Big Egos Lots of Fun

Hey Guys,

So as you might know comx has recently restarted and it's got off to a pretty good start, player numbers are not anywhere near where they used to be but the server has managed to improve on it's previous two restarts, maybe due to a common belief that this could be the last comx that is a Travian 3.6 server but I haven't heard that rumour confirmed by anyone official yet.

This server has seen the return of a number of veteran players from various comx rounds including Sanchesco, Alexei (aka Call Me Master, The Catalyst, Dark Night), dracoo & holy and various other skilled players. With the return of these players and others joining to play seriously (invasions from Dutch and Scandinavian counties have been noticed) there's a fair few egos around, topped by none other than Suri (aka Surikat, itachi) who gave us this quote:

''friend regged on comx to see how I was doing.. "ur doing good'', had to ask if he ever saw me do bad!'' 

For the first time in a very long while I'm predicting a fun, competitive and interesting comx that might have some interesting battles and wars, old enemies are working together and old friends seem to be against each other. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the game might progress.

Steve10

P.S. If you would like to help us improve Travian please take our survey here.

Comx Has Begun

Hey Guys,

Sorry it's taken me so long to do a post, I've had some problems organising time and some real life stuff came up. My series on social ideas to improve Travian is still happening but it may take a while longer than I expected because of all the stuff happening. One of my  favourite servers to play has always been comx, it's one of the more active, more experienced servers and there are many great people playing and leading alliances, there's a high quality and the games are action packed. That's one of the reasons why, after taking a sabbatical I've decided to start playing the server again. I'll be playing as a Gaul to give me some time to work on some strategy 

ideas I've been having and haven't had a chance to try. 

To be honest I'm slightly dissapointed that comx has restarted as a Travian 3.6 server rather than becoming the first Travian server to be a T4 Speed Server which would have been exciting and hopefully would have brought new players to the .com speed server which unfortunately has been getting less and less players for a while now. Anyway just to let you guys know I will probably be covering the things that happen on the server as it progresses and possibly do some alliance and server analysis later in the game.

Steve10

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

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!

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.

Travian Forums Down to Security Issues

Hey Guys,

As you might have noticed the Travian Forums are not available at the moment due to a serious security hole that meant a hole in the forum was exploited on .com, .net & .fr in quick succession. Because of this Travian HQ have had to take down all of Travian's forums to stop any more being taken advantage of and so they can fix the whole in security.

We have been told that the forums will be available again on Monday however it is not certain that everything will be completely fixed by then so there is the possiblity that the downtime will last more than 2 days. I'm using some private channels to keep up to date with any more news about the downtime so if we find out any more that we're allowed to report (so far we've had to keep some details a secret) then I'll post it up here.

[EDIT:] Statement coming from Tranqer (Game/IRC Admin) is that 'TG is performing mainenance on the discussion boards, with an unknown ETA.' My personal view is that this does not bode well for seeing the forums back up in a timely manner, I have a feeling that late Tuesday or possibly a delay going into Wednesday or Thursday could be on the hands.

[EDIT 2:] forum.travian.co.za is now BACK ONLINE and it has been updated to vBulletin 4.1.3 which means it is running the latest forum software in the vBulletin range. What I've heard is the forums will slowly be arriving back online one by one as they are upgraded. The new Travian theme for vBulletin 4.1.3 has not yet been released so they are using an altered version of the default vBulletin theme.

[EDIT 3:] forum.travian.de is also back online with the updated software.

[EDIT 4:] Full list of available forums has been added to the top of the blog, this will be continually updated until all the forums are available again. 

Steve

Please follow us on our twitter page, for the latest news on the return of the forums as well as when we post new blog posts.

Travian Survey Analysis

Hey Guys,

The results of the survey are now in, although we only just reached 200 respondents I am very happy we did and the answers to this poll have come from 201 results including one completely blank entry. Due to some problems google has generating the results, some percentages may add up to more or less than 100%, don't worry as the proportion shown is correct and so are the number of answers. This post is extremely long and has been split into three sections to make it easier to read. 

Section 1: Travian Game Questions:

The first question asked which domains most players had come from, because of the sheer number of domains I won't be posting a screenshot up but the domains where the most answerers came from was the .com & .co.uk domains.

