Donation etiquette

Hey – long time no post! Apologies – I’ll try and keep this a little more current with some new info.

Okay – this is a pretty boring topic, but I thought I’d post something up here for new folks that join the alliance and we can give something to refer them to on the website.

Alliance donations are a really powerful way to make your army stronger – nothing like getting an atomic tank to compliment your medieval troops! But, they can be a cause of alliance friction if you’re not careful. So, here’s some helpful guidelines:

• Anyone can donate for regular day-to-day raiding (attacking enemy bases not in a war). Even if you’re classical, we have an alliance bonus that automatically upgrades our troops to industrial level. So, that ballista gets upgraded to an artillery and that French guard chevalier gets upgraded to a sweet industrial French tank. And, we’re about to advance to the next alliance level bonus that upgrades troops to their global age equivalent which will be super-sweet. So, donate often, no matter your age!
• Try and keep your donations about double what you’re requesting at least. That lets you know that you’re helping the alliance appropriately.
• For requesting troops, I’d say try and keep your donation requests to 3 main types of requests:
  • “Defensive troops please” these are troops you’re looking to put in your town center that can help defend your base. If someone requests these, generally the troops that will be most effective to donate are in the following order: cannon/artillery, riflemen, bazookas, mortars, tanks, machine guns, foot soldiers. Do not donate raiders.
  • “General attacking troops please” these will include just about anything but raiders. Artillery and tanks are probably the best and most common. But, it’s better to fill someone up with 18 riflemen within 5 minutes from 3 people than to wait 30 minutes for 2 artillery
  • “Raiders please” NOW you can donate your motorcycle raiders. 🙂

    You can of course occasionally request specific things like if you have a specific goal you want to do (like a revenge attack) or have a weird army configuration that would be complimented by a weird alliance troop combo, but in general, keep it general.

• For people requesting war troops, it’s very important that you read what they’re requesting, and follow instructions. You’re welcome to offer them something else if it looks like they’ve been waiting a while, but usually people want to bring the strongest troops they can into a war (atomic or cold war age) and of a specific type. Common requests might be field howitzers, atomic or better French or Greek tanks, British atomic age riflemen, or some other exotic combo someone wants to compliment their army configuration.
• For donating to war bases, leave that to atomic or higher council level players in the alliance. Very important that we get very high level troops in the war bases, typically field howitzers, bazookas, British riflemen, etc.
• For stronghold donations in war bases, if you’ve got the extra troops you want to donate, great! I’d say a rule of thumb on those is try and donate the next age up troop at least to a war base. So, for example, if you want to stick an army in someone’s war stronghold and they’re a medieval player, try and put in at least a Gunpowder level troop.

Alright, now that we’re all on the same page, come get your Cold War heavy artillery and AMX-13 tanks!

Forming a Second Alliance!

Since our alliance is now constantly at the 50 person limit, we’ve decided to form a second alliance! What this will mean is that American Hawks will be our primary warring alliance and a new alliance, American Falcons, will be our less-warring alliance and training alliance.

Rynoalbino has agreed to be the primary leader over there, but several leaders will also have alternate accounts in that alliance..

What does that mean for our current alliance? Well, if you’re always checked out of wars and not one of our top donaters, maybe Falcons is best for you. If you’re at a lower age and aren’t very experienced with wars or attacking at or above your level, Falcons might be a great place to get some experience and training.

Who’s right for the Hawks alliance? People who like to war! The rewards aren’t great (but getting better and hopefully improving), but if we get a decent matchup, it’s probably one of the most fun aspects of the game. Just because you’re a lower age doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be in Hawks – in fact, we want to bring in an even distribution of players from all ages. So, it’s important that we have players from Classical all the way to Atomic.

And, people are welcome to float between the two alliances as their interest/time for warring changes.

Again, if you’re interested in making sure we can communicate regardless of what alliance we’re in, I would encourage people to install the LINE app for communication. Probably the easiest way to find our group is to look for TheQueenofMe and she can add you to our group.

Hopefully soon we’ll have two alliances of 50 fun loving folks each!

Trying a change of war tactics

The way we’ve been running wars til now is that we’ve been assigning first attacks, doing a lot of stat tracking, and keeping the wars small.

