Volume 3 Chapter 10 Small Meeting
On July 16, as soon as I entered the game, the Lemmings brought me news that the third gang in Fantasy, Ao Shi Tian Xia, was officially established in the north of the Cang Continent, near Tianying Tanlang City!
After exchanging some information , I felt that if Jinglei League wanted to develop smoothly in the game, intelligence was essential. The channels of profiteers were vast, but most of the information was about business, and there was only a general understanding of the major forces and organizations, which was definitely not enough, so I began to build the intelligence system of the League.
At this point, I am very troubled by the manpower. Intelligence is sometimes related to the survival of the gang. For example, if a hostile force wants to go to war with you, how much time you have to find out the enemy's plan and military strength in advance may determine the outcome of the war. Therefore, there must be absolutely reliable personnel to be responsible for the collection and organization of intelligence. In addition, this is a job that requires thinking, and it cannot be done by people who are not meticulous.
At present, the core brothers who can gain my absolute trust are still the dozen or so elders who founded the Jinglei League together. After all, the members who joined later have not been together for a long time. Especially as the leader of the League, I am a bit idle. I either go out to level up alone or think of ways to make money. I don’t know much about them, so I can’t give an evaluation of their loyalty for the time being. Among the elders, the most suitable ones to do intelligence work are Awei and Huaihuai. However, they are still responsible for recruiting people to join the League. That is also a very important job and cannot be abandoned at present. Lonely is too straightforward, the most love to eat fish is too honest, and the heart... You let a road blind person do intelligence? God, even if he finds out some news, it is a problem whether he can pass it back within three days! The rest of them are either not good at this job, or have other important tasks, or are not online enough. In short, there is no suitable candidate.
I had no choice but to settle for the next best thing and select talents from the members of our alliance. In fact, I also have long-term plans. One intelligence team is not enough. If one is not good, mistakes will be made, false information will be transmitted in reverse, and even traitors cannot be ruled out. Therefore, in the future, I will develop two or even more intelligence teams, one open and one secret, and compare them with each other. I believe that there will be no big mistakes. As for the secret team, I can wait for Ah Wei or Huai Huai to take time off and hand it over to them. At present, only a group of people who collect public information will be enough, and the requirements do not need to be so strict. I found that the active and talkative Lemming was a great talent for this task, so I told him solemnly: "Brother Lemming, there is an important task related to the development of our alliance, and I hope you will be responsible for it... In short, intelligence is a crucial task. I appoint you as the leader of the Secret Hall. This organization will not officially appear in the organizational structure of the Thunder Alliance for the time being, but if you do a good job, you will be the leader of the same status as Wenxin, Badao and others in the future... Make good use of your talents, the future of the Thunder Alliance is in your hands!" Haha, it's rare for me to nag in front of him, and then before he makes a long speech like "I will do my best and die...", I kicked him out of the headquarters and let him travel around the world! In fact, I appointed him to do this job, mostly because the brothers in the alliance are afraid of his tongue!
Jokes aside, after all, Lemming and I met in battle, and later he helped me catch unicorns. I deliberately observed his character. After catching Coco, I only said thank you to him without giving him any material rewards. He has seen how capable I am as a boss in earning money and equipment, and he also knows that I am generous. If he is a selfish and greedy person, I am afraid he will be dissatisfied if I didn't even say I would give him money and equipment after helping me so much. But he not only did not take the initiative to ask me for a reward, but he sincerely congratulated me on my good horse. Although the corny compliments like "Boss, you will be able to dominate the world and be invincible with this divine horse..." gave me goose bumps, I knew that was just his habit. He couldn't fake his happy and cheerful expression. He was happy for his friend's gains instead of being jealous. He should be a trustworthy brother, so I entrusted this important task to him. I also told him which targets to focus on. I had originally planned to assign him a few thieves and assassins as assistants, but unfortunately the levels of the few players of this profession in our alliance are still very low. Only when their levels are raised can we officially form a complete intelligence team.
The news that Lemmings sent back today is very important, but it is not valuable from an intelligence perspective, because this kind of news is not a secret. It’s just that I was online at an unlucky time and missed the system announcement. Even if he didn’t report it, I would have known it a few hours later at most. But this at least shows that Lemmings is working hard, which is great!
