[Guide] [Travian x3] Defence Guide

[BlackPaladin]

Defense From Attacks for Advanced Players, by gowf

V1.1

Contents

A. Basics
- Introduction
- Disclaimers
- General Tips
B. Approach to defending
- Your alliance
- Your/Enemy goals
- Other tips
C1. Mentality and Diplomacy
C2. Mentality and Diplomacy (cont)
- Crannies
- Walls
- Traps
- Scouting
- Understanding enemy mentality
- Diplomacy
- Long haul fights, Grinding
D1. Tactical Maneuvers and Skills
D2. Tactical Maneuvers and Skills (cont)
D3. Tactical Maneuvers and Skills (cont)
- Reinforcing
- Dodging
- Walking troops home
- Cutting waves
- Preventing chief takeovers using the residence
- Retaking villages
- Scorched Earth
- Misc
E1. Server Progression
E2. Server Progression (cont)
- Early
- Mid
- Late game
- Defense vs organised attacks
- Detecting fakes





A. Attacks/Defense Basics

Introduction
I have written a guide for the defensive aspects of the game as this area is especially weak in the uk servers. For those of you who don't know me, I am gowf, one of the orignal founders of 30DOM on speed. I also led apollo in the original uk speed server.

I had a similar version of this guide written about 9 months ago for members of my own alliance, before I quit travian. There didnt seem to be advanced guides for defense then and there still doesnt seem to be any now. Therefore I present a few tips and tricks on how to fend off attacks, ranging from the lightest raids to a full scale organised attack. Note - this is NOT a magical guide that will allow you to take out someone's WW army with a couple of paladin. If you have no troops to defend with or attack with, you cannot win against an opponent. no matter how good you are...

The message I'm trying to push across is that not only of the skills involved in defending, but also the mentality involved. Having the right attitude is really helpful if you want to make the right decisions. After all, defense is not just a few skills, but also deciding WHEN and WHERE to defend, how to approach the attacker, if or when to deal with him diplomatically, if counterattacking would be a good idea etc.


Disclaimers:
- My experience is mostly from speed. The normal servers are a bit slower paced and may be different (although from what some players say, it is very much similar, just 3 times slower and smaller in scale). All the build and travelling times given are SPEED. Please adjust your numbers accordingly.
- There are several excellent guides for the more newer players. This guide is aimed towards the more experienced player or new player who is willing to really spend time on his game
- If you are being farmed, this guide is not for you, unless you are willing to spend a LOT of time on the game. If you spend a lot of time on the game, you would have not become a farm in the first place.
- Not to belabour the point, but, activity, ie spending a fair bit of time on the game is the best way to stay ahead and avoid being attacked. Bigger targets are scarier targets. Sitters or duals are an excellent way to cover time you are not on.
- Basic assumptions are that you know the different sides, the mechanics of attacking, defense, and maybe village taking
- The game is mostly based on YOUR decisions. There are no perfect situations to copy here, it is just a guide on possible things you can do and what you should do and avoid. Every situation is different, so using your brain is the main pre-requisite for any effective action
- Being significantly outpowered by opponent(s) is difficult to recover from. At a certain point when one player is stronger than the other, the weaker player just cannot win unless divine intervention occurs.
- The theory in this guide is mainly to guide those players who are under attack and have an accceptable army compared to the attacker(s)

Basic Tips, Tricks and knowledge
Depending on how far you are along the server, there will be countless situations where you will be attacked. The following are some of the mechanics of attacking. They may be simple points, but it is extremely common to see experienced players falling foul of one of these:

- Armies can only attack or reinforce from the village that they are created from. Dont be caught with reinforcements in your own villages when you are dodging etc.

- All attacking armies have attack ratings. These are applied with bonuses such as that from your hero or from the blacksmith or even from gold

- All defending armies have a defense rating to horses and to infantry

- The final battle casualties calculation is a compelx interplay of these factors. If you have a plus account check out the simulations in different scenarios and mixes to get an idea of how these work. the more the attackers outnumber (as in the attack ratings vs defense ratings) the defenders, the less the casualties the attackers take in comparison to the ratio. Ie if you have 10000 attack vs 100 defense, you would expect to lose 1% of your attacking force. However, since you have vastly outpowered the defense, the casualties are less than 1%. This applies to defense vs attack too.

- Almost all large attacking forces are from ONE single base. This is because it takes about 15-25 fully upgraded villages to supply one non stop great barracks/stables village to make that superarmy. This is almost always the case with anything below 10 villages opponents.

- Common sense means that therefore, attacks not from a main attacking unit producing base are fakes. The exception of course, is when there are chieftans in the game. At that point, these attacks can be real, but will be limited in offensive ability.

- Not all attacking villages are from a 15crop village. Some people use normal capitals and some people have 15C capitals, but their troops are in ANOTHER village. The 15C is their storage site. This is especially for really advanced players who want to take advantage of the great stables/barracks.

