Miramagia Launches - Review & Screenshots

Yesterday I was on Twitter and received a link to Travian newest game, Miramagia, where you take on the role of either a Mage, a Shaman, a sorceror or a Druid. The game's German version already achieved over 23,000 players which is very good for a brand new game in a beta version. Now that a brand new version has been launched in English I'm sure that once the advertising kicks in the game will be getting a lot of new players.

Miramagia Frontpage (Click for fullsize)

You must first register for the game, which follows the same process as most other browser games, you enter you desired username and password and then activate your account via email. You are then automatically put in a brand new village and given a small area of land to grow crops on and a house and building space for other buildings. Within your village there are up to 7 other players who you can meet and interact with when they are online, you also have the ability to visit other villages and the city where you could meet even more players. A well thought out (and fairly long) tutorial made up of a large number of quests with rewards guides you through the early part of the game (I've been playing nearly two days now and the quests are still not finished), teaching you how to do the very basics and then as you progress showing you more advanced techniques and ideas. To me this is one of the best tutorial systems I've seen because the quests are challenging but not impossible and allow you to get a very good knowledge of the game. 

It seems to me that the game is aimed at younger players (although not limited to them), the graphics are cartoon style and very colorful and cute. When playing the game most of the space is actually given to the game itself and the buttons are right up at the top and side so there's a fair bit of screen space in the middle which is significantly better than some of the other games in this genre. The design is fairly innovative (it won the Browser Game of the Year award for most innovative game of 2011), however it seems to take some inspiration from the casual Facebook style games that are becoming increasingly popular. 

Game Layout (Click for Full Size)

The games simplest principles boil down to the point where the aim is to become the highest level in the game while amassing the most gold and mana, expanding your own land and helping to improve your village. I think that this simplicity is perfect the target audience and combined with the way they have integrated achievements into the game I think it's a good recipe for repeated visits to the game. Within the game you can plant seeds and the sell, use and resow the things that are produced, their seems to be a very active and self regulating marketplace within the game to go along with this. You can also purchase items to decorate your garden and improve other aspects of your gameplay. You use Gold to purchase most items although there are some premium items which require Rubies (the ingame currency, like Gold is in Travian) to purchase. Rubies are also used to purchase Plus accounts which give you extra features within the game. As far as I can work out the cost of Rubies is roughly the same as Gold within Travian although I think it might work out slightly cheaper. There's a lot of different features that come into play within the game and I think they all complement each other pretty well. 

For me I see the levelling system as a mixed bag, it's both good and also poor at the same time. I feel that new players to a game like to get a sense of some sort of achievement quite quickly when they start a game, even if it's just a small thing and that's why I believe that the amount of experience required to reach level 2 in the game is too much and takes too long. Levelling up is a key motivational factor to keep players playing the game and I felt it should have taken around half the time (or half the experience) that it did take, or the early tutorials in the game should have given the player more experience points for completing them. However once you start getting more experienced in the game you can appreciate that a little bit of a challenge is needed for levelling up and this is when it is good to have a bigger gap, so my suggestion is that the amount of experienced needed for the first 3 levels or so is reduced by between 1/3 and 1/2 to make it easier for new players to progress. Again the levelling system follows the usual path and gives players more options (in this case more plants, spells and items) the further they level up. I would also suggest that when you complete achievements extra experience going towards your level should be given. 

Achievements Page 

The game has just come out of beta so there are still a couple of issues with it, including a couple of links lead to external pages which are in German however this does not affect the actual gameplay so it's not an issue. However on their (very detailed) question and answer page (similar to the Travian one) while all the answers have been translated very well into English the screenshots used to provide demonstrations are still only available in German which can be frustrating for someone trying to use the images to work out how to do something. I'm sure it'll be fixed but for such a key thing that helps new players it needs to be done as soon as possible. 

Overall I think the game is fresh and very cute and addictive to play, if you haven't already tried it then I would suggest you atleast give the game a go as it might surprise you. I'm not sure I'll continue to play the game for much longer but it has it's attractions and I'm sure that very soon it will grow massively. Travian are excellent are translating their games and expanding domains so I'm sure that if it isn't available in your native language now then it will probably be available soon. If you're interested in playing the game then follow this link to register now.

I hope this review was useful, if it was either subscribe to our site or follow us on Twitter for the latest news and a link when we release a new article. 

Steve10

The Travian Takeover: Your Response

Apologies for not posting the results of this little Ideas session, Easter has been so busy, I never got round to it. But it doesn't matter as we have had quite a few responses to my previous post, and here they are from oldest to newest:

The first comment I got said that there should be speech bubbles on the map, which kind of makes it like Habbo Hotel when you think about it, however it is quite a nice idea, although it might be used as misleading information when you say "I'm being catapulted" and then when everyone else decides to attack as well. In other words it might do more harm than good, however still a nice idea.

The second was about decorative items for the village, and yes I can agree that Decorative Items are needed to make the Village a lot more homely, and I think that some should have village bonuses on them, and let them be found on Adventures or bought from the Auction room, to add a bit more variety to the game, but that's up for discussion.

