Travian 4: The Best Ideas

The Old & New Look of The Academy

Well if you're a follower of any of Travian's world wide forums you'll know that Travian 4.0 is scheduled for a stable release in Spring 2011, however everyone knows how things get delayed so my personal view is that we're likely to see a stable version around late Summer, possibly earlier if no major flaws are found. It's also expected that staff members will be the first to try it out (lucky for them). 

Anyway, I've trawled through hundreds of pages of game suggestions, the Travian 4 threads as well as looking at the most recurring complaints that come up on Travian's forums about gameplay to come up with a list of the most popular, the most sensible and my personal favourite ideas. Of course the majority of these won't appear, I'd love to see what would happen if they do and also I'd like to take this opportunity to publicise them just incase the powers that be do see this and maybe consider adding them in.

So anyway, I've split this into two categories:

1. 25 General Ideas
2. 3 Gold Ideas
3. 4 New Gold Club Features

1. Mobile Phone Friendlier:

One thing I've noticed (and experienced myself) is that Travian is very hard to play on any browser except Safari (I've tried and it performs well on it). To be truely mobile friendly their either needs to be apps for smartphones (iOS, Android, Win7 are the main ones) or just a mobile site that you automatically get sent to when you log on via a phone. Bigger buttons and small changes tailored to phone suitability would really help boost Travian's usability and possibly help bring in many more players.

2. A New Tribe:

This is the most common suggestion, in the Travian 4 threads, and it's been asked for ever since Travian started, people want more choice. Most of the time the reason given for why it hasn't happened is it will unbalance the gameplay, but I don't think that's fair at all, because surely if we wanted completely fair gameplay there would be one tribe which everyone had to play? I believe that as long as the new tribe(s) were to have drawbacks as well as excellent features (like the current tribes do) then the gameplay will adjust and improve due to the increased diversity and strategies that can be played.

This is a fantasy and will most likely never happen as stated by Travian Games many times.

3. Improving End-Game:

This is probably join first with the New Tribe idea and certainly my favourite area which I feel needs to be improved. The main reason I feel people drop out of the game (past the artefact stage) is that only a small number of people can truely be involved in End-Game, to most people being asked to send wheat and troops is not an interesting or fulfilling way to end the game. A rework where the end game is more involving to the majority of players is necessary if Travian Games do not want people dropping out especially Gold Players. I personally haven't spotted a truely excellent suggestion of how to do it but one I did like was releasing 10 WWs at the beginning of the server and first alliance to hold the majority of them and get 1 to level 100 would win. 

4. Quicker Start:

Although the majority of people complain about the end the most another popular complaint is the extremely slow start even on speed servers, speeding his up slightly would really help. My personal suggestion would be to have the production of a starting field be double what it is now on all servers, but only end up maybe 10% more by level 10. Or even having more indepth quests which offer larger rewards but aren't necessarily harder or more time consuming to obtain. This may help stop some of the early game drop outs. 

5. Remove Rally Point Restrictions & Auto-Recall:

Although not the very most complained about it's certainly high up there from a very, very vocal set of the players in the game. Very simply, ever since I joined the game back when UK1 & UKx had their very first servers there has been no set of features as unpopular as this. I've heard that the guy who stopped the Rally Point restrictions being lower and allowed Domain Admins to choose to disable these features on certain servers is in charge of this new version so I'll be very surprised if these are not removed.

6. Make Pushing ALOT harder:

Another controversial issue was created when Travian factored in raiding to the amount you can send to another person in a day, some people agreed it was good while most people believe it helps increase legal pushing at the beginning of the server; notably where all the duals on an account create an account, farm from them all during the first 2 weeks or so sending the max resources to the one they've decided to go with for the rest of the server. They then delete those farming accounts and then join the main account. Although there were quite a few suggestions for how this could be fixed my favourite is a raising limit where  something like the following would happen:

1. Day 1 & 2: Only allowed to send 1/2 Hour of Resource Production (not rolling)
2. Day 3 - 5: Only allowed to send 1 Hour of Resource Production (rolling 3 days)
3. Day 6 - 14: Only allowed to send 3 Hour of Resource Production (rolling 3 days)
4. Day 14 - 28: Only allowed to send 3 Hours of Resource Production (rolling 7 days)
5. Day 28 Onwards: Allowed to send 3 Hours Production plus Raiding (rolling 7 days)

This would greatly slow down the ability of pushers to pump resources into one account, but would not stop people giving out small amounts to help their friends. Of course a small amount of pushing would occur but not nearly on the scale of the current game and I don't think it could be stopped without banning anything but merchant trades which is not a good idea.