- all troops with defense ratings have a weakness to something - the spear is weak to infantry, the praetorian to cavalry etc. Ideally you want to be focusing on the weaknesses.

- any troop movement (atk or reinf) will proceed at the same speed as its slowest unit. This is basic common sense which is sadly lacking in many players.

- know your troop speeds. The speeds are completely linear and so a speed 8 unit will get to its destination in half the time of a speed 4 unit. Catapults are always the slowest unit in any army. Rams are next.

- crannies only cover 2/3 against teutons. Any resource in the marketplace is open to raids

- Know your village system, and organise it beforehand. Some people love to spread out their villages across half a map. Dont. Distance is a massively advantage. If your villages are right next to each other, you have an easier time defending. Attackers need to time everything very closely to avoid you just defending one site, moving troops to another and defending etc. Some people start off one village and then shift everything far away. Fine to them, but shifting everything several places far away just means reinforcements and supplies are difficult to organise. The possible village resource variation is not exactly difficult to find - 444/6 or 345/6 or 9/333 or 15/111. Most good players find a decent 15C and try to root themselves around such an area.

-NB version 3.5 will have more varied village field distributions 7Cs, 11Cs etc.

[BlackPaladin]

B. Approach to defending

The first thing to note is the general picture. You need to take into account the following factors:
- your own strength, economically, defensively and offensively
- this includes your own competence as well
- your alliance if any, how many reinforcements you can expect and how quickly they can get here
- how far along the server is
- the enemy strength/competence
- the enemy alliance
- *the aims of the enemy attacker(s)
- *what you want in the end

The last points I highlight as being part of the "situation" as they are key in deciding your actions or strategy. The first comparison is your respective strengths. Early on, if you are vastly ougunned and have no backup or even if you have an alliance but it looks like a poor one, then I suggest you first try diplomacy, or if you have major ambitions of your own, to restart. You can do more with a mid game restart than with a beginning server under the heel of a major aggressor.

Your Alliance
With the individual strengths, the alliances in question are also important. Depending on how active you and the alliance want to be, a good alliance will be using instant messaging services like skype, IRC, MSN or even a speaking client like x-fire, ventrillo.

The level of organisation is critical to determining how much help you'll get - organised alliances usually picks active members, which usually means
- a good level of reinforcements
- Their distance to you and how soon you can expect reinforcements are something to consider as well.
- significant political pressure to the player attacking to stop
- sitters
- advice and defensive/offensive help/advice from experienced players
A good alliance is VERY important as a deterrant to attack as well as actual help when attacked. So, JOIN A GOOD ALLIANCE. I cannot stress this enough.

All in all, a good alliance will have good leadership. You will know when you have good leaders because they get people involved and
- all or mostly blues/green orbs in their members,
- a decent average population compared to the other alliances in their area,
- there is a good structure and organisation with a clear alliance goal or target.
- try to keep geographically close or organise wings which contain close members. (ie they only recruit from one quadrant of the map)
- use a instant messaging service. IRC is probably the best of these in my opinion. Skype is a common choice too.
- the attack reports page is mostly of your alliance members attacking/farming rather than the other way
- has few CPs or NAPs. Fewer of these mean more farms available to its players
- numbers or multiple wings do not necessarily mean a good alliance. Quality is far greater than quantity in this game. In fact, alliances with multiple wings early on are generally weak and I would avoid these.
- eventually you will know a good alliance from a bad one, after being in one for some time.

- the trend for alliances does change. At the beginning, there are usually some "noob" alliances that rise to the top very quickly due to their incredibly lax attitude towards recruiting. Farms with focus on building population join these, and some players quickly lose interest in the game, or are stifled by better players. Once the better players start to control the game, they join alliances which have similar players. These alliances rise up around the 2 week - 1 month period. The others will fade into dust most of the time. The most reliable predictor is when alliances are at this time, although this is not certain (wars can happen).


Enemy Goals and your Goals

Finally, the situation of the attack is incredibly important. The type, strength and speed of attack and persistence of the attacker are dependant on whether he wants your resources, your troops dead, your city in ruins or just taking your city. These targets slowly shift as the game goes along. Be wary of each situation as there are rules which can be used to your advantage later on. For example, taking a village requires the attacking army to be stationed inside the taken village. The army is at the most vulnerable at this point.

Your own targets determines many aspects of your actions. Mostly it will just be to stop the attacks. However, early on, you should be aiming to wipe out the attacker too. A good player will always be trying to control their area and you should be no exception.

- for raiding, the player just wants resources. He doesn't want much fuss, and he definitely does not want to raid you and get his maces crushed as they arrive home.

- for those trying to take out your offensive army, they are trying to trap it, whether in its base or trying to walk it home (see manoevres, section D below). Be vigilant about such things. Most good aggressive players are easily capable of wiping your army out with such a move. Thankfully, even amonst the experienced demographics, "good" and "aggressive" are not often seen together in a player.

