f13.net

So I've been playing Travian lately.  It's kind of like a Civ-type game meets a lowish-tech, turn-based MMO-type game.  The basics of it seem to be that you can be either the Romans, the Gauls or the Teutons.  Each tribe has distinct advantages, etc.  You build up a town, can apparently build settlers and create other towns, and can conquer other towns. 

My first impression is that it plays rather slow.  This is kind of nice since it's a great "kill a few minutes at work here and there" game.  You get one week where your town is immune to attack, so that time seems best spend developing resource production and building the essential structures to get some troops to defend.  I'm now around 1.5 weeks in and barely ramping up to anything resembling adequate defenses.  I may also be allocating resources in a sub-prime way, but I never really got the entire min-max theory.

It's free to play, so if you're looking for something along those lines, it's at www.travian.com

Very pretty for a browser game.  I'll give it a shot.

Three questions, before I'll eat you alive:

1. Is combat tick or real-time based? (all attacks go at midnight, or I have to be online 1440 minutes a day to see it coming)
2. Is building turn or time based (I get number of resources per day, or it comes every second I have to be online 1440 minutes a day to build up effectively)
3. Do I stand a chance in winning if I started late?

nice find.  I'm in.  Wee Roman village ta build.  Onward.

1.  Not sure, haven't been attacked or attacked anyone yet.  3 Legionnaires does not an invasion force make.  I'm guessing they're done in real time, but I really don't know.  The FAQ makes it seem like your town can't be captured/destroyed if it's your only one...but can still be raided for resources, etc.  The FAQ also says that your defenders automatically defend.  There's a bigger FAQ in German, but I'm too lazy to translate it.

2.  Building is time-based.  Your resources refill at rate/hour depending on how developed your resource centers are.  You can build structures to store resources, so not being there to build at the exact moment you can won't really gimp you. 

3.  No idea about "chance of winning"  it looks like most people are still building up, and quite honestly, they've already opened a fourth server since I started, so there's always that.

EDIT -- Looks like someone did translate the bigger FAQ.  Find it here (http://forum.travian.com/viewtopic.php?t=59).

These free browser games normally suffer heavily from the sort of crowd they attract, with the catass's who plan their whole life so they never miss one tick of a whole round and the rampant exploiters.  Expect to grow nicely for a while and think you are doing ok only to get steamrolled by someone with 500x times your size.

That's not catass, but game fault.

99,9% of them work with the non-stop growing 24/7 scheme. You have to start at very beginning of server and play for 24 hours a day to stay competitive. Otherwise you're easily outgrown and soon there are people literally 500x bigger than you. I'm kind of temped to write simple program, feed it with building data and let it build perfect  village(s) for me. Try to imagine the ecstasy, when your 200 line long program crushes some catass playing 23/7:D

Now, there are few (<0.1%) browser based games that solve things differently. One of the examples is RedDragon, where attacks are calculated at midnight and that also when you're given turns, you can spend to build up your kingdom. You can spend 20 minutes/day when it's comfortable for you and stay competitive. It fixed being overgrown, but also showcased another design problem text based games suffer from - ganking. You don't get a catass problem, but few(hundreds) asshat vets, who will stomp any newcomer. Mentioned RedDragon is ruled by huge, shady coallitions of people who know each other for years (from cons, etc.). You can get to top5, but without solid backing, all it takes is one phone call and next day you end up with 5 wars.
Similar case would be tdzk (which, BTW is real time ship combat sim - if you can click and load reply link on this forum in less 0.5 sec, you have nice chances to own:D) - every once and a while new, strong alliance pops in, gets mauled down by pretty much everyone (cause there is always a reason for war declaration and kill is a kill) for like 6 months before it becomes formally recognized.

words to add to dictionary: ganking, tdzk, sim.

Been playing this for a couple weeks now.  It's neat.  I started an alliance yesterday and have started playing with the barter system so as to speed my rush up the tech tree.

It is slightly annoying that you can't queue up attacks to go off when you're offline, but they take long enough to carry out that I don't lose all that many opportunities.  I'm not playing very aggressively anyway, as I find the economic/diplomatic aspects much more fun.

Eh, it's a mixed bag. Starting at this point would be utterly pointless unless you enjoy being a farmed bitch with no way out. It was okay until they ended the n00b protection early on my server and all the people who'd been multi accounting raided everyone before they build crannies. All the big "hardcore" guilds have alliances or non-aggression pacts and concentrate soley on farming independant players. I'm getting hit literally every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. The only reason I'm still playing is to build enough crannies so that when I quit no one can get to my resources.

