My best suggestion

I got a normal job IRL.
Managing multiple alliances / multiple forums / multiple IRC channels / multiple big accounts / etc etc.
Its hard work people!
Takes alot of time to do all of this.
Lucky i can play Illyriad at work too

Tony, start your own alliance, then your not a 'loyal underling' 

You prove the point again. You say yourself that the only real option is to be consumed by a big alliance to be dictated to by a few like you. My suggestion gives a good way to allow more freedom to choose whether they want alliance play or not.

I hate to break it to you, but leadership is a bitch of a job.  It's hard work and its the members that benefit way more than the heads.  I have to take time away from developing my own account to even do a half-assed job at maintaining diplomatic relations, assisting/training members, establishing policies, tracking the activities of spies (90% accounting) and running counterintelligence operations, administrating forums and other alliance resources, smoothing over conflicts that shouldn't have happened and then coaching the member players that start them, and the list continues.  If I had a normal 9-5 job I couldn't possibly manage both leadership and a large/active account--as it is I wouldn't dream of running a second one.  And for the record, I'd happily step down if others were willing to take my place.  An alliance that isn't understaffed is a lucky alliance, because it doesn't take too long to find out how cool it isn't to be the man in charge.  At least in real life we get paid lots.

For the most part, the benefits I'm extolling are about the experience people have by joining an alliance, not leading one.  You interact (in a friendly way) with players chosen from a larger pool, based on common interests and goals rather than proximity.  You commiserate each others' losses, and plot together against common enemies.  You exchange advice, tips, and training with each other; participate in coordinated joint operations that tax skills not needed for a one-man operation; trade more; get economic assistance when you need it, and then pay it forward; discuss policies and self-governance; elect leaders (if you can actually get more than one candidate for a position) and--depending on the form of government chosen--vote on key issues like whether to go to war with certain alliances.  Everyone builds and runs a society, not just its leaders.  That might be less true in real life, but in a game like this, dictatorship survives only so long as it produces results that please its members.  After all, anyone can dissent or jump ship any time, and often even their accounts are safe from effective reprisal due to alternative support options.  And revolts or mass-exodus are way more doable than in real life.

Bottom line is this:  join an alliance, and even as an entry-level recruit, you will find greater opportunity to do way more and have more fun doing it.  Playing this game alone is like running your own empty IRC channel.  The chatbots really won't get you far.


Edited by HonoredMule - 09 Jul 2010 at 15:47

Why don't you try joining a large alliance and see for yourself what form of gameplay is truly stagnant?

Heck, take a leadership position...you could be working in-game from sunup to sundown and never get to launch an army.

Playing lone ranger is deterring your own progression and limiting your own game experience 100-fold.  I can see why from that perspective you should feel like you can lark about with small skirmishes or diplomatic missions on a daily basis without fear of getting steamrolled, because that's the whole game to you:  carving out one small niche amongst 10,000 small niches.  But that's actually a pretty mundane gaming experience, and most eventually get bored and leave if they aren't destroyed anyway.

Alliance members have a chance to be a part of something that may grow large (and sophisticated) enough to earn respect and recognition amongst its peers.  It doesn't require being "first to market," either--a new player will likely never catch up to the strength and development of a 6-month veteran, but a new alliance has a far better chance with so many more factors at play not dictated by game mechanics.  It isn't at all fair to limit our game experience so profoundly (and this certainly would) because you choose not to partake...especially when forces you don't even know about are sticking up for you and your right to play the way you want (even if we don't understand it).

Browser games are a mere platform for much more intricate social battlefields containing allies you haven't even met.  Multiple alliances label themselves as training or protection alliances and harbor newbies until they are developed (Shrapnel heads one such alliance).  Several other large alliances promote by peaceful means a nurturing attitude toward new players, or at least disallow their own members from attacking them.

Also, a day or two away isn't that far.  And as pointed out earlier, limiting recruitment choices by locality really narrows your neighborhood from a social aspect.  The only players you get to interact with meaningfully (and therefore at all in practice) are those well within your control radius.  Tough luck if they're all jerks.