Every player in ORKFiA is part of an alliance. An alliance can consist of up to 12 tribes and tribes in an alliance are, as the name implies, allies. They play together, help each other and fight their enemies (i.e. everyone outside their alliance) together. It might seem unfair with 12 people against the whole of ORKFiA, but remember; all the other alliances are also fighting each other.
How to know what to choose?
When you create an account you will have several options, amongst them the following:
Join Bootcamp or Join Random
When you have no or little experience in the game then it's recommended you join a bootcamp. There you can get help with the basics of the game from people who are willing to help new players.
Joining a random alliance will most likely put you into a small alliance if you create late in the age. The big alliances are normally filled with 12 persons or their alliance is set to private so you as a new player can't join them when you choose "random".
At the moment Bootcamps are disabled but we are working on restoring them. Right now your best way is to join a random alliance and join the Community Forum. There you will find the Recruitment Topic where you can find an alliance that takes on new players.
Join Friends
If you have friends that also play and already have an alliance you can ask for their alliance password and alliance number (#). Then you will be able to join them in the battle.
Create an Alliance
If you want to lead an alliance towards glory in the world of ORKFiA then choose this option. However it is only recommended if you are going to be joining with more than 5 other players. Since the world of ORKFiA is a very competitive place, very small alliances will get a harder time to achieve greatness.
The tribes in an alliance can choose an elder from among their allied tribes. This is done democratically, with every tribe having one vote, and of course, most votes wins. It's best to appoint an elder and at least one co-elder to back him up. It's important to choose an elder carefully and appoint somebody who has the skills of leadership and high understanding of the game. The elder has several so called "elder options":
Rename alliance
Give your alliance a nice name to stand out in the world of ORKFiA. Having an alliance with an original theme makes your alliance look like an organised group instead of a random bunch of players.
Defect a tribe
Choosing this will send away a tribe by force to another alliance. This is a powerful option to get rid of an inactive or unwanted tribe. Maybe you have some personal issues with the player that makes it impossible to play together? This cannot be undone so choose carefully when defecting a tribe!
Change alliance type
There are 2 options here, public or private. If you are a small alliance that wants to grow in tribe numbers choose "Public". New players that have chosen to join a "random alliance" will be able to enter your alliance. This also means that defected tribes will be able to enter your alliance. However if you have an alliance strategy that demands a certain number of players, or just simply wants to be alone, then make your alliance "private". However you will need more than 5 players in the alliance in order to be able to make it private.
Elder message
This is one of the most important ways to communicate with the tribes in your alliance. Every time a player goes to his tribe page he sees the elder message. Update it regularly and choose your words carefully. The space is limited and therefore specific and clear information is needed. It's best used to display alliance orders and rules, or to announce an upcoming war. In war the elder message is best used to display the current kill or retaliation target.
Important guidelines for the elder message:
Banner
Create and select a nice banner for your alliance to fit your alliance theme! The banner dimension limits are 500x200 pixels. It's possible to use animated gifs as well to create a changing banner. Before making a banner, look around and get inspired and if you can't make one by yourself then I'm sure somebody in your alliance can do it!
But be careful while creating a banner. There are restrictions! Make sure your banner isn't vulgar, insulting or violating copyrights!
Alliance password
When creating an alliance you are asked to set an alliance password. This is needed to make sure noone else besides you and your friends can enter the alliance. Choose your password carefully and only give it to people who you wish to enter the alliance. You can change the password at all times. Just don't forget it!
This only works for an alliance that is set to private with 5 tribes or more. When your alliance is public or a boot camp then people will be able to create or randomly join into your alliance.
This is a very important part of the game, both for your tribe and the alliance as a whole. Here you store your goods so that they don't pile up in your tribe! In other words, here you will put your extra soldiers (so they don't get anthraxed, and to leave more space for citizens), money (so you don't get raided for money), food (so it doesn't get poisoned by others) and wood (so it can't be destroyed by random events).
Note: The market is only available for your own alliance, no one else can access it.
Market credits
Each different resource has a fixed market price, called market credits. For each resource put on the market you receive these market credits. Your market credits will never go below zero and it will never change unless you trade on the market. You can see the value of each resource in the price list shown on the market page. Money, food and wood have fixed prices for each race and only the soldier value may vary on different races, depending on the soldier's original training cost.
