New analaysis
Now that things are settling down for me a bit more, I thought I'd do another analysis of the world situation. I don't think my results are terribly surprising, but interesting, nonetheless. (The data were collected over the weekend, so may be a few days old. For the growth/change data, I used one week's worth of data to give a more current rather than a more historical picture.)
I added one new element to what I had done before, and this took a whole lot more time. I checked each ocean to see how much presence (in terms of total points and total cities) each top alliance had in each ocean. This was pretty time-consuming. I need to figure out how to automate this stuff.
I counted both DES alliances as one, Atomic and Atomical as one, and both SPARTAN alliances as one. Alliances who are working together, but who, as far as I know, don't have an alliance-academy relationship, were not counted as one, but I also didn't count each other's city conquests. With this, the top 15 alliances were compressed into 12, which seemed a decent number. (I do count conquests of inactive members of enemy alliances, because I think that an alliance should be able to take care of its own inactive members. It's possible that in some of these cases, alliances may be fighting over the inactive city, so the winner should get credit. Also, I don't want to go through the trouble of determining whether or not a city lost was inactive, so I just count it.)
Category | World average (among top 12 alliances) |
---|
ABP gained | 108,245 |
ABP growth | 4.79% |
DBP gained | 118,971 |
DBP growth | 6.21% |
Point change | +168,395 |
Point growth | +2.29% |
Change in number of cities | +16 |
Growth in number of cities | +2.14% |
Overall, you can see that the DBP are increasing more than the ABP, which is probably natural at this stage, as top players are dug in, and morale is a problem against smaller players.
1.
Atomic
Unsurprisingly, Atomic came up on top on almost all measures. They had the highest ABP change and the third-highest DBP change, although the rate of growth in these two areas was below average. (In their case, they're so far ahead of everybody else in ABP, that it would take an extraordinary amount of ABP to post a significant growth rate.) Their point change was only fourth-highest, and their rate of growth was actually lower than the world average, but this is attributable in part to their large size to begin with. Same with their cities--they had the fifth highest number of cities gained, but a below-average rate of growth.
The only real cause for concern that I find here is in city conquests. Over this week period, Atomic had 0 successful conquests against top alliances (again, I am not counting taking cities from DES, since the two are allied), and 12 losses to other alliances. Half of these losses (6) are ANON Thieves taking cities from jsloan after he switched alliances, but even if you throw them out, Atomic scores 0 cities gained and 6 cities lost. This is a rather troubling statistic, but it could be that I just caught them in a bad week.
2.
ANON Thieves
ANON Thieves posted middling numbers for a top alliance. Above average gains, but below average growth rates. (Again, like Atomic, they've got more ABP, so they'll see lower growth rates unless they have an extraordinarily active week.) Still, among the top 6 alliances, only SPARTAN had fewer ABP, and only SPARTAN and DES had fewer DBP, and only SPARTAN gained fewer cities. On the flip side of the jsloan situation, their conquests looked good, taking 13 cities from top alliances (7, if you ignore the jsloan factor) and losing 3. Their war with Illuminati seems to progress well, but the lack of growth, I think, is partially because that's the only fighting they're doing, and being on the rim, they're hard-pressed to find other action.
3.
AFC
A Foolish Consistency is new to the rankings since I last did it several months ago, although if I may be permitted to say so, they were as good then as they are now. They had a pretty good week, topping the alliances in DBP gained (and taking the #1 alliance DBP spot from Atomic), and coming in third in ABP gained. Their ABP and DBP growth rate were both second (to VoR). They also topped the alliances in points gained and cities gained (these were partially due to the a few late additions from a recent merger). I think one of the more remarkable statistics they have for the week is 6 conquests won against top alliances, and none lost. Two other alliances lost no cities to enemies, but AFC took the most of all of these.
4.
SPARTAN
Like ANON Thieves, SPARTAN had a weak showing among top alliances. Among the top six alliances, they were last in ABP gained, last in DBP gained, last in cities gained, and in the bottom half of points gained. The one bright spot they had was that they conquered seven cities to four losses, a net gain of four cities. I think they're in a situation similar to ANON Thieves--on the rim in the southeast, fighting only one enemy alliance. And, unlike ANON Thieves, who are close to their enemy (because they've been fighting for months, and have invaded Illuminati territory), they don't have a good attacking position yet.
5.
