NOTE:
This guide is interchangeable with speed and normal servers. I will make notations if a distinction needs to be made.
NOTE 2:
Teuton’s are not for the faint of heart. Compared to the other two tribes they’re both slower AND exceptionally weaker in many respects. So again, if you’re not a super aggressive, dedicated, highly-active, hit and run kind of player I’d suggest going with Romans or Gauls. If you want to always be confident in your ability to defend your Kingdom I’d suggest going with Romans or Gauls. If you get attached to your troops like they’re your own children and you mope and lament for hours or days after heavy losses then sad to say Teutons are not for you. I’ve always said that Teutons have to be prepared to lose everything and be ready to rebuild immediately. There’s no time for nostalgia because losing everything is constantly before a Teuton. It’s just been a well kept secret from the other tribes. If they truly understood how much stronger, more balanced and faster they are than Teutons, this tribe would become unmanageable to n00bs and would only be useful to the highly skilled.
If you’re not raiding then you’re vulnerable. I can’t stress this enough. Teutons are dominant raiders and mass troop producers – that’s it. There’s nothing magical about them. Their strength lies in their ability to haul massive amounts of enemy resources which can cripple the target’s production (boosting their own) because of the exorbitant costs other tribes have to produce troops. Now that we’ve got that cleared up...let’s get started with the standard fare:
Names, Start Time and Positioning
Choose a name for yourself that you will care about. Something unassuming about you and if you’re inexperienced, something that will draw little attention to you. The same goes for your village names. You want a name that stirs up emotion when YOU read that you’ve been attacked or scouted by someone. Don’t choose something insulting if you can’t deal with the heat. Personally when I see “Unbelievably Bold Guy has scouted Valley Low” it drives me up a wall. The city name “Valley Low” means something to me. The city name “New Village” doesn’t stir up the same fire but somebody still gets punished.
There are more and more opponents to the notion of starting a server late. Some believe that it’s leaving yourself at a disadvantage when you let others get the jump on production before you. Fortunately for Teutons, the last thing they care about is “production” of fields at the start. More experienced Teutons can start a server late and still be able to subdue their 20x20’s. Normal servers I like to start 2 or 3 days after server start and speed servers I like to start about 3 days after start. Why? Because if I begin the server at noon, I want to be raiding by 2PM at the latest (4PM on a normal server). As a Gaul or Roman though I prefer to start a server on the day it begins, a good distance away from center map. Two speed servers ago I started 2.5 weeks after the server started and still won the Wonder, but I don't recommend that.
To avoid complications with coordinates I usually position my kingdom in the same place every server. It’s up to you where you go; it doesn’t matter really because there’s no way for you to tell who’s spawning where and what their experience is, unless you already have word of mouth knowledge of it.
For me the keys to good positioning are the amenities. It's important to view the details of EVERY square in your 13x13. This way you can start thinking about the future immediately. You must click on every square. Unfortunately this cannot be avoided within the rules. To make it so you only have to do it once, note the hotspots in your e-Notebook. I would like to have at least one of each oasis within my initial 9x9, even better would be one or two coupled with wheat (clay/wheat; iron/wheat or wood/wheat). This will come in handy for me personally because I prefer to make my capital a 4x4x4x6. If an oasis is lacking (say for instance wood), then I’ll pick a 5x4x3 to compensate and even things out.
The reason I choose this strategy most often is because the oasis’ mixed with the bonus buildings, lvl 10+ fields and (if you so desire) the Travian Plus bonuses will yield an obscene amount of resources to help fund your kingdom (and later the wonder) for the whole server. Early on the additional resources are a godsend. If you wish to make your 15 cropper or 9 cropper your capital, be my guest. I’ve been able to do it and be very successful. I just prefer my new method. Just don’t waste time and resources on building up the three non-wheats and their resource bonus buildings in a 15 cropper though.
Here’s an overview of what an ideal 13x13 might look like for a type-A Teuton gamer:
• At least one 15 cropper AND 9 cropper within your 9x9
• Wheat oasis’ within the 7x7 of those croppers
• Another 15 cropper AND 9 cropper within 13x13
• Varied oasis spots within 7x7 (one of each)
• 50%+ Teuton neighbors within 13x13
• More Romans than Gauls
Any decent variation of the above can be considered good for Teuton prosperity. Remember too that every good Teuton knows and appreciates that his initial success is directly related to the incompetence, negligence and inexperience of his neighbors. Don’t krap on that. Be firm but be consistent when you deal with them. If you make a promise, keep it. If you can find a way to be benevolent then do it. It keeps them from deleting and starting over somewhere else. Why let a kinder ruler take what rightfully belongs to you if your farms move? Also, when raiding them, don’t be greedy. Just send a few guys consistently instead of a lot of guys periodically. Every perfect parasite knows that it’s better to nibble lightly than to call too much attention to yourself by taking huge chunks from the flesh. Now on to the nitty-gritty.
