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.