7. Even Tougher Anti-Bot Measures:

I think Travian should be commended for the massive efforts they have made recently to counter bot use, however the think that has been noticed is the truly dedicated botters who pay for their bots are still managing to get away with it because of the superiority of their bots and this needs to be dealt with. Whenever a bot is updated to get past Travian updates then ASAP a new update to Travian needs to reblock these bots. I can't see Travian finding it hard to do this if they take out bot subscriptions (not to use of course) themselves so they are alerted as soon as one is updated.

8. Easier Troop Tracking & Management:

A general simplification is a must have in the next version of the game, by this I mean change the way you view reinforcements in the rally point it's by player first (for under 10 person reinforcements), or alliance (if it's over 10 people reinforcing), you could then go further down to locate the player and village reinforcing. To me this would be much more efficient then the tribe system currently in place. When you are viewing someone elses village which you have put troops into you should be able to view the total number of troops you have there from all your villages. Here is a quick mock-up I created:

This got a 95% approval rate on the UK Forums

It's simple changes like the one I described which will save players, especially with multiple villages a lot of time and may even prevent mistakes that lead to troop starvation.

9. Re-Work Spawning Algorithm:

This would change so that activating at the same time would not mean that two or more players would end up next to each other, which would help solve the problem of alliance pre-planning which often leads to newbes being destroyed and given no chance at a fair start. Also make it so that players who start five or more days into the game are not spawned next to already giant players when old players delete.

10. More Hero Statistics:

By the end of the game round quite a few heroes will have ended up over level 100, which currently means that many many points are left unattributed and kills with the hero are now not really rewarded in a meaningful way. So one idea I read suggested adding two new bonuses to the hero:

1. Speed: Up To 20% Faster
2. Siege Bonus: Up To 20% More Powerful 

I quite like both these ideas and it would help reward those offensive players who currently get nothing for having some of the best heroes in the game. I don't think it will be unbalancing, atleast no less unbalancing than the current hero bonuses are. 

11. Add Players To 'Block List' & add a 'Report' Feature:

This feature would allow you to block anyone from sending you messages within the game, it's been wanted for a very long time and could prove useful if you do not wish to talk to a player. The report feature would also allow you to report a message from the message page straight to the Multihunter and it would automatically contain a link to the message. This would make it easier to report abuse as well as mean the Multihunter wouldn't have to send a message back asking for a link to the abusive message if you forget to add it. I think someone should be alerted that they have been blocked by a player if they are.

12. Auto-Abandon Oasis For Banned Players:

My suggestion is that after three days any oasis owned by a Banned Player is automatically abandoned so that they can be conquered by other people, it is unfair to keep them from actually providing a benefit to a player and helps slow down gain development. If 3 days is considered too quick (which some may believe), then I think 14 days should really be a maximum amount of time that they are kept for.

13. Map of Alliance Members:

When you are in an alliance, you should be able to be shown a map of everyone's position on the map within your alliance. Quite simple, and it is available (I think in violation of the rules) on external sites, so it is possible and it's just one of those little things that would improve the game.

14. Retreat Feature:

This is an idea I like in principle but can see changing the game a bit so I'm not completely sure it is a good idea (maybe needing a trial before implementation), anyway I supported this idea on the UK Forums and basically it would mean that you could sent a percentage of losses where after you lose that amount your troops automatically retreat. My personal belief is that if implemented the amount should be no lower than 30% and you should not gain a report for the losses you inflicted upon the enemy unless you managed to kill over 50% of them.

15. Alliance Wings:

This is one of the ideas that is seen over and over again in forums all over the world, and nearly all of the comments in response to them agree that they should be added. Basically if you don't know what it is then it's a new diplomacy option for Alliances to set other alliances as their wings rather than a confed or N.A.P. With this the top alliance in the chain would be able to send out messages to members of all the wings, maybe with a tag like the current [ally] one only it would be [wings].

16. Re-Usable Recognition Medals:

Basically this is an idea that's been mentioned before where if you get the winning WW, the runner up WW, the most offensive points, the most defensive points, raided the most or had the highest level hero then at the end of the server you are awarded a medal that can be used on any server on that domain and can be kept forever. Would only work with the email used to register the medal winning account.

17. Notification & Acceptence of Being Set As Sitter:

For me this is another must have, when you are set as a sitter for someone else you must be notified automatically by IGM that you have been set and must also accept the position. Just a little thing but should help improve players' organisation.

18. Better Location of Guides For New Players:

Although I think there are some gameplay problems that need to be addressed to help new players however another problem is the lack of information available for new players and the often out of date sources. My idea would be to either create a Travian Official Wiki, which could be owned by Travian, and would be kept updated by players. There used to be one (was at wiki.travianteam.com now deleted) but that never got big enough or useful enough because the game never linked to it, so basically on the side under instructions would be a link to the wiki and it would also be in the Support Message that all players recieve at the beginning of the game. Maybe even a very simple quest could be added in to get people to press it like 'Press link to Wiki' with a very small reward on it.

