Right, then. As promised: another guide.
This one was written for Alliance leaders. It was also
not written by me. This was written by one 'Nyar'. This was his last guide, though he had published quite a few more.
You might find
this interesting as a compliment to this guide.
Most of this guide still holds true, but some of the specific tips may have changed since this was published. Players haven't so much, though
Preamblegreat guide!
Great guide needs to be shortened a touch...
Many principles used in total quality management in the workplace can be applied to running and leading an alliance on Battledawn. Before doing anything, you need to take a step back and give yourself some objectives and rate yourself on a weekly basis. What are you goals? - because there is a varying degree of power in alliances on Battledawn. Some of you may play to have fun with friends, and being top 10 is not a goal for you – which is perfectly fine. I am hoping this guide gives you some tips you did not consider in both running your alliance and strategies involved, as well as dealing with politics.
Recruitment:One of the most important aspects in Battledawn whether you like it or not is the level of activity your members will exhibit. Regardless of their skill and knowledge of the game, their success is limited by how often they can log in to make crucial coordinated attacks while keeping a strong power base. This is why I recommend when recruiting to not always looking at their score. I would set aside a couple requirements if you plan to be successful, those being:
1) Activity – Do they log in numerous times a day or just once or twice? The reason this is important is because when a war hits, you need to know that you can count on these individuals to mobilize their troops and make quick attacks. It is perfectly understandable to recruit those who work fulltime / attend school because some of these players can still show commitment. If they are truly passionate about the game, they will log in the morning etc. and all you need to do is set a reasonable coordinated attack time having members set delays accordingly.
2) Maturity – The level of maturity on Battledawn varies greatly. Whether a young or old player yourself, you need to realise that it is often better to have level headed individuals then youngsters who will throw temper tantrums resulting in un-necessary wars. I’m not discriminating by age because there are many younger players with a good head on their shoulders, but you should definitely interview your potential recruits on MSN.
3) Communication – Is there a language barrier separating your alliance and some of its members. I appreciate how diverse Battledawn is in terms of players all around the world, but it’s if you can’t get players who are all on the same page – you will encounter problems. I have grouped with excellent players in terms of skill, but their inability to follow directions because of a language barrier resulted in them being useless in any sort of coordinated attack.
4) Communication (mIRC/MSN) – For those of you more serious about being successful in Battledawn, I recommend making this a requirement for all of your members (MSN or another communcations tool, such as Skype) This allows you to better coordinate with your members and the better you know your members (outside and inside the game) the more of a bond you develop resulting in a sense of comradery. It is difficult to justify losing half your army in defence of someone you never talked to, but if you talk to these people on a daily basis on MSN etc. you would be surprised at the level of loyalty that would develop within your alliance.
5) Score – There is nothing more aggravating than players who are crystal whores. Do not go around messaging the top ranked people with heaps of crystals asking them to join your alliance; you should be looking at their power score instead. Crystals hugely inflate scores of players and alliances and the true power of an alliance lies in their activity and their power rating (taxation from conquers.) You would be surprised how easy it is to jack dozens of crystals off of weak undefended colonies and then just sitting on them the rest of the age. Crystal whores are also naturally selfish and independent and these are not the individuals that you want in a fully functioning alliance.
Leading the Alliance:One of the most important traits to possess as leader of your alliance is the ability to provide direction to your members. Make use of those mass messages; keep your members informed of day to day activities. If you sit idly by without messaging your members and letting them run independent, then that is what you will have. Trust me on this, you do not want 12 people running off doing their own thing because when an alliance comes by that works together and wars you, you will not stand a chance. Mass Messages is probably one of the most under-utilised features of the game that I have seen, far more effective than messaging on MSN. If something important happens that you want to let everyone know about, you can leave a MM which will be stored. Not everyone will be online at the same time and that’s when MSN poses a problem, it is good at the time something happens but Mass Messages provide direction to their members and lets them know their leader is always keeping an eye out.
Empowering your alliance members is very important; give them special unique tasks to make them feel like they are as important as any other member. You will always have a couple star players in your alliance, if you baby them and only pay attention to these members the lesser members will begin to feel alienated and their slow progress will only worsen. If you have members who cannot be online as much as others, so what? Utilise their abilities to the fullest; maybe designate them on guarding certain vital outposts. Commend them on a good job; make them feel just as important as any other member. When communication dies within an alliance, members feel less and less motivated to play / work as a team etc. An example used in my alliance, is the members who do not play often I give them specific tasks. Have someone build up their energy buildings sooner that you can count on mass scanning alliances and performing satellite scans in regions that will be filled with war. Designate your less active members to guard vital radar outposts with their troops. Designate someone to have the nuclear silo structure before anyone else then abandon it. Some noob is very likely to come along and capture, there your more active members can re-capture and begin re-arming the silo (even without the building purchased). It is little things like this that can make each of your members appreciated.
