Alliance Strategy

Hi All,

A bit of free thinking is always healthy I feel, so the following are some thoughts I had whilst driving down the M1 & M25 yesterday.........It was a long drive!!!

This may all be alot of horse sheeeet and totally impratical from a logistics perspective........but it seemed pretty obvious to me.

I must stress that Evony is a bit of fun for me, something to do in my quiet time, but that said I have invested months into building up my cities and I can fully understand how emotional people can get over their "real estate".

My objective here is to stimulate discussion, Ted and the guys have worked their nutz off to ensure we as an alliance continue to survive and hopefully prosper. I don't know enough of the in & outs of the game to call myself an expert, but by applying some objective/logical thinking to our recent problems we could get ourselves into more structured organisation to ensure we don't come so close to oblivion in the future.

What follows are my opinions only, to be used or abused as we see fit :lol! What I will say is that to succeed alliance members will need to be flexible, understanding and most importantly be able to cooperate with each other:

We are made up of Small, medium & Big players - Small 0-150k prestiege (1-2 cities), medium 150-300k prestiege (2-4 cities) and the big players 300k + prestiege (4+ cities)
Some are more active than others, some are more vunarable than others, some don't bother at all.

The key to any successful organisation is a "chain of command". In this environment Host & Vice Host, delegate to Presbyters & Officers and they action with the other troops.

I humbly suggest we restructure the alliance along what I call the "Bullseye" method......imagine a bullseye target, red in the centre, white in the middle, blue on the outer ring. Each ring is no more than 25 miles away from the other.

In the "red zone" we position our power base, our top 5 most powerful players (approx 30-50 cities).
In the "white zone" we position the presbyters and small players, again in groups of 5 (approx 10-20 cities). It will be the role of the presbtyers to nuture the small players and build a "food chain" of players to expand our territiories.
In the "blue zone" we populate with our officers and medium sized players, again in groups of 5 (approx 20-30 cities). The role of the blue zone is to act as pickets or early warning positions and as spring boards for territory expansion.

Why only 25miles between "zones"? Speed of response, it is a damn sight easier to respond to a request for resourse or reinforcement if it's only 25-50 miles away rather than 150-200 miles distant. The medium - Big players will have invested in relief stations, which means they can shift troops and resource around in minutes as oppose to hours. This would be key in times of crisis or offence, also it means a steady tap of resources to the big and small players to bulk up troop numbers and grow the cities more rapidly.

Why have "zones" anyway? Coordination, if people have a loose framework as to their roles within the alliance it offers a sense of purpose and belonging, key to any successful group. Also it allows us to focus our activities........think of it, potentialy we could have an easy offensive reach of 50-75 miles, think of the potential. Also we have the opportunity to dominate everything within a 50 miles radius.......thats alot of farming ground.

Why groups of 5 players? Ease of communication and coordination (potential management of accounts) for one but also space to grow, with valleys, flats etc.
Also lets face it, no small or medium sized alliance is gonna pick a fight with a collection of cities within easy reach of each other and strength in numbers is never a bad idea especially when u can shift a few hundred K of troops around within minutes.

Why move at all? We're all very attached to our cities where they are, but it takes weeks or months to get them completed. There are 100's of high level NPC's and cities that if we work together could be taken and distributed to the small and medium players. This could shave weeks & months off of the building process, expand our farming and troop building capability and clearly upgrade the defensive capabilities of the smaller players that tend to get picked off and dissapear.
The bigger players have already begun to do the city distribution thing, long may that continue....I'll have two lvl10's please!! LOL. But lets do this in a structured way rather than hap-hazzard.
My view is that the bigger players have a larf when knockin down cities and I would also imagine that its more fun for the smaller players to build things up than constantly getting hit.

Can this be done? Yeah I think so, if everyone is willing. I estimate that the powerbase could be established within a few days, if the activity of Ted, Knight, Dragonnz, Art and the others is anything to go by.
Phase 2, establishing the Presbyters and officers within a week in their zones, Phase 3 everyone else within 2-3weeks.
Admittadly it might mean booting some of the less active players, but there is a clear incentive......move and u get a bigger city, closer to the core of the alliance with a clear support and command structure.

Any other ideas? As soon as players are able, hit the npc's.....great source of resources and medals for promotions.
Also, have each player keep a reserve of Archers or somewhat in each of their cities that can be released on demand (between 2-5k).
Also defensive and offensive army lists. My armies have been build for defense or raiding npc's. I know what i can afford to build and keep my production in the green.....but i have know idea as to what an offensive army should look like.

Well thats it, thats all I got! successful armies are based on strong logistics, strong leadership, clear communication and force multipliers.
By adopting the suggestions above we cover those areas.

Would welcome ur thoughts and comments.......I'll get back in my box now. Cheers All.