Hello everyone, I'm Breor, and welcome back to Goodgame Empire.
If you've been subscribed to my channel for a long time, you will perhaps remember that
I used to make the occasional "audio-only" video.
These were like podcasts, and the idea was that my subscribers could listen to them in
the background while they played Goodgame Empire.
I even designed what is, in my opinion, a cool slide viewers could use to navigate the
whole playlist of these types of videos.
Well today, audio only is back, and our topic is going to be alliance leadership.
Having played the game for over four years now - I have filled every role except for
that of alliance leader itself - and we're going to talk about why that is.
I created Breor on USA1 during the spring of 2013, having experienced a great deal of
misery on my very first account.
I was hoping to get a off to a fresh start, and I thought a great way to do that would
be to form a new alliance with a friend I had just met in the area: mrdennis5.
He became the alliance leader, and I became an officer, because back then there were no
specialized officer roles like 'war marshall', 'recruiter', 'deputy', etc...
The alliance we started was called "Dark Army" and, much to my surprise, we were actually
very successful.
I wanna analyze why that is.
I think a huge factor in our favor was actually our location on the world map.
I had moved my castle to the near edge of the map in order to capture the three superfood
outposts I have now, so the players who started up around us were all new and seeking a good
alliance.
2013 was also a pretty strong growth period for the game, so I imagine if you tried to
do the same thing now, you wouldn't be as successful.
The other thing I think we did well in Dark Army is we were proactive recruiters.
We messaged people in our area who were weaker and stronger than us, and we weren't going
to give up when people said no.
We were probably pretty annoying, but it worked.
Instead of spamming the players in our area with generic recruitment messages repeatedly,
we only did that once for the purposes of opening up a conversation.
Players who didn't reply couldn't be recruited, but we strove to make a connection over time
even with players who declined our offer of membership.
One such player was stubbie, a grisled and moderately aggressive character whom we came
to learn only had one leg - hence the name.
Stubbie was stronger than we were at the time, and thus unwilling to join, but once he saw
how our alliance was growing, he did finally allow himself to be recruited.
Another important member we recruited was Terth.
Terth had experience in prior wars and has - to this day - been a consistent and active
player.
It's very important for an alliance to have a strongest player, who teaches others how
to play the game and ultimately carries everyone else on their backs.
We got very lucky, for a player I recruited in his infancy turned out to be a big ruby
buyer who filled this role perfectly.
This player was dthompson22.
DTH, as we called him, was eventually recruited away from our alliance to join Dream Team,
but we managed to recruit another strong player by the name of ZombieMaster.
You may have heard of ZombieMaster... after growing for a short while within our team,
he went to KingdomOfNeph and essentially became their War Marshall.
He ran masses and posted the team's battle reports in the forums - he actually turned
into a pretty nasty character on the forums if I'm honest.
He would later pull the rest of our team to KoN when Dark Army was finished, but I'll
speak more about that later.
For now, "Dark Army" was growing group of active players who were interested in starting
up some wars with other local groups.
We still had to be careful... one of the suckiest things about Goodgame Empire (in my opinion)
is how alliances can become subs of other alliances and form huge over-protective families.
Spotting an independent alliance of about our size was difficult, and because we ourselves
were independent, we became good targets for other players to attack.
We eventually did declare a war on the alliance "Lady Puffers," and massed them successfully
at least once.
The war was not a personal one, and I remember it being over quite quickly.
What the war made clear was that we were going to have to find a new method of obtaining
fair glory hits and bringing PVP action to our alliance.
At around this time, mrdennis5 became quite busy with college and - admittedly to my dismay
- promoted DTH to become the new leader of the alliance.
I'm sure I wanted a crack at leadership at the time, and since I had been the cofounding
member of the alliance, dennis' decision to pick someone else was surprising and disappointing.
DTH's leadership did not go well - while he was a strong member indeed, he was a very
lax leader and left the group with no goals to achieve.
While I'm not saying I would necessarily have been a better leader, I do think it's
important for alliance leaders to consider more that just might when issuing promotions.
I solved the problem of how to bring about fair PVP when I introduced a new program that
I called "Terror Tuesday"... the idea behind this program was that the officers could help
all of the members in the alliance find a good target to attack, and that we could all
send our attacks to land at around 3:00 AM on Tuesday.