It's a pretty game, but It's not any more complex or thought out than the old Trade Wars BBS game.

Every time people post games like this, I do a search for Ultracorps hoping somebody somewhere has put it back up.  Fucking Microsoft.

Damn, I'm tempted to play just to find a strategy to waste the efforts of those that live off farming indie players. Yet I get the impression that they're so large, one player can do nothing.

It has slowed my development down a tad, but the easiest way to avoid being farmed is to not increase your storage capacity until you have enough cranny space built to support the next tier of your warehouse and granary.  Granted, I've not expanded to a second town yet, but that will be my next experiment.  Right now I am happily ramping up my military research so that someday I can possibly field some decently tough troops to defend my town. 

Right now I don't waste resources on troops because I don't need 'em what with my four maxxed out crannies.

EDIT -- I also enjoy that idiots still try to farm me, with multiple attacks, even though I maintain no troops and have no resources to steal.

It's not hard at all to join an alliance.  If nothing else, you can start your own (which is what I did) - merely having an alliance tag by your name cuts down on your odds of being farmed.

There's also the "poor man's cranny", which is upgrading your marketplace a bit and loading all your resources onto merchants (i.e. put them up for sale at 2:1 rates).  Since stuff that's on the market isn't in your warehouses, raiders can't get to it.

I've also found recently that keeping several scouts at home does wonders.  Most large raiders send scouts at you before they sent the armies, and if you have enough scouts at home, your scouts will just gank their scouts and send their heads home in baskets.  Tends to deter any further invasions, even if you don't have many other troops at home.  (I maintain a standing defensive force of around 30 praetorians, which isn't enough to repel a determined invasion but makes raiding me a less than profitable enterprise.)

Massive Necro Inc...


wait for it...






(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff26/stuabrtow/thread_necromancer.png)

Okay. I've been developing a village for about a month now. The game is fun. Plenty of on-line resources are available. My alliance does a good job of looking out and developing new players. The beauty of the game is that you can log in and click several times and then move on to something else (like work). Much of the game seems to be luck of the draw. I was placed in a random square and recruited by a solid alliance and surrounded by members of our confederacy (and other alliance members) on all sides.

Diplomacy seems to be the major strategy of the game, which is fine with me. I mostly raid the NPC oases as a way to level up my Theutates Thunder Hero. I'll raid unaligned player cities once in a while, but I'm still a tiny radish in the grand scheme of things.

Also, ease of navigation helps quite a bit, as does the Travian FAQ (http://help.travian.us/index.php?type=start&mod=100).

I thought I was MMO-free after letting go of WoW. Grrrr. At least I can get things done while at work.

I wish TDZK was still up :(.

This game reminds me of Tribal Wars (www.tribalwars.net).  I played Tribal Wars for months now.  I've recently taken a break from it because it can be very time consuming.

This game is fun for a bit but then tries to control your life. It seems like it doesnt take much time, but once you start moving in the the end game, if you want to be anything more than a resource farm for a large alliance you need to be able to be on your computer ALL the time.

Just. Don't. Do. It.

This.

I did travian for about two months, never again.

I tried for a day a while back.  Then my catass sense warned me so I ran away.

Most browser based games that scale up do this, thats why I always prefered the limited # of game turns per run system.  I also really really miss Ultracorps which hampers how much fun I can have playing other browser games.

http://ultracorps.sjgames.com/

I dig these games and even did Travian for a few weeks, but I was losing sleep over the fact that I could be attacked and lose everything at night.

I need to be safe when I log out.  That's why I dropped it.

I've been playing for a few months now. It's about the most hardcore RTS/PVP game you can get. You could literally spend months building your village(s) and, if you tick off the wrong people and are not part of a strong alliance, lose everything (like to the point of your account getting deleted) in less than 24hrs.

I can give tips to people that want to get started:

1. Your not married to your account. When you start your village is randomly placed. If you find yourself in a bad area (surrounded by a lot of higher population villages, that are aggressive towards you and not responding to diplomacy.) Just delete the account and start somewhere else.

2. You have a week in which you are immune to attack when you start. Build a few fields, and then immediately build a Cranny. Level it to 10. You WILL be attacked. Don't make any troops. You are like a rabbit in a hole at this point. Gather your resources and hide them away.