Most of the rest of the posts were directed towards Hero's, and one of the comments I got was for the hero's to have High Heels, where one commenter posted:

Regarding high heels for Heroes, I'm of the opinion that while they may be aesthetically appealing, they will be of little practical use when wading through mounds of dismembered corpses, and, charred crop fields. I am however leaning towards the notion of thigh length boots, which, would greatly enhance both a riders stability, and, manoeuvrability.

As well as walking difficulties, I probably wouldn't be the first to say I would wait for the Female Hero upgrade to arrive (if it arrives) before adding any length of High Heels on a hero.

Next addition to the game was Pubs, Bars and Nightclubs, which could be an interesting feature to add in, if you include a Hangover feature, which means that the army isn't available for battle until they have recovered from their night out. Although, I think Nightclubs are under the Culture Point parties although I'm not too sure.

That's it for now, Part 2 will include the comments I missed out from my previous post, plus anymore you have. Until then, have a nice week :)

DUO WW holder comx ending round April 26 2011

The player's profile will tell you who are helping DUO account and he is thanking to the supporters.

New Comments Feature

Hey Guys,

I finally got around to changing us over from the defaults comments feature for Blogger onto a more capable, feature filled addon which allows for a lot more control and features for the commenting area. I've been getting a lot of spam so now commenters will have to enter an email address and optionally enter some kind of name or user name to comment. You've got many options for this, you can either remain as a guest posting or you can post via Disqus, Facebook or Twitter accounts as well as from other social networking logins. 

You can now also add links to your posts which will be converted automatically, along with this the ability to add images to comments has also been added which I believe is great and should come in really handy. You can reply to any other comment directly and that will go straight under the previous one, to go with this you also have the ability to 'like' posts that you think are useful and particularly well written.

That's all for now but I hope it improves the quality of the experience of commenting on the site. I hope you'll all try it out and comment more often now good features are in place. 

Steve10

A Social Travian Idea [Part 1]

Hey Guys,

I'm on a mission, and that mission is to use the data that I received in my last full scale Travian survey to try and design/suggest new ways for Travian to implement social features and if possibly to try and create some support for them. If you don't like them then fine but I hope you like at least some of them and show your support in our comments section below and by sharing the post on facebook/twitter. This set of ideas will be published over multiple posts over the next two weeks. I hope I'll be able to make each idea interesting and convince you that they'd improve Travian. 

Travian 4 has already become slightly more social by allowing troops released by players themselves from trappers to go unharmed which encourages more communication between players to stop their troops dying. With confederation pacts being limited to three the importance of communication is also highlighted. While these are good steps I think Travian can be a lot more direct with their approach to socialization.

So I thought I'd start by showing some screenshots of the information I received about social networking on the last survey I ran, just so you understand what kind of thing the public (or the people who voted in the survey) would like to see or have asked for. To make pictures fit on the blog I have had to shrink them, click on any picture to see the full sized version of it.

Which Social Networks Do You Have Accounts On?

Which of these would you be willing to publish to your facebook wall or twitter stream?

So armed with that knowledge and my belief that Travian isn't social enough I've set out a number of ideas which I believe would come together to make Travian a more social, active and larger game. 

No. 1: Moving The Alliance Chat:

The alliance chat is potentially one of Travian's best features however because of the awkwardness of it's location it means that not many people use the feature and alliance chat's are mostly inactive and unloved. I love the fact that Travian has one built in but I think it could be significantly improved on if it was much easier to find and use. So my suggestion is to move it so it becomes a box on every page like how your hero's picture is. I've done a quick mock up to show you how it might be done:

Click to view in Full Size

As you can see the box would replace the taskmaster after you have completed all of the tasks and also when you have joined an alliance. It would be fairly prominent but if you did not want to use it then it would be easy to hide/disable with a simple click of a button. I would also suggest that the feature could be removed entirely when users are playing the game in the low-res version. I think it will really make the Alliance Chat a useful feature and will mean those people who do not have/want Skype or MSN are still able to stay up to date with their alliances and get involved. 

The next post in my 'A Social Travian' series will be up in the next couple of days. In the meantime please share the post and if you want follow our twitter page. 

Guide to Settling in the Grey Zone

This Guide was written by Benchmark and uploaded/edited by Steve10.

Introduction:

First a few things about myself. Feel free to skip this part! 

I have played travian through several servers. Some of my achievements include, but are not limited to 49th place on the spring comx 2010 and an honorable 191th pop place in the x2 championship qualification server here on .com. I had a really tough time being at the border of my ally and we all fought against 3 quadrants, unfortunately to no avail. Towards the end I lost my capital and most of my villages were crop locked. These were solo achievements and all without any gold being bought! 

At the moment I have teamed up with another player from x2 and currently our account is among the top raiders on the T4 open beta (ts9) here on .com. The best position we got so far as top raiders was 5th place, a week ago. On the forums I go by the name benchmark - you may have encountered some of my posts. I try to answer questions when my time allows it.

This introduction was done so you can have a certain degree of confidence that I actually know what I'm talking about. I'm not an expert, but I do know a thing or two. Well enough with this, let's go on with the more 

interesting things.

So, you finally decided to give it a try and settle in the natar gray area, but you don't know exactly what dangers await you there and how exactly to deal with it. Of course you want to be prepared for the challenge. Well, read on then, it's all in here.

Advantages to Settling in the Grey Zone:

Before I venture forward with my presentation a few things about the natar gray area(there were people asking me things like 'Hey man, why do you want to settle there anyway?'.

