Change Allegiance: Order No. 175
"The shadow of Mordor lies on distant lands, ... Saruman has fallen under it." (I)
Change Allegiance is a unique order in that it can only be issued by Neutral nations (Good and Evil nations cannot change their allegiance at all). To compound matters, Change Allegiance is the only order in the game that a neutral player absolutely HAS to successfully issue if they are to win the game. This is because a nation that is neutral at the end of the game is not considered to be on the winning side. Further, a nation with neutral allegiance cannot win the game (See Victory Conditions, page 5: Either the Free Peoples or the Dark Servants are eliminated, or a Free People or Dark Servant character successfully issues Order 990, twice).
As both a Command order, and a Capital order, Change Allegiance means tying up one of your commanders in your capital hex. Since Agents love to visit capitals, and free command slots to issue orders always seem hard to come by, this particular order may be difficult to issue. However, as a blessing, perhaps, this order comes before personal challenges, assassinations, combat and bribes. It can apparently be issued even if another nation has an army in your capital (suggesting perhaps a quick way to save your nation. Switch to the allegiance of the nation sieging you!).
To compound matters, the change in allegiance is not automatic. The order is actually of Average difficulty, requiring the use of one of the nation's better commanders . This can really be a drain if a nation is spending turn after turn attempting to change allegiance when what is really needed is the hiring armies, raising of taxes or performance of other commander specific duties. The chance of success can be improved (or decreased) by having favorable (or disfavorable) relations with the nations of the intended allegiance.
Despite these setbacks, this is probably one of the more powerful orders in the game. This is because, once successfully issued, the nation cannot revert to neutral status. The impact of this is that one side or the other, Dark or Free, now has one additional nation to help their cause. It is a tough enough game campaining 10 nations against 10. It gets exponentially more difficult to fight 10 nations against 15. Therefor, the neutral player must carefully weigh all options before issuing this order.
Finally, remember that changing allegiance affects both encounter results and artifact usage. Further, certain spells are not available to Free People characters. Additionally, successfully using this order will modify automatically extreme relations with other nations. In an extreme case, this could reduce a nation's relations from Friendly to Neutral, or raise them from Hated to Neutral (Because Good and Evil nations, at best, can only have neutral relations with each other).
Return to Firebrand's Order Analysis
Text Copyright 1998 by Jeffery A. Dobberpuhl. All game mechanics and terms are Copyright 1993 by Tolkien Enterprises, as produced, designed and distributed by Game Systems, Inc.