In this post, I will outline how successful alliances set up their communication using the various in game communication channels for effective game play.
In game communication is how we communicate when we are actually playing Game of War. This will encompass your alliance chat, your private message contacts, your mail inbox, and custom chat rooms.
Out of game communication is how your alliance talks to each other outside of the game - be it actual phone calls or what many prefer, using a third party application on your device. It appears that most alliances in Game of War have adopted the Line App (iOS/Android) as their preferred application. I would suggest using that app and choosing a screen name that closely matches your Game of War account name.
The alliance chat room is where everybody in the alliance can contribute - and it's automatic for every member.
Everybody uses the room for in game needs - like resource share requests or offers, locations within the kingdom, did an enemy just teleport to a nearby location. What monster should everybody send their available hero to. Even sharing jokes or how your day went should be encouraged as that builds trust and friendship amongst your members which will keep the alliance together and happy through good times and bad.
Careful though, because of how open alliance chat is, you may want to think twice about what bits of information you do share in it. Depending on kingdoms, espionage between alliances can be an issue to watch out for - so sharing sensitive here should be kept to a minimum and this is where custom chat rooms come into play.
Spies like to share any pre-planning that is going on (is your alliance going to visit an enemy cluster, do they see an account that appears to be offline and a great target to attempt a zero). Spies may even share information like on your sleeping habits, where in the world you're located, when you applied your 24 hour shield. They will pass that information to enemies to set their own alarms against your shield and sleeping habits to catch you when you're likely to be away. Spies will also share things like what relics you've been able craft, what gems members have bragged about, the number of hospitals somebody may have. Knowing if a target has all villas and one hospital makes for a real juicy rally target as troops will die.
With that in mind, your alliance should consider setting up various chat rooms where the invites are only sent to specific members. What I think the most important example of this is having a special target room.
Having a target room for the most trusted and active fighters in the alliance - the players who train and lose troops on a more regular basis for your causes. The room should be used to determine roll call to see if enough troops can be mustered to fill a rally. Confidently share coordinates of possible clusters and empires to keep plans secret until just before an action is taken. A spy can't alert targets if the spy doesn't know about them. Then, once a decision is made for an attack, the conversation can be moved the alliance chat for a quick final roll call to give people time to set their heroes.
Groups in your alliance may also want to consider small temporary chat rooms for an afternoon of rallying and visiting enemy kingdoms. Used to call out quick targets and who's setting and not. If there are multiple rally groups on at once, these temporary chat rooms remove all the noise that may confuse members. This way members who aren't taking part and using the regular alliance chat for small talk don't interfere with the communication when troops are on the line.
Consider having larger custom chat rooms where sister and aligned alliances can communicate together. Treat this as you would the alliance chat room when considering what information should be shared.
The alliance can maybe have a news chat room where only certain members are allowed to post. News that maybe doesn't warrant a constant alliance mails. Who got zeroed in the kingdom, what is the bank low on, etc.
When real time and money is on the line and mistakes will result in millions of troops lost (remember - 1 million t4 lost just cost your alliance 3.5 billion in resources!) - keep your alliance chat clear of any talk except what is needed during current offensives and defensive actions.
When minutes and seconds count, alliances can't have everybody talking at once. Only the rally leader, rally target, and leaders should be talking during these times. Don't be asking for 3 million stone to upgrade your Lumber Yard at these times. The information in the alliance chat room (at this point rallies have already alerted everybody including potential spies) should be reserved war only. When a rally starts, the only item in the chat room should be what troops are needed (siege, ranged, cavalry). Members shouldn't be asking where the rally is - they should know how to follow the alliance tab to go to the rally location.
Also have some players that are designated to watch the target and how the rally target is acting. This includes shielding, teleporting, hero gear changing, reinforcements, resources for hospital healing, etc. These same players should also call out when enemies teleport in as well so reinforcements can go to smaller rally members for example.
Some members should also call out how many open spots there are to the rally to ensure every last available troop is sent. It's no fun to send a rally of 2,371,678 when there is room for 3,322 more troops! Also, call out how much time is left before the rally marches. Two minutes should be called, followed by one minute, 30 seconds, and finally 10 seconds.
Having only a few players calling out actions in the alliance chat at these times will make it easier to understand the information coming in to make better decisions to save on troops, resources, training costs, and relics.
Every member is able to mail every other member of the alliance. It's up to the alliance and the culture of the alliance to determine what type of messages are allowed here. Can members mail out when they began new 3-day shields so people can stash their troops. Can members mail to ask for resources for a certain construction or research item. These are all things to think about, but I think what is most helpful is having alliance wide mails distinguished from others. You should consider starting alliance wide mails with your alliance's three letter tag. This way people know the mail went to everybody and not just to them individually.
Some examples (and I don't know if ABC is a real alliance so my apologies) something like:
(ABC) New 3 Day Shield Started.
(ABC) New Alliance Wall Updates
You can personally use custom chat rooms across kingdoms as well. I'm in a room that is Q&A for game information named 'GoW Guru' (which includes some very knowledgable players from alliances like GOK, PFD, sic, HG), and I occasionally pop in and out of a more general discussion room named 'Kingdoms Chat' where many players enjoy sharing coordinates where rallies are taking place and the politics of certain kingdoms. Please share any other open rooms you are in through the comments below.
Contribued by Jesse