3. Diplomacy: never get mad when people attack you. Thats the point of the game. Angry letters = them laughing, and sending more attacks for more laughs. If you are crannied up, they will get nothing. Ignore un-allianced players, they are nothing. If a big player is Raiding you (800+ pop) this is GOOD! You should then send an in-game mail that reads something like this:
"Heya! I was wondering if we could have a little cease-fire. I'm new to the game, and just starting out. As you can see, I'm all crannied up so I hate to waste your troops time as they are coming home empty handed. Could we come to some arrangement?"
He'll probably agree and ask that you not settle anything near his villages. That sort of thing. Agree and then ask if you could occasionally ask advice.

4. Good alliances usually control an area of the game map. You will be in one of these areas. Find out who is in control. All the other alliances in that area are there because the controlling alliance allows it. You want to join this alliance. Make friends with people in it. Be polite. Help them out when you can.

5. The annoying 16yr olds that you are all worried about are fodder in this game. You'll end up farming them until they get frustrated and quit.

Whatever happened to that Heroes web browser game that I was fearing?

Both of these.  Srsly.

I've never felt so much relief at quitting a game as I did quitting Travian.  "Losing sleep" is not figurative -- in the last few weeks before I deleted my account, I was literally staying up after I wanted to be in bed so I could dodge incoming attacks sent by Romanians, and then lying in bed fretting about the attacks that would be launched while I slept.

Stay far, far away.

One of my roommates is at this stage.  He's sleeping up at his computer in our loft.  Wakes up every 20-30 minutes to send his troops away from his village on some pointless march.  This is so they do not get killed by the bigger town attacking him over and over.  He's stopped playing other PC games because he might miss an attack.  So he just waits and watches his hexagons all evening.  It can't last right? 

He's playing wrong.
The game is about strategy, diplomacy, and fear.
Your roomate is either in a weak alliance, or none at all.
Once you are up all night, dodging attacks, delete your account. You've screwed up.

I do not lay awake at night worrying about dodging attacks, because no one would attack me. It would be too costly to them. It would not be profitable. The people launching attacks all night long against your roomate are probably in the alliance he should have been trying to get into all along.

Yeah, he is doing it wrong, he needs to find a week village that is like 8 hours round trip so he can send his troops off before bed and sleep soundly.

But he is still fucked.

Once he is designated as a "farm" by a stronger player, he will not be accepted in to any major alliance, and if your not in a major alliance, you will just end up being a farm at one point or another.  I ended up building a huge army, and just attacking a large player with it, and then deleting my account.

Also, the game suffers from Shadowbane syndrome. You are ether in a huge alliance, and everyone is afraid to attack you and your guild ends up making every one around them farms or quit, and you have nothing to do, or you are one of the players who becomes a farm and quits.

I think the best part of Travian is about a month in to a new server. There is not much established huge dominating players, and so there is lots of fighting going on. Once you pass about the 2 month mark of a server, you can never catch up, or be caught up to.

Didn't notice this thread before, thought I'd share my experience with the game from about a year and a half ago.

I tried just turtling solo for a while.  It was great until my neighbors decided to send their gigantic armies in waves every fifteen minutes like was mentioned above.  My entire village was destroyed beyond its abilitiy to recover in 24 hours.  Haven't played it since.

I played obsessively for a few months and did really well. But I got to the point where I was doing the waking up on a schedule routine to keep my armies out raiding all the time so I came to my senses and deleted the account. Haven't had even the smallest inclination to go back.

I asked him for some details.  He is in a small alliance.  So no protection there.  He sends his troops on short attacks, so he can actually gain for their being out, often, rather than one attack per 7-8 hours.  I would imagine he'll fall into the farm category soon.  Blob or die doesn't sound like fun game mechanics to me.

[edit]Never mind. This didn't contribute to the thread. Carry on.[/edit]

That's pretty much what ever MMO game like this is about....

You don't want to be in a LARGE alliance, you want to be in a strong alliance. If the alliance has 50+ confederacy's, its a joke. My alliance has 3 confederacys and 5 NAPs. That's it.

Your alliance should focus on their area of control. If you are a player, in my alliances area of control, and you play well... of course, we will invite you. It only makes sense.

It is NOT economical to farm someone that it playing correctly. You should have at least 1 level 10 cranny by the time you come out of noob protection, this is plenty to allow you to build a 2nd. You should not have an army. You don't need one. If someone comes at you with catapults and your account is less than 2 weeks old, you either pissed them off, or they are really bored. Just delete your account and restart.

Once you have 3 crannies built to level 10, build a small army of like 50 guys... It will cost more to attack you, than the attackers will get in resources at this point. Killing 50 troops is expensive. Also, you want to have at least 5 scouts. That way they can't scout you (your scouts will kill their scouts.)

