Using the Request Alliance Action

Select the Request Alliance action by pressing the "Alliance" button under the game map. When the Request Alliance action is selected, clicking the mouse on the game map in a land area possessed by another nation will send an invitation to that nation, requesting that they join your nation in an alliance. They may then either accept or reject the invitation, or you may withdraw it before they respond.

The Request Alliance action button.

The Allies Panel

The Allies panel is used to accept or reject alliance invitations you've received, withdraw alliance invitations you've sent, and break existing alliances. You can get to the Allies panel by pressing the "Allies" button above the panel area on the right side of the game screen.

At the top of the Allies panel is a list of your nation's current allies. Beside the name of each ally nation is a button, "Break Alliance". Press this button to end your alliance with the corresponding nation.

The list of allies. There is one ally, Byhead.

Below the list of current allies a list of nations that your nation has sent alliance invitations to. Beside the name of each potential ally nation is a button, "Withdraw Invitation". Press this button to withdraw your invitation for an alliance with that nation.

The list of nations that you've invited as allies.

Below these is a list of nations that have invited your nation to join them in an alliance. Beside the name of each of these nations are two buttons, "Accept" and "Reject". Press one of these buttons to either accept the invitation and join the nation in an alliance, or reject their invitation.

The list of nations inviting you to ally with them.

The Use of Alliances

It is important to choose your allies carefully, because forming an alliance can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your nation. When two nations are allied, they share technology with one another. This means that for each attribute (such as Personal Combat or Innovation; see the section on the Summary panel for more information about attributes) in which your ally has a greater value that your nation has, your nation's value for that attribute will increase to equal your ally's value for that attribute. Likewise for any attribute in which your nation exceeds your ally's, your ally's value for that attribute will increase to match yours.

However, there is a drawback to forming alliances. To reflect the overhead caused by having to coordinate one nation's efforts with another in an alliance, both your nation and your ally will lose some effectiveness. For each alliance that a nation is party to, that nation loses some percentage of the value of each of their attributes. This is called a decrease in leadership efficiency. Your nation's Leadership Efficiency is displayed in the Technology Summary panel. Normally a nation's leadership efficiency is 100%, but as they form more alliances this number decreases. The decrease in leadership efficiency caused by a given alliance is determined by the difference between your nation's level and the level of your ally. If your ally's level is higher than or close to the same as your nation's level, then your nation will lose only 5% leadership efficiency. But the lower your ally's level, the greater the loss to your leadership efficiency.

For example, If your nation has one alliance, but it is with a nation 40 levels lower than your own nation, then your nation's leadership efficiency will be reduced to 60%, and each of your attributes will equal 60% of the highest value for that attribute possessed by your nation and its allies.

Leadership Efficiency is displayed in the Technology Summary panel. This nation has one ally.

This means that a nation with several poorly chosen allies can end up being far less effective than they were without the allies. However, choosing very few allies, each specifically for the way that their technologies and attributes will complement your own nation's, can result in a situation that is very beneficial to both you and your allies, increasing the effectiveness of all nations involved.

For instance, a nation that has specialized in Psionics could ally with a nation that has specialized in Personal Combat. Their strengths would complement each other enough to easily outweigh their decreased leadership efficiency, and make both nations much more effective.

There is another way that a nation's leadership efficiency can be reduced. Leadership efficiency is reduced by 5% for every one of a nation's members beyond the sixth. This is to prevent overwhelmingly powerful nations with dozens of players from forming, and dominating the game world.

For more information about how to determine whether and how an alliance is helping your nation, see the section on the Technology Summary panel.

Uniting with Another Nation

At the bottom of the Allies panel is a list of nations that have invited your nation to unite with them. A nation can issue an invitation to another nation to unite via the Nation Info panel. Only a nation's Sovereign can accept or reject an invitation to unite.

The list of nations inviting you to unite with them.

If you accept a nation's invitation to unite with them, then you and all of your nation's other member players, along with all of your nation's land, points, fortification points, credits and prize winnings will become part of the nation you have united with. The sovereign of the resulting nation will be the sovereign of the nation that offered the invitation.

When a nation unites into your nation, your nation will not receive that nation's points immediately. Instead, your nation will receive up to 100,000 points per hour until it has received all of the points of the uniting nation.

Uniting is an excellent way to bring together several players under one nation, because the effort that those players put into building their own nations isn't lost. All of the results of that effort are brought with these players as they unite with another nation.

When two nations are united, 250 credits are removed from the combined nation. This is because a new nation receives 250 credits for free, and if the same number of credits were not taken away when nations united then a nation could generate limitless free credits by creating new nations and uniting them with the existing nation. If the uniting nation has received 250 additional free credits due to having purchased credits, than the unite will cost 500 credits to compensate for this.

Republics

On the Nation Panel is displayed the number of republics that make up the nation, as well as the current maximum number of republics that it can support. The number of republics that a nation incorporates is the number of original nations that have united with this nation, either directly or by first uniting into another nation that later united into this nation. A new nation starts out as a single republic, and can support up to 3 republics. As a nation's level and age increase, the number of republics that can be supported by that nation also increases.

What this means is that careful decisions need to be made about which nations will be allowed to unite into your nation. When your nation starts out it can have at most two other original nations unite with it. Over time and as your nation gains levels this limitation will increase, but a nation's strategy of determining which unites to accept will often go a long way toward determining its ultimate success.

The Nation Info Panel dispays the number of republics that make up a given nation. That nation can unite with your nation if the sum of the number of republics of the two nations does not exceed your nation's number of supportable republics.

•To learn more about the game map, click here.

•To learn more about attributes, click here.