Euroslavia
27-04-2005, 22:53
Seemingly every day, the NationStates world sees a new alliance of some sort come into being or sees a country attempt to gain allies. Those threads have been a mainstay of NationStates seemingly from the very beginning of the game, but for all their popularity, the alliances that are proposed sometimes don't get off the ground. Why? What separates the alliance that takes off and becomes a mainstay of the NationStates community from the
alliance proposal that dies after a couple of bumps fails to garner any notice? We (Euroslavia and I; known as the entity called Eurozonia) have a few ideas about factors that lead to the most successful alliances on NationStates.
Respect for the player founding the alliance
This is admittedly the most difficult of the steps, so why start with it first? It's simple. The more well-known your country is, the better your chances of your alliance gaining notice by serious RPers. It's a sad fact of life on NS that new players sometimes have a hard time getting noticed for anything short of attempting to declare war on the entire world and "n00king" everyone on sight. Granted, this has not always been the case, but that seems to be the way things go on NS. Besides waiting until you have as much stature as Automagfreek, your best bet to get an alliance started if you haven't been RPing on NS for very long is to follow the suggestions we'll outline for you in the rest of this post.
Have a clear goal or a specific objective in mind
What's the surest way to align yourself with the types of countries you want in your alliance? Before you begin to propose an alliance, be sure to decide what you want your alliance to accomplish. Do you think Sarzonia is a threat to the soverignty of anti-gay countries? Do you wish there was a stronger emphasis on human rights? Do you want other countries with a Liberal Imperialist government to join together? Make that decision and include that in your introductory post. The clearer your aims are, the more likely the countries you want in your alliance will ask to join.
If necessary, make sure that the nations that you accept into your alliance have clear records at supporting whatever goal you wish to promote, or the fact that they have rectified their past ways, and that they don’t plan on going back to their old nature. Promises are broken often, and that’s when action needs to take place.
Determine your recruitment strategy and how to add new members
Different people have different ideas about membership requirements, and alliances are no exception. But you will have to have members join your alliance for it to get off the ground. How you do this is largely up to you, but some methods that we've seen implemented are recruitment threads specifically set up to harvest applications to join, directions to apply to an alliance on its message board, and perhaps via telegram to the founding nation. Once you determine how recruiting will happen, you will have to decide on your procedure for admitting countries into your alliance. Will you require a RP test? Will you just accept all comers? Will you open the process to all member nations or just a few in an executive council or a recruitment committee? Whatever you decide, be sure to be consistent with it or have specific criteria for changing your mind in the event someone comes along who fits the criteria but would be a poor fit for your alliance.
Some alliances, such as the Organization of Maritime Powers (OMP) have a three day waiting period whereby current members can decide to vote in a member or reject the application. If even one nation has a serious objection to another's application, the applicant is rejected. The Euroslavia-founded Union of World Powers (UWP) has a three stage RP test where applicants are supposed to RP three scenarios presented by a tester. If the recruit passes the tests, they are accepted into the alliance. The alliance I founded, the Woodstock Pact, has a fairly complex set of criteria for membership, but in effect will likely use a similar system to the OMP's.
If your alliance creates an RP test for the admittance of new nations, you’d be surprised at what nations you’re able to weed out, and what nations you’ll accept. There are players out there who you may not have heard of too often, but when it comes down to RP’ing the given scenario, give everyone an equal chance at giving it a shot. For all you know, Hataria or some of the other less experienced RP’ers out there could just blow you away with their response.
The Number of members in your alliance
As we have seen in past experiences, the number of members of an alliance can be detrimental to the success of it. The more members you have, the more pressure you’re able to put on a rogue nation, and more military you’ll have in case of a war; however, the more members you have also equals more diversity among the members, as well as an increased chance in squabbles and arguments within your alliance. This is the last thing you want. Having too few of members can make your alliance not as ‘threatening’ when it needs to put pressure on a rogue nation, and can be passed as a blow-off; however, having a fewer members also equates to a lesser chance at arguments and disagreements.
It’s up to you whether you want your alliance to be big or small, but perhaps you can find a healthy medium so that your alliance can be a honorable group of nations, while avoiding arguments that are detrimental to the alliances’ success.
Arguments are expected
Now let me clarify the fact that arguments aren’t necessarily a bad thing for an alliance, but there’s always the chance that this argument (if it isn’t solved) can lead to a division between the members of the alliance. Make sure that any argument is solved as quickly as it possibly can, with hopes that the members in the disagreement are willing to compromise for the sake of the unity of the alliance. You can’t expect every member to agree with every decision that is made.
Establish the groundwork once you have members
Getting member nations may be the easy part, but the hard part remains getting your alliance off the ground. To do that, you must first establish the internal housekeeping, such as writing a charter or constitution and determining the leadership structure you will use. It's possible that your alliance will fall under the principle of an alliance of equals, but there usually has to be a unified voice at the top of the alliance that can speak for the alliance. Most important, however; the alliance must be able to handle any external or internal emergencies such as declarations of war against members or violation of alliance rules by individual members. The actual structure itself is up to you, but something must be put into place for your alliance to thrive.
After your internal house is in order, start RPing in the I.I. world. Your best bet is most likely to start with a negotiation RP or a free trade RP, but you can get your alliance involved in RPs where the hot button issue as you've decided it comes up. However, be mindful of how you get your alliance involved in a RP because it's very easy to gain a reputation as a n00b alliance or an alliance of warmongers, whether that assessment is fair or not.
