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Leadership for Beginners
Contents
- Recruiting
- Leadership Structure
- Bonding
- Activity
- Diplomacy
- War
- Respect
- Identity
Before I begin, I wish to highlight comments from two big-name leaders from .net (their success can be debated, however their views are still valid).
Don't lead, its not worth the time and effort and it'll just piss you off - Pervis
leading sucks - Mattcurr
These two leaders have led tribes who have had very successful tribes in the past, and some not so successful. The point is there and it is something you need to seriously think about before you even consider becoming a leader. Do you REALLY want to devote your time, effort and sanity in to leading a tribe, where everything that goes wrong in the tribe will likely blamed on you? If you don't, stop reading here as leading is not for you.
Recruiting.
When recruiting, you need to focus on ISA. This stands for Intelligence, Skill, Activity. Of the 3, activity and intelligence should prioritize above skill. Skill can be picked up through useful guides, and experience. You can't force people to be active or intelligent, and so you should be careful when recruiting as such.
The best thing to do, is contact those of whom you would like to have in a tribe with you. Explain your (true) ingame ability, your (true) leadership ability, provide twstats links where possible to help you out. get talking to them, and get to know them. A good tribe should start with a good, communicative base of members. If they are immature, that isn't necessarily a problem. So long as you are friendly to them and they are intelligent enough to learn how to play, and can write in reasonably good english, they are still good members to have. If you don't understand why, then you haven't got the intelligence required for becoming a decent, successful leader.
Don't recruit everybody who asks to join purely to bolster members. Use TribalWarsMap and TwStats to do strategic recruiting and look at where your local tribes are. Try to avoid recruiting players who are so close to your members that they disrupt each other's farming, and also bear in mind that if you recruit players too far away, they can't be helpful supporting your members or you supporting them when in need, and as such could struggle unless they are quite skilled players. Recruitment is a continuous process throughout the time you run the tribe. If you see an opportunity to get a couple of members (through a war target, soloing players or from small local tribes), it is generally worth pursuing. You can always feel them out and get to know them before deciding whether or not recruit them!
The best thing to do, is contact those of whom you would like to have in a tribe with you. Explain your (true) ingame ability, your (true) leadership ability, provide twstats links where possible to help you out. get talking to them, and get to know them. A good tribe should start with a good, communicative base of members. If they are immature, that isn't necessarily a problem. So long as you are friendly to them and they are intelligent enough to learn how to play, and can write in reasonably good english, they are still good members to have. If you don't understand why, then you haven't got the intelligence required for becoming a decent, successful leader.
Don't recruit everybody who asks to join purely to bolster members. Use TribalWarsMap and TwStats to do strategic recruiting and look at where your local tribes are. Try to avoid recruiting players who are so close to your members that they disrupt each other's farming, and also bear in mind that if you recruit players too far away, they can't be helpful supporting your members or you supporting them when in need, and as such could struggle unless they are quite skilled players. Recruitment is a continuous process throughout the time you run the tribe. If you see an opportunity to get a couple of members (through a war target, soloing players or from small local tribes), it is generally worth pursuing. You can always feel them out and get to know them before deciding whether or not recruit them!
Leadership Structure.
This is the hardest thing to get right. If you are very active, you can try to do everything yourself. Recruitment. Diplomacy. War planning. Internal management. However, I would recommend that you don't do this. Other than a select few leaders, most won't take on the whole leadership on their own, as it is too time consuming and you can easily lose the fun of the game.
I would recommend the following. Always handle recruitment yourself. This is the least time consuming, and you then stay fully in the loop with what is going on. If there is a friendly, clever person in the tribe who is trustable, they can quite easily be turned in to a good diplomat. The key here is a good relation between tribes, and advance planning between you and your diplomat. Keep them 100% in the loop of your intentions regarding recruitment and tribe policies, and where you intend to head the tribe. The diplomat should be given relatively a free reign once they know where the tribe is heading in the future - don't try to involve yourself too much in the diplomacy of the tribe, as it can disrupt the diplomat's work and even ruin it. Just keep them updating you and send friendly messages to tribe leaders around you for good relations.