- players trying to damage your village, and wreak havoc have to use catapult waves. Good players use timed tabbed waves which are less than 1 second apart. Some can fit up to 10 or more in one second. Good players also try to cripple one aspect of your village so that it is less easily defended or rebuilt. Examples: 1.Wheat fields/granary/mb (really cripples a village from building anything for a long time) 2. rallypoint/mb (can't send out troops for a while) 3. warehouse/granary/mb (can't build much for a while or recruit a lot of units, but doesnt cripple a village), 4, iron mines/warehouse/mb (cripples a roman player's village) and so on. Note that a main building takes over 40 minutes to build from level 0 to 1.

- Village takeovers are complex. Players are a lot less likely to give up. If they are unsuccessful at taking it over, they become a little attached to the village. They feel like they need to prove a point and take it over to show the opponent their superiority. At this point, the only things you can do are, keep a large scouting force in that village or destroy his large offensive army somehow. Good players know that the village itself is not worth losing a hammer to, so they are more careful and methodical. Although some still have that over-riding aggression. A good alliance with fast reinfs and a continued vigil (ie sitters/duals) are critical to the success.

Browser selection
Its important to note that some internet browsers do not mix well with travian. I personally hold IE with utter contempt and use firefox instead. Others have mentioned opera as acceptable. Although this is mainly for attacking efficiency, its important to be comfortable with your browser and its page loading speed and its tab system (you NEED tabs with shortkeys to skip between them if you want to be a decent player)

Activity and Communications
Being active on speed servers is the only way you can defend successfully. Having a dual or even a triple account has many advantages. Sitters are equally good. Good communications with other players is also essential to a good player. An attacking player will have lots of victims, some even your alliance mates or neighbours - get some feedback on how they attack, army strength etc. Interaction is an important part of the game. You can also use the alliance attack screen to look up reports.

[BlackPaladin]

C1. Mentality and Diplomacy

Strange as it sounds, being aggressively minded is helpful, especially when you are outgunned. If you counterattack successfully, it will not only cause them damage, but make them respect and/or fear you. This is what you want. It will either make diplomacy easier as you have greater mental leverage over the attacker, or you can carrry on grinding and the attacker will be less likely to attack. Although counterattacking is risky, a good situation usually presents itself. Remember if you are vastly outpowered you will most likely never win a 1v1 unless the attacker does something incredibly stupid or unless something really lucky happens (the guy loses his internet connection, he quits, he's suddenly overwhelmed by another opponent etc).

Mentality and Crannies
My views on crannies are controversial. Some players love these, but crannies are just a defensive tool, overly using them is the same as capitulating the fight. Dont rely on them if you want to progress somewhere meaningful in the game. One maxed one is enough in my opinion. Any more and you are just inviting the attacker to repeatedly attack you and that means you will never have a meaningful army while the raider is still attacking. Moving troops to another alliance mate is ok for one attack, but repeatedly moving snippets of troops to another player means the attacker will soon be outproducing you at an exponential rate, gaining catapults while you are still in the stone age. At that point in the game, you might as well quit. Use all your resources before an attack and the remainder will be safe with one cranny.

Incidentally, a lot of players HATE cranny farms. They start catapulting them as soon as they get catas.

NB: some players suggest that the cranny capacity should be equal to the maximum amount of resources you make whilst you are not online.

Mentality and Walls
The importance of walls, while being an integral aspect of your game later on, is more difficult to gauge in the resource empty first few weeks. Having a good level wall, especially as romans imparts great defense bonuses, but also takes away vital iron resources. Think carefully if you want another 5% defense or 10 legionnaires etc. Remember, you will be dodging many attacks, unless you are facing a strong Gaul player with TTs. I would build the first few wall levels, as they are so cheap, but after it gets pricey, stop. Flexibility with troops is more important.

Mentality and Traps
Another defensive tool I dont particularly think is useful. Traps cost resources which could be going into your war effort. And they dont kill troops.
- If you have traps but no troops, what is the point? Your attacker can just attack you again and release his trapped.
- If you are going to dodge your attacks, why bother with expendable traps?
- If your army is good enough to defend the attack, why not spend the resource on a higher wall?
- If your army is weaker, then the attacker will just attack you again to release his troops. Even if your traps do help the defense enough to give it respite from one attack, traps are not flexible enough. You will want to dodge some attacks or defend others. Also, given that a good teuton player can accrue so many maces in a short time, you're gonna need to build a ton of traps just to keep up. Not worth it imo.

NB: 1. There are some tricks with the trap such as storing settlers and the like and is useful for new players.
2. version 3.5, to be released in ukx, will increase the number of traps per building. Maybe they will play a part in the earlier games, possibly. However, remember that as the server goes on, armies get pretty ludicrously big, it becomes increasingly obselete.