The second question in the survey was a simple question, which versions of Travian had the respondent played. The answers showed that the majority of respondents had played both Travian 3.6 and Travian 4. A result I found quite surprising was the fact that 24% of respondents have been playing since Version 2 or earlier which would mean years of experience. 

The next two questions were made to show what kind of players were most common out of the respondents, from the results we can see that they typical player is someone who spends 200 - 600 Gold per month and is online at least 6 hours but under 12. Only 18% of people used absolutely no gold at all and a similar 17% uses more than 1500 Gold Per Month. Only 4% of people played the game for less than 1 hour per day while more than 4 times that number played for more than 12 hours in a single day, and 64% spent between 3 and 12 hours online. 

Out of all the people who responded over 69% believed that they spent too much time time playing Travian and 9% believed they hadn't spent enough.

Next was a question where respondents had to rate how much they enjoyed playing the game, only one person said they did not like playing at all, which begs the question why they would play if they didn't enjoy it. 30% said it was their favourite thing in the world, which I think is quite an impressive number for an online game but it does kind of creep me out. 

The questions from this section, I believe, have shown that the vast majority of players spend a large amount of their time on Travian because they find it highly enjoyable, for the most part they are willing to spend reasonable amount of their own money on the game but they accept that they do devote too much time on the game. Most respondents have tried the newest versions of the game and are relatively new players however a decent number are experienced veterans who have played for many years, which shows the great retention Travian has in keeping it's players and continually drilling money out of them. 

Section 2: Community & Customer Service Questions:

The first question in this section asked respondents to rate the customer service they received from multihunters, moderators, supporters and even admins. These results gave a fairly even mix of results with the highest number of respondents giving Travian CS a 3 which is about average. 30% gave customer service a rating of 2 or 1 while another 30% gave Travian a rating of 4 or 5. This wide range of results shows that Travian needs to step up it's game and standardize the quality of staff over all domains, the fact that it can range so widely shows that the negative experiences are not anomalies and are regular occurances. Domains which are showing large number of negative reports really need to be actively investigated by Travian and, if necessary, changes need to be made. Being average is also not good at a time where hundreds of new games are available online and the competition is really stepping up. Travian should aim to have 90% of respondents giving them a 4 or a 5. 

Next I asked what has been considered Taboo by Travian HQ for a while, which is whether if Travian staff were paid would the service improved. In this questions only 14% believed that there was no chance of improvement if Travian crew were paid. This shows that the vast majority of players believe that if Travian staff were paid service could improve. 

A very simple question followed, asking people which of Travian's community features the respondents used, clearly the most popular was the forum with over 89% saying that they used the forum. To be fair it that could be, in part, because of the fact that this survey was advertised on Travian forums. However the question showed without doubt that the IRC rooms are underused and a bit disappointing. If Travian wish to continue to over the best community features they should really find interesting new ways of interacting with their community.

A quick question on whether forum users enjoyed custom holiday skins, like for Christmas or Halloween, showed that while most people enjoyed them, a significant number thought they should be made only for very special occasions and over 12% believed that they were annoying and made things harder to use. 

This question looked at what people actually used the forum for, with informational purposes about the game, coming out clearly on top. Most people came for the guides, questions, server discussion and news. Socialization was important but the majority of the respondents did not use the forums for this and stuck to just finding out information. Just under 30% of people got involved with either talking about ideas for the game or actually suggesting new ideas which I think is a good number but it'd be better if a lot more people could suggest ideas and made their views on the game known more often.

Following on from that I asked which new ideas players would most like to see implemented into the forums to made them more useful, of course there are more ideas that could make it onto the list but those were the main ones I had recently heard discussed and know are possible.The majority of respondents simple wanted more guides and game information to make playing an easier experience. The next most popular idea was the idea that all Travian forums could have one, single login for all Travian's forums which would mean you would only have to remember one username and password and could login to any of Travian's forums. This would encourage people to share their views and post up guides and other information on many more forums. Although coming in last place over 12% of respondents would have wanted and used the ability to login using facebook connect, which is a popular feature on many of the large, non-travian forums at them moment.

Section 3: Travian & Social Media Questions:

The first question in this section asked respondents which social network they used regularly, by far the most used was Facebook with over 98% of people who answered the questions saying they used the social network. Surprisingly some people still used Myspace with 13% of respondents saying they had accounts. 