The market and the alliance
For the alliance to be able to manage a good market it takes discipline from all the tribes in the alliance and it is very important. Sharing resources in the market is a good way to help your fellow alliance members grow or to aid them in difficult times, but make sure that nobody is stealing resources. Otherwise some people will be disadvantaged; for example somebody might not be able to do his long awaited explore because his soldiers are gone.
The market and war
The market can be used as a part of war tactics. While an alliance is preparing for war, every tribe can load the market with lots of resources. This will give each tribe a huge amount of market credits which the player can use in war or when the enemy is trying to kill him. This way you will not run out of market credits and your chance of survival increases.
Also market credits give you (a bit of) strength. So when you get some extra market credits, the strength of your tribe shown on the alliance page will increase.
Research is very important for the alliance. Having more research than your enemies can be the difference between life and death!
Research is done by the alliance and is generated by tribes buying rp's (research points) in the research page so that the elder can purchase research.
The cost is for normal races 500 cr / rp, for Brittonians its 750 cr and for Dragons its 100 cr.
Research Branches
There are 4 branches in which the elder can purchase research.
Production Research
This branch affects the amount of money your mines and banks earn for you. It also increases the production of wood and food. These bonuses are shown on your Internal Affairs page -> Goods as Production Bonus.
Engineering Research
This branch increases the number of people that can live in your homes. These percentages are calculated as Engineering Bonus and added to your max population seen on your Internal Affairs page.
Defence Tactics
Having enough defence means that you are not likely targeted with attacks. This branch will increase the defence of your troops. This bonus is displayed on the Internal Affairs -> Army page as Research Bonus. It also increases your protection against some of the most vicious spells done on your tribe.
War Tactics
Having enough offence will enable you to attack your enemies with more ease. This branch will increase the offence of your troops. This bonus is displayed on the Internal Affairs -> Army page as Research Bonus. This Research also increases mana regeneration and gives you more thievery operations per hour.
Where to purchase?
As an elder managing the alliance, research is very important. You need to find the right balance between the 4 different branches. Your alliance setup is very important when deciding on how to plan your research.
The most important branch is Engineering. This will boost the total inhabitants of your tribe and allows you to run more military while maintaining a decent amount of citizens. You can also choose to run a high amount of citizens to get more tax income from your people.
Second important is the Defence Tactics research. This will benefit all three types of play. The Thieves and Mages need less defensive specialists to have high defence and the attackers can either have less defence specialists and more offence specialists or for elite only attackers they can send out a bit more army and still maintain decent defence.
War research is used during the age to make sure the attackers can still attack. During the age other alliances increase their defence tactics and without offence tactics it gets harder and harder for an attacker to attack.
Production Research can be used to help expensive races to boost their income and to increase food when your citizens level are increasing with engineering research. Some alliances have proven to play very well without this research.
All branches are capped at 25%
Alliance strategy is one of the most important factors influencing whether you succeed as alliance or not. The strategy is based upon some factors:
Alliance race setup
When the age changes are announced, each age many people are debating on what is the best Attacker / Thief / Mage race. Also alliances need to decide what races and how many of them they will use. Depending or their play style they can go for many Attackers and few Thieves / Mages or vice versa. Very important when deciding what type of game play the alliance is going to do is the team of players. Always keep in mind what type of players you have and what their best play style is. Then choose the alliance setup carefully to match the races to the players and the alliance setup.
Always make sure to have a good balance between attackers / thieves and mages because you will all need them during the entire age!
Three types of alliances are mostly used:
Attacking alliance
This type of alliance setup has a lot of attacking races. The alliance is build around these attackers and science and market are used to boost the attacker's strength. War tactics will be used in this alliance at least at the same level as defence tactics and the market will be fed by the thieves and the mages with soldiers allowing the attackers to manage their tribes perfectly. This can include market feeding of wood, allowing the attackers to run without yards at all. Thieves and mages have the task to run most of the science, feed the market with soldiers and sometimes wood and they primarily do intelligence ops and cast ES for the attackers.
