#minimums

Michelle Poler for Minimums 

Negotiating bulk order minimums with suppliers can be a crucial skill for entrepreneurs and businesses looking to optimize their supply chain. It is not uncommon for suppliers to impose minimum order quantities (MOQs), which can be a barrier for smaller businesses or those testing new products. Here are some essential tips to effectively negotiate bulk order minimums with suppliers. 1. Research…

Hi miralia,

Are you asking about the suggested minimums? A gift just needs to include one of them.

You can create any of following as a gift:

a. fanfiction: 1k word fic, one-shot, or if part of a series or longer work, it must be able to be read as a standalone work.

or

b. fanart: 1 finished piece of digital or traditional art no smaller than (roughly) 3.5 x 5 inches (standard postcard size) depicting clean line art with allowances made for art style and project size. No background, color, or shading is required though it is encouraged.

or

c. .gifsets: at least 4 .gifs.

or

d. AMVs (anime music videos), podfics, songs, moodboards, .gifsets, collages, manga edits/colorings, etc. per a recipient’s request or suggestion.

These are just setting minumums that participants can expect. This does not prevent someone from offering more if they wish.

We hope this makes sense. Let us know if you need clarification on anything.

So you have a team.  You know that you need to recruit to replace the slackers. You know that you need to enforce rules and keep your remaining cats in line.  You know that you need to Exhibit Leadership Qualities.

But how?

At this point I should remind you that when I say ‘leader’, I mean that I have some really terrible innate leadership instincts, not that I actually ran teams into the ground by leading them.  If you read this post-

- I wasn’t exaggerating.  I had been leader of my team then for minutes at a time, when my leader forgot himself and accidentally promoted me on occasion.  Maybe that qualifies me for both definitions of the word!  

However, in the two years I helped to run my team, said team has had fewer than 5 teammates leave for a different team because they were dissatisfied with how things were in our team.

I should clarify that not all these points describe how we ran our team, but rather how I wish we could have.  It’s often not possible to stick to all these pointers; but we must all do the best we can.  I don’t help to run that team, now; I’m not even on that team.  Even so, I feel like the points below are mostly universally applicable and honestly pretty common-sense.  

Sometimes, we all just need a reminder.  Who better than this shitty leader who needed constant conscious introspection and reasoning to lead a team?

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BASICS

1. Know your team.  Take the time to get to know your most active members, and then take the time to reach out to and speak to your less active members.  This helps to build a bond between you and your individual members.  It’s helpful to make your teammates feel like they can come to you when they have concerns.

2. Know your leadership.  Your officers, your leader- these are the people who will be supporting you in the weeks and months to come.  It is important to ensure that all of you can trust each other to come forward with opinions you may have. Keep your lines of communication open so all of you are aware of what’s happening within the team at any one given time.

3. Help your team know each other.  It’s good to have at least one common chat open for game discussion and socialisation.  This helps your team get to know each other better and build stronger bonds of community that make this social game a much more fun one to play. - You can opt to separate the two, to cater to people who may want a pure game-related chat.  Ensure that you police the division between game-related and social chatter.  The upside of this is that you can add random people and alumni to your social chat and not have to worry about them SPYING on your team.  My old team’s social still manages to be one of my favourite chats in LINE. - Speaking of LINE, some teams choose to use Discord, WhatsApp, or Slack as messaging alternatives.  I’m fond of LINE, as it’s the most popular messaging app and is hence more convenient for getting in touch with people who aren’t on your team.  It’s also anonymous, which is important for some people to feel comfortable. - Starting weekly team calls is something that many teams choose to do.  It, however, often falls to leadership to initiate and begin such a team tradition, so it’s less socially pressuring for teammates to join and establish such a habit.  Feel free to inform your team beforehand so they can set aside time, if they’re interested.

4. Know your partners.  Particularly relevant for Atlas teams, know your 5ta leadership well and get to know your extended alliance’s leaders well, when you get the chance.  Atlas is a political game, except it’s politics are based on who you’re friends with, and who will vouch for you.  It may sound scary, but really it’s just about making friends with the people you want to be friends with.

...---...

MINIMUMS AND EXPECTATIONS

5. Set your rules and guidelines.  And then make them clear and accessible in the team wiki, LINE notes, or otherwise.  Ensure your team is aware of them. A good team is one that expects all it’s members to adhere to the same standards, and a clearly visible set of guidelines is key in enforcing that. 6. Ensure that your new recruits are aware of these expectations.  Again, no matter their size, it’s important to hold everyone to the same standards.  Make sure that you’ve impressed this upon your new recruits so they aren’t surprised when they join.

7. Be flexible.  This may seem to stand at a counterpoint to the last two points, but it’s important to recognise that at the end of the day, War Dragons is only a game, and real life can often get in the way of us fulfilling in game obligations.  I personally emphasised that if anyone was aware they wouldn’t be able to meet minimums for any particular week, it would be fine to seek clemency in advance.  If they don’t meet minimums without letting you know, consider asking what’s up before booting them.  For longer periods of time, though, consider discussing moving them off the team, to keep it fair to the rest of the team.