• All Oases have a +50% bonus, including wood, iron and clay!
• There are a high degree of croppers in this area. Many 9c and 15c croppers can be found here and because of all the +50% bonus there is a very high probability to find croppers with +150% bonus!
• You'll be close to all WW Villages which in T4 have a fixed position which is known right from the start of the game. Thus you can provide great support to your own WW as well as strike quickly (and unexpectedly) at enemy WWs and their support villages!
• Being close to the center you have a great opportunity for raiding as well!
• Such a position is great for taking artifacts because unique artefact's tend to spawn close to the center of the map!

Disadvantages to Settling in the Grey Zone:

Disadvantages for settling in the natar gray area

• Any villages settled in the grey zone give no culture points! Ouch! Be prepared to use a lot of artworks and host constant parties to compensate for that. At any rate you probably won't want to have more than 2-3 villages in this area. A way to deal with this inconvenience is to find a good cropper right next to where the grey area ends and have other villages settled a few squares away on normal terrain.
• Being in the center means you'll attract a lot of players so be prepared to take quite a lot of action. A high amount of online time is a must and you should have atleast one dual and some sitters to cover for your account!
• Also, as soon as you settle, the natars will launch catapult attacks at you. This is the part that we'll look into!

Preparing to Settle:

Most obviously these should be done before proceeding to settle. I will tell you what I did and why, but you must be able to distinguish for yourself if you need to do that too or it's not necessary. I wanted this to go as smoothly as possible so I gave it a lot of thought before doing it and actually over did it a bit.

1. Gold is a very handy/useful thing to have. Ok, so you probably don't need me to tell you that, however don't deny it's importance. Like I said, my personal policy is not to buy gold, but that doesn't prevent me from using it, if I have it. In Travian 4 gold is fairly easy to obtain. I simply sold all my items that I found in adventures. I managed to get around 150k of silver from these so that makes plenty of gold for what I needed. 

I tried to do a bit of business with  items - I sold a sword for 90k and figured that if I bought another sword for 45k I did a very good deal. This did not work for the second sword I paid 45k however I only sold for 20k, meaning I lost 25k ! My advice is that if you don't have the gift for trading, just stick to what you know, like I did. Anyway I used gold for plus, resource bonus, got gold club and I activated evasion.

2. Pile up as many resources as possible ready to transfer to your new village. I know that time is of the  essence, but waiting a few more hours will definitely not kill you. On the other hand natars might, if you're not prepared that is!

3. Having a high level market can only help. The more resources you can transfer, the better. I had level 10, but I would recommend a higher level if possible. Merchants vary a lot regarding both their speed and carrying capacity, depending on which tribe you are playing. I played romans and they are the worst at this. Slow merchants and worst carrying capacity

4. Talk to your other ally members to help you with resources maybe even convince the leader to get a MM sent out. However if you get help from ally members be prepared to help the others who then need it themselves.

5. There are some tricks you can do with your hero. Buy him a pennant and at least one skill book. After you settle the village, build a hero mansion there. Send him there and use the book to put all his skill points into resources. every little bit helps! Warning - do not send him there before the hero mansion is built, because if you do, those resources produced by your hero will remain attached to you main village (or the last village you visited that had a hero mansion in it).

6. More tricks. I love these and I bet you do too. I saved some of the rewards from the task master - what I mean here is I didn't take them as soon as I could. In case you don't know already, those rewards are received in the village you're currently at when you decide to take them. A great way to transfer resources, but there is a small catch - see the warning. Warning - Make absolutely sure you have enough storage capacity for the reward resources to fit into. I will give you an example:

The reward for "Palace or Residence to level 10?" is 3400 wood, 2800 clay, 3600 iron and 2200 crop. In order to be able to receive it in your new village you must have at least level 5 warehouse (this can store up to 4000 resources) and a level 3 granary (which can store up to 2300 crop). Also, you actually must have available space in them to store the reward. If they are full, the game won't let you take the reward ! Seems the developers have taken some precautions and decided to not let you waste the reward resources at any cost.

Settling Your Village:

Get your settlers and send them to your desired location. The game warns you about settling there, but you already did some preparations and you shoukd feel rather confident about it now. As soon as your settlers set foot and settle the village, 14 natar waves will be launched at you. These attacks will arrive around 24 hours from the time your village was settled no matter where it's location in the gray area may be. These attacks do not obey the normal game travel the units have. The reason is rather obvious - if they would be calculated according to the distance of their point of origin (0,0) you would have no chance settling in the center of the gray area.  So you practically have 24h at your disposal to do this build. The first wave to arrive is the cleaner which is meant to wipe out all defenses you might have in there. Rest of the waves are much weaker than the first, but still way too powerful to be stopped. All waves have catapults with double target so they will make 28 hits. From the best of my knowledge all catapults attacks are random and not meant at anything in particular (the natars could very well assume that you have a main building because every village starts with that, but they decided not to take advantage of this fact in particular).

My waves were spread in a 4 seconds interval so there is the possibility for inserts in several places. However, these natar attacks are rather strong and they will kill a lot of defensive units for sure (due to their increased stats) so you're better off letting them to destroy a few low level buildings. Actually this is the whole plan. It's very important to note that the attacks are one time only. IF you survive, they'll never bother 

you again!