We’re going to try something new with this next couple of wars. Changes include:

1. We’re going to open them up to a larger number of people (25-35 people)
2. We’re going to let YOU choose the target. The goal is to pick the highest level target that you can 5 star and then do you best. What we’re hoping to shoot for is for people to be able to 5 star targets between their own level and 10-20 levels higher than them.
3. If you have a tricky target, ask about it! There’s always people in chat that are willing to help suggest a plan of attack.
4. The most important thing is to try and 5 star your target, without low-balling your attack JUST to guarantee you get 5 stars.

Again, I’ll reiterate here a few tips for wars:

• Upgrade your coalitions. Now that National Trade Goods are easier to get, we should be shooting for 3 coalitions for each war. And, some of the better alliances have their coalitions maxed out for their levels. If you’re a higher level player and you’ve got a defensive base (Forbidden City, Versailles, Acropolis, Angor Wat, Kremlin, high walls, etc), then maybe doubling down and getting 1-3 def coalitions is good. If you’re a middle or lower level player, getting 3 offensive coalitions might be a good choice.
• Go in with all your offensive resources. All tactics filled (preferably Decoy, Sabotage, Protection), all Mercs, coalition bonus troops, donated alliance troops, all generals, etc. The use of troop tactics is fine if you want to (I usually use about one set per war on average), but not a requirement.
• Whenever you advance an age, focus on your offense first. Upgrade (roughly in this order), armory, barracks (1 at a time), library, airstrip, factory, alliance gate, fort. At the armory, try and make sure your core troops get upgraded first: cannon, heavy cav/tank, foot soldier, riflemen, healing cart, aircraft. Bazooka and APC for later ages and raiders when you’ve got the others finished. I’d say things to avoid unless they’re on sale and you’ve finished the rest: heavy tank, machine gunner, zeppelin, mortar troop, wall breaker. In the University, try and focus on offensive troops first, especially your nation’s special unit if you can.
• don’t neglect your walls! very tedious, but very important. Level 8-10 for Industrial, 9-12 for Global, 10-15 for Atomic.

If you do these things, watch some replays of good war attacks, and ask questions, you should be taking out bases 10-20 levels above you in no time.

What this means for our alliance

So, with the change of how we run wars, our goal is to create an alliance that has a good core group of attackers. So, in order to do that, we’re probably going to be a bit more selective than we’ve been in the past. To date, as long as you’ve not missed your attacks, donated, and we could communicate with you, you position in the alliance was secure.

And, that will still be generally true – as long as you’re showing improvement and growing as well as those other things, your position is secure. I think that’s part of the reason we’re changing it so YOU select the target – this forces you to get to know your own strengths and to push yourself to bigger challenges.

While there won’t be a hard formula for who gets cut from the alliance, some things to base the criteria on are:

• missing attacks in wars. At the very least, if you can’t take your attacks, let someone know that you won’t be able to so we can plan ahead.
• always being unavailable for wars. If you don’t prefer wars, that’s fine as long as you’re a valuable member otherwise (donate, helpful, make the alliance a more lively place, etc). And, if you don’t prefer wars, at least be open to occasionally jumping in if we need someone.
• not communicating. You don’t have to be our best friend, but if we try and reach you and don’t hear back, that’s missing a pretty important part of being an alliance. At the very least, scroll back and read the colored text in chat and any inbox messages.
• not growing militarily. If you like upgrading farms and roads and caravans, maybe this isn’t the best alliance for you?
• not improving. And, this is where it might be a little different than what we’ve done in the past. This could include not following suggestions we make for improving, not being able to consistently attack enemies at or slightly above your own level, not using your full offensive capability in wars, etc.

So, yeah, we might have to make some hard choices. But, as leaders, we’re hoping we can step things up a little bit and make the alliance a little better. While we’ll continue to work to make the alliance a fun place to be and a good group of people helping each other out, we do recognize that maybe some of the people that join won’t share our exuberance to try and continue to improve our play. And there’s nothing wrong with that – fortunately there are literally thousands of other alliances out there to pick from that might be a better fit for them, so no worries.

So, here’s to hoping we can have a good time and spur each other on to get better and better.

Who are we? Start here!