I would also recommend that you have somebody who can be listed as the person to contact in case of a problem with another member internally, or a noble claim dispute or some other internal affair. Usually anybody can do this sort of role, without much experience. They just need to be unbiased and diplomatic when talking to the people involved.
With regards to leadership style, this depends solely on your style as a player. You may prefer to be a dictator (this is what I do - it works well for me). You may prefer a council. Bear in mind the following: the larger a council, the longer the time for decisions to be made. However, people do not always like a dictatorship until they see it working well. I've lost control of a tribe I lead quite recently due to one person wanting power and not being given it, and managing to split the tribe because of it. I salvaged the situation and we took out the majority of the deserters, but it did a lot more internal damage than I would have liked.
I would recommend the following. Always handle recruitment yourself. This is the least time consuming, and you then stay fully in the loop with what is going on. If there is a friendly, clever person in the tribe who is trustable, they can quite easily be turned in to a good diplomat. The key here is a good relation between tribes, and advance planning between you and your diplomat. Keep them 100% in the loop of your intentions regarding recruitment and tribe policies, and where you intend to head the tribe. The diplomat should be given relatively a free reign once they know where the tribe is heading in the future - don't try to involve yourself too much in the diplomacy of the tribe, as it can disrupt the diplomat's work and even ruin it. Just keep them updating you and send friendly messages to tribe leaders around you for good relations.
I would also recommend that you have somebody who can be listed as the person to contact in case of a problem with another member internally, or a noble claim dispute or some other internal affair. Usually anybody can do this sort of role, without much experience. They just need to be unbiased and diplomatic when talking to the people involved.
With regards to leadership style, this depends solely on your style as a player. You may prefer to be a dictator (this is what I do - it works well for me). You may prefer a council. Bear in mind the following: the larger a council, the longer the time for decisions to be made. However, people do not always like a dictatorship until they see it working well. I've lost control of a tribe I lead quite recently due to one person wanting power and not being given it, and managing to split the tribe because of it. I salvaged the situation and we took out the majority of the deserters, but it did a lot more internal damage than I would have liked.
Bonding.
Every tribe needs its members to bond. Make a fun internal forum, perhaps make an IRC/skype room. Keep in constant contact with all your members (if you are friendly to them you can keep their loyalty without any problem, and so spies are much less likely to be in your fold). Just be a nice person to them all - even if you are telling them off, don't be harsh or rude, or angry. It is better to be diplomatic and explain the reasons for why you are telling them not to do something again, or that they have to take a certain punishment for their actions, than to be aggressive about it.
Activity.
Activity is crucial in any tribe. Low activity means easy targets for your enemies.
I would recommend early on dismissing members who go inactive. Once people begin to get past 4-5 villages in the tribe, I would recommend keeping people who have been offline for 3 or more days, scouting them out and nobling them whilst they are still in the tribe. This way the villages stay under control of the tribe, and you aren't likely to lose the villages to other tribes unless it is during a war. There is no right way to keep people active in a tribe. Getting them to enjoy themselves is a good method, though it doesn't always work. Keeping your forum neat and tidy is also sensible as some older players prefer to easily find the useful information. Having the tribe sitting each other as a regular occurrence is also a good idea. Trying to keep all accounts active is one of the hardest things leadership ever have to do, from my experience.
I would recommend early on dismissing members who go inactive. Once people begin to get past 4-5 villages in the tribe, I would recommend keeping people who have been offline for 3 or more days, scouting them out and nobling them whilst they are still in the tribe. This way the villages stay under control of the tribe, and you aren't likely to lose the villages to other tribes unless it is during a war. There is no right way to keep people active in a tribe. Getting them to enjoy themselves is a good method, though it doesn't always work. Keeping your forum neat and tidy is also sensible as some older players prefer to easily find the useful information. Having the tribe sitting each other as a regular occurrence is also a good idea. Trying to keep all accounts active is one of the hardest things leadership ever have to do, from my experience.
Diplomacy.
This is entirely down to each leadership, their styles and the situation of their area and their world, so I will keep this short.
Be polite and friendly, and honest, to all leaders. Regardless of whether you do or don't want diplomacy with them. Try to get a good relationship with each leader of tribes you see lasting any length of time, and keep it that way. Don't give away too much information on your tribe, although you also shouldn't lie.