Time for even more tricks. Now what could I possibly still have ? Well, there is a special building called the Stonemason's Lodge. It says there that it gives a bonus to resistance for all buildings. This is nice, but unfortunately the natar attacks are so powerful, you have no way to stand up to them. So what else there is about it ? Well, it has the same property as the cranny, you can't directly target it with catapults and it gives population even at level 1. But then again so can a level 6 cranny. Then why bother with the stonemason's lodge which requires a palace and a for the palace you need an embassy and a level 5 main building and on top of that it can only be built in the capital?

I talked in the forum with players far more experienced than myself which have confirmed for a fact that the stonemason's lodge is always the LAST building to be hit by catapults. So it's not a matter of maybe they hit it, maybe they don't. This is a very important piece of information and not many do not know about it, because it is not even documented in game's help. I personally finished several servers without even building this at all so it's definitely not common knowledge. Catapults will not hit it, unless it's the only building left standing in the village. So that's basically the insurance policy to ensure your survival.

What To Build There:

I built the following in my village:

• All resource fields to level 1. Even if you can't NPC, I would recommend doing the resources first because while it won't have time it's the only thing that at least gives your something back!
• Granary Level 3!
• Warehouse Level 5!
• Hero Mansion Level 1!
• Market Level 1!
• Embassy Level 1!
• Barracks Level 1!
• Rally Point Level 1!
• Palace Level 1!
• Stonemason's Lodge Level 1!
• 1 Cranny Level 1!
• 10 Cranny Level 10!

I used about 40 gold during this process, mostly for instant build. I only did 2 or 3 npc in total, but you should know that building is my specialty and I'm really good at balancing resources.

Natar Attack Details:

Click on the image to view in full size!

Total duration of attacks = 4 seconds

Oh, I almost forgot!. I survived! Cheers and good luck with the game!

Comx is on Hot Endgame

People, I had playing this game. But not looking forward for T4 version LOL.

Comx is getting hotter- too many armies were dead thru capturing artefacts and or sending their hammers to the WW village itself.


I took this screenshots after Spicer.team WW village was being bombed by the hammers. The 3 WW holders from Yestag meta give made them a leader of the race. But we will see how it goes. I will try to share some battle reports.




Awww.. wall destroyed and the 1k cata went through and delevel 1 level of the WW. Amazing!!!!


I just went out and ate breakfast and saw that Eagle Eyes WW village got down ;; Ahwee...

Hammer info that hit him can be viewed it later.. giv me a sec to get all of it :P

Steve's Travian 4 Roman Start Guide

Due to the Official Travian Forums being down I have added this popular guide to my blog.

This guide is for players who have some experience Travian or are new to Travian Version 4. It is aimed at Gold Users but can be adapted for none Gold users however any none gold users using this guide will have to be extremely active.

This guide is currently complete but it is still a first draft and will be continually improved. If you believe something should be added either leave a reply below or send me a Private Message.

Contents:

Step 1 The Very Start

Step 2: A Little Bit Further

Step 3 Am I Ready?

Step 4 The Hunt

Step 5 Growing Up

Step 6 Learning

Step 7 Goodbye Mr Teuton

Step 8 Moving Out

Bonus Content: Using Cages & Artworks

Step 1: The Very Start

Step 1a: Follow the Quests:

In Travian 4 the quests have been reorganized and give significantly more resources and rewards compared to T3, they are also compulsory. Only follows the stepped quests, once you complete them do not try and carry on with quests.

Step 1b: Adventures:

Since you aren't at the stage where you need to use your hero for clearing yet, send him out, then you are free to send him out on adventures, make sure you are getting to all of the adventures as soon as they appear. They are free and the rewards are great.

Step 1c: Hero Traits:

There's two things in this, one is what you set your resource bonus to and the other is what you add additional points to. If you plan on following this guide set your resource bonus to Crop Only, you will go into negatives if you don't do this. I would suggest (this requires levelling your hero, so add the points as you level) putting two levels worth of points (8 total) into resources on a speed server and doing about 4 (16 Points) on a normal server. After that pump all points into Hero Strength, adventures get harder the older your account is.

Step 2: A Little Bit Further

Step 2a: Trading For Profit:

Once you've completed the quests start building a marketplace, personally I go for level 3 but by the end of this stage you might want to be level 5 or 6. Offer wood or clay for sale in exchange at a roughly 1.5:1 or 2:1 ratio (in your favor) in exchange for iron or crop. To make this easier to get to you can change your hero to producing just wood or clay, but remember to change back when you start going negative. You can use Gold to NPC the extra crop and iron you are getting in.

Step 2b: Warehouse & Granary:

Upgrade this as you are increasing your marketplace, most likely you will be getting in quite a lot of crop in while getting less iron so I'd suggest building in a way more biased toward the granary. You shouldn't need to build it very high as you will be NPCing when needed.

Step 2c: Cranny Up:

This is an aggressive guide but I have to suggest crannying up, my guide hinges on being able to raid while offering absolutely nothing for raiders except casualties and a waste of their time. Since you will be NPCing the maximum number of crannies you should need is 1 and I'd stop at about level 4, but later on if you do come under attack then feel free to increase it.