Ao Shi Tian Xia is a family organization, which is quite famous in Fantasy. Their boss Ao Shi Tian Xia is a human warrior who is on the ranking list and has also won a good ranking in the third round of the semi-finals in the martial arts competition. The names of their family members are all prefixed with "Ao Shi". This kind of family organization is mostly established based on Internet cafes. Originally, with the development of technology to this day, the Internet (including high-speed wireless networks) has long been directly popularized to most families. Internet cafes as a business place once declined or even almost died out, but then the emergence of online games based on ecological warehouses saved this industry. Ordinary people cannot afford to buy such expensive equipment, but Internet cafes with sufficient funds can lower the average cost by purchasing in large quantities, and then use this to attract customers. Of course, the charges are very expensive. If you want to spend all day playing games on it, the cost is also very shocking. However, Internet cafes mainly promote network platform services based on ecological warehouses rather than games. To put it bluntly, they allow ordinary people to experience the charm of the virtual simulation world. This is the same as when the Internet was just beginning to become popular at the end of the 20th century, very few people owned computers, and Internet cafes charged 5 to 10 yuan for an hour of use. At that time, people went online just to chat and send and receive emails. Except for a few Internet addicts, there were few people who spent more than two hours online on average every day. However, the Internet cafe business was extremely prosperous because the Internet was a new thing at that time. Many people came to follow the trend, and the daily customer flow was very large.
The emergence of virtual helmet technology from New Era Group has made ecological warehouse technology face elimination immediately, which has dealt a heavy blow to most Internet cafes. Only those very powerful chain stores are still struggling to operate. Their main customers now are students. After all, although virtual helmets are cheap, they are still a considerable expense for poor students with few dollars in their pockets. Not everyone can afford them. In addition, competitive games that require people to gather together to play better also attract some players to consume in Internet cafes. Moreover, Internet cafes now pay great attention to service quality, and the environment there is much more comfortable than my doghouse.
After the reshuffle, the number of existing Internet cafes is small, but they are all large-scale corporate organizations with a large number of chain stores. They often have tens of thousands of computers and tens of thousands of regular customers. This makes it very easy for the players in these Internet cafes to form a powerful group in the game. After all, cooperation is more advantageous than fighting alone. In turn, this has become one of the means for Internet cafes to attract customers. It is good to lean on a big tree for shade. There are also many players who go to Internet cafes to play games and join a family even though they have computers and helmets.
The Ao Shi Family is said to be a super family group created by the cooperation of several large Internet cafes in Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian and other places. I am afraid that no one knows how many members this family has except their own core leaders. The reason why this family became famous before the official establishment of the gang is because of their large number of members! If you go to any city and observe for a while using skills such as "identification", you will find that there are definitely many people named "Ao Shi XXX". According to Xiao Yi's estimation, their members should be more than 30,000!
Because the main force of Ao Shi is college students, they are online more often, so the average level of Ao Shi family is higher. In terms of overall strength, they are probably the best in the current Fantasy! Therefore, this family is the focus of Xiao Yi, and I will naturally not ignore them. Now Ao Shi has become the first official gang in the Fantasy organization (I guess their boss is the third player to kill the D-level boss after I killed the Lion King, and he has won a lot of rewards and reputation, so he can build a gang so quickly), of course, it will attract my attention. But I am not very worried that they will be unfavorable to the Thunder Alliance, because they have a weakness: insufficient financial resources!
Although the combined wealth of all their members is certainly not small, and they have the support of Internet cafe operators, on average, since most of their members are students, they will not go to Internet cafes even if they have more money in their pockets. In the final analysis, Internet cafes are still for profit, and wars are fought for money, the consumption of medicines, the loss of equipment, and the compensation in case of defeat... Students who are not rich to begin with will definitely not be willing to pay for this money; and if Internet cafe operators are asked to pay this money, unless they are 100% sure that they can win and make a profit, it means that they will have to pay for the losses from their operating profits, and as businessmen, they will never do this, of course, except for those wealthy people who pursue the thrill of fighting and do not care about the loss of money.
Therefore, I believe that the Ao Shi family will not rashly declare war on another party. It's just that the strength of our Jing Lei Alliance is relatively too weak. If the Ao Shi family really sets their sights on us, they are very likely to swallow us up in one bite. However, the development of Jing Lei Alliance is still limited, so even if they win, they may not be able to gain much.
Therefore, what I have to do is to pay close attention to the movements of Ao Shi and see whether they will focus on stable development after establishing the gang, or will they really take the attitude of looking down on the world and actively prepare for war, in order to strangle small gangs like Jinglei League in the cradle?
