here, you contradict yourself here on your stated issue with those alliances and the very first example. You say that they seemingly pull good members from existing alliances, then list Requiem being comprised of disgruntled with t$. In other words, they weren't pulled. They left.

People who leave alliances do tend to leave because they're dissatisfied with the then-state of affairs, that is true. Those newly formed alliances are one of the two possible avenues of departure, with the other option being to join another existing alliance. There are arguments for and against either options, but I don't think that them leaving can be blamed on the launching of these new alliances, whether they be 'boutique' or not. Those new alliances are just a potential outcome of said departures.

As for the examples you listed:

Requiem: I'll be the first to admit that it didn't pan out as an alliance building project (which it was, alongside its stated political purpose). I'll also admit that the political aspect didn't develop as envisaged, with people more often than not seemingly using ODP's as overglorified NAP's rather than as, well, ODP's.

With that said, prior to Requiem, ODP's were largely an unutilized meme treaty. Requiem was the first alliance in recent times to start using them alongside PIAT's, which then spread by other alliances picking up on the usage of O levels. It was also a proponent for alliance-based politics, which did have some buy-in for some time.

To be clear; I'm not claiming that Requiem single handedly did this. Rather, it starting it encouraged others to do it themselves as well, eventually leading to the sort of purchase/viability ODP's currently have at the moment. So to say that it did "absolutely nothing" when at the very least, it helped set a trend that your own alliance is making use of is, quite plainly, incorrect.

TGH: You don't know Buorhann if you think that he's beholden to any ally, let alone an alliance led by Sketchy. I also don't think that they have a stated political mission like Requiem's. Buorhann's focus is usually just doing something engaging for his lot, which means burning pixels.

TSC: Literally just formed a week or two ago. Their tiering is also a bit spread and I'm unsure necessarily fitting of the second characteristic. My understanding is that they don't intend to fill this small alliance niche either, but it's yet to be seen whether they are able to grow numerically.

I'd also note that labelling an still-existing alliance as boutique when your distinction talks that them being such based on the legacy left behind once they're no longer around is, well, incongruent. A far better term would be 'unproven'.
 

9 hours ago, Thalmor said:

Alliance that are NOT boutique:

Oblivion is not boutique as their own shtick has been that they're barely active people who just log in when it's time to wreck shit.

Knights Templar is not boutique as they've been around for many years now, has quite a member base, and have pretty much always been committed to unreasonably aggressive action. 

Yarr is not boutique as they are, functionally, a bank pretending to be an alliance.

Oblivion: I actually think that you're being a bit derisive here. Ockey is probably a bit more influential within his circle than suggested here. Hidude in particular is active in whatever coalition he's in.

With that said, "borderline inactive that shows up for war" is hardly much of an alliance culture (no, I'm not ignoring that they're an incredibly tightly knit lot), and if "down to war" is all it takes not to be boutique, then TGH by definition isn't boutique.

KT: Obviously not boutique, and I'm not sure why you felt the need to include them at all. Though, I will note again how apparently being down to wreck stuff makes them explicitly non boutique, but TGH is still boutique in spite of being war-oriented.

Yarr: I guess that in order to be a boutique alliance you indeed first need to be an alliance. 

---

With all of that said, there one thing I'd like to mention, since I think that there's a bit of a misplaced expectation.

If said expectation is that they be the primary cause for wars; knowing firsthand from Requiem, these sorts of alliances don't work too well at kickstarting (noteworthy) stuff themselves. Their size inherently inhibits it. And no, hitting an isolated WTF for the umpteenth time isn't noteworthy.

They're much better at adapting and navigating whatever follows the moves the bigger alliances make. They can also wield outsized influence given their size if they're packed with heavy hitters, and more importantly, if they're led by figures that are already well known, respected, or connected, even if this isn't visible.

All in all, and at risk of stating the obvious; smaller alliances handle differently compared to larger alliances. Their function, and subsequently sort of legacy (most likely less flashy of one) left behind is going to differ relative to their major/mainstay counterparts.