To Quest or Not to Quest
For the experienced, the new quest system is an albatross of monstrous proportion. To the layman, quests will prove to be quite useful. The monotonous server beginning will be spiced up a bit for them. I did not follow the quest system from start to finish for fear that my eyeballs would combust causing my head to explode. I did however go far enough to receive two days of Travian Plus, gold, a rat and some extra resources (that I ended up spending on quest objectives mind you). From the leftovers I was able to train 2 or 3 Macemen. The problem is that it took a day and a half to get the Macemen out. I stopped the quest short when I was instructed to build up my remaining fields. I’ve seen everything I needed to see to make an educated guess on where the rest of my resources were going, especially without the use of an NPC merchant for lack of a marketplace. Enough was enough – Delete. (More on the quest system later)
Beginning Your Campaign
After starting over, I developed my type-A plan. The quickest way to begin raiding with minimal risk – assuming you’ve started 3 days late and most of your neighbors are out of bp:
Day One
NOTES:
*You start the server with 3k resources, that’s all you have to work with (and only in their current positions. No NPC merchant remember?)
**To make a bad situation worse if you make ONE false step, you could find yourself waiting for hours for any problems to correct themselves.
***Remember, there’s no FREE gold here to start so no extra wood, no Travian Plus, no offensive bonus right away etc.
NEW building steps and approximate times (rounded to the nearest ¼ hour) on normal servers:
1. Main Building lvl 2
(1 wheat) – 45 minutes
2. Rally Point lvl 1
(1 wheat) – 30 minutes
3. Main Building lvl 3
(1 wheat) – 60 minutes
4. Barracks lvl 1
(4 wheat) – 30 minutes
5. Two Macemen
(2 wheat) – 30 minutes
Requirements: Wood – 715; Clay – 565; Iron – 605; Wheat – 330
Don’t be alarmed by the wood requirement for a third maceman (810). Obviously you could wait the extra couple of hours necessary to get the third Maceman or you could play the odds and raid with only two. If you decide to raid with two then you must keep your raids to the sub 8-10 population Teutons. These opponents will most likely have no reinforcements – but it’s always a roll of the dice.
With 3 or more Maces raid Teuton and Roman villages and leave Gauls alone until you have scouts and enough Macemen to bust traps.
On the normal server you start the game with your wheat prod. at 10. The above steps call for the consumption of 10-wheat exactly (if you get the 3rd Maceman), leaving you with a prod. of 0. You’re ready to begin raiding in just 3.5 to 4 hours. Because there is no free gold right away, things will move slowly as you build one structure at a time.
NOTE: Obviously if you wanted to purchase gold you would be able to make use of the quick builds and Travian plus. You’d be able to use the NPC merchant as well. Things move much faster.
Once built, only upgrade your whse and granary as you need to. You should be building so many Maces that you don't have time to stock resources. Build your marketplace as quickly as you can. If you buy gold, be sure to use your resources quickly to build more maceman. If not, trade on the open market as best you can. By hours 8-10 after server start you should still be concentrating on building up your Maces.
Before the end of Day One (24 hours after server start), if you’ve purchased even the minimum gold, you want to get many of your prerequisites out of the way for your Townhall. We’ll hopefully be building that tomorrow. You should conservatively have 40-50 Maces already (some will have more, some less) and about 5 scouts. Your residence should be coming along as well. Before bed, send all of your troops (minus 1 scout if you’re on speed) to a far away 2-5 population village. Make sure the round trip is just about to end when you decide to log on in the morning. No doubt they will have great spoils there. Just make sure you can handle the resources when they return. All available resources should be spent (before bed) where possible on Townhall prerequ’s or more troops.
Of course those on normal servers will experience some delays. Don’t leave your troop queue active the first night if you’re going to break BP on speed. You don’t want them dead when you wake up.
More Quest notes
I do believe that the quest system has some value to more experience players but not at the games beginning. The best part about the quest system is the fact that it keeps everyone around you from building troops with the intensity that they would normally build with. With a population of 10, I attacked a population of 51 with 11 macemen and met only 2 legos and a rat. I lost one Maceman, and the enemy lost both the legos and the rat. Afterwards, you can strip the city bone dry and continue to do so because the once infertile land of your neighbors in times past is now flourishing earlier than ever because the quest system forces them to build up their fields on day one or two. I’ve worked this thing out on S7 and I have no reason to believe that it wouldn’t be even faster and more satisfying on speed server.
After that, everything else is standard fare and in the rest of the guide. Build up troops, raid, expand, terrorize etc. Right before you’ve dropped your second village, I would recommend doing the quests if you like, if not for the free gold then to get that annoying toon off your screen.
Raiding 101:
1. Your initial raids should be in groups of 3 or 4, at least until you start losing them to walls, defenders and enemy population growth.
2. As soon as you get a raid report send out another appropriately sized raiding party immediately if you got spoils.
3. If your report comes back empty and the round trip is an hour, you might as well send out one minimal raid for good measure.
4. If you get nothing a second time, let the city rest and recover for a few hours and repeat.
5. Take note of the release times of your neighbors from the beginner’s protection. Keep a running log so you can raid “IMMEDIATELY” when the protection drops. Set your alarm clocks and make sure you’re in a position to raid right away. Take good stock of your 20x20 and again, keep track of these times – your rivals will be. The raiding party for those that just come out of protection (and are still small enough to have built little infrastructure) I send between 55-75 mace at them, less if the distance is greater. This is to be able to get everything they have in one raid. I don't plan on sharing their resources with strangers. For populations of 2 all you need to send is 54 maces. Each mace will carry 59.23 resources from the maxed out 800 storage.