Of course, no matter what others do, the most important thing is to strengthen your own strength and take your own destiny into your own hands!
Because it was still early, most of the profiteers were not online yet, so I had to leave a message in the alliance, asking the profiteers, lonely, Awei and bad to gather at the headquarters in the afternoon to discuss something, and then I went out to level up. I have been busy making money for the past three days, but my level is still at 45. How can this be possible? Since I am the boss, I must take the lead and make efforts.
In the afternoon, the four of us arrived on time, and I took them to the headquarters' conference room for a private talk. First, Awei and Huaihuai reported on the recent recruitment situation. Because the recruitment conditions of our alliance are strict and there are not enough people to review, some players gave up applying to join the Thunder Alliance because they were dissatisfied with our slow response. In addition, judging from the reputation list, many people will be eligible to establish a gang within half a month. Many players began to take a wait-and-see attitude, hoping to choose a more powerful and promising gang to join. Therefore, the number of new applicants for joining has decreased every day, but in general, it still exceeds their review speed. "Recruitment" is not a problem at present, but it is estimated that this situation will not last long unless our alliance can launch more highlights to attract players.
Judging from the results so far, the recruitment standard for low-level members has been raised to level 20 or above to be eligible to join the alliance (this standard is already not low, the current average level of all Fantasy players is only level 25). Our alliance currently has more than 3,000 members at levels 20-30, and more than 1,200 members at levels 30-40, half of whom were recruited after the quality requirements were lowered. Therefore, although it is certain that their average quality level is still very good, it is inevitable that some people with slightly deviant morals will sneak into the Thunder Alliance.
I told them that some forces might have ambitions, and Ji Mo said, "Since it's not a matter of us guaranteeing the quality of our members and not provoking others to avoid trouble, but someone might take the initiative to cause trouble for us, then why not relax the standards a bit and guarantee to recruit tens of thousands of members within a week? Who will destroy whom by then? If they get angry, we might as well take the initiative and dominate the world!"
Although Lonely's words seemed impulsive and ridiculous, I was moved. If we can really adopt a preemptive strategy, we will have much more initiative. In the past, we did not have the financial resources to support such a large-scale gang operation, but now we have surplus funds in stock, and if we can win every battle, war is a shortcut to make money!
After thinking hard for a while, I finally gave up this tempting idea. There are too many unknown factors and the risks are too great. Once it fails, the Thunder Alliance may be finished. I am not the kind of person who likes to risk everything.
After discussing for a while, they decided that the recruitment standard could not be lowered any further for the sake of long-term planning. They only assigned more members to Huai Huai and A Wei as assistants to improve their work efficiency. Although this might allow some spies from certain forces with ulterior motives to infiltrate the Jing Lei League, that was not a problem. We could not achieve perfection, and could only seek a balance between strengthening our strength as quickly as possible and developing the gang steadily.
Then the profiteer also reported the current situation of gang construction. Because the level of architects is not high enough, it is not possible to build houses for players to live in the garrison. Therefore, the members have to go offline and can only use tents or go to Pojun City through the portal. This has caused inconvenience to everyone. Although the members also understand that this is a temporary situation and have not raised any opinions, this situation is not conducive to dealing with emergencies (once the garrison is attacked when a large number of members go offline to return to the city, those members will have to go back to the garrison through the teleportation array to participate in the battle even if they go online, and it is even possible that the teleportation array will be temporarily closed. But if most members have housing in the garrison, they can gather near the headquarters as soon as they go online, which is much more convenient), and it is not conducive to attracting players who are not members of the alliance to live and develop in our garrison for a long time. The profiteer suggested whether to go to the city to hire a few NPCs, or to build a batch of houses in the garrison and sell them to the members? But the cost will be much higher, and we will not make much money.
After some discussion, this proposal was rejected. The key point is not how much money we make. This approach will damage the future interests of architects and craftsmen in the alliance (it is equivalent to hiring NPCs to steal their jobs), which may make the alliance members feel disappointed. Finally, a temporary solution was discussed, which is to issue an announcement within the alliance to encourage members to set the offline location in the base, and half of the tent expenses will be subsidized by the gang fund.
In addition, the basic construction of the garrison fortifications has been completed. We only need to hire NPCs to upgrade them to form formal fortifications. In that way, our garrison will be surrounded by water on two sides and protected by a solid defensive wall on one side. It will have strong defensive capabilities, and no matter whether it is a human or monster attack, it will not be easy to capture our garrison.