No two members were permitted to attack the same player or the same alliance, so this
helped us avoid starting wars with groups who would overpower us.
It also taught our members more about cooperation and proper timing in case we needed to launch
real mass attacks in the future.
Running the event was quite fun for me, though I believe it caused some headaches for stubbie,
who had become the leader of the alliance after DTH had left for Dream Team.
Stubbie never participated himself, but he did have to deal with a great number of messages
from players and alliances whom we had attacked.
All of the attacks we conducted as part of Terror Tuesday were fair, so our targets had
no reason to complain, but complain they did nevertheless.
Speaking from experience, I know I would not be a good diplomat, because getting messages
of this nature would really not make me happy.
Though he did come to resent the thing which made Dark Army fun for the rest of us, stubbie
was probably the best leader Dark Army had.
Stubbie was the type of character who didn't normally reply to messages, which is actually
a good trait in a leader because it causes others to work for your attention.
It's probably not a very good trait for making friends, though.
Stubbie also had a healthy skepticism of new members.
I personally believe that being paranoid of spies tears an alliance apart, but stubbie's
expectations of new members served as a form of quality control over all those we recruited.
Stubbie was very different from myself, and I learned by watching him that I probably
wouldn't do a very good job of holding the crown.
Ironically, I became leader at about the time when my interest in doing so faded, since
stubbie promoted me to that position and left to join a Neph branch with some of his former
friends.
I said at the beginning of this video that I have never been leader, but I should now
qualify that statement.
I certainly have held the crown before, but it's always been in a transitional role or
to temporarily relieve someone else from the duty.
Dark Army had been experiencing some rough times, so I took the opportunity to merge
it into an alliance called Imperial VSK.
Terth, who had become my second-in-command, didn't stay long in VSK and eventually I followed
both him and stubbie into Neph.
Imperial VSK would become Fluffy Unicorns, which is currently the most powerful alliance
on the USA1 server, so maybe we should have stayed!
I've talked at length already about my own history and that of my first alliance, but
before we move on to my KingdomOfNeph experiences, let's review some of the lessons I did learn,
or at least should have learned, from my time at Dark Army.
I think it's fair to say that I was in-part responsible for the alliance's success.
Most of the recruiting was indeed done by me, and I also had a hand in conducting mass
attacks and advising mrdennis5 on promotions.
I made an alliance website for the group that actually still exists, so if you want to see
it, there will be a link to it in this video's description.
The biggest lesson I learned was that it's better never to accept the mantle of leadership...
the game is a lot more fun to play from the perspective of a deputy.
As the leader of a small to mid-size alliance, you'll have to be dealing with petty complaints
from inside and outside of your alliance.
You'll have to represent your group when negotiating with bullies who just happen to be stronger
and more well-equipped.
You'll be expected to actively engage in texting other people to get them online or using the
groups preferred method of communication, so if you aren't comfortable with these
things, the role is probably not for you.
KingdomOfNeph uses Skype, other groups might use a voice chat program like Ventrilo, and
in Dark Army we made use of Chatzy.
In other words, as leader you will be preoccupied with meaningless small tasks and messaging,
the one benefit being that you are almost always informed of what's going on.
As deputy, you can get this same benefit without being bogged down by all that nonsense.
Deputies still work for the benefit of the alliance, but normally they pioneer and invent
while the leader cleans up the messes of ongoing issues.
My advice to you is, if you want to enjoy the game, find a group of friends you're comfortable
playing with and turn down any opportunity to become leader.
But let's say you're in the unfortunate position of already being a leader.
There are a few ways you can minimize the workload, and you might want to know about
them for the sake of your own sanity.
The first is to write a purposed alliance description.
You might include in your description a list of alliances with whom you are friends, to
discourage being hit accidentally by them.
You might mention that your alliance conducts fair glory attacks and complaints will be
ignored.
You might mention that there will be consequences for those who come to steal your alliance's
resource villages or to claim the property of members who are in ruins.
There are an endless number of things you could put in your alliance description, but
the key is finding an attitude that matches the size and capability of your alliance.