Step 2d: The Wall Shall Rise:

The wall is an important tool in Travian 4 at the early game, it allows players (Romans especially) to cause casualties on attackers without leaving a single one of your own troops in harms way. As soon as possible build your wall to level 4 (before end of BP) as this will ensure that 1 clubswinger/maceman is killed when a Teuton attacks you, this may not seem like much but if every time the Teuton attacks they lose one of their troops and gain no resources then you most likely will not be attacked in the first week again.

Step 3: Am I Ready?

You really need to start this stage when you have between 1/3 & 1/4 of your beginners protection remaining if you want to have time to be ready to start raiding, if you started at the very beginning then people around you will be getting out of BP at the same time so be ready at that time.

Step 3a: Building Troops:

Starting building legionnaires at roughly this point, make sure your production is as constant as it can be, but be willing to sacrifice the production of a couple of troops if you need to make marketplace trades. You should have anywhere between about 6 and 25 troops by the time beginners protection is lifted.

Step 3b: Continue Trading:

Even if trading is not great it will still be your main source of income at the moment so keep at it, if you haven't already upgrade your marketplace to level 5 and make sure you constantly have trades available. At this stage I was lucky enough to have very good trading conditions and had upgraded to level 9 with all traders out constantly. If you're this lucky then do it, if not stick to level 5 and possibly reduce your ratio to try and lure traders but don't go lower than 1.4:1 (in your favor).

Step 3c: Prey & Predators:

You'll be very close to the end of Beginners protection at this point so start looking out in your 13x13 for your victims in the first round of waves, because walls have become a thread I suggest looking for players under 9 population as they are unable to have a barracks and troops and unlikely to have a wall or have caught any animals in traps. These will be your first victims. At the same time make sure to find and avoid raiding any active looking Teutons in your area, remember them for later as they are likely to be going for the same farms you are.

Step 4: The Hunt

This bit will happen when you (and the others near you) start to come out of protection. During this step continue to trade and train legionnaires (get those queues constant). You won't need your hero during this phase so continue to send him on adventures.

Step 4a: Hit Those Inactives:

To start with at least the inactive are going to be the ones with the most resources, these are the people who registered and didn't do anything or registered and only built a couple of things. If you hit these people before others in your area do (a mix of luck & timing) you'll be able to get most of the resources of them. However raid normally with groups of 3 legionnaires and don't send all your troops to the same place.

Step 4b: Report Raiding:

Forget Gold Club for raiding, just use your reports, it's easier to manage and now you'll be able to see whether your trips are coming back full without even opening the report. If you see the report is full click on it an see what happens, then use the new options available and repeat the raid.

Step 4c: Barracks Up:

If you're queues are constant than take this opportunity to putting your barracks up a level or two, I wouldn't go much higher than level 3 but if you can sustain constant queues past that then feel free but it might slow down your progression in the next step.

Step 4d: Find Your Rivals:

At this point you really should start to work out who the main raiders in your area are, you can do this by looking at how fast people are growing, which of your farms have the least resources and also by employing the new Vicinity Report feature. None of them will give you a definitive answer to who's doing the raiding but with all of them together it should be quite easy to work it out.

Step 5: Growing Up

Step 5a: Expand Your Farming:

This is a natural evolution so there's a good chance you've begun it already expanding but you've got to be quite aggressive with it, as a Roman you'll always be competing for farms and you cannot allow yourself to be the last to get them or you'll never get a head. By risks I mean hitting Gauls that might not be as small as you'd like, as much as a risk as it is most Gauls will not have built traps, you may also chose to hit some smallish Teutons but be careful when hitting both if these, try looking for signs of activity on the account, you can never be certain but try and avoid hitting highly active targets. If you want to try a less risky way of increasing raiding you can increase the amount of land you farm but this means it will take significantly longer to bring in resources and you will be encroaching on the territory of a larger number of active raiders.

Step 5b: Storage + Barracks:

This is a simple one, in the next step we're going to be doing some quite resource expensive things so you should start building up your storage, if you're raiding well then you'll need to do this anyway. As for barracks upgrade it a little more to allow for more troop production.

Step 5c: Main Building:

Not essential but I like to upgrade my main building a few levels at this point so I can save on building times before we get to academy and residence levelling.

Step 6: Learning

This step is the one where you've got to take the fight to the Tuetons. Don't bother starting this stage if you don't have 100 legs out raiding constantly. This step is pretty simple but it is massively resource intensive so you'll have to try and maximize your raid profits, make sure all your troops are out all of the time.

Step 6a: Academy Level 5:

Build your academy up to level 5, however don't research anything yet.

Step 6b: Stable Level 5:

Both these level upgrades will be expensive but for the EIs we're about to research they are necessary.

Step 6c: Research those Horsies:

As I'm sure you'll be aware at the moment your competing for farms against quite a few Teuton (maybe even some Gaul) raiders and you'll be losing. Don't waste your time researching Imperians, you'll gain nothing from them except a waste of time and resources.

Step 6d: Raid Further Out:

As your EIs are trained continue sending them out in groups of three to raids further away so you can cover larger areas quicker, try and pump as much resources into EIs as possible.

Step 7: Goodbye Mr Teuton

You'll need around 20 EIs to be successful at this, a couple of scouts would be good too.

