What's new with travian

The developers of travian are squeezing their creativity so that they will come up with schemes to make money from their game and keep their players at the same time.  Some veteran players resent these schemes but, for my part, these are perfectly understandable.

They are testing the possibility that the in-game environment of travian can be a platform for commercial advertisements.  When you open to upgrade some buildings, for example, you will be presented two choices. To speed up the level up or to level it up normally.  Surely, we all want to speed it up. But the catch is, we have to click and watch a video advertisement if we want to cut 25% from the build up time.

  

Travian Today

I've been away from travian for so long but I returned to the speed server only weeks ago.  The server was already 1 1/2 months into the game.  Right now after barely two weeks of playing, I am on my way to spawn my 7th village.  From the looks of it, if I can maintain my focus and obsession, I could manage to produce 14 villages in 1 1/2 months.

I returned to writing because I have been obsessed, very obsessed with my account lately.  my playing time is about 18 hours in all. Writing gets my obsession organized.  An organized obsession can be a nice thing to have.  From the outside I seem truly extraordinary because on top of my travian addiction I still managed to finish three modules in mathematics.  They are all due to be used and published in our school next school year.

I will come back to this journal as soon as I can.  My purpose is to write a review of the game. But  I cannot speak about the entire game-play itself, much less  about the competition, fierce competition among alliances.  In this server, I chose to play alone, to focus on my personal stats: attack points, hero points and village count.  I plan to write about rapid expansion, attack stats, and about the numerous hero implements that is flooding the auction.

bye for now

 http://www.gettertools.com/tx3.travian.com.10/kb/VrapWdNS

Personal Musings on Travian

I am posting this blog not so much to help travian enthusiasts with their game-play, this blog has more to do with my inclination to bring clarity to many complicated tasks. To play travian is one complicated task.  The game-play is complicated enough, but the strategies to pursue both on the individual account and alliance levels are even more complicated.

A player who imagines that the successes of an alliance or meta rest on in-game strategies betrays himself to be a newbie.  That is how all newbies imagine strategy.  If we go farther back in time, to the years when this game was in its infancy, this view has a point.  Which is why many veteran players always look back at the past as the true golden years for travian.  That was the epoch when the game bred an outstanding class of players and leaders. 

Today, the successes of an alliance or meta rest on out-game strategies. This is the blue-print for strategies laid down OUTSIDE GAME-PLAY.  This blue-print is laid down even before the game started!  If ever it is  improved or modified when the server is already at play, that blue-print is taken out of actual game-play and brought to an external environment such as skype rooms, yahoo-chat rooms, and possibly in internet cafes.  My point is, to win as an alliance one has to think outside the box! Outside the perimeter of actual game play and into strategies which are totally outside travian.  For example, so many technical enhancements are now available to support an account.  Bots, offline bots, browser modifiers, etc.  These are the "illegal" enhancements.  But there are enhancements that can be had legally for a price. Gold Club membership, Silver for auctions, etc.  And there are these support software systems that help an alliance analyze incoming attacks.  I had been a member of a meta that uses such, I think it was the cadre of dedicated members of our meta who put up this system.

As I see it, winning a server rests on strategies hatched outside the game!  Outside the box! And this environment bred a new class of gamers. Today, dedicated gamers are organized like fraternities.  They live among themselves in cyberspace as members of fraternities do in college.

People who are born into the culture of computer-gaming can easily breathe and live in this environment which is cyberspace.  But for those who are not, like myself, the smart goal to aim is to be realistic with ones aspiration.

I just started an account in tc3 as a lone player.  I know nobody, and am not enthusiastic to join alliances.  I find this truly liberating, because I can see how my game should proceed, and I can see it clearly.  By removing "cooperative" gaming from my strategy,  I am able to hatch a game-plan which is unthinkable if one were to play as a member of a group.

Travian Tactics and Large Numbers

traviantactics.com

Politics

Politics as defined in text books is the study of power. The power to decide about where, who, when and how to allocate scarce resources.  If a community has excess of all resources, its unlikely people will be drawn into politics.  Its the necessity to produce treasured but scarce goods, and manage them which prompt people to begin politics.

