I've read alot of posts that have been knocking "collectives" of people who are banding together to help eachother. Please dont listen to these people. They are just jealous because other towns and alliances are having more success than they are. Theres many benefits to joining a large alliance of towns. The main one being of course protection. Alliances protect its own at all costs. We protect our allies like they are family. Some towns have no dueling rules but our duelers surprisingly dont like to attack builders well about 99% of us dont attack builders unless were at war with another town. Lately we've been mainly protecting our towns from marauders though. Anyways to get back to my point which is if your looking for a town to join dont automatically assume a big collective of towns is the "big bad wolf" if you do you might find you missed out on being apart of something great.
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Large alliances form to "protect" their non-duelers from aggression, which is totally unneccessary anyway, as the mechanics of dueling levels and 48 hour KO's do that already (and they do a damn good job of it, it's a shame there is no way to code a prevention for whining and temper tantrums).
There are two major reasons why someone would seek a large alliance, to avoid being attacked, so as to level up and build their inventory in peace, or so they can duel at will without fear of being KO'd in return (strength in numbers). Both are pure signs of weakness, and ensure the majority of the ranks of any large alliance are filled with cowards and bullies.
The real problems with mega alliances is that they effectively reduce the options for their duelers, in terms of available targets, leading them to farm any non-connected town, making them become, by default, the exact kind of bullies they formed to avoid (irony much?).
Even worse, once everyone has been forced into treaties/pacts to avoid their town being zerged out of the game by a horde of hormone fueled teenage bullies, the game totally stagnates and loses its fun (see the other 9 worlds).
My advice: DO NOT join a mega alliance. Protection from duels might sound good, but hey, you can only be KO'd once every 48 hours, and eventually the dueling level system will prevent any terrible mismatches from repeating.