Can You Migrate a Whole Alliance? The Migration Toolkit

Introduction:

When we started the process of moving our entire player population from one alliance to another we consulted the forum. Although we got some good advice from individual respondents, there certainly wasn’t an abundance of threads to draw on.
For that reason I have written a report on our experience. I hope it’s useful to anyone in a similar situation; I appreciate that every alliance is different but perhaps you will find some inspiration here. If you have any questions or comments, @annieb and I would love to hear from you…

Guardians of Terra was a busy, mid-tier alliance with a wide range of players ranging from level 30 to level four.

We were hitting 5-6 titans, had a small but active Line group and weathered a run of awful war results to put together three wins on the spin.*

And then we all left.

This is our account of how to successfully manage an alliance migration.


  1. The Status Quo

I joined Guardians of Terra around six weeks ago and found the following:

  • the leader was absent
  • there were two co-leaders still actively managing the alliance
  • a small handful of players, including the co-leaders Annie and Zoey used Line
  • non-active players were kicked after fair warning
  • new members were being actively recruited

So why change anything if the co-leaders were managing all the day-to-day business?

  1. Absent Leaders

There are a number of problems with having an absent leader. These are obviously much more acute if there are no co-leaders:

  • the leader cannot be kicked and so occupies a slot
  • the leaders heroes are still used for war matching (as it currently stands) and typically, the leader tends to have one of the strongest teams in the alliance.
  • no new co-leaders can be promoted
  • no co-leaders can be demoted or kicked

It may be that an alliance can cope with these restrictions, however for an alliance that wants to grow and be victorious, the zombie leader becomes a millstone.

For one of our co-leaders, @Annieb, this became unacceptable.

  1. The Catalyst

Following a successful recruitment campaign, the Line chat group became increasingly popular.
New members asked about the history of the alliance and it became clear that there was an appetite for a new alliance which would jettison the current leader, unless he became active again.

Annie formed a closed group of senior players to discuss a plan and also explored the forum for advice. The senior players agreed that the absence of a leader was not conducive to success and that @Annieb was the clear heir-apparent . The following plan was agreed upon

4: An Exodus is Planned

The senior player group agreed the following plan:

  • the alliance description would be changed to attempt to engage the leader, who, surprisingly, had logged on briefly.
  • there would be a chat message to the leader posted regularly in-game with a follow-up paragraph saved on Line that could be pasted in to explain the situation were he to respond.
  • after 10 days, a message would be posted regularly to the group chat suggesting a new alliance and asking for opinions.

We used the following message, tailored to balance the desire to show decisive leadership without demanding obedience, encouraging debate and being reasonably accessible to players with English as a second language:

No doubt you have noticed our leader xxx is mostly absent which limits our alliance in several ways, and as co-leaders we are keen to continue to grow. We have left him a message asking to pass on the leadership, but with no response as yet. So with reluctance we are considering starting a new alliance.

We are not going to rush this and would like to hear your thoughts before we commit, as this needs to be a team effort. We hope most of you would come with us, and any co-leader or elder will maintain that position in the new alliance.

We will repeat this message regularly to allow debate before starting the transfer, should the majority of players agree.

Annie B and Zoey

  • Following a 7 day consultation, a decision would be made to go or stay
  • The practical details could then be arranged

5 - Crossing the Rubicon - the decision

Following an overwhelmingly positive response to the plan, Annie truncated the consultation period with the backing of the players using Line.

The move was structured as follows:

  • Annie would leave to setup the new alliance
  • Zoey, the other co-leader, would stay to manage the original alliance along with Annie’s alt account.
  • Annie would then announce the opening of the new alliance via Line and her alt account.
  • players then began migrating across
  • after a further two days of attempting to communicate with all the players Zoey also migrated.
  • the alliance was left on ‘invite only’ to prevent new players joining by accident
  • directions to the new alliance, Guardians Reborn, were left in the description panel.

Over the next 48 hours 23 of our 26 members migrated to Guardians Reborn.