Mainly in the interest of not having to repeat myself every time someone joins, I thought I’d jot down a few notes about our alliance so everyone can be on the same page when they join and know what we’re about.

What are we about?

• Having fun! It’s a game people
• You don’t have to be chatty, but we do seek people that communicate. Introduce yourself when you join, let us know who you are, engage people in conversation when you can. If we don’t hear from you, we don’t know if you’re active, so it makes us hesitant to include you in alliance activities like world wars.
• Contribute! Be a contributing member of the alliance.  That can include a mixture of the following:
  • Participate in world wars. TAKE BOTH YOUR ATTACKS! We typically war 2-3 times a week.
  • Donate to alliance members
  • Ask/answer questions, give feedback on people’s bases, be friendly and helpful.
• Improving. There’s not a single one of us that can’t improve and that means we should always be open to suggestions and input from others.
• Winning. While not the only goal, it’s certainly a fun one. Will we be a top 100 team? Well, maybe not as long as there’s stacker alliances in world wars (alliances that include several bogus iron age/classical bases to bring their average ranking down in order to get easier opponents), cheaters, and alliances that spend vast amounts of money. But, could we be included in the top 100 alliances that don’t do those things – maybe!
• And, related to above, we’re not a stacker alliance. Even though it would make our lives a lot easier, we consider that to be cheating and won’t participate. We’re hoping that somehow, someway Nexon will get their act together and fix it so we can have some fair matchups.

And, just a couple of practical things:

• For world wars, we will send out your first attack assignments in your inbox. The assignments will look something like this: 1-3&4, 2-5, 3-6, 4-7… [Translation: our alliance #1 player should attack the #3 and #4 enemy, our #2 their #5, etc]. Second attacks will usually be assigned in chat either by the leaders suggestion or your request.
• For world war bases, please get permission to donate. Currently, atomic age players will be donating to war bases to get the strongest possible troops for the bases.
• Check your inbox for messages.
• Scan chat when you log on, particularly for any colored text which is typically from the leadership.
• We use the LINE app for out-of-game communication, to exchange screenshots of enemy bases, etc. To join the LINE channel, search for the player Alexnder90 and he can hook you up.

Things that might indicate ‘it’s just not working out’:

• Missing attacks in wars. Things happen, technology fails, etc. But, if you miss an attack, please let us know what happened. Consistent missing of war attacks isn’t fair to those that participate in wars and expend their hard earned resources to win.
• Not ever speaking. If you don’t say anything, we don’t know you’re active. If you’re not active, maybe this alliance isn’t a good fit for you?
• Always being unavailable for wars. While participation in wars isn’t mandatory, we’d like to have everyone participate from time to time. If you’re always marked as unavailable, then maybe this alliance isn’t a good fit for you?
• Never donating. While lower age players may not have strong troops to offer, at least be willing and ask if the requester would like your troops.
• Being unwilling to take constructive criticisms of your base, attacks, troop selection, etc. We’re all in this to help each other!
• Being away for more than 7 days without letting someone know. If you haven’t been in the alliance long, it’ll probably be less than 7 days.
• Being a jerk. Life’s too short to play a game with unpleasant people.

Well, that certainly seems like a lot of rules, but I’m hoping a lot of this kind of thing is common sense. At least, common sense to the kind of people we’d like to have in our alliance. 🙂

Please let us know if you have any questions and let’s have fun!

Dave

Building a team for offense

In the interest of beating more and more of the stacker teams (alliances that include one or several iron/classical age bases that won’t contribute any offensive capability to their war lineup, but serve to lower their average level of the whole team in order to get an easier ranked opponents for wars) but without going that route, we thought maybe we could put together a hit squad. The aim would be to take out our opponents top guys. Much like Tommy is ranked around #9 in our lineup, yet he’s able to attack their top guys consistently.

We realize that some of you have a solid game plan in place and we don’t want to disrupt that but for others looking for glory this just may work!

Considering we already have a strong defensive team, this sub team would switch their focus from defense and focus solely on upgrading their offense for the time being. eventually you will need to even out.

The ideal candidate is an industrial player who is doing well 5 starring people at their level. This candidate would focus on upgrading offense and 5 starring people 10 -20 levels above them.

We are looking for volunteers – who’s in?

