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Alliance Improvements

Alliance Improvements

Today's update adds the Alliance Levy system, as well as other alliance features we plan to implement in the future. It has been almost two years since we added alliances as a test feature, but until now their functionality has pretty much remained the same.

Alliance Levy

In our recent update we introduced resource limits. This was implemented to prevent players from receiving too many free resources from other players, and to prevent some players from taking advantage of multiple accounts. However, sending resources for free was heavily used between alliance members to help recover from serious attacks, for retraining armies, etc. This is where the new Alliance Levy features come into place.

So what exactly is Alliance Levy?

Alliance Levy allows all alliance members to deliver resources to another member. It is a feature of the alliance Treasurer which can be used in the following way:

  • The Treasurer can announce a town of an alliance member as the levy recepient
  • The levy size varies from 50% to 200% of hourly income. More developed players will have to pay a larger amount, as it depends on hourly income and not a fixed amount.
  • The levy can be announced at any time and as often as the Treasurer wants, although there is a time-out period before you can place a levy again. The time-out depends on the previous levy size (it will vary from 12 to 48 hours).
  • When the levy is announced, a new button in the marketplace panel now allows people to send the levy more conveniently. You may choose to send resources regularly, and it will be counted as well.
  • A Levy can be paid in any type of resource that has been researched by the recipient player.
  • It is up to recipient to arrange enough storage to receive all of the incoming traders carrying the levy, or to spend it on time. Resources which fail to be delivered because of storage limit will still be counted as a paid levy.
  • The Treasurer will be able to see the progress of levy deliveries. He or she will see which alliance members paid, and how much, so it will be easy to track who is paying and who is not. It is up to alliance Leaders to take action based on that information.
  • The alliance levy resource limits go beyond the resource gratis limits.
  • New alliance members who enter the alliance after a levy is announced are not required to pay the levy.
  • It is possible to cancel a levy, although the time-out feature will still be in effect, and must expire before you will be able to announce one again.

Since the levy feature allows alliances to manage their resources in a pretty convenient way, the resource gratis limit has been reduced from 100% to 30% of daily income. This will possibly prevent players from taking unfair advantage without sacrificing important gameplay possibilities - such as redistributing resources within their alliance.

This is only the first of the three alliance features we are planning to implement. The others are Commander abilities - which includes the following two items:

  1. Ability to move the troops between alliance members to reinforce each other promptly, along with the ability to see all the marching troops and incoming attacks.
  2. Ability to arrange simultaneous attacks via a simple and straight-forward mechanism. This is currently used by experienced players manually - which is tricky to pull off. It will be easier when we implement it in the future.

Let us know what you think about these new alliance features: Levy feature of the Treasurer from current update and new planned features of the Commander.

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Comments

One concern that we have at the moment is that all of the taxes could be paid using the same resource. Watching the world market shows that some resources are at low demand and some are at a very high demand.

This could allow all players to always send the same resource and will not help the alliance to recover from an attack or loss of ones army.

Classical and medieval age players are heavy in iron. If all taxes were paid in iron, the tax would be of little value to the alliance when they need enormous amounts of wood and stone for siege upgrades.

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all great ideas i think, really love the idea of the new planned features for the commander. looking forward to it!

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Mari, that's because currently everyone started at the same time and have similar progress. Later in the game the resource supply/demand will be more balanced as you can recall from the past stages, plus there are market badges which can allow to take advantage even from least used resource.

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50% of hourly rate as a levy seems quite high as the minimum rate. Why does it have to start at this. If the levy is to help the alliance, should they not be able to set any amount they wish, especially a lower amount?

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There can be only 1 commander per alliance ? It would be way better if as long as someone in the alliance is not offline there is always someone able to reinforce members.

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all great ideas i think, really love the idea of the new planned features for the commander. looking forward to it!

is a great idea indeed to allow to the commander the possibilty to coordinate multiple attacks! more efficient! :)

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One concern that we have at the moment is that all of the taxes could be paid using the same resource.

Mari, that's because currently everyone started at the same time and have similar progress. Later in the game the resource supply/demand will be more balanced as you can recall from the past stages, plus there are market badges which can allow to take advantage even from least used resource.

Even with what Bers said as a reply to Mari, I still do agree with her.

An alliance Levy could be raised in order to contribute to an important alliance building (like upgrading alliance size, etc.) and often those buildings require specific resources (stone).

Also, if planning to go to war, an Alliance may be willing to contribute to the construction of war buildings (for example at players who are lucky enough to have horses in their territory), and this time food is more important.

A good first compromise would be to let the treasurer add a comment/message along with the levy, explaining the reason for this sudden tax, and the most required resources.

50% of hourly rate as a levy seems quite high as the minimum rate

I also agree on that.

Edited 16 minutes later by . Reason: Adding quotes.
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There can be only 1 commander per alliance ? It would be way better if as long as someone in the alliance is not offline there is always someone able to reinforce members.

Only leader is 1 per alliance, the others can be multiple ones. If you are unable to do it, this is a bug and should be reported.

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50% of hourly rate as a levy seems quite high as the minimum rate. Why does it have to start at this. If the levy is to help the alliance, should they not be able to set any amount they wish, especially a lower amount?

