Originally posted by Tertius:
Or... you could help teach all the players of your alliance how they can make the most of their land, make the efficient decisions, and end with a top networth so they can be proud of their own achievement while celebrating and supporting the alliance's goal of TNW and ANW.
In my opinion, sending one or two names to the top doesn't make SoF look good, and it didn't require any effort or teamwork. The only skill required is to be able to convince enough people to do the work for you and buy up all of a particular commodity. With the $2B bug gone, there is no planning. One person sells, the rest buy. One selfish person gets the "glory" of being at the top, and the alliance fails at all of the alliance rankings, but hey, no one cares about that here, this is just the Alliance server, right?
The Monsters have the right idea in their recruitment. The accomplishment is in the teaching. Allowing others to be able to compete at a higher level makes the whole game better: for the alliance and for the level of play. Using lame tactics to bypass the competitive portion of the game helps no one, and it won't impress anyone either.
Congrats on rank 6 ANW, SoF. You deserved it.
In a set where the entire alliance ran fighting strats, I'd have to disagree with you. Two of those top three SoF were with me in the m0m0 alliance, which kicked behind as a netgaining alliance 7 years ago. One of the two has been playing for 60% of his life, and has a better grasp on how the game works than just about anyone else I've talked to. Just because they are in alliance that chooses to fight, and are willing to play strats that are not ideal to net to be good members of said alliance does not mean that they do not know how to net. In my opinion, having most of their membership made up of players with great netgaining ability is what made SoF the greatest fighting alliance in 1a history in their glory days, and much of their recent growth has been driven by the return of those players. This is not the SoF of the recent past that struggled to maintain 30 members. While they can't compete with the top 3 or 4 netgaining alliances for ANW, their top 6 or 7 players (if they chose to net) could compete with the top 6 or 7 netgainers in any alliance.
The third has done quite well netting in his own right, even if he does sometimes open mouth and insert foot.