Feedback from the latest war

On February 14th, we faced probably our toughest opponent to date, Active Warfare. Even though these guys were our same average level, they were great players and completely blew us out of the water both on offense and defense.

First, they were kind enough to give some of our bases individual feedback on their attack. So, I’ll cut and paste that below:

Led– Hey Led. Like your base layout. The open spaces allow for heal carts to veer off course and right through your traps. But, a few suggestions to help out.
Separate your bunkers. A good sabotage and they’re useless.
Upgrade your mortars. We use lots of seige (artillery), and the better your mortars, the more we cringe.
I attacked SW wall by Hanging Gardens. Place some more traps there and SE wall.
Uni resistance, ftw!
Good luck bro. 🙂

Ryno- Dropped at the airfield, bk the center, the castle, a bunker and 2 depots went down in seconds. Sabitaged the 3rd depot with nortar and rc and rallied by the acropolis for qv. Then let the troops do their thing and grabbed hts as they came. My advice is more wall sectioning and spreading the bunkers and depots. The anti air should make use of the assymetry of the map for plane guidance.

Joe- Dropped west by the church. Sabed tc with tank depot and mortar. Rallied in front of tc. Too many tanks appeared and lost lot of my troops. Bad rally killed me after.
Have video for cereal’s attack. Cereal advises to spread the abse more. Says it it too small now.

nani-Not a bad base layout but the cannons and sniper tower need to be mixed inside the walls near the TC. Maybe do less compartments and enclose more inside the walls.

Willpower: tiger: “This base would have been much harder if FC was further away from TC. Move it further North.”
Buns: “Scatter high hp buildings as it was easy to get 50% QV which makes FC useless. Also place mortars close enough so at lease two of them should be firing at troops. As Korean, I had no issue with these mortars.. Sab and move… easy.”

Moose: “So for improvement, general upgrades, the versailles is not doing much there, the stables are all together. I would start from scratch. Keep in mind that it got beat by a gp army with no offensive coalitions”

Bob: your mortars can be sabotaged together. Never want that

Matt: “Dropped at east redoubt, used one sab on tc, dropped 3 foot at fc which cleared that whole corner as there’s no defences, one sab on whichever northern mortar targeted my shooters and siege, 3rd sab on castle, sab on castle ran out but as general could only get out north as there are no gates heading south I waited for him to to leave and dropped my general, my troops took out the other defences and general vs general I won
I chose to attack from here as there is less mortar fire and no cannon towers, I also knew my troops would clear the second mortar before the fc foot got in range so they wouldn’t take any damage and my carts wouldn’t leave my army.. Wasn’t too worried about leaving the two stables north as there is no Acropolis so had faith in my army”

Also, Bob, your base isn’t an fc base. Your fc can be taken out with a few foot. You need to protect your fc better. 😉

Lord lappo: Dropped at north tower as can take out 2 stables mortar tc coliseum and Angkor with 1 wall break, after that base is easy pickings

Ken: your fc is exposed. You need to protect it

Nathan: “I dropped at the acropolis. Once the catapult and redoubt was down I rallied into the redoubt compartment but first I sabotaged your tc. Then I rally/ protect and worked my way around your base clockwise. I think you could use your Versailles better if you had it closer to your tc. I would recommend to max out your stables first for defense. They really slow down an attack.” You have a bunch of X joints. Turn those into T joints so it doesn’t just take 1 break at the joint to be in all compartments.

Stephen: those double walls in the corners aren’t doing anything

In addition to their offense, some of their base layouts were really really great. From Gunpowder to Global level, they really showed how a good base design can decide your win.

A few examples below:

1. Base 25 – this base absorbed 5 attacks by our players and ended with only 1 star against it. And this is their #25 base at the Gunpowder level! Note the wide spread between the town center and the forbidden city with the Versailles right in the middle to slow everything up.
2. Another great GP level base
3. Jumping all the way up to #6, this industrial base also makes great use of the FC.
   

Heck, all the bases are great – some fine selections in there from Global to Gunpowder. Check them all out here.

Note that all of them have at least 1 or 2 offense or defense related wonders. But base layout, wonder placement and high wall levels show how the same content can be grouped well to make really difficult bases to attack.

We got crushed, but let’s hope it’ll make us a better team!