  1. Casualties

This transition wasn’t entirely painless

  • two players other than the leader appear to have become inactive, including a third co-leader. This may be a co-incidence as neither were communicators, we will probably never know

  • our Titans have been reset to 1*. We do not feel like this is a major issue and anticipate accelerating moving back to 6* briskly. Indeed, the newer players are enjoying not being wiped out!

  1. Conclusions

When Annie and I discussed the move with the forum we were warned of the possible consequences, that the alliance may fracture and two weak alliances would be left in the vortex.

We heeded the advice and maximised opportunities to communicate and demonstrate a thorough and decisive leadership. I believe that this has helped Annie navigate the move with great poise (apologies if I go full fan-boy here)

I know this is just a game, but we invest time and finances in it and build relationships with our allies so it was important to us as a project.

Here are a few further tips and conclusions:

  • an external communications app was invaluable for us to build strong relationships and make robust plans
  • we were very fortunate to have a popular and respected leader-in-waiting. There was no war of succession and Zoey has been extremely selfless in playing the role of lieutenant.
  • bringing leadership and communication skills from real life was another positive

Thanks for reading. We will take a day or two to settle, but if you enjoyed our tale please consider joining the adventure. Contact us on the forum or annie_br on line.

Thanks for reading

JB ‘Lesley-Annia’

(C) Guardians Reborn - join us

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Nicely written and done! Very good advice and tips here for anyone wanting/needing to do that.

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That was an awesome and accurate accounting.

I would add, the whole process and planning was pretty good fun and came with the added benefit of bringing our leadership specifically, and alliance as a whole into a more tight knit group
I have high hopes for the future of this alliance :slight_smile:

Annie (Not so humble - New leader of Guardians Reborn)

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2nd postscript

I would also like to add that @JonahTheBard was extremely key to both the move and prior to the move.
Since joining our alliance he has actively recruited for us and taken on the role of War Master.
I am extremely grateful for the support and he is now Co-leader in the new alliance.

:grin:

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I may remember wrong, but weren’t you recruited here as a bunch and did know that leader was absent? If that’s correct, what was the reason you entered abandoned alliance?

And what are your plans now, eg wars and so?

I think what you did is awesome work, offering the players option to be in active alliance, and not left alone in the wind… I am on the hunt, currently low intensity, and I keep my eye on the ads, and I did stumble on your topics, and terra ad, and that ‘leader inactive’ just was discouraging, so I’m just wondering what you saw there? Opportunity to get bunch of players without going through the recruitment from scratch or?

@RedPython Excellent memory sir, @Duaneski, @Lila_Ann and I were part of a roving band looking for a new alliance, however it turned out that we were looking for slightly different things so we amicably parted ways.

@annieb replied to our add and LilaAnn did notice the inactive leader. I was quite new to alliance mechanics and didn’t think it would be a problem. And my first alliance was treading water so anything was an improvement!

And yes, we tried to poach you too a few weeks ago and I did say that the leader was an issue, but we had plans a-foot. But it turns out they went very well!

We now have 22+ active players who have all had to choose to join us and a dynamic leader.

In terms of war, we always fight to win, with me as main cheerleader. We aren’t at the stage of allocating specific hits, but I do analyse our alliances defence teams, particularly of the new guys and discuss the best formations with them.

So we’re on a high at the moment. Drop in if you’re free :wink:

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Excellent write up as always :slight_smile: glad to hear things are going well with the Guardians - and actually I love the name! Maybe even better than the original :wink:

Best of luck to you guys :smiley:

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Erm… is this reply in the right place ?

What in blazes are you talking about, @Feroroxy?

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Don’t get this either.
They did it exactly the right way. No wining, no claiming, no self-pity -->they ACT! to change their situation and they did it well.

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My text was not to migrate a whole alliance .My text was to those people who are leaving because they don’t like what the dev. are doing to the game. If you don’t like it just leave. You don’t have to write a two page letter about it. Sorry if I put it under the wrong one. My mistake. Thanks feroroxy :slight_smile:

So we are 11 days in and I thought those of you following our story might like an update

We are now back to the level we were at previously, fighting 6* titans.
We chose as a team to forgo everyone getting loot from each titan by killing them quickly, and it’s paid off.

