[lokken]

What small alliances have never learned is that to make headway with their equals and lessers they need to cooperate rather than compete and that they can hold large alliances in major wars to ransom because they are dependent on their assistance.

A fantastic example was one attack we sent on angels in round 19. We had a pretty shit BC (myself, on my first go in years) an agreed plan and 3 pretty bogstandard alliances (ND, TGV and someone else) and attacked FO. The result was a tidy bit of containment, ND up on roids for the first time in a week and Angels showing mild losses. Had that continued or even existed from the start we'd have been able to damage some other alliances too. The key to it was generally that the attacks set up were fair, targets divided equally and there was a general intent of all parties to fulfil their side of the bargain. We can contrast with alliances like Angels who never won because they had a habit to like to eliminate their rivals at the first opportunity rather than finish a far more necessary and important task - not just from our point of view, but theirs too.

ND used to play this way to a large extent, if it had more in the way of cooperation (not necessarily it's fault) it might have won a round. This post is not to say ND's strategies when it was competitive were flawless because there were things in my time there that quite honestly made me cry with despair. But the reason for the fact that we were competitive to a degree, was because we followed the broad formula I showed above.

If round 6 hadn't turned me into a burned out wreck incapable of doing anything in particular I would have loved to help out ND more but as an advisor, you can only interfere so much and sometimes you have to sit back and accept that it is not your alliance to run.