Duh, did it ever occurred to him he can write a simple macro that will send his stupid armies in 10 minutes?
Or even be lazy about it and record appropriate mouse movements with some freeware mouse recorder?

All the "management" type webgames suck, but if you really want something travian-esque, Red Dragon is still the best of them (limited alliance sizes, land gains proportional to size difference(means you cannot farm) and all attacks are calculated at single time of day (5am, to make it equally shit fair for everyone)   

I second having at least 5 scouts, but the more the merrier. My main village actually has 211 Pathfinders in it lol. I know it sounds outrageous, but I regularly snipe 75+ sized movements of scouts from aggressive players.

On another note, a player in my alliance posted this today (I hear you guys like graphs):

(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff26/stuabrtow/traviantradesgraph.jpg)

Do you have a link to Red Dragon.  My mad google skillz are failing me.

I believe I have played Travian precisely once -- in other words, I created an account, placed a few buildings, realized it was exactly like Tribal Wars and never bothered with it again.

I played Tribal Wars for 6 months or so, until I realized it was all futile to try to go on in that game because, as someone pointed out, I did not join the server I was playing on from day one.

On top of that, Tribal Wars had a two-tiered approach to the game, which meant that subscribers could have an unlimited building queue , whereas non-subscribers were limited to two buildings at a time.  At first it did not mean much, but over a longer period of time, I'm pretty sure it gave a strong advantage to subscribers.

But what really led me to think it was a waste of time was when I compared my own statistics to those of another player who had started at roughly the same time.  The difference was that I took over small abandoned villages in my immediate vicinity and developed them into strongholds to consolidate my position, while rarely attacking other players unless attacked first; he, on the other hand invaded the large villages of other players.    Worse still, he had a pattern of joining tribes, staying a few weeks with them, growing fat on invading their inactives, then leaving and joining an even larger tribe, all the while invading the convenient villages of ex-tribemates.  Last time I checked, he had changed tribes at least 5 times, yet there never seemed to be a shortage of larger tribes ready to invite him along.  Result?  After half a year, he was quadruple my own size.

Likewise, wars were just started over peccadilloes (such as harbouring refugees), hearsay, personal disputes, and sometimes just the whim of their leaders despite having an alliance with the tribe to be attacked (think Hitler's "let's invade Russia today, we'll be done with it before winter").  You'd wake up one morning and discover that you were under attack from 40 different places at once.  A day or two is fun in a challenging sort of way, but when it extends into a week, it quickly becomes more bothersome than it will ever be worth.

Then there were the question of tribe sizes.  Small was impossible; remaining so was just asking to be invaded.  So I was forced to graduate from a small tribe of four players, to one of maybe twenty, to one of over a hundred with two sister tribes of similar sizes.  The tribe of twenty was okay, but the logic that the tribe of a hundred+ members used to convince us to join them could be summarized as follows: "your area is vital to us, so if you don't join, we'll invade you."  So you had to merge into larger tribes or risk being invaded by them.  On the World I was playing, one tribe was notorious for controlling an entire quadrant, and for only welcoming insanely large players to join them.  They were also notorious for bullying smaller players/tribes into giving them villages.  If you refused, they invaded you; if you gave in, they would be back anyway...

Large guilds have never interested me in any game, especially if they are just transplants from other games with the same leadership always in place.  So I prefer smaller guilds, and I tend to choose my games accordingly.  I have two criteria, essentially: First, that a small guild can play most of the aspects of the game without being eaten alive within a few days; second, that a defensive style of play is also viable.  Neither of these seem viable in Tribal Wars, Travian, Ikariam or all their clones.  (Hell, I remember it was not even an option in that old Utopia game; in one case, upon remarking that defensive units of one race had a defensive bonus and therefore gave you a stronger defense, I was answered that the purpose was for you to retain less defensive troops at home while you're attacking others.  What ruined that game, however, could be resumed in one word: Absalom.)

It would seem that such games only maintain an impression of movement by just launching more servers as the old ones stagnate, a luxury which most genuine MMO's don't have.  Tribal Wars, for instance, was maybe at World 10 when I joined a year ago, and World 13 last winter; now it's up to World 24...  With such an expansion, maybe even Shadowbane could have looked competitive...

http://www.rd2.cz/ (http://www.rd2.cz/)  ?

Boy, someone should make one of these with some real depth and gameplay that doesn't smack of a $15k budget.

Although admittedly, I had no idea how many of these there were.