Vanguard of Retribution
VoR is also new to the ranking since the last time I've done this. They've been putting up a pretty tough fight in the south to two top alliances, although I think that they're losing ground (they only gained 3 cities and lost 8 over the past week). Because of the ferocity of the fighting, they've put up some good BP numbers in the last week, raking in the second-highest ABP and DBP, and posting the highest growth rate by several percentage points. (This last bit is because they are a newer alliance, so the alliance doesn't have as many points.) Part of this good showing for the week is because they've been pretty actively fighting two alliances, although I think another part is because there have been a couple of inactive players they've had to take over in the last week. Still, a pretty good showing for the alliance.
6.
DES
There's a pretty clear break between DES and the next alliance, so I think that DES is the last of the top tier of alliances. The end of DES's war with Atomic has allowed them to recover. Their growth has been middle of the pack among the top six alliances (better in ABP than DBP, and with the second largest number of cities gained). They conquered 7 enemy cities and lost just two, so their net conquest was +5, which is the third largest (after ANON Thieves and AFC). This alliance is in a similar position as ANON Thieves and SPARTAN. They occupy the north rim, and since they're no longer at war with Atomic, they've just got a few smaller alliances around to attack, so there is less opportunity for growth.
The bottom tier of alliances are 7.
Arcadians, 8.
Lords of Darkness, 9.
illuminati, 10.
League of Destruction, 11.
Ascension and 12.
GOA. I'll spend less time on these, and just point out a few things. Other than AFC, the other two alliances that had no cities lost were Darkness (1 conquest, 0 cities lost) and Ascension (3 conquests, 0 cities lost). Three of these alliances had a net loss in points and cities, mostly due to players shifting to another alliance. (Arcadians lost a big player to Ascension, and Illuminati lost jsloan to Atomic.) GOA also had a negative growth, and was the only alliance other than Atomic not to conquer an enemy city. Of these bottom tier of alliances, Ascension is the most impressive. They gained a few strong players from nearby alliances, and it will be interesting to see what they do in the future. (As an aside, Illuminati and Darkness look to me to be heading for a merger. I noticed that Illuminati now have a lot of cities in Darkness territory as ANON Thieves continue to move into their territory.)
The other thing I did was to look at alliance ocean control. For each ocean, I checked to see how many points and cities each alliance had, to see how large an area the alliances controlled. The top 8 alliances each controlled at least 1 ocean with at least 80% of the points. Only the bottom two alliances didn't have an ocean where they had the majority of the points. The most-controlled ocean is O43, which is 98% controlled by DES.
Looking at where alliances had a presence (which I'm defining as 25% of the points in an ocean), I was really surprised to see ANON Thieves stand out here, especially considering they are just one alliance, and don't have a second academy alliance. ANON Thieves have 7 different oceans where they have at least 25% control. DES also do, but they've got an academy. SPARTAN has 25% or better control in 6 oceans, but they also are two alliances. ANON can do this with just one alliance. (It's probably not coincidental that these three also have the fewest BP above. I think that some of these oceans are rim oceans, so they're not generating BP.)
Looking at how big the oceans are, Atomic shines. Atomic has two oceans where they have 3 million points--DES and SPARTAN have one apiece, and nobody else has any oceans that large. (Atomic is the only alliance with a 4 million point ocean. Their largest ocean, O55, is 50% bigger than any other alliance's largest ocean. This is just incredible, and a big reason why they're able to stay so strong.) These three alliances and AFC are also the only ones with oceans with at least 300 cities. (Again, Atomic is the only ocean with more than 400 cities, and their largest ocean has more than 1/3 more cities than the next largest.) Atomic and AFC are the only alliances with 5 oceans with at least a million points. (Even though DES and SPARTAN and ANON Thieves have stronger presence in more oceans, they're more sparsely populated rim oceans, so they don't reach this size.)
Overall, I think that Atomic is still the strongest alliance in the world. I suspect they just had a bit of a lull recently (or maybe they need to find some weaker targets to beat up on to get some mojo back). Their strength comes from their dominating control of the dense central oceans, and they've got the players and leadership to translate that into power.
AFC was probably the second most-impressive alliance over this time, with their defensive showing--the DBP they racked up, and not giving up any cities.
ANON Thieves, SPARTAN and DES seem to be in a similar situation, with some small differences. All of these are based out of less-populated rim alliances, and seem to me to be struggling to stay active and aggressive. (ANON Thieves gets a pass on this because they are in the thick of it with Illuminati and the remnants of DES in their territory, and have been pretty successful there over the past months. But they may do well with opening up a new fight with another alliance.)
VoR is struggling to remain a top alliance. To their credit, they're standing up to two top alliances, but this constant fighting on two fronts (I think that AFC and VoR are the only alliances fighting on two fronts) is starting to have an effect, and they're showing cracks.
If you'd like to talk about this in more detail (and if you ask nicely, I can show you my stats), give me a PM in-game.