There is nothing more frustrating then in-fighting within the alliance over conquers and crystals. Make it known right from the get-go that all attacks should be done only after reloading the map and check outgoing radar. By going for the same targets and stealing conquers, your alliance is wasting oil that can be better spent during war times. The same can be said for crystals, have some etiquette in place so everyone understands that sharing crystals is recommended and jacking crystals from conquered members is not OK. I’ve personally booted several top #30 members from the alliance I was in because of selfish people like this. I would rather have someone ranked #300 that works as a team than a selfish person who will relocate and abandon his friends at the first sign of troubled who is ranked in the top 10. I’ve been in alliances where many were in the top 10 and many of these members were almost a member of their own alliance. They didn’t work together, they did their own thing and when crunch time hit they were nowhere to be found.
Direction has already been mentioned, but I cannot stress this enough. Keep everyone informed in your alliance and where they are going, what you are considering and ask for their input. If you empower your members to make suggestions on plans of attack, possible allies etc. then they will become more involved and work more as a team. Setting coordinated attacks is a crucial part of being in an organised alliance. Try and accommodate the members not on your time zone and provide adequate warning. Give at least 3-4 tick notice before planning a large attack and make it known many ticks in advance at what time you want everyone to attack. There is nothing more fulfilling than seeing 40+ squads take off early in the age which is comprised of 80% of your alliance. With coordination and teamwork and a good leader to provide direction, you can find your alliance filled with friends taking out top 10 alliances with ease. Score is hugely over-rated!
Strategies:Every alliance should have some sort of conquer field established that resides around a set area or location. For many people this is around the colony cluster and rightfully so. True success in Battledawn is derived from the power base of the alliance, the easiest way to accumulate power is obviously through conquers which leads to more resources which leads to more troops being trained. Emphasis needs to be placed on securing a conquer field. If you find that many conquers are being taken by another alliance, this is a time to consider warring this alliance. The easiest conquers to maintain are the ones near your base, and this is why extra effort should be made in securing this area. This is why I do not recommend having sub alliances start nearby, you are only cannibalizing the conquers within the two alliances. In order to maintain these conquers if they are not near your colony cluster designate someone to build a barracks where the attack origin can be set. After a while you should be force relocating all of your conquers in one area so putting down rebellions can be done as a team and not necessarily by individuals.
Outpost sweeping – I have talked of this in another guide of mine but for those unfamiliar I will go over again in brief. The idea is to clear your colony cluster or conquer field of outposts, the reason being is that it generates space for force relocations and for new colonies to start in the area. At the start of an age outpost sweeping when done as an alliance and not just one person, results in safety (enemies cannot attack the cluster from a close distance) and also gives considerable resources from the razing of outposts.
Utilising Spies – The majority of your targets early on in an age will not have spy protection, even more-so in outposts that you will be attacking. When warring alliances early on, make the adequate planning. The general idea is to designate two of your members to get advanced spy op building (tier 4) by tick 300 which allows you to war major alliances already using heavy vehicles/armor with relative ease. Play upon the alliance weaknesses; attack from far away on a colony that you already had a spy planted. Hope that the alliance supports this colony and sends the majority of their troops so you are able to kill their entire military in one battle where you hold the advantage. I recommend giving your more active members the responsibility of spy duty so they are there to activate 1 tick before arrival. Another good strategy utilising spies is fighting alliances at outposts, like gates or radar outposts that they are massing in. The majority of times they will do so in gates or training bases appearing to be ‘sneaky’ but with a watchful eye you can catch these. Plant spies in op’s that you expect a big battle to be in, the likelihood of spy protection being used on an OP is very very low ensuring heavy losses on the enemy side.
Minimum Military Defence Requirements – This is a very under-utilised strategy by the majority of alliances. There are many reasons for doing this, which I will explain. For the most part this brings the alliance defence on a whole stronger, since everyone is keeping strong units on defence and being caught “off guard” is less likely to occur if adequate defences are on the colonies to begin with. This also gives you an idea on who in the alliance is following directions, working as a team etc. With a good amount of defence in each colony, alliance defence is very high. This is something that has to be instituted because the majority of BD players leave their colony undefended like if it were some kind of single player game – if something bad happens on Battledawn there is no “Load” button. Generic defence requirements is a squad of anti-infantry + anti – vehicle + GMI (multiple amounts). Another reason for this is that it lowers the likelihood of being attacked by a near-by conquer stockpiling units. You will no longer have alliance members leaving their colony undefended going for a near-by crystal or conquer since they are forced to defend at all times ready to defend fellow members all the same.
