EVENTS
Alliance Cup
The Alliance Cup is a 7 day tournament that runs every week and pays a real prize pool. It scores alliances, not players, and it scores what happens at the Citadel.
The binding terms are on the event rules page, and this week's standings and pool are on events. This page explains how the machinery works.
How an alliance scores
| Act | Points to the alliance |
|---|---|
| Resolving a district stage, whether you took it or held it | 500 |
| Resolving the Throne stage | 1,500 |
| Each Crown Tithe while you hold the Throne | 1,500 |
Taking a district and successfully defending one pay the same. The Cup rewards resolving stages, not flipping them.
An alliance needs at least 3 members who actually took part to place at all. NPC alliances and NPC players never rank and never get paid.
What the pool is
50% of the $THRONE creator fee earned during a week goes into the Cup prize reserve. Each week then pays out 25% of that reserve (last week's balance plus this week's deposit) as its pool, with a guaranteed $50 for first place for the first 20 weeks.
The pool is whichever is larger, the draw or the guarantee, and first place is floored at the guarantee. The remaining ranks then split what is left in 60 / 30 / 10 proportion, and no lower rank can out-earn the one above it. A light week therefore pays first place the guarantee and very little below it, rather than three even slices of a small pool.
Why a reserve, not the week's own fee
Trading volume is not steady. A launch week or a listing can carry more fee in seven days than the following two months, and a pool that paid it all out at once would be enormous for one week and back to the guarantee the next. The reserve turns that spike into prizes for the weeks after it.
Two things follow from the rule, and both are exact:
- Nothing is withheld. A cent deposited into the reserve is paid out eventually. A one-off spike is paid as a shrinking series (each week 25% of what is left) that adds up to the whole spike; half of it is out within about 2.4 weeks.
- Under steady fees the pool is exactly the fee share. When the same fee arrives every week, the reserve settles at the level where the draw equals the deposit, so the pool converges to 50% of the week's creator fee. The reserve only changes the timing, never the total.
A worked example, from the live rule: a single deposit followed by weeks with no fee at all.
| Week | Fee share deposited | Pool paid | Reserve left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 (the deposit) | $1,000 | $250 | $750 |
| Week 2 | $0 | $187.50 | $562.50 |
| Week 3 | $0 | $140.62 | $421.88 |
| Week 4 | $0 | $105.47 | $316.41 |
| Week 5 | $0 | $79.10 | $237.31 |
| Week 6 | $0 | $59.32 | $177.99 |
A cent the pool did not award, because no alliance qualified for a rank, stays in the reserve for the following weeks. The reserve also funds the first place guarantee before the operator does. If the Cup ever ends, its final week draws the whole reserve, so nothing is stranded.
Because the pool depends on the reserve and on fees accrued during the week, the only honest source for this week's numbers is events.
How an alliance prize splits between members
| Rule | Value |
|---|---|
| Split equally among every eligible member | 30% of the alliance prize |
| The rest, shared by contribution | 70% |
| Most one member can take | 50% of the alliance prize |
| Garrison time counted as contribution | 2,000 per hour held |
| Minimum garrison to qualify on garrison alone | 60 minutes |
To be eligible you need either one siege battle for the alliance inside the week, or 60 minutes of garrison time. That is the filter that stops empty accounts collecting.
If you move alliances mid-week
Your contribution is stamped to the alliance you fought for at the time, and nothing moves it afterwards. The base share is paid through exactly one alliance: the one you finished the week in.
What happens to the work itself depends on how you left. If you were kicked, or the alliance disbanded, it still pays you pro rata exactly as if you had stayed, and the remaining members gain nothing from a kick. The leader who disbands is the exception: disbanding is their own choice, so for them it counts as leaving. If you left voluntarily, it is forfeited to that alliance's remaining members unless you return and finish the week there. Leaving voluntarily also locks any other alliance's work out of the Cup for 24 hours.
The full rules, including what happens if you leave and come back, are on Cup membership rules.
Getting paid
There is no claim step. See prizes and payouts.