Step 7a: Research & Train 3 Scouts

This should be all you need, it'll allow you scouts to help find new farms, see enemy numbers and protect your own villages from other players who might be getting scouts in the near future.

Step 7b: Hitting those Teutons:

Your biggest rivals are local Teutons, for the most part by the time you reach this stage you should be able to work out which Teutons in your area are the ones doing the raiding, there's a relatively good chance that they've tried raiding you at some point so far. The best way to try and catch their troops is using a follow back but that only works if they're attacking you or someone who you have access to. So that's why you'll most likely have to do one of two things, try and work out when the Teuton is offline most often and attempt to land an attack during that time and hope or use the scouts you have just researched. Some Teutons will have trained scouts already but I've found that at this stage most haven't so it's possible to use scouts to a real advantage. Make sure when trying to hit their clubs that you send your EIs and no legs, your EIs have the ability to crush the clubs. Be persistent, if you don't hit them the first time trying varying the time of your attacks and make sure they are always on their toes, even if you aren't able to get their troops some will find it hard to keep all their clubs out of the village and also raid efficiently and protect all their resources while under random attacks.

Step 7c: Boosting Your EI Numbers:

I like to have quite a few EIs before moving on to a second village, especially if that village is further away than I would like as it does allow you to soften the area around the village up as well as to bring in larger raiding incomes to support your next village.

Step 7d: Town Hall & Parties:

Once you've started hitting Teutons and bringing in resources you'll need to start your first party, you won't be the first person to a second village by a long shot but you should be one of the first 50 and should have a good choice of croppers available to you.

Step 8: Moving Out

This is the final step I'll be doing in the guide since once this is done I'd say that we're past the stagge where I would still say the account is in 'start' mentality although the decisions you make on this step will shape the rest of your server. Be careful to make sure you have enough culture points to settle before your settlers are done, if not have another party or buy an artwork.

Step 8a: Residence to Level 10 & 3 Settlers:

In this portion of the step you simply need to build your residence to level 10 and build the 3 Settlers. In Travian 4 the costs of settlers, especially for Romans has been greatly reduced so I won't be as much as a burden on you as previously. With decent raiding it should be possible to have them all queued and ready within a matter of hours.

Step 8b: Choosing Your Location:

In Travian 4 there are a large number of 150% croppers in the middle of the map in an area called the Grey Zone, if you settle in the Grey Zone none of the villages you settle there will produce Culture Points. Also if you settle within the Grey Zone you will come under attack by a large number of natars with multiple catapult waves. However you can still find 150% croppers and other great croppers outside the zone but they are quite a bit rarer than previously. For me as a raiding Roman I find the perfect second village would be a cropper in my 13x13, although occasionally if you are truly dominating you're local area then I might suggest settling normal 4/4/4/6 next to the cropper to stake your claim and to make sure that you have decent production before settling the cropper as a third village.

Bonus Content: Using Cages & Artworks

Using Cages:

Cages are a massive part of Travian 4 but they are overrated. If you get a set of cages while still on your first village you should use them as it'll most likely mean that you can fight off any raiders who attack you, combined with your wall and your hero it'll make sure no raiding troops return. Don't bother buying any extra cages in an auction as I promise that later on you'll regret it later in the game when you realise the cages were overpriced and a couple of animals aren't going to cause a problem to even a medium sized force.

Artworks:

Artworks are very useful throughout the game and this means their prize on the auction block can go up massively, on the closed beta I saw one go for nearly 100K in silver, honestly the maximum they are worth is about 8K, don't pay anything above that. Don't use them as soon you get them, do some calculations, work out the point at which using the artwork will get you the most CP and let your hit the goal for your next village.

Guide: Building a Hammer

This guide is written primarily for speed servers running Travian Version 3.6, but is compatible with Travian 4 and some aspects work with Travian Classic servers. This guide has been written by Skie of the Danish Domains and edited by Steve10 & Lala of .co.uk. 

Contents:

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: If I’m building a hammer, can I do other things?

Section 3: Choosing a tribe

- Teutons

- Romans

- Gauls

Section 4: Rams or catapults?

Section 5: Capital or normal village

Section 6: How to hide a hammer

- Keep a low profile

- Choosing your hammer village

- ‘‘Fake hammer villages”

- Keep the pop low

Section 7: Trainer or no trainer

Section 8: The end, and a few final tips

Section 1: Introduction

So you have decided to build a true WW hammer? You want to have a direct influence on the outcome of the endgame, and to kill the World Wonder dreams of other players forever? Does it sound like fun? Yes?  Then you have come to right place.

The decision to build a WW hammer is something which divides opinion amongst players. There are the players who think it's the most boring aspect of the game and it is not something that deserves any special recognition.  On the other hand, we find players who consider it an art to build up an efficient account dedicated to a single attack, which can ensure (the) victory for their alliance. 

What characterizes a WW hammer differs widely from server to server. In principle every hammer that is able to slow down a world wonder is a WW hammer. On my own domain (Denmark, .dk) a decent hammer contains a minimum of 10000 catapults (rammers are a quite a bit more complicated).  However, for a first time hammer simmer or a more casual account the following would be reasonable targets;

Teuton: 120,000 Axes and 48,000 TKs or 200,000 Clubs and 48,000 TKs

Roman: 75,000 Imps, and 52,000 EC

Gauls: 100,000 Swords, and 46,000 Haeduans

For people who have never tried to make this type of hammer before, these goals can seem a bit ambitious. But there is no reason not to be when we are planning to attack a World Wonder village defended with millions of troops. If you are fairly dedicated and have plenty of time and patience, you will quickly realize your goals.

