Guide to a Raiders Mindset

Written By: boomdawg
Original Copy: travian.us
Formatting By: Steve10

This guide looks inside the mind of a heartless, unashamed raider. 

There are plenty of guides to tell you how to stop being a farm or how to avoid ever becoming one but I have yet to see one that truly explains the mindset of a raider. Knowing this and this alone won't keep you from being a farm or stop you from being a farm but what this insight can do is explain why you should do the things mentioned and possibly help you prioritize or change how you do the things the other guides suggest.

First and foremost a raider raids because it's a benefit to them. This may seem obvious to most but some people don't seem to get it and take it personally. But truly understanding that a raider is in it for their own benefit allows one to think creatively about how to deal with a raider. 

There are several ways you as a farm are a benefit to a raider and minimizing all these aspects is a surefire way to get the raiding to stop (though depending on how you go about it the raiding may stop and the catapults may begin). The most obvious benefit a farm provides to a raider is resources. Resources and time are the two most important factors of Travian. If you are giving up resources even some of the time you are providing a very tangible benefit to the raider. The more you provide the more valuable you are to the raider. The earlier in the game you are providing them (relative to their start time) that value is increased. That is to say 4,000 resources in the first 3 days of playing means a lot more than 10,000 resources in the 9th month of playing.

The next possible benefit is experience for their hero. This comes if you have defenses which are getting killed off to the raiders attacks (if the hero is present of course) or if you send troops to attack the raider (and the hero is there with defense). As with resources the more experience you provide and the sooner you provide it the more valuable it is to the raider.

Lastly is an intangible benefit that is often overlooked yet one of the more prized aspects of a good farm. This benefit is entertainment. The raider is playing a game for enjoyment. Some find this joy in being good at what they do. Others find it in dominating some aspect of the game whether it be rankings or other people. Some are here for the social aspect and raiding is a means to increase their social standing or take care of others in their social circle. Not all farms provide entertainment but those that do tend to do so in a few different ways. 

The first and least productive way is through whining or threatening IGMs or even forum posts. I can tell you a funny threatening IGM will get passed around to the raider's friends faster than the only lighter on a cigarette break. These types of messages in most cases will actually prompt further antagonism in the hopes of it causing even more humorous messages to ensue. Calling out the raider on the forums is in some circles the ultimate prize and only further cements your role as a farm.

The second way of providing entertainment is to just be humorous. Sending messages that are witty or off the wall is another way to provide entertainment for the raider that stands a better chance of a positive outcome. I personally have used messages similar to the following:

Dear (raider name), 

I wanted to send you a note in regards to your visitation earlier today. I took note of your very dashing and well mannered Macemen you sent. They were quite polite in setting about their task of tidying up the stray resources I had just laying about and for that I am quite grateful. I will have to get at my handservents about the mess and hopefully, should you visit again, there won't be so much lying around in the future. 

Thankfully Yours, 

(me)

You could easily change this about depending on your circumstances, perhaps inviting them to return for tea at some future date (so long as you know your crannies will be covering the resources you will have then). I have even changed the air of the message to chastise the soldiers for their slovenliness and rude behavior. In using such a light hearted manner I have even secured the return of raided resources.

Thirdly you can entertain the one raiding you via flattery. Compliment them on their prowess, size and strength. Ask them humbly if perhaps they could share some of their wisdom with you. I wouldn't advise you to berate yourself too much but do make it clear that you feel you could benefit from any knowledge they might so kindly impart. If they respond favorably with info but keep farming, take their advice, implement it if worthwhile and move one. Message again a few days later with another simple question. Don't forget to be grateful. Just about everyone likes to have their ego stroked if it seems sincere and everyone likes to be appreciated. It's not uncommon for raiders to dispense good advice and then give the farm in question a little respite to see if they follow through. 

If they see you becoming successful and they feel they may have played a role in that they may see you as a possible ally more than a possible threat. Again it comes back to being able to benefit from you. Even if they don't stop farming you but you have established a "working" relationship you may offer to become a defensive player for them. All raiders focus heavily on offense for a notable length of time and thus end up behind on the defensive troops and upgrades. If they feel they can trust you it's not unheard of for a raider to stop raiding someone and come to depend on them for defenses if the need arises. As a Teuton raider I have made this arrangement with Roman players. They provide the infantry defense and I offer to stop raiding and provide some modicum of cavalry defense. If they don't need defenses try to identify some other need they may have. You may even offer to to provide quarter for some of their troops if they aren't using them all in raiding.

Now that we've fairly well covered how you can appeal to a raider as providing benefit. Let's address other aspects of how a raider thinks.

