5. Alliances

Alliances are pretty much fundamental to your success in Evony.  If you are not apart of an alliance you will struggle to grow and be of any good to anyone or anything.  Trust me when I say, the game gets pretty boring pretty quickly when you have no one to run wars with, no one to help you grow, no one to chat with, etc.  Some people enjoy being loners, but they are usually those who spend tons of money to get really high levels and then they enjoy just going around pulverizing people.  Note: You have to spend HUNDREDS of dollars to do what I've just described.  Evony will not let you get to high enough levels on your own without spending this much or more unless you play the game for years just constantly grinding all by yourself.

So join an alliance that suits you.  Even if you don't like the people, it is best to join an alliance as soon as possible to help you start growing.  You can always leave the alliance later if you don't like them and you find another you'd like to try.

There are two enrollment options.  The Alliance Leaders will set the enrollment type for their alliance.  The first is Open Enrollment.  This is where the alliance will accept anyone at any time.  Just tap Join and you are in.  That's it.  The second is Apply Enrollment.  This option forces those who are interested in joining an alliance to first tap Apply.  Then they have to wait for an R4 or R5 (Alliance Leaders are Rank 4 or Rank 5 on the Members List) to approve your application.  They may mail you or Friend Request you and ask you questions or they may simply reject you if you don't meet their alliance's requirements.  (Usually alliances will require a certain Monarch Power Level before they let you join.  Some really big alliances I've known won't let you join unless you are Power Level 10 million or higher.)

There are many benefits to being in an alliance.  First, the Alliance City provides all members within its borders to receive buffs to their stats.  You will receive buffs based on the Alliance Sciences that your alliance has researched.  So if you research Construction Speed, while your city is within the Alliance City's borders, you will find that you can upgrade buildings faster than if you are off by yourself.

Another benefit is the use of the Alliance Warehouse.  This can store resources and keep them safe from attack.  This is especially useful when it comes to Wheat because if you keep excess Wheat in your city your troops will eat it up.  Storing Wheat in the Alliance Warehouse gives you the ability to save your excess Wheat instead of having those piggish troops eat it all up.  Your own city's warehouse determines how much Wheat you can have in your city before your troops start eating it up.  Tap on the Warehouse in your City Management screen and tap on the "i" icon.  It'll tell you how much Wheat you can have before your troops start eating it.

The Alliance Resource is another great benefit.  You can farm on that resource tile all day long even during KE and SVS and you are safe.  No one can touch you on that tile (spaces on the world map are called tiles).

Yet another benefit of being in an alliance is that you can now run Boss Monster Alliance Wars (more commonly known as rallies or just wars).  Rallies give you lots of speedups which you will need especially as you get higher in your Keep level.  Unless you want to take a month or more to level up your buildings once you reach like Keep level 21 or 22, speedups are the only way you are going to upgrade fast.  Therefore, Rallies are the only way you are going to upgrade fast.  Therefore, joining rallies or starting rallies of your own for your allies is essential.

Battles of Gaugamela and Constantinople are also only available if you are in a Top 10 alliance on the server.  So if you want to get gems and speedups fast, join a Top 10 alliance and ask to participate in one of these two battles (or both if you can).  Undead Invasion is also only available if you are in an alliance.  These events give you lots of gems and other rewards, so you miss out if you aren't in an alliance to receive them.

There are so many benefits to being in an alliance that I could probably go on and on for some time.  However, these are the main reasons why joining an alliance is essential.  Now to go into expectations that any alliance will have:

1. Be active.  This typically means that you play at least enough to maintain your Bubble.  Even if you do nothing else but play to maintain your Bubble, your alliance will likely keep you.  Drop your Bubble enough times and most alliances will expel you (kick you out), and then they'll likely burn you on top of it (meaning they will attack you and kill your troops and steal your resources to avoid other alliances getting them).

2. Donate to Alliance Science.  Most alliances want you to chip in and donate to Alliance Science at least once a day.  This is done by going into the Alliance Menu (Shield icon on the right side of the screen).  Then select Alliance Science.  Usually, the recommended science is the one they want you to donate to.  Just donate until it asks you to spend gems.  Then stop donating.

3. Participate in Rallies.  When someone runs rallies, attacking Boss Monsters, they usually expect anyone who is playing to join them.  If you don't, it's no big deal.  No one will usually gripe about it.  However, it only does you good to join in, so why not?  Most alliances will tell you how many troops they want you to send when you join rallies.  Typically this is 1 General and 1-10 Mounted troops (horses or cavs, as they are usually called).  If they want you to send more, they will ask you to send more.