Mentality with the unknown
Attackers are intelligent enough to calculate probable size in defensive garrisons. However, scouting is an important part of the prelude to attacks. Always have a large scouting army somewhere, and at least one scout in every village early on. Later, you will want more each village. Knowing that your opponent knows you know he knows your strength (read that carefully...) can be important as a deterrant. When the game has entered about 3-4 weeks, most players further expanding their raiding targets would not attack comparable sized opponents without scouting him. That's when a large scouting force defending your capital/troop village is important - the psychological impact of having a large scouting force not return makes him very reluctant to attack you as the base thought process is that large scouting defense = a lot of troops to hide. Players do not wish to lose their hammers attacking a village that they do not know about.

Understanding attacker mentality
Anyone who has had a successful attacking (raiding) spell knows how easy the game can flow when they are doing well. Resources come in and its just a matter of deciding the target and being active enough to raid everyone around you. However, the attacker mostly wants to "sim attack" rather than really get involved in a proper fight. More often than not, their focus is more on the resources and building up their own troops. So if they attack and you try diplomacy, they will probably decline (unless they're nice of course..). However if they attack you, get nothing repeatedly, and then receive counterattacks which do a lot more damage to their troops than yours, they'll start listening and you'll have their (grudging) respect. Eventually you can become friendly with them or join the same alliance as them, or become a def partner or just a personal alliance/nap. Most players in this situation will not break the nap down the line out of a sense of personal honour.

Aggressive players also dont like players who half heartedly defend their own villages. For example if you have 100 maces, and raid someone with 5 praetorians each time, the attacker will not stop, but in fact increase their frequency, regardless of whether they get any resources or not. The aim is to stop the defenders accummulating enough to do significant damage to the attacking stack and also for hero experience. Do not give such a pointless reason for the attacker to be attacking you. Dodge the attacks if possible, try hard to make sure the attacker gets nothing. If they get nothing, they are wasting time on attacks or they try to save time by splitting up their attack force. When they send 20 instead of 200 maces, you can defend it, you can cause damage, and you can make it expensive to mess with you.

Players who like to control their area are the most difficult to deal with. They dont want you in their area as you are
- a potential threat to them early game when you are both similar in size. Losing a decent attacking army unnecessarily in the very beginning severly stunts an attacking player.
- a potential threat later as you may have joined a decent rival alliance, can strike out locally and can be reinforced heavily. The larger a player, the more villages they have to micromanage and the more vulnerable they are to attacks.
- you are competing for raiding local weaker players for resources. The res that they normally bank on being theirs, is now split.
- early attackers are usually teuton, who have a weak defense and so have this paranoia about the other players rising to power. This is not an unfounded idea, as even a smaller attack on the massive teuton army insde its base can cause a decent loss.
- they are generally a little xenophobic and have issues with not controlling everything in their 21x21 (the Napoleon complex)
These players are more complex and each differ. If you are starting to lag behind, restarting is certainly an option (especially romans and gauls). If you have a respectable offensive army compared to him, you can try grinding out a military win, by walking his troops home (see below) and gearing towards cavalry as soon as poss. You will find out who these players are because they will come knocking on your door early in the game, and you will need to resolve this guy early in the game. Finally, you can offer to be a def partner to him. Ultra aggressive players are usually weak in defense and like having a couple of decent defensive players around. Be warned that if you do not prove your worth, you may be farmed or your villages captured.

[BlackPaladin]

C2. Mentality and Diplomacy (cont)

Mentality in a diplomatic situation
Consider why an attacker would stop attacking you. Most new players may think it is a good idea to stop hostilities and focus on building up their own, but a good farmer knows that resources they gain from raiding are often more than the 1 hour per day they can legally get from tributes. To get them to stop, they must have additional incentive. These reasons may be
- they are naturally peaceful and friendly. These are "weaker" players in the sense that they are playing travian socially, rather than for glory. Many players have some form of a moral code, such as they'll stop attacks when asked, etc. You will usually find these players starting strong, but lag later on.
- they fear for their own safety and are afraid you may have enough clout to do damage to them. This situation occurs quite often if the attacker is not highly competent. At this point, having the aggressive mentality would help to further improve your chances
- they are fattening you up. Always be wary that some players are tricky and are waiting until you have a few decent villages to take so they can overrun you and capture your villages later on. Be careful if your relationship after you cease hostilities becomes frosty and there is little mutual exchange.
- you are a potential ally/subordinate/def partner. For the latter though, be warned that it will probably change your game style if you are doing a lot of defensive troop making.