[Solomon Ben-David]

As a few folks have pointed out, there's a lot of pre-judging the outcome and a bit of confusion surrounding The Sword Coast, especially considering we haven't even officially launched yet. I won't rehash some of the issues in the argument that Shiho has pointed out - instead, I'll focus on TSC to clear the air a bit.

12 hours ago, Thalmor said:

The Sword Coast is, as it stands now, a boutique alliance. It is headed up, largely,@Raphaelwho is a pretty significant P&W theorist. 

There are a few issues with this statement. First, while Roberts has started quite a few alliances in his day, I wouldn't argue that this is headed "largely" by him considering in lieu of leaders our structure has the heads of the departments work together as the leaders. All five of us have been working to get this started, so I don't quite think it's fair to diminish TSC to "just another Roberts aa" since part of the point is that it's not led by a single person.
I'll also poke at this "boutique" statement. As Shiho pointed out, arguing an under-20 member, high-tiered alliance doesn't entirely fit with our current tiering spread, or the fact that we're currently brushing 20 members even without launching. I'll agree that the 20 member thing is a nitpick, but the result is still the same - you're pre-judging the outcome.

I really enjoy @Cypher's take here, that it's also unrealistic to expect the world of alliances who haven't been around, or in our case, haven't even launched yet.

 

Generally, while I do appreciate the argument and think it's useful to think about, I just can't see TSC fitting into the mix, especially when we haven't even made an official forum post or properly launched yet.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Solomon Ben-David

[Kastor]

This makes entirely no sense, majority of the alliances in the game start out how you mentioned, did you forget your own founding?

 

KT was a splinter from TEst, literally did a whole crusade about wanting to change the game and move it to be more war oriented. While a bit of that came about after you created it, the driving principle around KT was to impact and change the game. 

 

50-80% of the alliances in the game started that way. If you didn't bring your community in from another game, that's how everyone starts. No one starts and then the next day has 100+ members and a "keep the status quo". You start with a group of people you trust, and build up from there. If your ideas are good, and theme solid, people join and eventually you become a standard alliance. TKR started this way. As did TFP, Grumpy, The Immortals, etc. 

 

[Thalmor]

I want to thank everyone for replying to this thread, which made by a madman who was under the influence last night. This is a topic I've given a decent amount of thought to for some time, but obviously I did not present it in the best way possible (which was the point. I made the thread live on a bonus show last night). 

I want to rewrite the thread to better articulate my position (including a more comprehensive list of alliance that I would consider boutique), but the holidays are preventing that. I intend on doing the rewrite and responding to the posts here more probably on Tuesday. 

[Uncle Iroh]

12 hours ago, Thalmor said:

Not as much as your mom blew me just now lmao

[Jesus Prime]

TL;DR Drunken rant didn’t read.

[Buorhann]

15 hours ago, Thalmor said:

If an alliance leaves any kind of ~significant~ legacy behind that people remember for years to come, they are not much of a boutique alliance.

Alliances that ARE boutique: The Golden Horde

I feel cute for some odd reason.  Too bad I’m not at home, got the perfect picture for this moment.

@Thalmor - You’re adorable.  A fricking idiot, but adorable.

[Keegoz]

I'm just going to congratulate @Thalmorfor making people have a proper discussion on the forums.

[Buorhann]

I’m curious to @Thalmor’s opinion on actual useless alliances that have existed for so long that their crowning achievement is signing treaties.

[Thalmor]

12 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

I’m curious to @Thalmor’s opinion on actual useless alliances that have existed for so long that their crowning achievement is signing treaties.

In this thread, I've explored the "boutique alliance" archetype. A second archetype I'm formulating is the NPC alliance archetype. Alliances whose lack of meaningful action go beyond the average. Alliances who are particularly incompetent, and have very little projection in the community; yet, in spite of these problems, continue to persist for years. They're just always there for some reason. They never really change, and are just waiting for a party to go and beat them up for experience points. 

I would consider Fark and Polaris to be historic examples of this archetype. UPN, USN, and WTF are current examples.