Soliciting Thoughts on Alliance Barriers To Entry

NB. We are aware that there is not an "Alliance Guide" available, and so some of the information in here may come as news to many of you. 

There will be a guide, but right now I'm asking for sensible, coherent and constructive suggestions from you, the playerbase.

THE MECHANICS

• Being in an Alliance grants you certain protection from the world outside.

• Neutral (non-Allied) players can attack you, of course, but other Alliances cannot unless they declare War.

• Declaring war on an Alliance costs the aggressor Gold to do, which is called the "War Declaration Fee"

• The War Declaration Fee increases with each additional, simultaneous war declared or in progress.

• The War Declaration Fee is then reduced or increased further depending on the relative size difference (defined as the total Town Population of all cities in each alliance, as a measure of strength) between the Aggressor and the Aggressed.  By way of example, a small alliance who declares war against a large alliance pays less than the "Base" War Declaration Fee.  A large alliance who declares war against a small alliance pays more than the "Base" War Declaration Fee.

• This fee is paid by the Agressor into "Escrow" which means that the NPC Council of Illyriad holds this sum of money.

• The "Winner" of the inter-Alliance war is defined as the person who accepts an offer of peace from the other party (or the person who successfully sieges and razes - or captures - the Alliance Capital City).

• The "Winner" of the war receives the Escrow amount, paid directly into his or her Alliance Coffers.
  

THE PROBLEM WE HAVE

The barrier to entry to forming an alliance is very low:

• 1,000 Gold,
• a Level 3 Consulate, and
  
• the Finesse skill

This means, in practical terms, that if there is absolutely *no* downside to individual players forming an "Alliance of One", simply to escape the ravages of other Alliances who prey on Neutrals, whereby for 1,000 Gold they at least get 24hrs notice and protection before an attack, and also force the Aggressing alliance to stump up a committment of Escrow.

We don't want a game populated by one-person Alliances, but we're equally happy to have a non-affiliated Independent Alliance of (effectively) solo players grouped together.

We don't want to set the Alliance bar too high so that people don't think it is achievable if a small group of players want to try it out, and that on additional (new) servers there aren't any Alliances being formed for weeks/months.

We're toying with a variety of ideas, such as :

• Raising the required Alliance setup fee (though this isn't this simply pushing the problem to later weeks/months?)

• Weekly Alliance Upkeep costs - although if implemented, we would want these to both scale upwards with the size of the alliance, but also to reduce a bit with each member, so that larger alliances get economies of scale and there's an incentive to grow (if this seems confusing, think eg 500 Gold per player per week, reducing by 3 gold per player per week for each additional player or something).  This does, however, almost entirely rule out the idea of a large Alliance with zero taxation for a good few months.
  

• Removing the "Capital City cannot be captured / razed" rule from any player in an Alliance, so that a player in an alliance gives up his right to "never lose it all"; although this may seem to provide a big disincentive against one-player alliances (and a big incentive to larger alliances to get well organized defences together) it's not so much the case - as there's still nothing to stop a large siege army sitting outside a fully-protected city and pummelling it every time the player tries to build something

• Entirely removing (or greatly reducing) the protection amount provided by the Vault building to people in an Alliance, but increasing this amount back upwards (for every player in the alliance) with every new player the alliance recruits

• Something with the Alliance Coffers (not sure what, but could be protection for resources or something else)

• Remove the War Declaration fee entirely if it is being made in retaliation to a *known* hostile act from an Aggressor (ie if you capture someone's spies/scouts/burglars then your alliance can instantly declare war, for free, on the aggressing Alliance)

• Any combination of the above

• Any other suggestions from nearfield, leftfield, outfield or outerspace
  

Personally I lean towards the Vault option at the moment, but as a team we're entirely willing to listen to other thoughts.

It's something we need to fix sooner rather than later, before it becomes a real issue as the player count expands.

Go for it.


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 12 Mar 2010 at 20:25

Thanks for replying, bow.

bow locks wrote: scale the deccing fee to the size of the alliance, also the amount of protection.