Therefore when chatting with other players, always be polite. I cannot stress this enough. You never know when the strategic situation can change, and the other player suddenly realises what a decent player you are or could be. They will think better of you down the line if you have shown to be polite, and can spell and is capable of a logical conversation.
- good players don't want to mess with good players if both have a chance at winning a fight. Don't give an extra reason for him to attack you by being an *** unless you want to goad him to attack you.
- being an *** is detrimental to your own success. You will annoy people, they and their friends will gang up on you, and you may lose sometime down the line.
- being an *** makes it harder for your own alliance to justify your own actions.
- alliances later on are made from interactions early on. Do your part for the greater good of your alliance
- be firm with your intentions and words, but not hardlined
- try to use correct spelling and the like. In my experience, there is nothing more annoying to read than "i lyk dat sheet plz stop atkn mi". It gives the impression that you are mentally incapable of a good interaction. Why would anyone want to make a deal or relationship with what could be their puberty-challenged teenage son?
- This game isn't diplomatically oriented, its far more war oriented. Therefore, don't flame players for attacking you. They are just excercising their right to play the game in the way they want to. You do not have a moral highground as a victim of aggression. It is part of the game. Get over it, reason with the guy, defend yourself, or don't play.
- Similarly you should not flame people who use underhand tactics such as spying and lying to gain advantages. You may not like such subversive aspects of the game, but don't be disappointed if others do these things. If it is within the rules to do such things, then it is fair game to do so. I also personally think it adds to the rich vein of travian stratey if these tactics were available.
- there are lots of childish players on the servers - do not resort to their level. Dont swear on messages, and don't say anything stupid that can get you banned.
- Your actions and messages have repercussions. Your messages can be saved and used. THINK about what you are writing and why. Alliances and CPs have been broken up and war started in the past just from one poorly phrased or ill thought of message. Players get banned because they wrote sily messages which were racially, sexually or otherwise offensive or in bad taste, even though they may not have meant it.


The Grind
Remember, you dont have to always annihilate the other player to get the attacks to stop. Players attack you for all sorts of reasons, but if the cost is too great compared to the reward, they will stop or be more likely to listen to a compromise. One hour's resource per day is a small price to pay for a chance to play the game.

For a lot of the time, the fight will happen. Two aggressive players in a single area cannot exist without either one leaving or a compromise being made. When they do fight, it is usually either early game or later when they both have a decent offensive force. In either case, the first army to catch the other in their base will win. Therefore, dont keep your army in your base! It should always be on the move. At night, it should go off on a long raid across the map.

When counterattacking or defending, dont be afraid to commit all your troops. As mentioned before, travian gives better numbers if you go excessive rather than not. Also dont be afraid to lose all your troops in an attack if the damage given/received ratio is decent. Ie if you lose your entire army counterattacking, but end up doing far more damage to his troops, then its well worth it.

Example - two players with a couple of villages each.
- A has a mace army of 400, and B has 10 paladins and 100 maces.
- If A attacks B, B dodges, B now has enough paladins to do nearly 100 macemen casulaties. Although they will all die, the cost to A is massive.
- If both carry on, B will do some serious damage to A's mace stack.
- A will be forced to make spears, and force his mentality to a more defensive one. Therfore B outgrinded A.
- Even though A may have more villages or pop, and he can make his army back quickly, he has to change his strategy to stay in the game and it is more difficult to consider attacking B.

When the odds are favourable and the result means you lose less troop resources, you should almost always go ahead. The exceptions are where you may want to save your troops for an even more crushing victory etc. Don't save up your troops like you're in a bank - use your troops to win.

[BlackPaladin]

D1. Tactical Maneuvers and Skills

This section is for the actual fighting and when you're under attack. These tricks are all valuable in their own ways. It is only experience and some common sense that can tell you when to use these.

- Reinforcing your base is not difficult, but timing is important AND you need to be comfortable with how many troops can get where and when. Good alliances often let all their members MM everyone, so if you do ask for reinfs, make sure you add in all the relevant details
- coordinates,
- what is needed (more anti cav/inf),
- when it should arrive, the attacker stats, is is catapult speed etc.
- your wheat situation, and whether you need wheat (there is no better way of annoying your friends than letting their reinfs starve...)

Drawing a whole load of reinforcements from other players and shuffling them into a high level wall is one of the most effective defenses against a large army. Every player involved loses a portion of defense, but the attacker loses it all. When an attacker loses a large army, you will get a long period of peace. However it is rarely a simple case of one attack, one massive army, and one huge defense, and this is where you will have to be creative and think on your feet. How to differentiate between fakes and real attacks are discussed in the last section.

- Dodging - this is an extrememly simple manoevre, just simply attack or reinforce another village before the attack arrives, and then you can cancel your move as soon as the attack is over or just let the move happen.

- "Pinging" - basically scouting someone when they are at a defensive alert. Fake attacks to villages will make them reinforce their villages, having a scouting mission of their villages right before your attack arrives will be a good indicator of their defenses and how fast they can mobilise reinforcements if you decide to counterattack in future. It also throws him off-balance, as faking him many times makes your real attacks more disguised. Although this is definitely an attacking option, it is listed here for completeness.

- Reading your messages - many players use the ruse of sending you a message to ascertain if you are online or not. Be careful if this happens. These players also use other, neutral players or even an illegal second account to message you. Although you can't always gain anything from not reading or reading your message, tactically, just bear this tactic in mind.

