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Unread 24 May 2004, 22:36   #1
Cayl
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 346
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How to start a brand new alliance or (HC 101)

I keep seeing threads by people who are frustrated in their attempts to create a new alliance. So allow me to give a little advice.

First, why are you starting an alliance? There are lots of good ones out there already. There are only two answers. The first is that you're already a group of friends who hangs out and attacks and defense together, you might as well give yourselves a name and invite others to join. This is by far the best way to start an alliance.

The second is that you are a power hungry person in search of peons to direct at your whim. This is also fine, but you'll have to do a lot more work to be even slightly successful. If this is you, just be honest with yourself about it, it will make things so much easier down the road.

Now answer some questions:

Do you know what IRC is? Have you ever attacked with a group of people before? Have you ever had to organize other people's fleets to defend someone elses planet?

If the answer to any of these questions is NO, then you will not be successful until you've spent a little time learning the ropes from an established alliance. Don't worry, you can still take over the universe some day, just not this round. Allow the people who have perfected the art to teach you their ways. You will use their own knowledge to crush them.

Now, some more questions:
Are you on IRC most of your day? Will you be active for at least one full round of Planetarion and the month or so before? Do you know anyone you can trust absolutely to help you out?

If the answer to these questions are NO, then you've got to seriously re-examine whether its going to be worth your time and effort to try this out. If you can't be around running your alliance most of the day, then its not going to go anywhere. PA is a 24 hour game. You have to be here for the full round, its not fair to your members for you to back out on them after 3 weeks because your mum forgot to pay the internet bill. And you have to have help. People you can trust to make sound judgements will be essential, because you have to sleep, and someone has to mind the store while you're away.

So if you can pass those basic questions, then you're ready to get started.

First if you're not experienced, and want help, get on #mentors on IRC. There PA has assembled a group of people who are both politically neutral and eager to help people do just what you are doing now.

Second, start a channel. PIck a word for your alliance, join that channel. Once you're the only one there with an @ by your name, you've arrived at your new home.

Third, get those people you can trust in there, and get P in your channel.

Now you're set to begin recruiting by word of mouth, but NO ANNOUNCEMENTS. If you can't get at least 10 people in your alliance just on your friends, galaxy mates, their friends, etc, then its a failed experiment.

Once you have an established core memberbase, some very basic infrastructure, and a little experience, you're ready to come to this board and announce your alliance. You will not tell them how crap your alliance is, and how you're new and don't know what you're doing. You will tell them what you've accomplished, how many dedicated active players you have, about your desire to do well next round, about your strong tight knit community, or any other GOOD things you have.

YOU WILL NOT POST ON THIS BOARD WITHOUT HAVING AN IRC CHANNEL.

To do so shows everyone in the world that you've ignored every piece of advice available to you. You WILL require your members to be in IRC on a regular and consistent basis. The in-game forums, and attack and defense tools are not meant to be adequate and will not be even laughablly sufficient for you to be half-way serious about this.

If you've done everything here and you've got a small memberbase, then you may be ready to be an alliance that people take seriously. You may not be experienced, and you have many many more lessons to learn, but if you can't master these prerequisites, you just can not be successful in this game.

Good Luck!

Amended Dec 18 2004. You are explicitly forbidden from using or in any initial alliance recruitment posts.
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Last edited by Cayl; 18 Dec 2004 at 22:55.
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