Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances

Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances
Developer(s)	EA Phenomic
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Series	Command & Conquer
Platform(s)	Web browser (supported Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4.1+, Google Chrome)
Release	March 15, 2012 (open beta) May 24, 2012 (official release)
Genre(s)	Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances is a military science fiction massively multiplayer online real-time strategy video game developed by Electronic Arts Phenomic and published by Electronic Arts as a free-to-play online-only browser game. The game entered its open beta stage on March 15, 2012 and its official release was on May 24, 2012 requiring an Origin account to play.

Gameplay

Each player will first select a sector on the world map and start their first base there. The base will be protected from any attacks for exactly 1 week, but will go unprotected if the owner attacks another player prior to the time ending. From there the player can advance his/her base further through construction, gathering, or combat. There are several resources used in the game. They are Tiberium, crystal, power, credit, and research points. Tiberium is used for base construction. Crystal is used to produce infantry, tanks and aircraft and upgrade manned defense units. Power is used for both base construction and military unit upgrades. Credit is for transferring Tiberium and crystals between bases. It is also used along with research points to research new units and structures for base advancement, and also for new MCV's, which are deployed to create new bases.

The player usually starts off battling against camps of The Forgotten, then moves on to battling the Forgotten outposts and bases as well as other player bases (if their protection shields are down). Through battles, the player can win resources from other bases or lose resources if attacked by another player. If a player loses his base, he can re-materialize his base on another nearby location, with time and resource penalties. (Bases can also be moved to new locations without being destroyed first.)

Alliances

Any player can create an alliance and invite people to it. An alliance must have at least one Commander-in-Chief (CiC), and can also have any number of Second-in-Commands (SiCs), officers, veterans, members, inactives, and trial players, so long as the total is 50 players or fewer. Despite the name difference, CiCs and SiCs have equal powers, including the ability to disband the alliance. They can also grant rights based on rank to the remaining players. Officers and above also have a private chat area only they can see, while there's a general chat area for the entire alliance, and a "whisper" mode that allows anyone to have a private chat with anyone else, even in another alliance. In addition, there's a primitive email system within the game, called messages.

Diplomacy

Alliances can have diplomatic relations with each other. Each alliance is displayed as a different color, depending on their diplomatic relationship with your alliance:

• Blue: The player's alliance. Can not be attacked, and you can easily send messages to your entire alliance or just the commanders (CiCs and SiCs). You can also only move into allied territory or open territory (once you destroy a base, that becomes your territory, but it reverts to open territory if no bases are moved in within 24 hours).
• Green: Ally. Allies can not be attacked, and you can easily send messages to their entire alliance.
• White: Non-Aggression Pact (NAP). They can not be attacked, either.
• Orange: No relation. They can be attacked. Players not in an alliance are always orange, and everyone is orange to them.
• Yellow: Forgotten bases. They can always be attacked, and, in some of the newer worlds, they can attack you.
• Red: Enemy. They can also be attacked.

Typically families of alliances develop, called coalitions, which are all allied to each other.

Points of Interest

POIs held by the alliance provide bonuses to all alliance bases:

• Production bonuses: Tiberium, crystals, and power each have a POI type which grants bonus production for that item.
• Offensive bonuses: Infantry, vehicles, and aircraft each have a POI type which grants bonuses for attacks using those units.
• Defensive bonuses: Resonator POIs grant increased defense bonuses to all alliance bases.

A POI is held by having alliance base(s) near them. The level of each base, divided by its distance from the POI, is used to determine its level of influence on the POI. Whichever alliance has the most influence over a POI controls it and gets those bonuses. A POI may be captured either by moving bigger bases closer to it than another alliance, or by destroying the base(s) which currently hold it.

Alliance bonuses

Each type of alliance bonus is determined by the total score for all the POIs of that type the alliance holds. A portion of the bonus is determined by that score alone, while another portion depends on how your alliance's score compares with other alliances on the server.

GDI and Nod factions

Each player on each server must select a permanent faction to join. The GDI faction has traditional military ranks, while the Nod faction seems to be religious extremists, each with a religious title. The two factions have different offensive and defensive unit types. It appears that originally the concept was to have all Nod players fight all GDI players, but EA abandoned that idea and now allows them to mix in the same alliance. Some people run multiple accounts on a server, allowing them to have a mix of Nod and GDI players.

Duration of game

It can take months or even years for a player to get his badge (by joining an alliance which defeats the Fortress). Many players continue after that, to help others to get their badges.

Servers

There are over 100 servers, each with one "world" running on it. They vary by target language group and geographic region, although typically a mix of each will be found on every server. Each world can hold a maximum of 50,000 players, although some are smaller, with 25,000 or fewer players allowed. Different worlds also have different economies, meaning how many resources are required for upgrades, new bases, etc.

The Forgotten Fortress

At the center of each server is a Fortress, surrounded by 7 hubs. The objective of the game is to destroy this Fortress:

• Only an alliance can attack it.
• First 4 of the 7 hubs must be fully occupied (all 8 terminals on each hub filled by alliance bases, with each player only allowed on one terminal of one hub) for 10 days to bring down the Fortress shield. If any base leaves or is destroyed during this period, the shield is fully restored, once fewer than 4 hubs are fully occupied. For this reason, and for the virus injections mentioned below, it is wise to occupy 6 hubs (occupying all 7 would require more players than an alliance can have) and surround them by allied bases, to protect them from enemy attacks.
• Each player may land on occasional satellite wreckage sites and occupy them long enough to extract a secret code. This code can then be used to inject a virus into a hub fully occupied by your alliance, during a Fortress attack, and each weakens the Fortress slightly. An alliance can thus inject up to 48 viruses during the attack, if they have 6 fully occupied hubs and every player on those hubs has the code. (You never actually see the code in the game, it is all handled internally.) It is essentially impossible to destroy the Fortress without injecting virus code.
• Every player in the alliance can then attack the Fortress (although they can also launch pre-virus injection attacks to take out walls, etc.). Each of a player's bases must wait 50 minutes to attack again, and the Fortress attack typically lasts 2–3 hours, meaning each of the player's bases may be able to attack a few times.
• If the Fortress is not destroyed, then the alliance can try again, after they upgrade their offences and or change their tactics.
• If the Fortress is destroyed, then the conquering alliance and each individual player receive a badge, which can be viewed by anyone on that server or any other. The badge lists the world and date on which the Fortress was destroyed, along with the order (whether this is the first, 2nd, 3rd, etc., time it was destroyed on that world), and whether that player had Nod or GDI units. The Fortress then rebuilds, in a week, and any alliance can then try to destroy it again. If an alliance destroys it which has already done so, they do not get an additional badge. Each time the Fortress rebuilds, it is stronger, based on the strengths of the top alliances on that server. It typically takes months for any alliance to destroy the Fortress, meaning only a small portion of the players on a server will ever get their badge. A recent addition to the game is that the Forgotten counter-attack after the Fortress is destroyed, wiping out all bases in the attacking alliance that remain within 25 spaces from the Fortress, or on the hubs.

Plagiarism accusation

Accusations were raised against EA that the designs of two pre-release in-game units were copies of the Ork Bonecruncha and Baneblade tank from the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. EA later confirmed that the units in question would not appear in the game official release.

External links

• Official website