If you check the say top 50 countries in Primary, there is a form of what the outside would would call "Interlocking Corporate Directorships" where the top players are allied to each other.

My suggestion is to make allies randomly assigned by the server. If your ally remains in protection through out the set, tough luck for you. If your ally gets killed off or deletes then you can ask to be randomly assigned to another player. Other than that if you don't like your ally you can choose to have them removed and continue the rest of the set without the option to get another.

Discuss.

too much randomness. This is worse than earthquakes. Having strong defensive allies is very important for every country. Having strong research allies is one of the most important things for techers. Earning these alliances is part of the game.

Remove tech/offense/and maybe even spy allies. Having 'strong' tech allies is not all the hype, removing them will help reduce the supply of tech anyways, which will help a techer (see tournament server).

Remove earthquakes!

I don't think def allies are all that important in Primary. I remember edfjr played a 120m country and never used d-allies, but never got attacked all set. If you never get attacked, you don't need the alliances. I like them anyway for insurance but I don't think they're make or break. Wait, what am I saying... I'm answering Andrew, in that I don't think they're too necessary to protect yourself, but on the other hand, I do like them to make it harder to attack and make grabbing take more effort. OK.

I think D and I allies are fine, the rest should be removed.

D allies makes grabbing an interesting problem
A) Should I skip spying his allies and blind send?
B) Should I just ally spy, then estimate defenses sent by allies?
C) Should I ally spy, then spy both allies to get accurate breaks?

Because of this choice, there is actual risk versus reward.

I'm with you. I've been lobbying for that for many a set. Research allies would be fine if they were redesigned but failing that I'd just wipe em out of solo servers.

I agree it would be better if RAs were removed. But as long as they are available, any techer needs the best RA's they can find.

I would prefer the following:

a) keep def allies - like what Xin said, it makes the grabbing game more strategic

b) get rid of tech alliances - then there'll be no leeching. And tech prices will be good again for techers (tech prices have sucked really badly almost every set I played and it's due to the excess supply). With higher tech prices, the trend of cashers/indies dominance in primary will stop.

c) nerf off allies if we're keeping it - instead of being able to double your offense, make it such that even with 3 off allies with lots of jets, you can get maximum maybe 25% additional military strength. This will get people thinking about balancing their losses from having offensive allies and the additional military strength from the alliance. Though, this does not stop the off leeching phenomenon we see nowadays, but if we nerf it to 25% additional strength, the leeching may reduce.

d) keep intel allies - I don't think anyone has any comment on this ya?

Depends on who you ask. In primary I am unstoppable stealing tech and have stole over 2m point. 20,000 tech points per turn stealing. I think that might be overpowered.

How many labs would it take to be able to tech 20,000 points per turn?

if 10.5k labs give ~3.5k tpt then to reach 20k tpt would require ~65k labs.