One thing I would do differently is be more cognizant of the time of day to start the new alliance. I set it up 1st thing in the morning UK time. Which given the fact each titan comes 1 hour earlier meant those of us in Europe missed the 1st weeks titans, our US friends dealt with them for us but we would have progressed quicker with a start at the end of the UK day rather than the beginning.
The 1st titan to appear when us Europeans were around got battered in less than 15 minutes !

Of the 3 we left behind, our old leader has not logged in.
Our semi absent co-leader and remaining member have been online, but must have decided not to join us.
The alliance description still has our parting message.

But we have picked up 4 new team mates without really trying. 2 newbies and 2 mid level (for our alliance).

Plus we had a visit from @RedPython who came for a look see

It’s all looking good for the guardians - I was keeping a couple of places in case of a late arrival from the remaining terrans, but will be opening those up now

Come join the fun at Guardians Reborn, or just pop in for a cup of tea and a slice of titan flesh :slight_smile:

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Hello. Sorry, I know this is out of the topic, but could someone tell me how to post a new announcement?

You used to have to do some kind of tutorial. Now I think you need to have read a certain number of posts.

Then go to New topics and there should be a 'create topic’s button.

Also, as that was so off topic, I think we deserve a post on how awesome our alliance move is!

Yes you need to be a basic user

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Excellent post!

I started playing in Jan this year and joined an alliance where the leader, co-leaders were inactive. Being a noob I just casually went about my business, attacking the titan when I could.

It wasn’t until an active member pointed out, and I quote, “This leader is useless”. Once this was mentioned I then noticed the majority of members were inactive.

After a few chats, there weren’t many of us who were active so it wasn’t a very long chat, it was decided a new Alliance should be created. Once we came up with a name I left and created a new one, the others remained to communicate the planned migration, etc. Nearly all who were active (6 in total lol) followed us across.

We’ve all learnt alot since then and have formed a great alliance with both experienced and noobs. Using Discord has helped immensely with this progress.

I definitely recommend an outside source of communication before, during and after the migration. In a case where this isn’t possible (not everyone likes to use Line, Discord, etc), having members remain to ensure the migration is happening is definitely a must.

I’m pleased too that this is under the guide section as it’ll raise interest/curiosity amonst noobs, who may have found themselves in an inactive alliance.

Would be good if you could keep us updated with your Alliance’s progress :grinning:

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Thank you for sharing your story - we will most definitely keep you updated:)

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Thank you for the update. Very interesting :slight_smile:
One thing stood out to me:

I think the 100% key there is that you chose this as an alliance.

This is really a potential landmine for other alliances maybe doing this.

Imagine if you guys hadn’t decided. Some people could’ve got a little tilted at being left off a weeks worth of titans.

I would think it would make sense, especially on the 1-4* titans, to request everyone to not hit the Titan more than 1-2 times, and try not to kill until everyone had a hit. Since the 23 hour delay is there either way, ya know?

And the next Titan to spawn shouldn’t be a problem even if somehow you aren’t full flags :slight_smile:

Just a thought. I think the key anyway is you guys made a decision. Hopefully other alliances in this situation will consider it as well, and make a decision they all agree on :slight_smile:

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We did that for the 1st one, we all tickled it. But the loot was poor (of course) and we then read of an alliance taking a week to move to the next stage level, and a suggestion that finishing them off quickly would get us through quicker. It seems to have worked, though of course I only have evidence of the one strategy.

But I agree totally that if I had forced that on the whole alliance it may not have gone down well.
We are definitely a democracy not a dictatorship:)

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Not… not yet.
I’ve seen that gleam in @Annieb 's eyes. She seeks to take all of the rings of power for herself.

In fact. Just last night I saw her sacrificing seven virgin… sniffle sob … seven virgin root beers… she poured them out right in front of me.

Then she maniacally laughed.

I’m not saying you guys are doomed. I think, most probably, her deals with the E&P gods will vault you atop the likes of 7DD… but at what cost ??

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