Big Numbers

How does power play itself out in Travian? In my opinion as a travian enthusiast with 5 years of experience, it is NUMBERS which is at the heart of travian dynamics. It is NUMBERS which infuse energy into the game.  From a newbie player up to the veterans, the pursuit of LARGE NUMBERS becomes the most consuming thought every player has.  From the beginning when a player begins with a population of 2 until the end when veteran players itch to reveal their humunguous hammers, players are in a hurry to level up, to pop up, to rob more, to train more. 

The truth of the matter is, it becomes a competition not only among travian players.    It becomes a race to beat LARGE NUMBERS. Having said this, I wish to make a proposition that an alliance's success in travian rests on its ablitiy to organize around large numbers.

Population Does Matter

Some gamers boastfully write on their profiles "Population does not matter". But in my opinion, it is only the most skillfull who can make such a claim.  Population does matter because of the following reasons:

a) High population means high resource and fast toop productions.

b) It suggests a dedicated gamer.  A high population gamer most likely spends countless hours on PC, and spends a lot of money on gold.  As in any competitions, it is difficult to beat  anyone who has a lot of time and money.

c)  Since gamers chase large numbers, alliances which house high pop members get respect. They are feared.  Their good will is sought after by small alliances. It matters little if they are all pop and no muscle. Their population size casts a mantra of sort to most gamers.  It is not their troop count nor skill which command respect, its simply the fact that they are large.

Whenever I ponder about war and politics in Travian, my mind ocassionally lumbers into history and in particular into the story of Japanese defeat in WW II.  General Nimitz was commander of the allied fleet tasked to bring down Japan.  His strategy was simple. Bomb the Japs. Bomb them   hard. Rain hell and fire.  Simply bomb every square foot of their major cities, it doesn't matter if bombs fall on vacant lots or factories.  Bring LARGE NUMBERS on the Japs. 

Finally the LARGESTever NUMBER of that time fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  It was the size of an atomic bomb.

Travian Tactics

I have given up my scruples about bots. The fact of the matter is alliances don't win just because they use bots a lot. In the end what matters most is strategy, management, and leadership. 

Dear readers this is my take on  TT (Traviantactics)

 Auto Farming

This is what we searched the net for. We want a script that will help us farm while we attend to our jobs.  But what is even more amazing about TT is the ease with which it creates a farm list.  You have to create a farm list before you can farm. You press "find farm", choose empty oasis, for example, and enter the radius of search.  TT returns with a farm list. You choose the troops you wish to use to farm, then press "save to server".

But in my opinion it was probably a spark of inspiration for its developers to allow TT to save a farm list to one's gold club farm list.  If you are a gold club member Travian will allow you to create a farm list. But its a heck of a job to come up with one without TT. 

 

Auto Builder

This is the thing about Travian. The bigger the number is the more respect it gets.  This, in my opinion, is the psychological thing about this game.  Its a numbers game. We are drawn to large numbers. Players respect large numbers.

TT can help you become larger than your neighbors.  I always use Auto Builder before I go to sleep, for example. I put in queue a list of build ups, say 6 buid ups, and then when I wake in the morning, its done. Big populations, big numbers. Nice!

Auto Train

Right now, I play Teutons once more.  To maximize the unique abilities of this tribe you must produce troops continuously and farm.  This is how TT allows you to do it. You go to your barracks and set it to produce 1 or more troops every specified time interval. Right now, I set mine at 20 minutes. Every 20 minutes, if resources are available, a proud Teuton will be born in my village.  Very nice!

Market

TT is nice not just because of what it does but also because of the dedication of its developers. Right now, and this is what I read from their forum, they are developing an amazing script for your merchants.  Wouldn't it be great if you can continuously gain profit through your merchants? Imagine a merchant who buys a resource, say timber for example, whenever they are sold cheap. Imagine a merchant who automically sells your excess resource in exchange for resources you need. But don't be excited just yet because TT developers are still in the process of developing this idea.

In the meantime this is what you get from trading through TT. You can set your merchants to send resources to your villages at specified time intervals.You can choose to send once, or more than once.  There are a lot more to it actually.

Right now I cannot confidently say I am maximizing TT.  I am barely computer savvy and have little time to sit in front of my PC to work it all through. But believe me, the fundamentals of traviantactics are more than enough. 

TT is nice, very nice!