Ways in which I have recruited players and alliances

I have been asked how to go about recruiting, and have even seen some of my invite messages get reused by others later. This will be a series of posts in which I present a number of the messages I have sent. For the most part these will be the first letters only, one of the things that has lead to my success is the communications I maintained with them after initial contact and the friendships I have built. But these messages should demonstrate the tone I believe in taking with initial convos's, and how I have open the doors to further communications.

This is the oldest one I have (missing all of the ones in which I brought in Individuals) and I am also missing the iital contact here sadly. But, the way this went down was I probed him, he probed me, and I sent him a message telling him that he should attack me. He did not (as it was suicide), but later that night I hit him and wiped out his fleet and cost him 75% of his resources. This lead to an angry message and started this:

Message 1
"I was trying to bait you into attacking me... but since you didn't I was forced to attack you. Hey, I lost 3 apollo's... that is something right?

I was trying to hide my poseidons by running missions so you couldn't probe them, because without my 7 cruisers I look like a tempting target.

No lie, I plan to cripple you in this game, but in all seriousness, good luck with finals. I just recently finished my college degree, and finals can be rough."

I later saw him entering dip mode so I sent this
Message 2
"I take it as a compliment that I am forcing you into diplomatic mode. It means that I did my job. Unless your alliance begins growing dramatically, I recommend abandoning it for a real alliance, because I am not even an officer in mine and I was able to crush you and you are the Head of yours... enough said."

Last one I will post is this, and I think that this is the one in which he came to realize I wasn't JUST an ass, but serious too, and I was making him a real offer.
Message 3
"I would suggest you join our alliance while still in dip mode, and then build up your fleet before exiting dip mod. You aren't any good to anyone if you don't have a fleet. If we have to send a fleet every day to protect you because you joined us and had no fleet it would be a drain on our systems. And if you don't have a fleet you can not come play with us when we tackle other people.

Our alliance draws strength from the fact that we have a good number of killers, not just good numbers, so you having a fleet is key.

Good luck with finals, if you wander through WWII let me know, my undergrad thesis was on the flag raising on Iwo Jima. And I hope to see you join up, and when you have your fleet and can safely leave dip mode, I look forward to doing some group attacks along side you"

While I was trying to figure out how best to deal with the ERA players in our area, I saw a player with 2 planets in system. He had a good alliance but they were all far. I probed him, he probed me, and I sent him this message.

"look at me again in 2 hours... I have already paid for some more impressive defenses, they should all be online then and they will be pretty. How can you be in the same system as the ERA guys and feel comfortable? Your defenses and fleet appear under par, and you are surrounded by bigger nastier people.

I see that you have an impressive alliance, but they are not nearby close enough to help much. All I can say is better you then me =)"

That was all i sent, and I left it at that. I later found out that he joined COLA just after I set up a colony in the system. Sometimes less is more, you need to read the situation and speak the truth. The best advice I can give is always be honest when recruiting, because it does us no good if they join, decide we are a pack of liars and leave. And while I am NORMALLY the threat, in this case I didn't have to be.

ERA I approached carefully, as trying to crush them at that time could have cost more then it was worth, but they also sat between a lot of our members. So I contacted them (message missing) and simply invited them to join us, which the player said he would talk about with his leader.

A day or 2 later, after not hearing anything further, I probed the leader of ERA. He wrote back asking why I would probe them when they were in the process of joining. I replied with this:

"It is no problem, I am still sending probes around every so often. All I got for sure was that you MAY be joining, and I promised to respect that and promised to give you some time and not rush anything. That being said I like keeping tabs on anyone as powerful as you guys. I've seen nothing to believe you guys are insincere and I trust you and look forward to your eventual joining of us.

For the record I am not the leader, but I speak with his authority and am responsible for a large percentage of our recruitment in this sector. I seem to be the 37 morale officer =)"

Again I state, speak truthfully when talking to potential recruits. I am not saying to give away any intelligence on us, but make sure you say what you mean. I even went so far as to make sure they knew who I was and not try to trick them into thinking I was anything more. I defused a situation that could have cost us the ERA members (members I am glad to have and have fought beside since then) if they felt that they were being treated poorly, and I did it without backing down and making myself look weak.

The second point I will make is never look weak. If you messed up, own it and admit it, because sending out a weak lie will only make them lose respect for you. If you probe someone like this, be honest. I honestly wanted to see what they had been doing since I had heard nothing, and rather then send more messages which could make me look needy, I [probed them, which let me see if they were just taking the time to prepare for a fight. And when he asked, I honestly admitted as much, which did not make me looks stupid the way a cheap lie would have (such as "it was an accident, oops" or "i forgot you might be joining...")

see, this is what I am talking about. You need to be both good cop AND bad cop.

Say "I realized I can keep farming you and that it is not fun, and you must hate it, so i plan on stopping for now, give you time to rebuild. But i also know that won't stop others from doing the same thing and that in the long run you will probably want to have some help. To that end, I want to invite you to join COLA. We can be a great help to each other and progress together and be all the better for it. If not, I won't take it personally and i still won't attack you for a while. Good luck and enjoy the game."

If they are in dip mode already "dude, you are getting taxed to hell while everyone else isn't, meaning that your growth will be less then everyone else around you making it hard for you to every get ahead in here. You also can't farm the (in)'s for free mins. As this is obviously not the best option, why don't you join us so that you can enjoy all of the game... blah, blah, blah, continue formula here"

The key is to be completely honest with them, come from a position of strength, and be both good cop and bad cop at once.

Pure intimidation never works well, and normally gets you that exact reaction.

This from the leader of COLA, copy and paste to him. The benefits of joining us are multiple.
1)simple fear factor that being in a strong alliance provides.
2)Access to the forums with advise from others, trading requests and attack/defense requests and advice in real rime.
3)Mutual defense benefits along with group attack possibilities.
4) should push come to shove, stronger members can send a colony out to your area to use as a staging ground for quick attacks on players causing an issue.
5)Obviously you will never be attacked by anyone in our alliance or anyone in an alliance we have a NAP with.

Those are the main points and are true for any REAL alliance, but COLA is already by you and we are a fast growing alliance that has already crossed in to the top 100 as an alliance. We are an alliance worth having and as my COLA member believe that you are a player worth having, I personally invite you to join COLA.

George Mason
aka Dr Pepper

"We are the best of friends and the absolute worst of enemies..."