Historically speaking, I don’t know of any empire that lasted for ever. There are always the rich times, filled with richness and glory, and down times, with less resources and defeats. On Orion’s Belt this also happens. Those familiarized with Orion’s Belt History already know that. Even on this new version we can see that. At one time or another there were an alliance that ruled the universe. We can remember CUS and Cosa Nostra from the old days. And on this version Prophets of the Revolution, ALPHA and System Lords have been on front and quite powerful, and have fallen to lesser positions.

This weekend, while the System Lords admirals were not at the command of their fleets, two of the System Lords officers turned against them and joined the Death Squadron and attacked the only System Lords relic left. This is specially interesting because these two traitors were an important rebel force against the Death Squadron. I dare to say that at this moment the Death Squadron alliance is the most powerful ever seen on this version of Orion’s Belt. System Lords can’t really complaint about their members, seen that the alliance has a history of betraying its allies. And now, an alliance that once had 8 relics, now fights for the last one…

The balance of power may seam on Death Squadron’s side. They are a lot, very well organized, and with great zone control. But every time that one alliance becomes two strong, it has to deal with several problems:

• Internal problems: many members means a lot of stuff to handle; it’s hard to keep all the members happy, specially when there’s bounty to share
• Being the first means that all the alliances focus on that one alliance

It may be difficult to reach number one. But it’s even more difficult to stay there for a long time.

Some time ago System Lords went on a campaign for relics and turned against their allies ALPHA and Prophets of the Revolution. Because of this sneak attack we won quite a fame and alliances started to dislike us, but the truth is: war is profitable. At this time System Lords have 8 relics under their possession. System Lords spent a lot of time earning income from +6 relics, and that was really profitable.

As expected, we got some enemies. We got some shy attacks from ALPHA and the Prophets, and we also were under attack by Corsários. The only friend we had left was Death Squadron…. until today. Today, on an expected move, Death Squadron declared war on System Lords and attacked one relic. We don’t know much about this attack, but we do know that it was carefully planned and that it is just the beginning… We also don’t know what kind of pacts DS made with our current enemies. But having 8 relics, it’s normal to have DS turn on us.

I sense that there is going to be a lot of blood shead on the times to come. System Lords armies got some time to rest, and now they’re mobilizing again for battle. And they’re anxious for it!

I’m creating a new Hall of Fame category to write about players that made a difference on Orion’s Belt. The first one of the list is funnynovato. Few of the current players of the game may know him, because he has stopped playing a long time ago. Funny started to play the game at 17 Dec 2005… Almost four years ago!

I still remember the first fight I had with him. It was a universe battle and I tought about attacking him. At that time there weren’t a lot of proficient players on the board, and the administrators and some beta testers ruled the battle system. I attacked him, bearing in mind that he’d be an easy prey.

But I lost big time… he already played well and caught me off guard. The fact is, after that I faced him on several tournaments and I never could win against him. He left the game before I could achieve that. Funny was also the first regular player to win a regicide tournament! At that time we didn’t archive battles, so all that history is gone.

He also founded the IUC alliance, an alliance that was very big back then. We don’t know his whereabouts at the moment, but he was really an important community member back then!

The only thing we have left from funnynovato is a picture from a battle for a regicide battle, that we use on Wikipedia.

Almost since the beginning of the game that players have began forming alliances.

But in the old days it was all much different than it is now. In the first rounds there was no alliance interface like now. It all came down to a group off players that said that they were from the same alliance. They changed their name so they included an alliance tag, but that was all.

Like Tiago already said earlier it all began with the ACSK alliance (an alliance dedicated to overthrown Shadow Knight from the top of the ranking). In response to that the CUS alliance was created. CUS stands for Shadow United Club, and as you can guess their objective was to protect Shadow Knight and help him.

But that was not all. Some players decided that this war was not for them. So a third alliance appeared: Independent Universe Conquers or IUC for short.

The powerful System Lord also appeared around this time. This alliance formed by the game programmers was most known by their diplomatic abilities and their capacity to make the several alliance go into war.

In the third round the AIR alliance was created. AIR stands for Independent Ruler Alliance and was created by me and Miguel18. It all started in the office where I worked back then but rapidly other players joined. Around this time some of the IUC players started joining other alliances, as the IUC leaders stopped playing.

With the end of the ACSK and CUS alliances two other were formed: GOAL (Game Over Alliance) and ORE (Orions Renegades).

GOAL was maybe one of the biggest alliances that ever existed, with more than 40 members. They became so powerful that now the alliances have a member quantity limit. They won that round individually and by alliances.

Still in the first version of the game the Cosa Nostra alliance was created. With only 2 members their superiority was amazing. It was one of the most successful alliances ever although some times the two member attacked witch other. But it was all in a good spirit and those episodes were very funny to watch in the game forum as the discussions toked place.

Although many other alliances were created just one more got some notoriety: the ST’s (the Star Trek alliance). A small group of friends but all very god players. It must have been one of the most hated alliances ever in the game, but that didn’t stopped then from some success.

Nowadays the alliances work in a very different way that back in the first version. There is a cool alliance interface and even game messages. Some of the players from back then don’t play the game anymore, others changed team and new people got into the game.

And if those times were very nice and fun the future seems even brighter. The game is growing and the players are becoming better and better.