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.