On the same line of questioning the next question asked whether players would want to be able to register and login using facebook or twitter connect services. A large majority said they would never used the services but still a reasonable amount said they would be willing to use it at least some of the time. 

Following on from this, I asked, which of any, of the following options people would be willing to post to their facebook streams. Clearly the most popular was winning the World Wonder race which is quite unique followed closely by Getting a Medal which is easily attainable but still quite difficult for most players. This question tended to show that the harder the task the more people believed they would post it to their facebook wall if available.

Again on the same kind of steam I asked whether people would be willing to play Travian actually on facebook rather than on their browser. 48% believed that they would probably at least try it while some of those believed they'd use their broswer as well as playing it through facebook. 95 people said they would certainly not play Travian on Facebook. 

A lot of people have been asking about Travian apps for phones and mobile devices so I decided to add in, as the last question, a question about which device would be the most popular for an app. There was a large split in this question with Android and iOS (Apple Devices) being only 10 votes apart. The largest number of people voted for 'Other' which includes thinks like Symbian, Bada and other operating systems I don't know, however this choice is very fragmented. 

Thank you all for reading, and voting in the survey, if you didn't vote then I hope at least that you enjoyed looking at the results. If you'd like to keep up to date with new posts on the blog please follow us on our Twitter feed which can be found here. 

Steve

Hero Items on T4 - Helmets

Greetings, It is Adam here again to give you a run down of Items that your hero could win either on eBay extreme (The auctions between you and me) or on the hero's adventure which some of you do daily (I for one am having troubles, probably because I put all of my points on resources - oops), but, what can you win? Well, let me explain :)

There are seven areas where you can equip your hero, and they are Head, Chest, Left Hand, Right Hand, Feet, Horses, and other bits and bobs such as ointments and cages. So in the great spirit of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (or Bread, Mushrooms, Beans on Toast for my cousins), Let us dive in Head First.

There are 5 types of helmets, with 3 levels to each helmet and each type doing something different when its on your hero's head, BUT your only allowed one at a time, however once you've used it, you don't lose the bonus leaving everyone happy :). And bearing in mind, I've just had to edit the next paragraph to something different, this is a tricky subject to write about.

The 5 types are as follows, with their respective levels:

1) Experience

Does what it says on the tin, by giving:

a)15% more experience with an Awareness Helmet

b)20% more with an Enlightening Helmet, and

c)25% more with a wisdom helmet.

Don't ask me why their named like that, because I don't know either

2) Regeneration

Best Helmet of them all me thinks, as Less Regeneration Time = More adventures and attacks, giving:

a)10 More Health Points a Day with a Regeneration Helmet

b)15 More Health Points a Day with a Healthiness Helmet, and

c)20 More Health Points a Day with a Healing Helmet

Slightly better names, but I swear Healthiness isn't even a word

3) Culture Points

For those who want to Sim as many villages as possible by Christmas, then this is the Helmet for you, giving:

a)100 (or 50 on Speed) more Culture Points a Day with the Helmet of the Gladiator

b)400 (or 200 on Speed) more Culture Points a Day with the Helmet of the Tribune, and

c)800 (or 400 on Speed) more Culture Points a Day with the Helmet of the Consul

Again, not too sure about the names, but what can you call a Helmet which gives Culture. Hmm

4 and 5) Infantry and Calvary Training

These two go Hand in Hand, skipping from Village to Village... You get the idea, as these two helmets give:

a) 10% Less Training Time in the Barracks or Stable with the Mercenary or Horseman Helmets

b) 15% Less Training Time with the Warrior or Calvary Helmets, and

c) 20% Less Training Time with the Archon or Heavy Calvary Helmets

You could tell they were running out of names, as Archon isn't even a word in my Dictionary. Thus Concludes the Helmet Section of the Hero.

Next time, I'll move on to the body armour, so until then, Have a great week :)

Travian Survey

Hey Guys,

I'm running another survey, however this time I've got permission over from the staff at .co.uk forums so thanks to them. However it is un-official and not endorsed in any way by Travian HQ. I'd really appreciate it if you could all take it as the responses will hopefully go into making Travian and in particular Travian forums a much better environment with more features. Anyway, if you are interested the survey will take around 4 Minutes Max and can be found here!

Travian Survey!