Cluster alliance

A cluster alliance is an alliance created with only members from the same cluster. It has several key features namely, defense, hostiles and intelligence.

Defense within the cluster can be very important due to the 1 tick bonus on ETA. This means that people can send you faster defence when needed. It should be remembered that this bonus is not cumulative with alliance travel time bonus.

Hostiles within the cluster in rounds prior to round 10 could be very painful. During that period there was an ETA advantage on attacks as well as defence. However, since Round 10 there has been no in-cluster travel time bonus for attacks.

Intelligence towards the start of a round is often incomplete. This means that you will often find active players from opposing alliances working together to form a cluster alliance, as it is often the most active players who will wish to do so. However, due to their activity it's very likely that they are skilled players in an alliance. Possibly friendly but possibly hostile as well. That is why its important to get good feed-back from the alliance to know who is friendly, neutral or hostile. It is also important for alliances to receive intel the other way, so they can identify hostiles.

The cluster alliance may attempt only to make sure that no hostiles from within the cluster appear so that you can make a good start. In some instances, clusters may also attack together; however, there is little benefit to doing so.