Psychology Behind Small Raiding Parties:
As mentioned at the outset, your goal is to keep villages from deleting and/or building against you. Sending large raiding parties of 10 or more Maces at a single target is just bad time management. It’s always better to collect 600 resources from 5 different targets than 600 from one target early on. The more targets you hit the better your odds are of getting good returns. What happens if you guess wrong on a raid and you send all 30 Maces at a single target and come up empty? Look at the time you’ve wasted. You’ve allowed your enemy to see exactly how many troops you have, you’ve allowed too much time for your neighbors to recover from your last raids, you’ve given rivals time to raid your neighbors and get resources that you should have at LEAST been able to share and last but not least you’ve got to wait for your whole raiding army to come back home before you can relaunch....waste!
Day Two – Party Time
Your raiding party should be arriving shortly. Check the logs for any attacks. If there are, don’t panic or become belligerent. Don’t contact the offender. Take note of anything missing. Check your messages. Do not respond to flamers. Those that seek mercy should be respected but declined. Be empathetic but continue raiding. Promise to “take a breather” or “choose other targets before I raid again” and stuff like that. It will placate them into sticking it out a while longer.
Nothing is more important today than getting this party started. Parties expensive so there’s no time for small talk. You have to raid quick & often. Be sure to have 5 scouts at home at all times and another 10 scouting your neighbors.
Normal servers are gonna take about 3 or 4 parties to get a second city. Speed only one. Much of your success will depend on how many neighbors you have, especially within your 7x7. Remember, you don’t have any fields built up except for maybe a couple of woodcutters on lvl 1 and a clay on lvl 1.
When your pre-requisites are completed for the Townhall you have to be sure you have enough storage throw the party and to build settlers.
Conservative estimates by the end of day 2: (with decent farming ground and avoiding the loss or overflow of resources – of course normal speed servers with no gold may be a bit behind.)
• Residence: lvl 10 (fast approaching lvl 10 on normal)
• Wheat fields: Appropriate level to allow building and upgrading of structures
• Barracks: Normal lvl 5 / Speed lvl 1-3
• Maces: 100-125
• Scouts: 5-10
• Academy: lvl 10
o Researches: Scouts only!
• Main Building: lvl 10
• Townhall: lvl 1 (1st party well under way on speed, probably just getting started on Normal)
• Woodcutters: Three or four at lvl 1 on Normal
• Clay: Three at lvl 1 on Normal
• No walls, no embassies, no NAPs, no shenanigans
Day Three – Loadin’ Up the Wagon
Day three is an exciting day because it’s time to pack. Whether you’re on speed or normal you know the 2nd village is coming. Whatever you’ve fallen behind on building from day 2 then finish it. Keep raids going and scouts on the move. If you haven’t started your party yet do it today for sure. Check your records to make sure of who’s coming out of protection. Continue to ignore the flamers and ingratiate the farms. Also, pay close attention to alliances forming in your area. You will be recruited undoubtedly. Tell them you’ll seriously consider it and thank them for asking. Right now you just want to concentrate on “getting your village running”. If you see alliances forming, concentrate many of your raids on leadership. Don’t let them get off the ground. They will threaten and yell and tell you about the cata’s they’re going to build against you and remind you that there’s one of you and 5 of them and blah blah blah. The point is that the server just started and they have nothing and they won’t have anything because you won’t let them. One strategy they like to use is to reinforce a member to try and kill your troops. Make sure to scout the leaders and members before attacking.
Conservative Kingdom estimates by the end of day 3: (with decent farming ground and avoiding the loss or overflow of resources)
• Two or Three settlers (One or Two on normal servers)
• 150-200 Maces (under exceptional conditions)
• Barracks: Normal lvl 8 / Speed lvl 5
• Market: about lvl 5 only on normal servers (to prepare for transfers to second village)
• Scouts: 20
• Townhall: (Perhaps 2nd party on speed, possible 1st ending on normal)
• No walls, no embassies, researches, no NAPs, no shenanigans
Day Four – Movin’ Day
Speed server players should be ready to settle their next village, Normal server guys are still be a day or two away, depending on how early you were able to start your first party, and that’s fine. You should still be raiding non-stop and you’ve got enough Maces now to do two hour round trip raids. You honestly shouldn’t be receiving any incoming attacks. You may receive an occasional attack from outside your 20x20. These attacks will probably be from far away alliance mates of your farms within your 13x13. Normally these attacks are no more than 3 or 4 light infantry. No one wants to spend the first week of a server defending anybody so the attacks will be half-hearted just so they can say that they obeyed their leaders. If you are receiving heavy fire then you’re probably doing something wrong. Do an honest observation of yourself and ask a few questions:
1. Am I being aggressive enough?
2. Have I allowed raiders to take too many resources?
3. Have I allowed sleep, work or my small children to encroach upon Travian’s #1 place in my life?
If the answer to any one of these questions is “yes” ... fix it!
Make sure your next party is going as soon as your previous party stops. Once you do settle your second village, make sure you build your rally point right away to watch for incoming attacks. Also, reinforce the village with a few scouts.