I have seen it said that some farms feel the raider wants them to quit. I will not say this is never the case but it is truly a sadistic raider that desires this outcome. One of the biggest complains raiders make is about farms quitting and their villages deleting (not the case so much with T4). Raiders want to raid you for what you provide. If you quit and your village disappears they get nothing from you anymore. Most raiders have come to accept this as the long term cost of business but this desire to keep you around can be played to. This is why raiders don't go and catapult unproductive farms into the ground and decry those who do.

Here too, good open communication with the one raiding you is important. Messaging them and threatening to delete if they don't stop farming you does little good. If they don't raid you or you delete it's the same difference. Here is when you can try to offer tribute. If you have built up a good rapport with them previously or if this is your last ditch effort it's worth a try to stop the raiding. Message the raider offering the limit of 1 hours production every day. If you're bold enough or desperate enough you may even offer it as a short term stay with the issue to be revisited in 2 weeks or so. 

This offers several benefits to the raider. If you're further away from them it means they won't have to tie up so many troops in making repeated trips to you, which in turn means they can then raid someone else and still get some resources from you. This also means you'll be around longer and though raiding generally falls by the wayside for many, it's always nice to have or find decent farms in mid to late game that aren't too far away. Additionally this means you'll grow, not as fast as you could but you will grow. This is good because it means you'll be a better farm later and the tribute ensures you won't grow too fast and become a threat to the raider. 

What this means to you is instead of losing nearly all your production you'll only lose 1/24th of it. This also buys you time. With this time you can build up your own troop levels, do some farming yourself (possibly), find a solid stable alliance, or even just time to build up the relationship with the raider. Even if at first rejected you can broach the subject of becoming a defender once you've established yourself as being reliable with the tribute. Lastly this may provide you enough time to get your second village and move it someplace far safer.

Now that we've addressed the resources and entertainment benefits that farming can provide a raider lets talk about the experience benefits. In it's simplest form this is very easy. Don't let troops die to the one raiding you. Many people accomplish this by not building troops at all. In the short term this is not such a bad way to go but long term it can lead to problems. Eventually you won't be able to cranny all your resources you produce. This happens because your fields have gotten so productive and your warehouse so big or because you find that you need to demolish some crannies to make room for more buildings. When this happens you don't want to start giving up resources. Some people will start dumping their resources into research, you can only spend so much though and research queues start to get very very long taking days or even weeks on regular servers. Troops on the other hand can be started at any time, the only restriction is crop and a well developed 6 cropper can sustain more than a thousand troops. So we can see to deny resources eventually troops become necessary (also to stop the cycle of farming as well).

The simplest way to keep troops alive is to keep them out of your town. This can be done by sending them as reinforcements to a friends village, sending them out on long raids and immediately sending them back out again. The problem with these is availability. If your friend is close by they are probably being farmed too. If they are far away then it could take a long time to get your defenses back when you need them. If you send them on far raids their availability can be even less than if their at your friend's. In addition while this is happening you cannot use them for your own farming. But another way is to dodge (it's called evasion in T4). This method allows you to keep them on hand when you're around and you can still send them on long walks while you sleep or work. How this works is once you see an incoming raid you figure out about when it lands so you can decide if you'll be there. You let all your troops return from their raids and you wait, then roughly one minute before the raid arrives you send all your troops out, wait 40 seconds to a minute (you get 90 seconds) and then recall them. I don't advise waiting till 20 seconds before the raid arrives because lag or human error can cause you to miss the delay and then you're giving up experience again.

Now that we've identified how to prevent your local tormentor from benefiting via resources, experience and provided them an alternative way to entertain what goes through the raiders mind. At this point it's probably apathy. You're not a threat to them, you're not a threat to a future cropper (if you are there isn't much you can do to save yourself). You're not providing experience for their hero. The only entertainment you provide is the occasional polite message but those can't be provoked out of you via violence of action and as such the raider ceases to care. Sure they might send something your way every now and then, see if you've gotten lazy in your anti-farm defense, but so long as they continue to get nothing they'll stop altogether. To continue to attempt to farm you now costs time, and produces nothing. Now that you're not a farm you're more attractive to alliances worth joining which will be able to provide some modicum of protection and cause you to drop off the raiders radar altogether.

There is yet one raider where none of this matters. This raider for a variety of possible reasons actually is intent on driving you from the game. There is no way to appease this raider. No amount of tribute offered, no amount of losses inflicted, no matter what alliance you join, nothing will deter this person from their goal. These raiders may be sadistic and derive their benefit from the suffering of others (Schadenfreude). They may also be paranoid. I have been in an alliance with someone that refused to let anyone exist within 7 squares of any of his villages to the point of catapulting an alliance mates newly settled town (technically it was a different alliance but we were in the same meta). He was so paranoid about "his 7x7" that we eventually had to boot him and pummel him into deleting. There is no way to reason with folks such as raiders such as these, and as such the only possible actions are to survive long enough to get a second village or delete your account and start over (most likely on another server if people already have catapults on the one you're on).