8. Think about why you’re setting certain minimums and policies.  Sometimes, leaders may choose to set minimums arbitrarily without considering why exactly they’re doing so.   - Personally, I never set minimums for Fort and Breed- I wanted my members to be able to progress the way they wish instead of arbitrarily spending resources to get points. - Troop minimums made very little sense for our team- we had recruited a team of responsible people who knew how to manage their troops, and we didn’t want to stop people from sniping their little hearts out.  This team I speak of is currently ranked amongst and above a majority of diamond teams for troops killed, now. - Bank policies are good to think about- how can you make them fair for your team?  Do you want people to pay taxes, or submit donations, or otherwise?  Does it make sense to restrict food and wood withdrawals outside of fort and breed?  How can you make the distribution system fair? - I made a post about PvP minimums here, too, if you want to look into this topic further.  

9. Give your teammates a voice.  Make sure that they’re aware that they can speak up if they agree or disagree with certain policies, minimums, and expectations.  This helps your teammates feel included and cared about.

...---...

RECRUITMENT AND REPLACEMENT

10. Recruitment: Long Term vs Short Term.  This is an important consideration for any team, and you should consider your team’s specific situation to make a decision on this.  Anything I say in this section holds true for merges, as well, btw. - Long term recruitment: You hold off on many meh recruits for those recruits you want to keep and grow, in the long term.  The downside of this is that you’ll probably be waiting a long time. - Short term recruitment: You go through new recruits by constantly upgrading to newer, better models.  The downside of this is that you’ll probably destabilise your team’s social fabric in the long term by making so many changes to your roster in short order. 11. What makes your team attractive?  This may be quite duh, but, what sets your team apart from everyone else’s standard egg tokens, castles, etc.?  Every team has those.  What makes you different?  Capitalize on these to stand out to new recruits.  Also please stop with the one-note recruitment posters, unless you have fun making them.  Then carry on.

12. Give the people you’re replacing time to find new teams.  With few exceptions, these are players who have contributed to making your team what it is today.  As much as possible, give them a few days to find a new team. 13.  Vet your recruits well.  Remember, these are people you’re letting onto your team.  What they do and how they behave will directly affect your team’s performance.  You can spare an hour to just chat with them and get a better feel of their personality and how they will fit on your team, beyond their game performance. 14. Make your recruits feel welcome.  Take the time to go through team conventions and rules with them when they first join.  They may be from a very different team environment.  Check in with them often in the first week to see how they’re settling in.  It’s good to send out a weekly mail to introduce everyone to each other, to ease transitions into the team.

...---... EVENTS AND ATLAS 15. Be gracious.  Don’t take losses personally, and don’t gloat (too much or publicly! Have some fun!) over your wins.  Leadership’s attitude towards any occurrence in the game will affect team morale.  Other people’s opinions are secondary, but they’re entitled to what they think, too.  Accept this as well.

16. Your team comes first.  Ahead of your personal interests.  Ahead of the interests of your friends on other teams.  You’re responsible for the gameplay and enjoyment of 49 other people.  Please don’t be that team that does officer only guard swaps, or sets up farm bases to swap with another team without informing your members.  This also means that you can and should feel free to ignore opinions by other teams, on your team.  They matter far less, so long as your team is happy.  You know your team best, and haters gonna hate.

17. Be certain of how you want to play your game.  There’s no shame in sandbagging.  There’s no shame in choosing to target only certain teams in PvP.  There’s no shame in sniping.  Are you certain you want to take a gifted castle?  Are you certain you want to swap guards?  Are you certain you want to help in this failed raid?  There’s no shame in playing the game as you are allowed to play it.  All that matters is that your team is in agreement, and you can reconcile how you play with your conscience.

18. Do what makes you and your team happy.  You don’t need to be efficient to enjoy your game.  As long as your team is fine with it, go pirate your little hearts out!  Sandbag away!  The world is your oyster!

19. Form your own opinions. In this age of some pretty propagandised Atlas movements, consider what you’ve personally observed of the subjects at hand and form your own opinions based on that instead of listening in to gossip.  You’ll be much happier distancing yourself and your team from drama, too. 20. Think long term.  If you agree to gate this T4, you’ll get a T4, but in the long term, will your team’s troop loss be worth it?  If you don’t participate in Atlas battles with your alliance, what happens when you’re forced on defence?

21. Stay humble.  No team is the best in every single category.  There’s always something new to learn from everyone else.  Some pride in your team is good, but too much is hubris.  It results in things like teams threatening to destroy other teams and getting destroyed instead.  Conversely...

22. Keep your own counsel.  If you play your cards close to your chest, this is how you become that team that destroys all bragging comers.  Crouching tiger, hidden dragon!

23. Be proud of your team.  This may seem contradictory, but you know your own team’s strength best.  Confidence boosts your team’s morale, and increases activity.

24. Communicate early.  If you have a guard swap coming up, give a few days’ of notice.  If you need people online for a mega wave at the end of a fight pits round, tag in advance.  If you’re going to change minimums for the week for any given reason, give notice.  This gives time for people to discuss any concerns they may have about changes with you.