Choosing Your Second Village
I’ve debated this topic over and over and I’ve changed my views at least once on the issue. Here is my current conclusion on the matter. If you can look at your 13x13 and honestly evaluate that there is no legitimate rival for you within that space, you can take any square you’d like. If you have a 15 cropper or 9 cropper nearby you have the luxury of waiting or you can take it now. If you don’t take a cropper, make sure that the square you choose is either touching your current village OR moving in the direction of your future cropper – especially on normal servers. Teuton merchants are too slow to have a scattered kingdom, especially early on. You want your Kingdom in a tight box-like formation for easy moving of resources and defenders.
Personally, I try to always choose a 5 clay square second. I do this because the demand for clay is so great early on especially when building woodcutters, crop, cavalry etc.
Sidebar:
For a third village I try to find an adjacent 5 woodcutter which will help when building structures and eventual defenders. My fourth village is either my cropper or my future capital 4x4x4x6. This is an advanced technique and should not be entered into lightly. On a normal speed server I’d probably end up taking my cropper third but no later than fourth depending on the level of competition in my area and the distance it is from my current stronghold.
I DO NOT SETTLE SQUARES WHERE FARMS HAVE DELETED. That's because the game will quickly respawn you a new farm in that hole. There's no worse feeling than having a farm delete that's directly next to you. But, there's nothing better than waking up and having a new roomate in the morning because you left the space unattended. Those spaces will be a revolving door of farms for you for at least the first quarter of the server. Eventually someone will decide to either stick it out, agree to pay tribute or just abandon the village out of frustration. Either way you win.
Risks/Rewards to Consider When You Don’t Choose a Cropper Second:
To be fair, it should be noted that waiting until your third of fourth village to settle a 15 or 9 cropper runs the serious risk of someone else settling it. If you assume this risk then you understand that you have a responsibility to stop all production and build your catapult infrastructure if someone does settle it under your nose. This will cause you to lose significant time and create other risk factors. On speed this should take you about a day but on normal about 2 or 3 days. To get the cropper back, you have to raid the cropper incessantly (and the supply village) to hinder the building of a palace, assemble your clearing squad, build the Cata Infrastructure (including prerequisites and a lvl 20 Rally Point), build at least 20 catas and gather the settlers necessary to populate the village once you’ve destroyed everything in it. This could include building the prerequisites for the settlers in another village if you don’t already have them. I’ve been in this position and it’s not fun, but I overcame it.
Note too that in the meantime, your farms have been left to their own devices and they could make best use of that time by putting up crannies, joining alliances, forming pacts and assembling an offensive against you. You’re not really able to concentrate on raiding efficiently or building more barrack levels and raid infantry. Then you’ll have to factor in the time it will take for you to continually send your catapults back and forth to this village. How far away is it? Do you lose any troops or catas in the process? How long to replace them?
Well with all that risk, what’s the reward? I believe the reward for waiting to settle a cropper until your third of fourth village lies in your immediate ability to fund and build up your cropper once you get it. With 3 or 4 supply villages at your disposal you will be able to quickly and efficiently build up your cropper right away. You won’t have to wait or uses gross amounts of gold. The faster your fields come up the faster you can begin working on your Hammer Infrastructure.
Risks/Rewards to Consider When You Do Choose a Cropper Second:
Choosing a cropper as your second village (especially a 15) puts a lot more pressure on you to do one of two things – either raid more if that’s even possible and/or consistently “who-re” gold. The fact that your first village is supported entirely by raiding and your second village (the 15 cropper) only has one of each resource that you won’t be upgrading anyway, you have to be able to sustain your existence at least for another week and a half on a normal server by strictly raiding. If raid conditions are ideal then this shouldn’t sting much. But if you’ve all of a sudden got rivals for your farms or farms with 8 crannies you’re in a bit of a pickle. No doubt your first village is running at negative crop already.
In addition, your 15 cropper needs resources too if it’s ever going to be the uber offensive village you wish it to be. You could find yourself falling behind in a major way and micromanaging the resources you are bringing in to provide crop for your troops and build wheat fields and Crop Infrastructure (whse, market, granary, flour mill) in your 15 cropper. Once you build the crops up you’ll have to use the market or the NPC merchant to even out your resources to build your Settlement/Party Infrastructure (see below) for your third village... and as you’ll see below, it’s pretty expensive. But if you decide to use your first village to settle your third village (upgrading your Residence to lvl 20 and forgoing the upgrade of your cropper) it will cost you about 4 times the amount you would spend going the Settlement/Party Infrastructure (in your cropper) way. Also, if you don’t upgrade your second village right away then you’ll have to throw “big” parties in your first village to compensate for the Townhall you would have built in your second village. That means upgrading your first Townhall to level 10 and then having to wait twice as long for the parties to finish paying three-four times as much.
Well with all that risk, what’s the reward? The security in knowing that you’ll probably have that cropper until the end of the server. It’s an underrated feeling. Having your ability to build your army secured by landing the cropper is just priceless. And if you choose to use a lot of gold, you can start to build the cropper up at a pretty nice clip.
As you can see, there are pros and cons to both philosophies. You can choose whichever fits your style.
(yeah I know it’s long, just shut up and keep reading.)