Alliances: 1-2 alliances are valuable. More can be risky in case your allies turn on each other. You should be 100% honest with your allies and open about your diplomacy to them (share who you have NAPs with, allies with etc).
NAPs: These can be used for 2-3 reasons. The 1st reason is to build a foundation of trust for a future alliance. The second is to avoid a war with the tribe until the right moment for you (sometimes this is more of a temporary-alliance, if you are warring another tribe together). The third is to use as a meat-shield so that another tribe which is a potential threat to you can't get help.
Be polite and friendly, and honest, to all leaders. Regardless of whether you do or don't want diplomacy with them. Try to get a good relationship with each leader of tribes you see lasting any length of time, and keep it that way. Don't give away too much information on your tribe, although you also shouldn't lie.
Alliances: 1-2 alliances are valuable. More can be risky in case your allies turn on each other. You should be 100% honest with your allies and open about your diplomacy to them (share who you have NAPs with, allies with etc).
NAPs: These can be used for 2-3 reasons. The 1st reason is to build a foundation of trust for a future alliance. The second is to avoid a war with the tribe until the right moment for you (sometimes this is more of a temporary-alliance, if you are warring another tribe together). The third is to use as a meat-shield so that another tribe which is a potential threat to you can't get help.
War.
Again, not too much to say.
Read guides. Post them in guide sections in your tribe's forums. Have a tactic planned in advance. Plan ahead. Use allies where possible. Recruit a couple of their members if you think it could benefit you. Landing times are valuable if you are hitting a single player heavily, or a large area heavily. Hiding attacks in between fakes is also smart.
Cat-waves are also very useful, but are not used enough generally to have a good impact.
Just see what your tribe appears to be best at. Co-ordination is a key, as is sharing noble claims - if you undernoble, you should mail the nearest player and suggest they send a noble to quickly cap the village. Teamwork on this scale is what wins a war.
Read guides. Post them in guide sections in your tribe's forums. Have a tactic planned in advance. Plan ahead. Use allies where possible. Recruit a couple of their members if you think it could benefit you. Landing times are valuable if you are hitting a single player heavily, or a large area heavily. Hiding attacks in between fakes is also smart.
Cat-waves are also very useful, but are not used enough generally to have a good impact.
Just see what your tribe appears to be best at. Co-ordination is a key, as is sharing noble claims - if you undernoble, you should mail the nearest player and suggest they send a noble to quickly cap the village. Teamwork on this scale is what wins a war.
Respect.
Treat everybody with respect, and you get respected for it. Be careful on External forums. Unless you wish to be like me and provoke wars/manipulate to cause conflicts, don't troll on the externals. Post very carefully, and only when you have to. Avoid spamming where possible. Depends on your character as a leader really. I have seen a good duke flame everybody on the forum and be majorly arrogant, purely to get all local tribes trying to attack his tribe.
Identity.
Be proud of your tribe and its identity. Get a nice COA to match your chosen tag and name. Make sure the tag and name are connected where possible.
You should then spend a good amount of time (sometimes 3-4 hours) crafting a decent profile. It could be 1-2 lines. It *should* have a name in bb-codes of who to contact. Recruitment and Diplomacy are "no-no"s in my opinion. Even putting up who to speak to about that isn't really a good idea, as having 1 account filter everything is the easiest way to keep on top of running a tribe, in my experience. Avoid ASCII swords, or any of those "Cna uoY RaeD HTiS?" copy-pastes.
Just try to make your tribe look professional - you will get respect for it.
You should then spend a good amount of time (sometimes 3-4 hours) crafting a decent profile. It could be 1-2 lines. It *should* have a name in bb-codes of who to contact. Recruitment and Diplomacy are "no-no"s in my opinion. Even putting up who to speak to about that isn't really a good idea, as having 1 account filter everything is the easiest way to keep on top of running a tribe, in my experience. Avoid ASCII swords, or any of those "Cna uoY RaeD HTiS?" copy-pastes.
Just try to make your tribe look professional - you will get respect for it.
That's pretty much everything I have to say. Just develop the style that you find suits you best, and see what happens. That really is the best advise I can give you.
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