Conclusion
This thread is certainly not the last word when it comes to establishing an alliance, but we hope this guide will help you to realise what can help your alliance achieve the goals you've set for it and become a part of NS history in the process.
alliance proposal that dies after a couple of bumps fails to garner any notice? We (Euroslavia and I; known as the entity called Eurozonia) have a few ideas about factors that lead to the most successful alliances on NationStates.
Respect for the player founding the alliance
This is admittedly the most difficult of the steps, so why start with it first? It's simple. The more well-known your country is, the better your chances of your alliance gaining notice by serious RPers. It's a sad fact of life on NS that new players sometimes have a hard time getting noticed for anything short of attempting to declare war on the entire world and "n00king" everyone on sight. Granted, this has not always been the case, but that seems to be the way things go on NS. Besides waiting until you have as much stature as Automagfreek, your best bet to get an alliance started if you haven't been RPing on NS for very long is to follow the suggestions we'll outline for you in the rest of this post.
Have a clear goal or a specific objective in mind
What's the surest way to align yourself with the types of countries you want in your alliance? Before you begin to propose an alliance, be sure to decide what you want your alliance to accomplish. Do you think Sarzonia is a threat to the soverignty of anti-gay countries? Do you wish there was a stronger emphasis on human rights? Do you want other countries with a Liberal Imperialist government to join together? Make that decision and include that in your introductory post. The clearer your aims are, the more likely the countries you want in your alliance will ask to join.
If necessary, make sure that the nations that you accept into your alliance have clear records at supporting whatever goal you wish to promote, or the fact that they have rectified their past ways, and that they don’t plan on going back to their old nature. Promises are broken often, and that’s when action needs to take place.
Determine your recruitment strategy and how to add new members
Different people have different ideas about membership requirements, and alliances are no exception. But you will have to have members join your alliance for it to get off the ground. How you do this is largely up to you, but some methods that we've seen implemented are recruitment threads specifically set up to harvest applications to join, directions to apply to an alliance on its message board, and perhaps via telegram to the founding nation. Once you determine how recruiting will happen, you will have to decide on your procedure for admitting countries into your alliance. Will you require a RP test? Will you just accept all comers? Will you open the process to all member nations or just a few in an executive council or a recruitment committee? Whatever you decide, be sure to be consistent with it or have specific criteria for changing your mind in the event someone comes along who fits the criteria but would be a poor fit for your alliance.
Some alliances, such as the Organization of Maritime Powers (OMP) have a three day waiting period whereby current members can decide to vote in a member or reject the application. If even one nation has a serious objection to another's application, the applicant is rejected. The Euroslavia-founded Union of World Powers (UWP) has a three stage RP test where applicants are supposed to RP three scenarios presented by a tester. If the recruit passes the tests, they are accepted into the alliance. The alliance I founded, the Woodstock Pact, has a fairly complex set of criteria for membership, but in effect will likely use a similar system to the OMP's.
If your alliance creates an RP test for the admittance of new nations, you’d be surprised at what nations you’re able to weed out, and what nations you’ll accept. There are players out there who you may not have heard of too often, but when it comes down to RP’ing the given scenario, give everyone an equal chance at giving it a shot. For all you know, Hataria or some of the other less experienced RP’ers out there could just blow you away with their response.
The Number of members in your alliance
As we have seen in past experiences, the number of members of an alliance can be detrimental to the success of it. The more members you have, the more pressure you’re able to put on a rogue nation, and more military you’ll have in case of a war; however, the more members you have also equals more diversity among the members, as well as an increased chance in squabbles and arguments within your alliance. This is the last thing you want. Having too few of members can make your alliance not as ‘threatening’ when it needs to put pressure on a rogue nation, and can be passed as a blow-off; however, having a fewer members also equates to a lesser chance at arguments and disagreements.
It’s up to you whether you want your alliance to be big or small, but perhaps you can find a healthy medium so that your alliance can be a honorable group of nations, while avoiding arguments that are detrimental to the alliances’ success.
Arguments are expected
Now let me clarify the fact that arguments aren’t necessarily a bad thing for an alliance, but there’s always the chance that this argument (if it isn’t solved) can lead to a division between the members of the alliance. Make sure that any argument is solved as quickly as it possibly can, with hopes that the members in the disagreement are willing to compromise for the sake of the unity of the alliance. You can’t expect every member to agree with every decision that is made.
Establish the groundwork once you have members
Getting member nations may be the easy part, but the hard part remains getting your alliance off the ground. To do that, you must first establish the internal housekeeping, such as writing a charter or constitution and determining the leadership structure you will use. It's possible that your alliance will fall under the principle of an alliance of equals, but there usually has to be a unified voice at the top of the alliance that can speak for the alliance. Most important, however; the alliance must be able to handle any external or internal emergencies such as declarations of war against members or violation of alliance rules by individual members. The actual structure itself is up to you, but something must be put into place for your alliance to thrive.
After your internal house is in order, start RPing in the I.I. world. Your best bet is most likely to start with a negotiation RP or a free trade RP, but you can get your alliance involved in RPs where the hot button issue as you've decided it comes up. However, be mindful of how you get your alliance involved in a RP because it's very easy to gain a reputation as a n00b alliance or an alliance of warmongers, whether that assessment is fair or not.
Conclusion
This thread is certainly not the last word when it comes to establishing an alliance, but we hope this guide will help you to realise what can help your alliance achieve the goals you've set for it and become a part of NS history in the process.