At our current gang level, the defense can be upgraded to level 4. I asked the profiteer, and according to the length of our defense line, it would cost about 150,000 gold coins to upgrade to level 4! The profiteer smiled bitterly and said, "Boss, you didn't expect to fight other gangs soon. You only plan to upgrade to level 2 to prevent monsters from attacking your camp. That will save a lot of money. Although we have just made a big profit, I'm afraid you won't be able to sustain it for long if you keep spending like this!"
Ah Wei suddenly said, "Spend! This money must be spent! Not only must we upgrade to level 4 fortifications, but we must also start building a second line of defense inside the first line of defense!"
We were all shocked and looked at Ah Wei. He pretended to be shy and said, "Don't look at me like that. I'll be embarrassed..."
Everyone vomited violently, and after five minutes the nausea in their stomachs subsided and they returned to the main topic.
"It's not that I got any definite news that someone is going to attack the Jinglei League." Ah Wei understood the reason for our surprise and said calmly, "First of all, I think it's better to be prepared for anything. It doesn't matter if the league really has no money. Now that we have abundant funds, it is necessary to invest them in this kind of infrastructure. And it's not a waste. Even if it can't be used now, when the league develops in the future, don't we need to upgrade the fortifications? It's just a little earlier and in one step. Secondly, the Jinglei League is the first sect to be established in Fantasy, and its strength is not strong. It is indeed eye-catching. If someone really wants to dominate the world, it is very likely to list the Jinglei League as the first target of attack. But I think, if you think about it the other way around..."
Ah Wei whispered something that made sense to us. We were surprised, but we had to admire his idea. Hehe, if it could be implemented smoothly, it would be a very good idea indeed! As expected, one person's plan is short, but everyone's plan is long. Even experienced veterans like me, the profiteer, and Lonely have never considered this problem, but Ah Wei has a new breakthrough in thinking, and it is very consistent with the principles of military science. This kid has a future!
"Okay, then let's make this decision. We will invest money to upgrade the fortifications and organize the construction of a second line of defense. Lonely, it's your turn to speak."
Lonely reported the status of the alliance's combat power. In fact, if a war between gangs really breaks out, the only players who can really be used are those above level 30. There are currently more than 1,200 members of the Thunder Alliance who have reached this level, and there are also many members of levels 25 to 30. Lonely's main work now is to organize them to form teams and level up in a planned manner, and to train the members of this level to be masters above level 30 who are capable of playing a role in group battles as soon as possible. The four branch hall masters have done a good job, and the speed at which the members level up is satisfactory.
After some discussion, we added a task for Lonely, which was to ask him to be responsible for organizing senior members. After the fortifications were upgraded, he should take time out to conduct exercises and training on the fortifications to practice tactics and coordination, so that the members can become familiar with the skills of defensive operations as soon as possible, improve their combat effectiveness and enhance cohesion.
This task is quite difficult. It requires good organization, convincing the members to sacrifice their time for this kind of training, and drawing up a training expense plan. Lonely and the leaders of each hall are busy! Although it is not required that all members attend every training, as long as they rotate in batches and have a few hundred people participate in each training, it is also a mentally and laborious task. However, this is also for many reasons. First, the strength of the Thunder Alliance is relatively weak. If those large organizations come to attack our alliance, we must use the abilities of all members to the greatest extent possible in order to defeat the majority with the minority. Second, through this kind of training, we can not only exercise the organization and command abilities of the core members of our alliance, but also discover talents in the training process and promote their positions as a talent reserve when the gang expands in the future.
This meeting lasted for a full two hours. We listened to the opinions of all comrades, and after sufficient democratic discussions, we made a number of important decisions related to the future development of the Thunder Alliance... Stop, how did I get the habit of a lemming? This is not a report to the Politburo of the Central Committee!
In short, I realized today how difficult it is to be a gang leader, especially to be a successful leader. No matter how heavy the work is, and how complicated the problems are, I have the confidence to keep going on this path because my brothers are supporting and helping me wholeheartedly. But as the dream develops, how long can the peace on the continent last? Can the Thunder Alliance survive and grow stronger in the coming storm? The road ahead is longer and more difficult. I will have to work harder, and I don't know if I can succeed. But this is also the fun of the game!