Day Five – Farmer’s in the Dell
Time to build up the fields in your first village. The faster you get those up the easier it will be to expand. Personally I build up all of the fields to level 4. Then from there I take one woodcutter to lvl 10. I do the same for clay and then for iron a bit later. Once I get wood and clay to 10 I build the bonus buildings up to lvl 2 or 3. I also think about upgrading my storage buildings to full capacity if not at least to lvl 18, you still can’t afford to overflow resources.
Using some supplies from the first village I upgrade the second village. Because it’s a clay village for me I begin to think about using the village for producing a clay heavy troop in the future. Perhaps this will be my defensive TK depot or my first cata factory? At any rate I’ll be upgrading the 2nd village initially with a Settlement infrastructure that includes a lvl 10 residence and a lvl 1 Townhall. Soon I will have nonstop parties in both my cities. This is how I begin most villages. Here are the minimum requirements for building the Settlement/Party infrastructure immediately in a new village:
• Rally Point lvl 1
• Market lvl 1
• Main Building lvl 10
• Academy lvl 10
• Whse lvl 10
• Granary lvl 10
• Residence lvl 10
• Townhall lvl 10
• Party – small (continuous)
• Settlers 3
o You will have to feed all of this so you’re looking at about an 80-90 crop need here. Minimally you should upgrade every wheat field to lvl 2. This should yield you 90+ crop in the village. You could forgo some of the fields and just upgrade your fields to lvl 1 and one to lvl 5 and build/upgrade a flour mill.
o This whole process will take about 190k – have fun!
Day Six – Enjoy Your Creation
You should be the first in your area with a 2nd village. You should also be 1 of about 4 on the whole server that has reached this accomplishment. It’s important to revel only for a moment because this fact puts an arrow on your back. You’ve got to hit your neighbors pretty hard for the next day or so. You don’t want them feeling like they can attack your second village. By this time you should have about 400-500 Maces and both villages should be throwing parties. Keep an eye on your Culture Points. Be ready to settle your third village once you’ve reached the requirements.
Do not stop raiding. Look for those coming out of beginner’s protection. Begin researching Pali’s in your first village. This will extend your raiding range and capacity. Now is not the time to begin troop upgrades of any kind. Just concentrate on raiding your neighbors, tracking those coming out of protection, raiding the new neighbors and establishing your dominance.
By the end of day six, you should have your Settlement Infrastructure in your second village just about complete. Use the subsequent days to throw continuous parties in all villages and continue this pattern and expand another village every couple of days. Remember to keep a tight formation and to continue raiding without let up. Once you reach 5 or 6 villages I would recommend (for my playing style) this configuration if at all possible:
• Village One - 4x4x4x6: Primary raiding village (soon to be phased out to primary supply) – Raiding (2000+ Maces, 400+ Palis) / Supply
• Village Two - 5 clayer: Preliminary Cata Base with small escort / Clay Supply
• Village Three - 5 woodcutter: Scouts / Future Defensive Infantry Base / Wood Supply
• Village Four – 4x4x4x6: Capital / Future Defensive Cavalry / Heavy Supply
• Village Five – 15 cropper: Hammer Headquarters (Axe, TK, Ram) / Heavy Assault
• Village Six – 9 cropper: Future Permanent Raiding Den (Mace, Pali, Rams) / Light Assault
After your initial 6 or 7 villages have been specialized, the rest of the villages in your kingdom will simply serve as some kind of supply depot. Whether it’s resources, defensive infantry, defensive TK’s etc. you’ll be supplying your kingdom quickly and efficiently. The majority of your villages when you’ve reached about 20 or so should serve a dual purpose of resource supply and defensive infantry. I hardly ever go past 25 villages unless a chief opportunity proves too lucrative. 30+ villages serves as a weakness for Teutons I believe. The more villages I have, the more I have to tend, upgrade and defend. My life as a Teuton revolves around keeping my 20x20 in check and supporting my alliance, not transferring resources from village 30 to village 35 etc. to avoid overflows. It's hard enough managing the negative crop without extra burdens. Also, you’ll want some villages with good crop capacity to store your offensive overflow in from your Hammer Headquarters. This will be explained later.
Sitters
This topic is very important and it's probably crossing your mind about now as the nights get longer and longer. Personally, I don’t use sitters. For my playing style I find that they do more harm than good – especially in the games first half. There are some instances during the course of a server where I wish I had one, if only to spell me during the wee hours of the night. If you do decide to take on a sitter, keep in mind that you’ll be giving a LOT of power to someone whom you’ve more than likely never met. The penalties for being a bad Sitter range from being fired to being banned – all from a make believe game world that ultimately means nothing. So it’s important to get a Sitter that cares about your success almost as much as you. It’s best if your Sitter doesn’t share your time zone range. When you’re asleep you want them awake. A sitter is of little value if their sleeping when you’re sleeping.
• Sitters come in many flavors. Two taste good (Mirror Image and Devoted Apprentice) all other flavors taste like varying combinations of pralines and doo doo.
o Mirror Image Sitters (MIS): Experienced players that are intelligent enough to follow your wishes and assertive enough to anticipate your needs. MIS’s won’t allow your storage to overflow and they won’t let your Axe production falter. They’ll know how to use the Village stat model and will be frugal with the NPC Merch. They’ll even kick in the little to purchase 30 gold to keep your hammer from starving in an emergency. You can trust them with large tasks like raiding operations and settling. It really can be liberating, freeing up a couple of hours for your real life roommates like your wife and kids.