Section 2: If I’m building a hammer, can I do other things?

This is a yes and no answer. When I made this hammer: http://travian-reports.net/dk/report/885922a4ca8 (a large hammer by any standards), I found I didn't really have the resources for doing much else except for making a secondary army to take an artefact in midgame.

Also, in the end, it really depends on the size of your account and whether you are able to train other troops on top of your WW hammer. My experience though, is that quite a lot of players are able to find the both time and resources to either build extra smaller sweeps or train a decent amount of defence besides their main, large hammer. Just like many offensive players have been able to convert their active sweeps from the midgame to a WW hammer in the endgame simply by producing an excessive amount of troops in their sweep, so it is possible to fill the role of a WW hammer in the endgame even if you start late. The amount of troops listed in the previous section can be made in just 75 days, only using the standard barracks and stables and these queues can be supported by 10 feeder villages.

Section 3: Choosing a tribe:

Teutons: The Teutons are the first choice of many offensive players due to cheap troops which can be trained extremely fast. But keep in mind their somewhat low attack values means a relatively low attack per crop ratio compared to other tribes. This can result in quite a large upkeep later on, especially when building the more extreme hammers. If crop consumption is no problem for you then clubbies are the way to go as they are the most attack per hour efficient troop in the whole game. If you prefer a more mixed playing style or just like to have some extra troops or your own defensive reserve of spears, then (the) axes might be the best choice. Worst case scenario is that you have to stop producing troops because you aren't able to feed any more troops. If you are in doubt, or this is you first time building a large hammer, I would recommend the axes. If everything is going well you are always able to switch to clubs at the cost of an upgrade in the blacksmith.


Romans: My belief is that roman hammers are quite underestimated by most of the general population of Travian players, probably due to the fact they usually contain fewer troops and don't look as impressive. Remember though that roman troops are much stronger. Imperians and Equites Caesaris are second to none in regard of attack per crop consumption. The addition of the drinking trough allows for a greater production of horses for your hammer and also decreases the crop consumption of the mounted troops, which can really tip the balance when choosing which tribe to build your hammer with. For that reason, the drinking trough should be built in both the capital, where the troops typically will be stationed before use, and in the hammer village for a significantly faster production. Romans should always choose EC over EI simply due to higher attack per hour. The EIs are a bit cheaper though, and can be used if necessary. But there is a reason why most roman hammers contain EC and that is because the roman hammers gain a lot of their overall attack value from the horses, so no reason for shortcuts here.

Gauls: Gauls are the weakest of the three races in my opinion. Gauls are mostly considered to be a defensive tribe, but that doesn't mean they aren't able to build strong hammers. They are generally chosen by players who also wish to contribute defensively to their alliance's goals or who just like the easy access to cheap phalanxes. Haeduans should be chosen over Theutates Thunder for the same reasons that Romans prefer ECs over EIs. Even though the TTs are cheaper, they don't have much use besides as a farming unit or in ghost hammers, as their attacking power is minimal (at most).

Section 4: Rams or catapults?

A general mistake which I’ve seen a lot of players make is to underestimate the value of plenty of catapults or rams. It's one of the most important things, if not the most important, to consider when we want to damage a WW village. Through the servers I’ve played I’ve seen too many impressive hammers that do not fully utilize their potential due to the lack of catapults or rams.

Before even starting on your hammer, you should have decided whether you want to build a ram or catapult hammer - do you want to tear down the wall for other players or would you prefer to destroy some of the infrastructure and/or the WW itself? As Travian has evolved, all hammers have had to evolve as well, for two specific reasons. Firstly, the reason why most WW holders are usually Teutons is their wall. It’s very durable and with the addition of an architect artefact they are quite difficult to beat down, especially if your hammer is balanced between rams and catapults.

Speaking of architects; the unique architect artefact seems to have scared a lot of WW hammer builders into not (to) building rammers anymore, because no one wants to spend several months building up for a single attack just to see a level or two being taken from the wall. On the contrary the architect’s artefact has increased the demand for great rammers and if you choose to go in that direction you will probably find that your alliance leaders will give you a high priority. But keep in mind that rammer builders, most of the time, will have to be a bit more dedicated then the other hammer builders, because you have to reach a high amount of rams to make your hammer really useful.

The most important thing when considering building a rammer is this: they should always be built by Teutons!  This is simply because of the access to the ‘‘beer festival” which increases the total attack power of your hammer by up to 10%. For that reason the Teuton players should always be the ones tearing down the walls, especially when a WW has a architects artefact.

Section 5: Capital or normal village

In general, I really don’t like using the capital for hammer production. This is simply because you are unable to build a Great Barracks or Great Stable in a capital village. However, if you have no ambitions about using those, a hammer built in the capital could be your best choice to eliminate the threat of having your hammer village conquered. The example of hammers mentioned earlier can be achieved in a capital, but bear in mind you are going need quite a lot of room when building up the crop fields to higher levels (15 cropper). 

