Disclaimer: This post might be a bit long winded.

I feel that there are several flaws with the current alliance server and this suggestion is actually inspired somewhat by *gasp* utopia.

I never really cared for utopia, but did give it a try when first playing earth in 2001/2002. When you entered the game, you were forced into a random kingdom of 25 with 24 other random players.

What I dislike most about the current alliance server is the large degree of bureaucracy in terms of what is and is not allowed and accepted, the ease to kill countries with a first strike, the tools that are implemented for 3rd party sites to make farming brainless, the small amount of players, and lastly, what motivates many alliances to act (ruining others rounds because of long held grudges, vendettas, etc). It is annoying to have to seek out getting recruited in order to play if you are a new player (vets at least know how to go about this if they are coming back).

My suggestion is a new server that would randomly throw you in an alliance of...for example: 20. This server would automatically throw a tag onto your country that your alliance could rename if they so chose. The server would also not support 3rd party sites, so everything would have to done in game. Hopefully both insite forums as well as chat rooms would be supported.

Every forum could have some standard posts by the administrators to both welcome you into the game in terms of basic strategy and generally accepted policies. I think it would also be good to slow the pace down similar to the 1a, 1b games of years ago (1 turn every 40 minutes) with a max of 75 (37). This would allow alliances to not be completely smashed by a FS and actually stand a chance. You would be able to declare war both individually and as one alliance against another.

I believe in utopia wars actually allowed you to grow rather than just destroy. Gains for SS and PS could be significantly improved if at war with another alliance. Other special attacks could be modified and weakened/tweaked to promote more growth rather than pure destruction.

Summary:
-hybrid of team/alliance server
-20 randomly assigned countries
-all work done in game
-no country report options other than ingame
-forums and chat rooms supported in site
-slower pace with less max turns and a longer round
-weakened special attacks (since everything is smaller now and there is no longer 10k + players)
-increased benefits for formally declaring war against an alliance in game
-tweaked spy ops (look into eliminating some ops)

I feel this could be a good intro server that would promote teamwork. Right now all servers are almost totally individual based or overbearing alliance based policies.

Flame away.

hm much of this would require us to complete proper forum -- game interaction... which will eventually happen :)

other than that... it's an interesting idea, but not one I'd really want to implement until we've gotten quite a few more players.

My thoughts were that this would be more "new player friendly" compared to the alliance server, but would still promote interaction.

It could be a stepping stone to the alliance server if players want to play a more intense game. I feel it could help with player retention assuming new players do come via facebook or whatever.

i had the same thoughts on such a server. the biggest thing would be to shake up politics. the game is stale and any changes to the status quo would bring in some fresh air.

i like the idea uticant.

i'd also like to see some changes with starting land. seeing it raised to 1000 acres and a starting bpt of 20 as opposed to 5. increase exploring effectiveness via tech. allow the selling of acres on the public market.

allowing only 1 attack on countries unless you have declared war.

adding oil to the private market. increasing food selling price on the private market.

in short i'd just like to see some actual game changes from what we knew before...don't get me wrong i see some nice stuff getting done. i just want more =)

Thanks maz, I value you opinion.

And yes, I think some of those other options could be good as well.

As for this idea, you could even link it somehow into facebook, so it might not totally be random (putting you together with fb friends).

I like the declare war idea, or at least modifying what it is now.

Declaring war only to go around GDI and get a 10% bonus is kinda lame. GDI could definitely be modified too (maybe make it an actual organization, which could offer other benefits to members)

I made a post about this months ago on team board.

Was told you had other ideas.

reference :http://forums.earthempires.com/...amp;z=an-interesting-idea

oh and I support this 110%