There are some drawbacks. Because of their confidence and Travian skill, MIS’s always have the potential to do “too much”. How annoying is it to be logged in at the same time as your sitter? Screens changing, troops moving and resources disappearing. MIS’s are also nosey because of their competitive nature. They’ll read your messages and study all your logs. Also, sometimes they don’t pay attention to the “details” that you put in the instruction igm, such as villages that you DON’T raid. Perhaps you have an agreement with a village to not raid them for a day or two or if you receive tribute from another village. These are all beautiful things that can be ruined if not respected. I like to put a link on my preferences that says “DO NOT ATTACK – XYZ Village xx|xx” for all villages that send me tribute. Sometimes even if I point this out, the MIS will acknowledge it and eventually attack anyway. Not purposely out of spite, just out of pure, blind zeal for raiding. Also, MIS’s have their own Kingdom’s to deal with and may at times do things for you in a “half-hearted” kinda way. Not purposely out of spite, just out of pure, blind zeal for their Kingdoms.
o Devoted Apprentice Sitters (DA): Players that just want to be a part of what you’ve got going on. They recognize that you can help them learn and are willing to listen intently. They sometimes sacrifice their Kingdom’s well being to make sure your Kingdom thrives. DA’s follow directions implicitly. There is no variation from your standing orders. They will be diligent day and night when you need them. They will not use your armies or resources for personal gain or against their personal enemies. When you return to your Kingdom, everything you’ve asked to be done will be done to the best of their ability. If something went askew, you will have a full report message waiting as well.
DA drawbacks can sometimes outweigh their desirable qualities. DA’s are inexperienced, sometimes very much so. The fact that they follow directions exactly as you lay them out is underscored by their inability to “think on the fly” or troubleshoot/investigate a situation. This makes them easy to rattle and confuse because they lack the confidence to improvise. If you receive an incoming attack they will probably panic and clear the village of all troops and resources OR stack the village with troops and wheat to defend. The problem is that all this is done before assessment of the situation is made. Who’s attacking? What is their population? What is their race? Is it just one attack on one village or a more organized attempt? Is the target village a “high priority target?” How fast is the attack coming – infantry? Seige? Cavalry? Is it an enemy alliance or an ally who made a mistake? Would it be smart to contact them or send a counterstrike? Too many details for the DA to deal with.
All things considered, I’d rather have a DA. I run my account competently enough. All I need my sitter to do is follow directions I leave and report the results. I prefer that my sitter NOT be responsible for raiding, unless I’m in need of a resource boost for a special initiative. Also, do yourself a favor and only use Sitters that are in your alliance. If they’re DA’s make sure if they join an alliance, then they get dropped. You don’t want to be the leak that allowed the enemy to pick up the war strategies.
Going Forward
When the server is about 25% complete you should have about 10 villages conservatively. By this time your first 5 villages should have maxed out fields at level 10 and the rest shouldn’t be far behind. You’re storage in your initial villages should be AT LEAST at 160k capacity depending on your needs. There still shouldn’t be many within your 13x13 with a second village in the area. Some of your neighbors may have second villages like 300 squares away in a place they plan on moving. If your neighbors do have second or third villages you should be working on chiefing their non captials immediately. After about village 7 or 8 I stop building settlers (but I always keep 3 around just in case an opportunity arises) if I’ve secured my local croppers. From that point on I stack as many chiefs as I can. The rest of my Kingdom will be gifts from my neighbors.
Conquereing
When you Chief someone, you want it done in a matter of seconds not minutes. From clear to cata to chiefs to 2nd clear to reins to resupply – the process should take less than 5 seconds. Here’s an example:
For biggun’ enemy croppers, first send a flurry of 5 or 6 fakes to all enemy villages and real attacks to oasis points to set up a smoke screen before and after the strike. If you’re in an alliance, get them to do it too with the same approximate land time.
scout (3000 scouts)
2. clear at 4:00:00 am
3. cata residence at 4:00:02 am (at the latest)
4. 2 chiefs from one village at 4:00:03am
5. 2 chiefs from 2nd village at 4:00:03am
6. 2nd clear at 4:00:03 am
7. 2 chiefs from 3rd village or 1 chief from 3rd and 1 from 4th village at 4:00:04am
(inhabitants now enjoy my rulership)
8. Wheat shipment of 80k at 4:00:05am
9. 30k accumulated reins from my own stash (and that of my alliance mates) between 4:00:10 and 4:01:00
10. 3k defensive scouts by 4:05:00am at the latest.
11. Incoming reins/scouts and wheat for the next 12 hours from friends and family to kill hammers and enemy chiefs if they retaliate and those of their alliance mates.
12. I'll spend the next 48 hours taking down wood/clay/iron bonus buildings and fields (because I know they've wasted resources on them) and erecting granaries.
Smaller scale conquers follow the same basic formula just on a well... smaller scale. There’s a little more margin for error as well.
