Alliance

Official Alliances

An official alliance is created when 2 families formally declare each other as allies using the game's built-in alliance feature.

Tri-Alliances

The most common form of alliance has been the tri-alliance; an ally "triangle" when each of 3 families is allied to the other 2. This became a de facto standard through most of Imperial Conflict's history, so much that [Pre-Round] discussions were often heavily focused on forming these relationships. Most of the dramatic wars in Imperial Conflict have been between tri-alliances; usually 2 but sometimes more.

Bi-Alliance

A less common but simpler form of alliance was the bi-alliance, which comprised of 2 families foregoing a 3rd ally.

Chain Alliances

Chain alliances could in theory include an unlimited number of families, but becomes more complicated as the number of families involved increases. These also would sometimes lead to intra-alliance drama as 2 families within the same alliance could technically not be directly allied to each other.

The in-game alliance feature has been disabled for several years due to incompatibility with newer code.

Unofficial Alliances

Unofficial Alliances have been illegal for most of Imperial Conflict's history, and were originally called "Illegal Alliances" (IA). The logic is that players coordinating in secret gives them an unfair advantage over players using the official alliance feature.

This has been a divisive rule, even more so after the official alliance feature was disabled. An attempt to abolish it was made shortly after the ownership transition, but due to player protest it was re-established as a galaxy setting and renamed "Unofficial Alliances" (UA).

Illegal Alliances

Whether or not a UA is legal now depends on the galaxy in question. Milky Way forbids them by default, whereas Supernova permits them. Custom Galaxies depend on the design of their creators.

What constitutes an Illegal Alliance is inherently unclear due to the complex nature of diplomacy. A good guideline is that where UAs are forbidden, players should avoid coordinating or discussing any internal matters with players outside of their own family.