- Working out attack speed - this is such an underused skill, and so incredibly important if you're defending against any kind of attacks. There are times you want to know what kind troops your attacker is sending against you. This includes looking for fast troops (which cannot be catapult/ram speed etc) and you can dodge or assume are fakes. You need a good idea of when the attacks first happened, so if you spot one appearing, write down when and where it came from. You can use your under attack village to reinforce any troop to the attacker and see how long it would take.

To understand the example below, remember that if something travels at twice the speed, it arrives in half the time.

Eg, you are browsing your village, and then an attack appears. It arrives in 5 hours and is from a Gaul player. It takes your haeduans 2 hours, 41 minutes to reinforce the attacking village. Since the haeduans travel at 26 speed, and the attacking force is travelling at X speed,

X/26 = 161/300 (5 hours=300 mins)
X= 161/300 * 26
X= 14

Basically this means the attacking army is travelling at a speed of 14. The only unit at that speed in gauls is the phalanx. So you can assume that this attack is a fake, since why would someone attack you with a phalanx unit? And if he did attack you with faster units mixed with phalanxes, he would be an utter noob. Either way you can be assured that there are no catapults or rams in the attack, and so you can dodge or wall up with confidence.

NB: villages more than 30 squares away can move with more speed given a tournament square. Use a travian speed calculator if these sums are difficult. You can usually guess what kind of level tournament square is on the attacker depending on the size of the attacker, the progress of the server and so on. Early game, before catapults, most likely they have no tourny square. After catapults, they gear towards level 20 rally point and so you're looking at 0-8 TS. Mid to end this rises to 20 quite easily with some bigger players. Later on, you have to assume level 20.


- Walking troops home:
An incredibly important skill to develop. The idea is to attack an army as it is returning home from an attack. If your offensive troops are faster than the attackers, you can attack them after they attack you. If yours is slower, you will have to take a leap of faith and attack before the attack arrives. However, most armies are predictable depending on the aggressiveness of the attacker, their size and how far along the server it is.

This move is very useful against all sides. Agaisnt teutons, the macemen horde can be crushed with a few cavalry units. Note that since TT speed is more than twice that of either the mace or the legion, TTs have time to attack, return and still have time to miss your counterattacks. This makes Gauls a tough target for countering. To do this, you need to calculate how long your troops will take to get to the attacker's village, and when the attacker's troops will return. This requires some time calculations. You should work out when you need to send out the attack and add a second or two to make sure no mistakes.

You need to have the unit attack screen already set up. After you select the number of units, you press ok, and then the next screen is the right one to lauch the attack. Timing is critical, down to the second. You want to hit the attackers around 1-3 seconds after they arrive.

The great thing about this move is that since most attacking units are weak at defense, a much smaller army can destroy a much larger one. Even if you dont take out the whole army, you can kill so many of the attackers that they will be afraid to attack you again.

You can also be quite creative with this move. Attacks don't have to be limited to the early game. You can walk troops home with massive mid or end game armies. For example,
- an aggressive player sends out his hammer to catapult one of your ally's villages.
- He is actually further away to the catapult target than he is to you.
- His troops hit, and you know his catapults have struck because you are in an excellent alliance with great commmunications (yes you are!) or you have read the attack report in the alliance attack screen.
- His troops are moving home at catapult speed, and so you can calculate exactly when they will get home by using a speed calculator or using your mathematics degree do some Cartesian geometry
- Power up your rams, send your main army at him, timed at his village.
- He will have the time it takes for you to hit to organise a massive defense. Even if he takes out your offense army, you've seriously damaged a hammer.
- He may be afk from the computer when you attack as he is just waiting for his hammer to come back. Even if he sees your attack, he needs some time to organise his alliance reinforcements.
- Most hammers are built from a 6C with Great Stables/Barracks. He will be in severe -ve wheat. It is unlikely he would have had any defense normally stationed there, eating up more wheat.
- Hammers from 15Cs capitals are less powerful, and are more likely to have some permanent reinforcements, but nothing like what you should be attacking him with.
- Even if he has reinforcements, you still do proportional damage to his hammer. So lets say the hammer has no defense, and you attack his reinforcements. Wall is destroyed. The proportion of his defense that is lost during your attack is the same as the proportion of the hammer that is killed.
- Most hammers do not have maxed armoury bonuses. Ouch

- Cutting/splitting catapult waves: attackers using catapults usually use waves to ensure as much destruction as possible To do this, attackers use one clearing wave attack with attack waves of catapults afterwards. Good attackers use the tab method to get about 4-6 waves per second. In that case, it is pretty much impossible to cut in between the waves. A lot of players individuallly send out the waves or they use the tab method but their internet connection is slow, from which there is some time between waves. Timing some reinforcements (like the attack method above) to arrive before that will wipe out a good chunk of the attacker's catapults, which severely limits how much damage he can do in future. You do not even have to use all your reinforcements between waves, since most of the attacker's catapult waves are usually weakly guarded.