Choosing Alliances
Joining an alliance is something that should be done when you’ve established yourself as the ruler of your 13x13. Any alliance that tries to recruit you too quickly (and doesn’t know you from another server) doesn’t deserve to have you. They’re an upstart alliance and they’re looking to gather a bunch of friends so they don’t have to play hard. In my experience, these alliances never last long or grow at a snails pace. Whenever you have an amalgamation of alliance and NAP mates in the same area you can stick a street sign on it because it’s definitely a sim city block. Preferably, you want your 13x13 (at least) free of friends. This is your life blood for most of the server.
Only join an alliance that is determined to win the Wonder race, preferably one that’s done it before. No one with sights set on disturbing others who want to win the Wonder race or who just “want to have fun.” If you want to win a server, picking the right alliance is crucial. It’s also important to make sure that you’re alliance does at least have a decent presence in your quadrant...not your immediate area necessarily.
And don’t be afraid to go it alone for a while. Be the belle of the ball. Allow the best alliances to court you. You just have to be taking care of business militarily and all good things will come.
Joining an Alliance
Once you join an alliance (preferably with a high offensive ranking), follow the rules. Do your best to be loyal and helpful where you can. If a call goes out for reins and resources then supply them when you can. If the destination is over 100 squares away – don’t bother sending them. Some people like to build villages hundreds of miles away so they can either Sim City or escape being farmed. I don’t support them. Especially on the slower normal servers.
Don’t be intimidated by leadership. Feel free to speak your mind and offer your opinion. Don’t let anyone talk down to you or give you rude orders or nonsensical duties or chores. Be more than a cog. Make a difference. Follow all reasonable requests and make your self available. Participate in group chats and voice chats if possible. Be invaluable.
Make sure your alliance mates don’t get comfortable enough to just settle in your 7x7 though.
Leaving an Alliance
If you feel like you have to leave an alliance, try to do so on the best terms. The last thing you want to do is have a competent veteran alliance focusing on you for a couple of days. Be sure to refrain from attacking former alliance mates, even if you join a rival alliance. Make it clear that you’ll only attack in retaliation but you will not attack a former alliance mate unprovoked. If you have far away villages in your alliances stronghold, as soon as you leave, send some resources from that village over to the largest player in the general area. When he asks why you did it, either offer the village to him outright or just state something about no hard feelings about leaving and how you still respect the alliance. That goes a long way with your former family and will be appreciated. If your new alliance wants you (which they will) they will respect this as well. It’s not tribute. It’s politics Travian-style.
Culture Points
Culture Points (CP) are as important as anything in Travian. They decide whether you can settle, conquer or help chief villages. Did you know that if you don’t have enough CP that you can’t even help an alliance mate chief a village? The fastest way to get CP is to throw parties and by mid-server you should be throwing the Big Parties non-stop in all of your villages replacing the small parties you’ve been doing where possible. Another way to get more CP is to keep expanding your kingdom through conquering already existing villages. Each structure you build within your Kingdom produces CP as well, some more than others. The best sources of CP are maxed lvl 20: Embassies, Markets, Trade Offices, Townhalls, Palaces, Academies and Workshops.
Of course I carry a market in each city but in my assault cities I do not carry unnecessary structures that would take away from my storage capacity or military flexibility. Be sure to include as many of the Infrastructure buildings in your supply villages though. Each of my supply villages has an Embassy, Market, Trade Office, Townhall and Academy. That’s 700+ CP in addition to the other structures in the village just for one day. Multiply that by 20-30 cities and add in your parties from 90% of those cities and you’ve got more than enough CP
Troops
Keep your troops on the move. Your hammer is your second most prized possession next to your raiding army. Your hammer should never be used until something needs to be ... hammered. Preferably you want to use it in conjunction with the chiefing of a cropper or the offensive against an alliance enemy. Don’t waste it on stupid stuff and don’t tip your hand by leaving it to be scouted. When you send it out at night, make sure the round trip will finish about an hour after you plan to wake up. Leaves some time for you to oversleep or take a dump in the morning. Also, only raid single, obviously abandoned villages with no alliance affiliation when you’re moving your hammer.
Carrying more than a -50k wheat capacity is just plain crazy in any village unless you’re attacking with the full strength of your hammer. If you carry 7 granaries at full capacity then that 560k of wheat storage. After 11 hours your starving. You’ve got to be able to go away for 11 hours before checking in. For the troops over the 50k limit, you’d be better served by taking 2-3k of the cavalry troops and reinforcing your own nearby villages with adequate wheat. The further away the reinforcement village the faster the troop. You don’t want to send your siege away. Nobody’s got time to wait for those to return. You want to be able to reassemble your hammer within less than a half hour if possible. Definitely no longer than 45 minutes to an hour – and that’s pushing it.
Quick Hits:
-Tournament Squares should be built in all villages that produce troops – defensive or offensive.
-I don’t even research, let alone start building Axe’s until my cropper is up and running. What’s the point before that? They’re not a raid unit for me and my hammer is made a bit in the future.
-I don’t care when troops die. Especially Maces on speed. They’re built every 41 seconds and only cost 250 resources. You can produce 2100+ per day with minimal effort. That’s what makes Macemen perfect for secondary assault. They’re trained to die – especially when the percentages stack.