Whilst speaking of capitals, I would like to recommend the 15 croppers because of the impressive crop production that can feed your hammer, and even help pay for troop production, until the upkeep becomes too high. If you have no problem with spending a lot of gold, and have high amount of online time, your goal should be level 19 crop fields, and should be finished around the time of the artefacts being added to the game. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to accomplish that, then you just stop at level 17 or 18. It is possible to build a hammer on an account with only a 9 cropper, but be prepared that you are probably going to have to depend on crop hotels from other players to feed and store some of your hammer.

Section 6: How to hide a hammer

One of the most important steps in the process is protecting your hammer and hopefully your alliance will always give that high priority.  Ideally the need to defend the hammer will be kept to a minimum so that the defence can be used elsewhere. And you certainly wouldn’t want to risk losing your hammer before it has even been used, right?

Keep a low profile:

Especially on a small domain, like the one that I come from, where most of the top players know each other from earlier servers and speak with one another, keeping a low profile is important. The number of people who know about your project should be kept to a minimum, and preferably you should pick an alliance where the leaders are able to keep their mouths shut.

Choosing your hammer village:

Quite a lot of players choose the village settled after their capital for to be their hammer village. If you are a known player, then there’s a very good chance that your enemy will start looking there for your hammer. So if you’re not busy with starting the hammer production you could wait and choose a later settled village. Unless you are an avid farmer you will have probably already have settled several villages before starting on the hammer itself anyway. You could also pick a village which isn't placed next to the capital (or the oases of that capital) as these tend to attract attention as well.

‘‘Fake hammer villages”:

A really smart tactic is to have one or several support villages which seem like a hammer village. That you do by building stuff like barracks, stables and the Workshop. Why? Simply because when I and others are hunting down enemy hammers, we send a lot of fakes aiming at these buildings. Even though the lone catapult gets killed in the attack, you are able to see what building it tried shooting at. If they are not in the village, they switch to a random target. If they are able to see that you only have barracks etc. in one of your twenty villages but not in any of the rest, then your hammer village is pretty much located and known to all of your enemies. There is no reason to make it that easy for the enemy.  To make it even better you can also place X amount of every offensive troop types in these villages to make it look like offensive troops are being produced in that village if scouted (or if fake reports are being leaked by a spy in your alliance). Go for a random number, and change it every time a report is generated. If they see 1k clubs, 500 TK and 200 catapults 7 days in a row, then they will probably know it's a fake hammer village.

Keep the pop low:

But population is awesome right? No! Not really, and especially not when trying to keep a low profile. Don’t build any unnecessary buildings, and tear down the buildings you don’t need any more in all of your villages. That might even add some extra morale bonus if you are attacked by a larger player. The difference might not be huge, but a little can mean the difference between life or death – so to speak. Also being in the top of the population rankings tends to attract attention which you don’t want if you’re trying to keep a low profile on the server.

Keeping the pop low also applies to your hammer village. A lone 1000+ pop village on an account screams ‘‘Here is my hammer, come get it”. Make sure your fake hammer villages are quite big, and the real hammer village is low on pop. Have you ever considered catapulting your own resource fields in the hammer village? Give it a try; make it look like some crappy feeder village.

If you are so ‘‘lucky” that the enemy takes over one of you fake hammer villages, please give him the impression that you indeed lost your hammer with the hope that he will move on to his next target on his hunt for WW hammers. Then sit back and relax knowing that you are no longer on their target list and give them a nasty surprise in the endgame, mwhaha ;-)

Section 7: Trainer or no trainer

Aaha, those nice trainer artefacts! Don't we just love 'em? Reducing the training time of troops for up to 50% - who can say no to that? Be cautious though. Trainer artefacts in general tend to attract attention from enemies. It might be that they just want your trainer for themselves or they use them to track down enemy hammers. The large and unique trainer still offers the opportunity to hide your hammer village, but the small one doesn't. If you are using a small trainer, maybe even only borrowing one from time to time, then forget everything you just learned about hiding your hammer village. In the treasure chamber they can see where all the small trainers have been, and if you got almost no offensive point they are probably expecting you to build on something big – and you will be a magnet for their attacks. This disadvantage is offset with benefits, of course. They still allow you to build even bigger hammers and in a significantly shorter period of time. But please be cautious and analyze your situation. Do you even have the resources to fully utilize the benefits of the trainer, or is your hammer growing fine as it is? Is your area secure and how far away are you nearest enemies, and are you able to gather a massive def wall before they can reach you? It is a question you really should put into consideration before deciding to use a trainer artefact. Trainers have some benefits but are the increased risks worth it in your situation?

Section 8: The end and last small tips

Hopefully, by reading my ‘‘guide”, you now have gained some insight to the whole hammer building aspect of Travian and in particular WW hammers. There are a lot of methods to use which is also the reason I haven't made it in a step-by-step style. Because the situations you can be in vary widely. The most important thing is to keep the production of troops going 24/7, be well disciplined and arm yourself with a lot of patience. Remember why you started on this project in the first place; to make a difference in the endgame and help your alliance to achieve victory. Don't use the troops intended to be your WW hammer, and you're probably going to regret if you don’t start with the catapults or rams first – it's usually them you want more of later on. The sweep itself is going to grow in a steady pace.

Criticism is welcome, and please ask if you have any questions. I hope you can use my guide in some way :)