I'm currently a member of The~Unforgiven, so let me use our alliance description as
an example.
I'll paraphrase here, even though I think the actual language is pretty important.
"Welcome to The~Unforgiven.
Our friends include KoN, Grumpy King, and Fluffy Unicorns.
We play by the developer's rules and therefore make and accept glory hits on both castles
and outposts.
Stay away from our resource villages or you'll be stripped.
Complain to the leader about a fair glory hit and you can expect to be attacked by him.
Don't hide behind your fires - man up and put them out.
They aren't a smart defensive strategy, and this is a war game."
Note how aggressive this alliance description is, and how likely it is to discourage someone
from writing to our leader to complain.
Having just recently been in the server war, I (as a member of The~Unforgiven) can appreciate
that our alliance is serious about PVP.
The~Unforgiven is currently the seventh most powerful alliance on the server, so we are
more than capable of backing this description up, but imagine for a second reading this
on the page of a smaller alliance.
It would be laughable and not nearly as effective.
If you were the leader of a medium-sized alliance, your alliance description could say similar
things, but it would need to take a different tone.
Another thing you as leader can do is delegate tasks and promotions, but you must do so thoughtfully
and carefully.
If you promote too many players, you will make promotions meaningless and cause confusion
and angst amongst the hierarchy of leadership.
Instead, take the time to recognize the individual interests of your players and assign them
the roles they are best suited to.
If it seems like promotions wouldn't matter to some players, those players should definitely
be left at "member" status.
KoN2, my previous alliance, handled promotions pretty effectively.
They were sparse, but all of the players who were permanent members of the alliance were
given a promotion to sergeant.
This made them feel like they were invested in the alliance and had been recognized in
some form or fashion.
When I was eventually promoted, it was to War Marshall, which was a role I had experience
with and could fill.
I did end up running masses in KoN2.
If you have talented players in your alliance, you as a leader should be putting them to
work for the purposes of accomplishing your goals.
You can make their goals and your goals one in the same because, when you promote somebody,
they too will want to lead a larger and more powerful alliance.
Something to avoid is password-sharing and multi-accounting, since this practice ultimately
leads to security flaws and a lack of enjoyment in the game.
I have never given my password to anybody else, even when I could have done so to protect
my account from attacks when I was unavailable.
Multi-accounting also causes problems because it's difficult to determine who knows what.
In addition, you'll be splitting one active member between two or more roster slots if
you choose to allow multi-accounting.
It's a bad deal no matter how you approach it.
Ultimately, "Dark Army" failed because the game was losing popularity and the leaders
became less interested in continuing in a medium-sized alliance.
Goodgame Studios introduced new benefits to being in a larger alliance - KoN had control
over alliance property such as capitals and metropolises, and the in-game events were
beginning to reward bigger alliances with important prizes.
Nowadays playing in a medium-sized alliance can be very unrewarding because (1) you won't
be able to get the important prizes other alliances can grab, and (2) medium-sized alliances
are often targeted by bigger ones.
If you don't have a solid base of leaders, players will be leaving your alliance as soon
as they can for a chance to go somewhere bigger and better.
That doesn't mean that having a successful mid-size alliance is impossible however - the
trick, I think, is finding a solid group or players who are willing to pass up on other
opportunities for a chance to do something meaningful in the game.
I'm going to end this video here, but I'll talk about my experiences in KoN in a second-part
to be released on the channel within a few days.
Thanks so much for listening, and thank you to all of the folks who subscribed after Goodgame
Studios promoted one of my videos via email.
Let me know in the comments if "audio only" is still a good format for this channel.
I've been Breor, and I'll see you in the next video.
For more infomation >> Smith Supports Empowering States to Incentivize Benefits Recipients to Stay Drug-Free - Duration: 2:10. 
For more infomation >> Senate Okays Bill Authorizing Natural Gas Power Plant - Duration: 50:28. 
For more infomation >> Renault Clio Estate 0.9 TCe Limited Profiteer t/m 31 maart tijdend de Beste Deal Dagen bij Terwolde - Duration: 1:15. 
For more infomation >> Lip and Ice Cream Coloring Page - Duration: 5:20. 
No comments:
Post a Comment