Parties
Keep the parties going and make sure all of your villages (except your croppers) have trade offices for moving massive amounts of resources when needed. Nothing is more frustrating when a chiefing opportunity comes and you don’t have enough CP to pull it off.
Blacksmiths, Academies and Armories
Academies should be fully researched in every village with the exception of catapults. All infantry, cavalry, rams and chiefs should be researched. Once it’s of no more value, Academies should be taken down. Remember that this could come back to bite you because the Academy is the prerequisite of many military buildings.
In most villages you won’t have to take the Blacksmith past level 3. Only build these when they are prerequisites or when you’re building a troop that needs them. Once it’s maxed out to level 20 for whatever purpose then tear it down with your cata’s. As far as Armories go, for safeties sake, if I build defensive infantry in a particular village, I will not only upgrade the defensive infantry to 20 but also the defensive cavalry as well.
[Hero] es
I make ONE hero and I stick with him. I don’t make a Mace hero then an axe one and then a cavalry one. All kill points will go to ONE hero, making his ascension quicker. For the Gauls I use a Thunder. For Romans I use an EI. For Teutons I use the ... Pali. I know most people use the TK and I have no problem with this. To me the one speed point makes a difference. When I send my Pali’s out to a big raid or minor assault I don’t want them slowed even a smidgen.
When I send out my hammer, I play the percentages game not the attack rating. Before I do anything else, I raise my hero’s regeneration with the first 5 xp I get. I’d prefer he recover quickly. Then I add to the offensive bonus until it reaches 20%. If I get a big score, I’ll put more in the regeneration up to 100 or a bit short of 200. After reaching 20% offensive bonus I add to Attack rating and regeneration. I hardly ever take the regeneration past 600. After the Attack rating is maxed out I’ll hit the defensive bonus to 20% and then whatever’s left over after that
Hammers
It’s been touched on a bit but I want to come back around and talk more about the hammer and different views I’ve come across. It’s important that a Hammer be not only big but max leveled. There is absolutely no excuse for creating a hammer without eventual max upgrades. It’s irresponsible and unnecessarily reckless for your Kingdom AND your alliance. When people follow behind you with precious siege weapons, crop and reins ready to storm a major target, they’re looking for your hammer to do its job which is to CLEAR EVERYTHING. If your hammer is wiped (which it probably will be) you better have wiped the enemy clean. If you don’t have confidence in your hammer’s ability to do that based on the scouting reports then send your secondary assault team behind it (separated by a 2 seconds or less) to clean up the rif raff.
A typical Teuton hammer will be maxed at lvl 20 blacksmith for each group. It will look like this:
1 Cavalry [Hero] (20% offensive bonus)
40k Axemen
15k TK’s
600-1k rams
Don’t let anyone fool you. That is the typical hammer. Some will boast of larger numbers and I’ve seen a few twice this size but for the most part people don’t have the patience to wait that long. But, if you want to do real damage to a top 5 player, Natar village or Wonder structure, your hammer will look more like this:
1 Cavalry [Hero] (20% offensive bonus)
75k Axemen
30-40k TK’s
3-4k rams
War
Only n00b alliances go to war in the beginning of the game. Don’t get involved in that garbage, it only hinders your growth allowing your neighbors to do whatever they want. Real wars are fought in quarter 3 of a normal server. These are really good fun and if you’re smart will pay off big time in the way of new villages and a bigger Alliance presence. I’ve fought in wars that last a week, a month or 5 months. The key is to survey the scene and be as active and helpful as possible. This is what you’ve been preparing yourself for. By third quarter you’ve probably got about 40k in lvl 20 spears, at least 10k lvl 20 def. TK’s, another 10 def Pali’s (aside from your raiders) and a good sized lvl 20 hammer (assuming you only have one cropper). Be quick to reinforce/restock your mates. Sacrifice your hammer for a great cause but the cause doesn’t have to be sexy as long as it’s important.
Endgame
By the fourth quarter of the server I usually only have tribute farms and 3 or 4 major ones left that produce an obscene amount of resources every day. They’re normally abandoned villages or Sim players. One round I was next to an abandoned first village of a player that had rebuilt hundreds of squares away. Every day I got over 500k resources from this village and it was right next to my Hammer Headquarters. That was unbelievable.
Most of your villages at this point need to start moving over to defensive infantry duty. One other village should be devoted to scouts for a total of two now. One or two village for TK’s. These should all be lvl 20 defense as well. We’re preparing for two things. The Wonder race and sneaky enemies from far away that will claim “hammer suicide to make room for their own defensive troops” when the hammer is killed. They’ll even send you igm’s that thank you for dispatching their “secondary hammer” so they can start building defense. I don’t even bother responding. The label on the attack log says it best, “None of your soldiers returned”.
Once your alliance secures the Wonder sites and both sets of plans, you have an obligation to give everything you have to make that Wonder build successful. Of course some Wonder teams aren’t as swift as others and some do things like begin building too fast without the proper storage capacity in place... but that’s neither here nor there. Don’t volunteer to babysit the Wonder if your not willing to either spend money on gold for your own Wonder feeders or put in the time commitment which involves avoiding starvation every 3 hours or so.
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