4. Donate to the Warehouse.  A little each day adds up when everyone participates.  This increases the resources in the Warehouse that are available for Alliance Leaders to use to upgrade Alliance Buildings.  The higher the level Alliance City, Warehouse, and Alliance Resources, the more benefits everyone gets from them.  So it benefits everyone to Donate to the Warehouse a little every day.

5. Other Expectations.  Some alliances will require members to donate resources to other team members to help them grow faster.  This is done in sort of a round robin kind of way.  Alliance Leaders pick a member who needs resources to upgrade their keep and everyone pitches in to help that member acquire the resources they need to do this.  Some alliances may expect members to participate in KE or SVS, pushing them to grow faster and stronger to participate in these events.  There is no telling what expectations you will run into, but what is listed above are the standard ones.

There are 5 ranks within each alliance.  Each rank allows members to perform certain functions.  R5 controls everything, and there is only 1 R5, the Alliance Leader.  R4s control almost everything.  They can promote or demote everyone from R1 to R3.  They cannot promote someone to R4.  Only the R5 can do that.  R4s and R5 can change the Alliance Resource, expel members from the alliance, accept new members if they Apply, send out Alliance Mail to everyone in the Alliance, change Alliance Science Recommendations, change banner messages, demolish Alliance buildings and initiate building them, and many other things.

R3s and below are much more limited and have almost none of these abilities.  Nevertheless, R5s and R4s will usually promote people based on how long they have been in an alliance as well as their Power Levels, performance, etc.  Therefore, ranks are not meaningless.  They allow the Alliance Leaders to let their team know just how well, or poorly, they are doing.

R5s are the only ones who can disband an alliance, and they are the only ones who can expel and demote R4s.  They are also the only ones who can Abdicate the R5 position to another alliance member.  Abdicating means they are giving up their R5 position and giving it to someone else.  This person can be anyone in the alliance.  If they do this, that person has ultimate power immediately, and the previous R5 is given that member's rank.

If you want to leave an alliance, the best way is to ask to be expelled (usually called kicked).  If you an R4 or R5 kicks you out of an alliance, you can immediately join another one.  There is no penalty.  If you leave on your own, by going into the Alliance Menu and selecting Leave Alliance, you will have to satisfy a 12 hour cooldown.  During that 12 hours, you will not be able to join another alliance.  They can invite you and you can try to accept, but it won't let you join them until that 12 hour period ends.

Lastly, to build an Alliance City, the first thing an alliance must do is build a banner.  This can be done in an hour and requires nothing.  To upgrade to an Alliance City, the alliance must have at least 20 members and a Power Level of 5 million or more.  The Alliance Power Level is a combination of everyone's Monarch Power Level.

But that's not all.  Once the R5 or R4 initiates the upgrade process, the entire alliance has 24 hours to upgrade it.  They must reinforce the Alliance City with as many of their best troops as they can.  The more troops and the better those troops are, the faster the building gets completed.  If your alliance truly has at least 5 million in power, it should be able to successfully build the Alliance City in 24 hours.  However, that is only IF everyone combined truly equals 5 million in Troop Power Level not Monarch Power Level.

To determine your Troop Power Level, select the Alliance Banner or City, select Reinforce, and then look at the crossed swords icon in the lower right window above the March button.  The number next to it is your Troop Power Level.  THAT is what counts when upgrading Alliance Buildings.  For a Level 1 Alliance City, you must be able to build 60 million Hit Points (HP) in 24 hours.  Your troops can produce 1 HP per 1 million Troop Power per hour.  So if your troops' Troop Power level is 1,000,000, your troops can produce 1 million HP for the city in 1 hour.  So for a Level 1 city, you really only need 2.5 million Troop Power combined to accomplish this in 24 hours, but it will take you the entire 24 hours to do it.  Alliance City Level 2 requires 80 mil HP and Alliance City Level 3 requires 100 mil HP.

BEWARE!!!! Your Alliance City can be attacked while you are trying to upgrade it.  This is why the faster you build it the better.  This being said, most alliances on most servers will respect an alliance that is building a city and won't attack it, but some people are jerks and may attack you, especially during KE and absolutely during SVS.

If you upgrade your Alliance City during SVS, expect all of your troops on the Alliance City to die within minutes of SVS beginning, if you even get that far.  Most servers will purge your Alliance City of all troops by attacking it BEFORE SVS begins so that you don't give tons of points to the enemy server.

So basically, never upgrade an Alliance City during KE or SVS unless you really want everyone in your alliance to lose all of their best troops all at once.