Very good players sometimes use a fake clearing wave or two so that their main wave comes in the second or third waves, or they change the order randomly. They also purposely create a second or two delay between the fake and actual wave to induce you trying to cut the waves. These guys are tricky and are experienced. You'll find this out from previous attacks on you or your neighbours or you'll find out the hard way. If you get attacked again, you can do an appropriate cut or even multiple cuts. Otherwise, you'll just have to grin and bear or really reinfroce.

[BlackPaladin]

D2. Tactical Maneuvers and Skills (cont)

- Cutting chief waves: attackers later on will have multiple chiefs so they can wipe one village in one series of attacks. The waves you find coming to you are quite obvious. The clearing wave comes from his main army base. Then depending on his timing skills, follows 2-4 attacks from different villages, each at a ram speed. And he will want to be very precise with his timing, we're talking a second or two to minimise risk to the other chiefs. If there are fakes on other villages, you can rule out your capital. And since it takes a lot of effort to coordinate multiple fakes from multiple sources, it is likely that he will have only spent time to do the actual attack properly. Look in the rally point to ascertain which one is well timed. Cutting these is similar to cutting waves of catapults. Also note that his chief villages are unlikely to all have siege shops that make rams, so they will no doubt use other units for fakes, which are faster, therefore giving you another way of distinguishing from real attacks.

- Timing a Residence Build (courtesy of fizzy)

Quote:

Originally Posted by fizzy In addition to cutting chief waves with defence, you can also time your residence to build an additional level between the clearing wave with the catapults, and the next wave with chiefs. Because Travian times events to complete in the order they were started, it is sometimes even possible if the attacker sends all his attacks to land on the same second. To be successful at this, you will probably need to be a gold user, or to plan ahead. - Firstly you need to spot which village is the target of the takeover (tips are given in the last section). - Go to that village and see how long another level of residence building will take to complete. The trick is to time that to complete straight after the clearing wave. - to do this, open up another window, and set them side by side, one showing the rally point of the target village, the other showing the residence / palace. The next level of residence / palace will take xx.xx number of minutes and seconds. You need to click on the upgrade when that time matches the time left before the clearing wave hits. If you get it right, the residence will complete on the same second as the clearing wave, but crucially after it. The advantage that gold users have is that if there is not time to build another level of residence / palace (or that they are maxed out), they can auto demolish levels until there is. In addition, should you mess up your timing, you can cancel the build, demolish another level and try again, and again, until successful. As mentioned earlier, it is possible to time the residence build even if all the waves hit on the same second, but you need some luck and things to work out just right. If you see an attack coming in that you suspect is the clearing wave for a takeover, you have a window where you can time a residence build before they launch their waves of chiefs. Remember, Travian times its events to complete in the order they were started, so if you time your build before the waves of chiefs are launched, yours will complete first, even if their chiefs land on the same second as the clearing wave. If the chief waves are launched from villages farther away to you, than the clearing wave village, then once again if you time your residence build to finish the second before they land, but before the clearing wave is launched, again it will work in your favour. For those non gold users out there that cant autodemolish residences / palaces, its is trickier, however if you think you are at risk of being chiefed, planning ahead is the trick. Assuming you have used the explansion slots, it might be worth taking a few levels off them over 24 hours, to give yourself a reasonable chance of catching a window. However, unlike gold users, you will only have 1 chance to suceed.

- Retaking villages. Later on, you will most likely have a chief somewhere in your villages. Retaking your village if taken is a VERY effective tactic. For a skilled player, it can be used like a massive trap. When someone takes a village, the attacking forces are stationed in that village.

The village is at its most vulnerable to a capture AFTER it has just been captured. The reasons are that
- The village most likely not have walls (the attacker with catapults no doubt will use rams to help with the defenses),
- there is an offensive force in that village, which the attacker cannot remove for a few seconds,
- AND that village has low loyalty and no palace/residence (cannot be hurried by gold.).
- The attacker also cannot possibly know you are setting up a trap because YOU have that village right up till they take it over.

The trick is to time your counter attack as soon as their last chief arrives. If a player attacks with chieftan waves in one attack, you can cut the waves, and stunt his attack, forcing him to remake chieftans, giving you valuable time for reinfs. If your opponent tries to take over a village by attacks with his main army WITH chiefs, you can really screw him. When he moves in for the final attack, you can calaculate the attack time arrival, dodge the attack, and wipe out his offensive army.

In the above situation, you are trapping the attacker to destroy his army. However, you can just retake a village because you want it back! As said before, the newly lost village is at its most vulnerable to takeover, so make sure you get your chiefs in as soon as possible. Residence level 1 takes approximately 10 minutes to build, and will no doubt be the first thing built after a takeover, so adjust your catapult strategy accordingly.