Agreed

bow locks wrote: make alliances of less than 10 people almost free to dec and also with a reduced warning time.

We're unwilling to do this, tbh - it means that after a certain point (that we might already be close to), new players to the game simply wouldn't form alliances under these circumstances unless they can whip together 10 people straight up.  We don't want 1 person alliances, but equally we think a small alliance of up to 10 people should be feasible with penalties.

bow locks wrote: penalise, over time, alliances of less than 5 people - massively. reward large alliances - give them huge central vaults, where each member can store vast riches, protected by the capital.

We think the semi-finalised proposal (at the bottom of this post) does both these, to a limited but still meaningful extent.  There might be some scope for very large alliances to build special buildings at a later stage in the Alliance Capital city that perform some useful functions like this.

bow locks wrote: i didnt know about this escrow war winning fee. thats a little odd. doesnt this make wars drag on, or do alliances pay weekly for war? war fees should be time based, and increase exponentially.

Wars dragging on is good, and we like this, generally. 

We want people to think carefully about who they wardec, and we want suing for peace / surrender to be a meaningful act.  I hadn't, frankly, considered weekly fees for war in this context.

bow locks wrote: NO to alliance upkeep costs, unless there are alliance benefits as per the vault.

See below.

bow locks wrote: NO to the hostile act bit - how will you judge it, and hostilities are very restricted now.

Agreed.

CHANGE PROPOSAL

1. Keep the Alliance Foundation fee, but increase it to 5,000 Gold

2. Alliances start with a 50% penalty to resources protected by the Vault, rising by 5% per Alliance member after the Founder.  So in a one-person Alliance, that player has a Vault that protects only 50% of normal, and in a 5-person Alliance, each player's Vault would protect 70% of normal.  At 11 members, all Alliance member Vaults behave as usual.

3. Alliances will have "token" upkeep costs for each member, payable weekly from the central Alliance Coffer.  Such cost would probably be around 50 Gold per member per week, as we don't want to prohibit zero taxation alliances.

4. The Alliance Coffer (where taxes go) is secure, 100%, from Diplomatic unit theft, raids and everything hostile.  The only hostile way of getting Gold out of the Alliance Capital's Coffer would be to capture the Alliance Capital City.  However, the transfer of Gold to and from the Alliance Coffer to external cities (eg tax collectors etc) are subject to the normal Blockading rules etc.


We think the above 4 proposals cover most everything we are trying to ensure happens with the Alliance mechanics, and we don't get too many one-person alliances (unless they are able to adequately defend themselves!).

We intend to release this proposal in Monday's edition of The Herald, with 1 week notice before the changes come into effect; so that players have a bit of time to adjust their alliance strategy/recruitment/whatever.  Any new Alliance being founded from Monday onwards will be made aware of these impending changes on the "Found New Alliance" screen.

This is everyone's last chance to stick their oar(s) into this topic!

Best wishes,

GM Stormcrow


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 13 Mar 2010 at 20:23

mmm
What if people make alts?
Like i make 2 alts.
I ask my friend to make 2 alts, i ask other friends to make 2 alts.
Total of 11.
Only you are active, the rest are not active.

Like Rescendent proposed, maybe a population requirement.
Dont know what amount would be ok though.

He said it on IRC.
You should visit there more often :)

Also

4. The Alliance Coffer (where taxes go) is secure, 100%, from Diplomatic unit theft, raids and everything hostile.  The only hostile way of getting Gold out of the Alliance Capital's Coffer would be to capture the Alliance Capital City.  However, the transfer of Gold to and from the Alliance Coffer to external cities (eg tax collectors etc) are subject to the normal Blockading rules etc.

Capital Cities can be attacked, but never occupied and conquered by an enemy. They may destroy all your buildings, but you will always be able to rebuild.

The second quote comes from the starting guide part one (tried to find part two, but never saw it haha :)).

Doesnt these 2 things contradict eachother?
You saw we can get the alliance coffer by captureing the Alliance Capital City.
But in the starting guide you say that Capital Cities never be occupied and conquered.


ps.
I spammed you with more petitions :P.

War is pretty f**king boring at the moment.