Radar Coverage – This goes without saying but one of the most important aspects of alliance defence lies in the visibility and perimeter established. This should be made known to the entire alliance, but when outpost-sweeping this question should always be asked.
When playing in full-screen mode do I see another alliance radar on the screen? – If the answer is no then there needs to be radar here.
It is a general rule of thumb which will give your alliance, coupled with outpost-sweeping excellent radar coverage. This will allow you as the leader to see attacks coming from very far away and (sneak attacks). Members who show lower activity should be encouraged to stockpile their energy for satellite scans used to give the alliance further radar coverage into hostile territory. It’s also important to note the importance of having radar cover in “wreck areas”. Places like the island on Mars has at least 10 wrecks a day there, strategically placing radar outposts on the island or the coast will allow for the alliance to snag more wrecks. Sometimes even building outposts to be later converted to radar in strategic places should be done.
Propaganda – Kudos has to be given to Krippen Virus for this one. Before any large war campaign, you should go around messaging every conquer of your target; a message letting them know that now is a good time for rebellion. Just like how you should be messaging your own conquers, offering advice and help (lowering the amount of people who rebel on you). This message can inform your war targets' conquers that they will be having a large scale war and their troops will be diverted fighting you, and if they want freedom now is the chance. Not only will you be fighting your enemy, but suddenly their conquers will be rebelling and they will start taking heavy losses due to spies that you have been planting and their world will be caving in around them. Suddenly warring against you won’t seem like such a slick idea and your alliance will be notorious in the area for a strong force not to be messed with. Propaganda is a hell of a thing.
There are heaps of other strategies that you can utilise as an alliance, but these are some basic ones that all alliances should use. Depending on your play-style and your alliance goals, you can even formulate your own strategies that work specifically for you.
Politics:Don’t trust anyone.
Let me repeat it in case it is not imprinted in your brain yet.
Don’t trust anyone.
The extent of any alliance that you make on Battledawn can be related to a concept used in any relationship – time and effort invested. If you do not communicate often with your ally, and troops are not used to support their campaigns or help them with objectives and vice versa then the likelihood of this being a good alliance is slim. Due to current game design and concepts, it is almost foolish not to trick alliances into fake friendships. That is what the majority of players think, however if you have a sliver of integrity and honor like myself and a few others you will have to rely on teamwork and strategy to overcome the treacherous scum that inhabit Battledawn.
As a general rule, I don’t recommend making anyone within 10 ticks an ally under any circumstances. They will be sharing your radar and will know exactly when a large force is out somewhere not being used for colony defence and will have a very big advantage when they choose to backstab you. Anyone within 10 ticks distance of starting an age should be marked hostile. They are not to be trusted, you don’t know them well enough first of all and they are also infringing on your alliance conquers. They should be disposed of immediately before any other major wars are planned.
Do not under any circumstance allow any OP that is not your own within 6 ticks distance of your colony cluster. This could be a stepping stone that could lead to the death of your whole alliance. What most don’t understand, is that even if that alliance who you are best friends with owns that outpost they may not be the ones directly responsible for harming you. All it takes is a harmless spam squad from an enemy alliance to take this outpost and next thing you know 40 squads of tanks are headed to an OP 6 ticks from your colony cluster. Make this known to your true allies, that it is not that you don’t trust them (lie, because you can never fully trust anyone) but that the outpost could be taken over by an enemy overnight.
I’m not going to go into much more detail about politics because it is such a touchy subject, that I have different ideals on. Some people think they can become the Ghandi of their server – good for you. I would rather treat Battledawn like the Cold War always being ready for the worst because it is most likely to occur in a game where backstabbing and sneak attacks happen daily. If you want to step back and examine how good of an ally you truly have. Try to understand how much time and effort your alliance has put out to become an ally of theirs. If all you did was send a message in game saying “Hey lets be allies”, then there isn’t much time and effort made here and anything is likely to happen.
The EndThis will be the last of my guides written. I hope some of you find a couple things useful.
On a side note, I will be retiring from BD as it has become far more of a job than fun. I haven’t been around here long but I have experienced much of the game on the two servers that I played on. What was once a time killer that didn’t seem too intense became a job that was not as much fun anymore. I’m far too competitive to play something like this part-time and I must move on with things. Abandoning alliance members has been the only thing holding me back from making this decision for a week now.
I am truly sorry, but real life demands it.
Sincerely,
Nyar