19. Alliance Crest/Shield/Small Picture:

Well since the game is getting better graphics over all I think it would be a good idea if each alliance is allowed to have a small crest/flag/shield/picture (you get the idea), on their frontpage, maybe a maximum of 100x100 pixels or 15kbs. Of course as with the alliance description, nothing obscene or abusive would be allowed.

20. Server Length Display:

Another short idea, when registering for a server, just let it display how long the server has been going on for.

21. Kicked or Left:

Well this idea has been quite popular lately and I think it's quite important and very useful. When a player leaves the alliance instead of the current message it would display 'abc has chosen to leave the alliance', if a player is removed it will say 'xyz has removed abc from the alliance'. Another add-on to this idea would be to allow a reason to be added when leaving or kicking, either from a pre-decided drop down list or typed in.

22. New Image For Villages At 1000 Population:

Very simple, like with the other population markers when your village reaches 1000 population it is expanded further. Seeing all those 500 population villages is getting a bit boring and there's no real downside to this idea so I can't see why it can't be done.

23. Add The Week Number to Medal Page:

Just a very small addition to the medal page so you can tell what week of the server you are in.

Image Made By Carrothead of the UK Forums

24. Report Changes When Conquering:

As you know if you conquer a village and then you, members of your alliance or members of your confed have other attacks going to it then things can quickly get confused. Such to the level that confeds have been cancelled and players kicked from alliances because of this. A very simple idea would be change is so that any report on that village taken 12 hours before or 12 hours after the conquer would have clearly on it: 'This Village was taken at xx:xx by the player abc'.

Just imagine the amounts of confusion something as simple as that could solve.

25. Sharing of Defensive Points:

This is one thing that has a lot of people divided, it is who should get rewarded when you reinforce someone under attack. If there are more than one people reinforcing it would be be split by the percentage of troops in the village providing by each person. So if someone provided 10% of the troops they would recieve 10% of the def points, 60% would recieve 60% and so on.

1. [GOLD IDEA] Instant Demolish To Zero:

This certainly will never become the most used idea, but it think for maybe about 1 or 2 Gold it could be a very useful feature, when demolishing a building you can choose to pay that gold to demolish the building straight to zero. I would think that it would not be possible on TC, Residence & Palace. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, will help save time and won't cause a game play unbalance.

2. [GOLD IDEA]: Instant Hero Regeneration:

As all major players know, when your hero dies and it's high levelled it costs you hundreds of thousands of resources as well as a massive amount of time to resusitate it. My idea  to solve this is that it will still cost the same amount of resources, however for 5-10 Gold (up to Travian of course) you will have the ability to instantly regenerate the hero. This will mean more attacks will be sent, especially in later stages of the game and it will save a lot of time, plus being a lucrative earner for Travian.

3. [GOLD IDEA]: Gold Reward For Recieving Medals:

A common complain that players have when they get a medal is there is no real reward for it and this is the most popular suggestion I have seen for giving these high achieving players something in return for their achievements. Players 4-10 in the medals tables would recieve 20 Gold, the player who comes third will get 75 Gold, the player who comes second will get 150 Gold and the player that comes first will get 300 Gold. Of course if added in Travian may adjust these figures but to me they seem like reasonable amounts.

1. [GOLD CLUB FEATURE] Multiple Chat Recipients:

I think Gold Club is quite useful but I think it is massively overcharged for at the moment for the features it provides, so I've decided to give a few suggestions for new Gold Club only features. This one is my favourite, the ability to send messages to multiple recipients. Very simple, simply make it possible to message more than one person at a time, personally I'd suggest a maximum cap of maybe 10 to 15 people to stop major spammers, but if people do spam they could be reported to the Multihunter as they are at the moment. To be quite honest I can't see someone paying for gold club just to have the ability to spam.

2. [GOLD CLUB FEATURE] More Markings On Map:

For Gold Club players when they look at the map they will now be able to see 'Banned' players and players in 'Beginners Protection', the banned players would appear with a black outline around their villages and the players in beginners protection would appear with a white outline around their villages. If you hovered over one of these white villages a countdown would appear telling you when BP for that village ends.

3. [GOLD CLUB FEATURE] Scout Improvements:

Now I can't say I am 100% sure about this idea, but once I saw it I recognized it would be extremely useful for a lot of people, and most of those people will be Gold or Gold Club users. So anyway here it is, if you are a Gold Club user when you are sending out scouts you would be given the option to find out the level of up to 3 buildings of your choice in the village you are scouting, say for example I could choose The Barracks, The Granary & Another Granary.

4. [GOLD CLUB FEATURE] Marketplace Offer Expiry:

Simple really, anyone using Gold Club can set their marketplace offers up so that they last a set amount of time, they could insert the time frame by no. of hours. This way even if they need something urgently at some point but they forget to take it off if no one takes the offer they won't end up with an un-needed trade later on.