Exploring alliance
This type of alliance setup is purely for growth. Each individual tribe runs his tribe to achieve fast growth. The alliance science is mostly directed at engineering, defence and even production science. War science is hardly needed because almost every tribe will use explores to gain the acres. Engineering science is the most important science here because this allows each tribe to have maximum citizens and high income to get the resources for their next explore. Every tribe will run the same amount of labs so that all tribes contribute equally to the science. The alliance market is used purely as a warehouse where each tribe piles up it's resources needed for it's next explore. Stealing from the market in an exploring alliance can be considered capital crime!
The races are chosen for their income, defence and soldier cost.
War alliance
This alliance setup is chosen for the purpose to have a lot of wars and to kill tribes fast. You will find many thieves and mages in this type of alliance backed up by some powerful attackers. The alliance science is mostly directed at high engineering and defence. War tactics are also kept at a level around defence tactics and production science is mostly ignored. This science setup is based upon powerful thieves and mages. The alliance market is used with a market system in which individual tribes claim resources. Very important for a warring alliance is that each tribe needs sufficient market credits to sustain a lot of ops like DM and arson and be able to rebuild their tribes after a war. In wars there is a lot of killing going on and you want to rebuild your losses or else you might lose your own tribe.
The role of the attackers is to protect the thieves and mages and be a threat to the opposing alliance, making sure that the enemy's attackers don't just send a lot of offence knowing they can't be retaliated.
Other important information
Alliance research:
As written in the previous article this is very important for the alliance. When you go for high science it's important there are science rules in the alliance. For instance every tribe invests a specific % of their income. Some alliances let attackers buy less or even no rps. This can benefit the attackers but it will slow down the science. So be careful when allowing attackers to invest less.
Alliance market:
The market can be used to help every tribe in the alliance or just used as a place where each tribe stores it's own resources for later use. The market can be part of the alliance strategy with rules on how to use the market. As an alliance you can choose to use a market system in which people can claim their own resources. Resources not on that list are free for all to use. Read Alliance Market part for extra information.
At the war declaration page the elder can view all alliances that are in reach, but it may be good to know the rules in order to prepare your alliance.
Declaring a war
A all green alli cannot declare nor be declared upon.
War can be declared against alliances at minimum 80% of both your size and number of tribes.
This is to protect the smaller alliances from being preyed on by large ones, and also to prevent small alliances from having suicidal wars or alliances with a few strong and large tribes from declaring against alliances with many small tribes.
This is to protect their weakened tribes from being preyed upon by rested alliances.
Alliances that have been in war are protected by the Orkfian gods against new war declarations, and cannot be declared against for 6 hours. Also they cannot declare on others for 12 hours.
After declaring war the actual war with its bonuses doesnt start until four hours later, during this period the elder of the opposite alliance has the ability to extend the declaration period another four hours as a "last stand".
Ending a war
A war has to end; we can't have a war going on for an entire age! There are several ways to end a war but once a war has ended it takes 4 hours before the bonuses is removed.
Victory
If the opposing alliance surrenders or if you defeat them you emerge victorious, claiming the enemy's goods, research and fame! To win you need to meet the victory condition.
If completed you will to start with gain an amount of cr, based on hours the war lasted * current income * 20%. This is added from a 12hour base bonus.
Defeat
If an alli gets all green tribes then a war is automaticly ended with a defeat.
When one alliance is victorious, the other is defeated.
Surrender
If an alliance thinks they're fighting a losing battle and the enemy isn't accepting a truce, they can choose to surrender. The losses for surrendering are greater than for suffering a defeat.
Truce
Alliances may offer a truce during war. When a truce is agreed upon the war will end immediately.
Automatic Truce
The Orkfian gods will not allow any war to last longer than 48 hours.
In Orkfia warring is as essential to life as water to drink and air to breathe. Orkfians love to war, and rather than staying in their homes hiding they will greatly benefit from being at war.
War only Bonuses
War only Spells and Operations
War only Random Events
Triggered events
War strategies
"If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."
Co-operation in a war is very important. Don't allow your tribes to randomly attack and to exhaust their strength, but focus on a few targets in order to weaken and kill them quickly, effectively and without too much work for each tribe.
During a war, obeying your elder is vital. The elder must have the loyalty of the alliance or else defeat will be inevitable!
Designed by Acwder
Content written by experienced Orkfian players
Copyright 2008 Orkfia Classic