Because the rate depends on time and average reasonable rate is 1 hour income during 24 hours. 50% will be at 12 hours. It is unreasonable to set the time below 12 hours because people are playing at different time zones and will not be able to react at such levy announcement.

The levy tool provides basic functionality, but you are not prohibited to do any kind of additional rules within your alliance and announce them in the alliance chat or wherever you see fit. You can declare that iron is prohibited to be sent, or you can ask to only send half of what is required by levy if 50% sounds too high for you, etc.

Ofcourse the levy mechanism is just only released and untested and might be revised later based on feedback, but you are too early to do conclusions. This is not a simple tool, you have to try it out in different conditions before deciding where it works and where it doesn't.

Edited 1 minute later by .
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Also I think people misunderstood the levy. 50% of hourly income during 12 hours, is 50% of income generated by your country during 1 hour. 12 hours is just the time during which you have to deliver that income, not the 12-hour income.

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sounds great, but the treasurer should have the possibility to stop the levy to a town at any time he/she likes.Especially with so many time zones, we should be able to stop the delivery when the receiver is at work or in bed, when resources can't be moved around.

and I think the Treasurer should also be able to see the marching troops and incoming attacks. this way he/she can better steer the resources.

Edited 13 minutes later by .
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It seems more and more that this game is for the players that want to "play" war. I find the fee for entering an Alliance pretty high!! Too high. What happens if you do not want to enter an Alliance because the fee is too high and you just want to play, fight monsters not players, want to explore, play puzzles? We were originally promised to be able to play solo, but that is not the case anymore. A simple solution you offer is to upgrade your walls and towers. I am wondering if the non war players are protected enough to be able to enjoy playing and interacting without the fear of being attacked contstantly.
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Quote from Iron - above -

It seems more and more that this game is for the players that want to "play" war. I find the fee for entering an Alliance pretty high!! Too high.

My answer.

The warriors feel that the game is more for players who want to play solo or farming. Must mean that it is more balanced then we think.

The levy is decided by an alliance and it doesn't have to be implemented at all if the alliance so chooses not to. But you should expect to have to do something to have the benefits of an alliance.

If you play solo, you are missing out on the best part of the game and that is getting to know other players. And the sharing of information is very helpful, even to the most experienced players.

I hope that you will enjoy the enrichment of getting to know many players. Most are really nice and we care about the other players, even though we war against each other.

Edited 5 minutes later by . Reason: Quote looked like my words..
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The warriors feel that the game is more for players who want to play solo or farming. Must mean that it is more balanced then we think.

The levy is decided by an alliance and it doesn't have to be implemented at all if the alliance so chooses not to. But you should expect to have to do something to have the benefits of an alliance.

If you play solo, you are missing out on the best part of the game and that is getting to know other players. And the sharing of information is very helpful, even to the most experienced players.

I hope that you will enjoy the enrichment of getting to know many players. Most are really nice and we care about the other players, even though we war against each other.

Don't get me wrong. I played almost two months in A4 and in the end got to be part of an Alliance. I liked the interaction with other players. Had some good conversations with them and others, learned a lot. But this should be and stay possible even if I do not want to be an active attacking player. If this game can offer us both a lot of what we want, than that is great. It is impossible to keep all players happy. But most of the enhancements I see, seem to be more for the leaderisms. That is why I reacted. Interacting with each other... fun. I just do not like war (understatement if ever), even if it is a game. Granted that in order to get to next levels I have to slay bad beasties, but that is as far as I want to go. To each his own. I hope that this game keeps offering good times for all!
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But most of the enhancements I see, seem to be more for the leaderisms. That is why I reacted.

You could not be more wrong.  If you ever played leaderism, you would understand that the changes that have been made are actually very must against leaderism players.  Keep in mind, you don't need to join an alliance at all if you feel that the 'price' is too high to pay.  The whole point of alliances are to help each other and to protect each other.  If you feel that it 'costs' you too much to be protected, then don't join one.

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We need a total of resource income per hour in the window we use to send the levy. Now it is a guess and does it calculate on the basic production or the production we see in the resource window? maybe you could also put it in this resource window.

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Reply to

We need a total of resource income per hour in the window we use to send the levy. Now it is a guess and does it calculate on the basic production or the production we see in the resource window? maybe you could also put it in this resource window.

Agreed. We need to see a button at the bottom of the resource list in each town to show the total income in that town.

Or, better still, an easily accessible button to show the grand total income of a player's country which is dynamically updated in real time.

Edited 1 minute later by .
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Reply to

We need a total of resource income per hour in the window we use to send the levy. Now it is a guess and does it calculate on the basic production or the production we see in the resource window? maybe you could also put it in this resource window.

In the Alliance/Members tab, if you hover your mouse over the percentage coloumn, you get the amount of levy you have to pay.

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Commander abilities: does he will be able to:

- move troops which are in the shelter of the other member of the alliance?

- see enemy troops when they are entering in the attacked country or when the attacker just left his country?

- to apply power-ups to the army of the others members of the alliance ? - battle cry, black fire...

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