- Scorched earth. If you either have no chiefs or you really want to 'annoy' the attacker, damage your own village before he can take it (or straight after you lose it, before he can reinforce it) A newly taken village's weak spot is the wheat production - Granary, 6 wheat fields and the main building and sometimes the marketplace (no wheat trading/npc) means that the attacker will be in negative wheat. When an attacker does this to your village, this is often called croplock. However, you can perform a self croplock using your own troops. The process of rebuilding from a croplock is tough:
1. No MB means wheat fields take forever to make and he cannot build any other buildings unless his wheat is positive (oh yes! you cannot build anything except a wheat field if your buildings take up more wheat that you produce).
2. This also means no residence/palace, no walls, no main building, no granary EVEN WITH GOLD.
3. No granary also means he can't simply stock up wheat easily. -ve wheat means his troops and reinforcements are gonna starve. That means the more defenses he puts in, the more he will lose. Scorched earth can be done by you or your friends.
In the end, remember it is better to damage the lost village than let your opponent gain full use of it.

[BlackPaladin]

D3. Tactical Maneuvers and Skills (cont)

- Joining his allies. A good population account can get into most alliances. And a lot of alliances dont check your history. If you join an CP of your attacker's alliance, you can catch him on "friendly fire" and report him to the multihunter. He'll probably get banned around 3 days or so, depending on the MH and/or any changes in rules. It is only considered FF if he attacks you after you join. You are safe even for 48 hours after you leave. This is considered a pretty despicable act though, don't be surprised if he hates you forever (a lot of players vow to zero you). However this can get you valuable time for reinforcements.

NB: as mentioned, this is a very low act, and will not make you a popular person. Some playes don't actually report to the MH, but instead threaten to do so, which may keep the peace.

- drawing his fire. Use strategies that will cause him to attack other places or villages. There are lots of ways around this, but none of them easy. One way is to repeatedly fake him. A player receiving attacks is more likely to be getting defensive. You should throw in some real attacks on his weaker villages to distract him.

- Destroying/Capturing his village - an incredibly ballsy move, if you have the strength to do it. Towards the middle of the server, a very advanced player will build his main offense army in his non capital. He will also have very little defenses. He will also get a lot of fakes from players because he is a very aggressive farmer. If you have the muscle, taking his village out with chiefs is possible. He loses the entire army if he loses the village. Hopefully, some of the fakes will disguise your attack. Some powerful players have lost out with this move, but weigh up the attack carefully. It does have a low success rate. I would only recommend VERY experienced players use this move.

The other way of doing this is to croplock his village. Usually, the village is a 6C, so this is possible. He will often have at least 8 maxed granaries. Faking his capital is also a good idea.

Remember both of these work best when he has sent his troops out attacking. For the latter. if you damage his wheat, he will be losing troops on the way home due to starvation.

- Escaping a walking home. A very little know manoevre if you are outplayed by a walking home. If you have a few seconds before your troops return and the walk home occurs, you can try to move them out manually after the troops arrive, but this is impossible under 5 seconds.

Therefore you need to send your troops out pre-emptively. How to do this:
- Reinforce another village
- once the screen comes up, type in a large number for whatever your troops are returning, eg 5000 maces.
- set up another tab and wait till exactly your troops return home, and as soon as the server is resetting, you ok the reinforcement, and click ok again.
- anything less than 2 seconds between the two waves is impossible to avoid, you are screwed. But 2+ seconds is possible.
- this is NOT a highly reliable move. Server computing time and connection speed can really screw this up for you. However, given that the only other outcome is destruction of your troops, its always worth a try

[BlackPaladin]

E1. Server Progression

The progress along the server is a good idea of what to expect. The general trend for a speed:

- At the beginning, the aggresive players focus on squeezing every last drop of resources around them to expand themselves and controlling their immediate area. Most of these players are teutons, but the occassional gaul and roman do come through. A good Gaul player is one of the most difficult to defend against.
- Early-mid game (2weeks-1month) is still similar but major alliances spring up and the shape of the game moulds. Catapults are more and more commonly used. Some villages are being taken.
- Mid game (1month-2months), the focus is now on taking other villages, expanding
- Mid-end game (2-4m), alliances position themselves on endgame. Major warfare usually erupts on an active server, though the latest ones have been quite dull from what I hear. Raiding for resources still happens but production makes far more than raids now.
- End game. The natars come and by now focus is on that or on improving your own table rankings, if you're bothered by this.
You can also find out more about your opponent in his stats (pop, off, def etc rankings). Tools such as the travian world analyser are very useful to help you find out more about your attacker. These tools are all available - use them!

Early Game

Raids for resources are very common.
- one main village each player, two as the server moves along
- High numbers of aggressive teutons, and later on gauls/romans.
- Troop numbers can be surprisingly high - ranging from 50+ maces in the first 2 days to literally 1000++ in a week.
- This is the best time to restart if you have a bad time.

Teutons vs Teutons - is tricky. An aggressive teuton will invariably spend most of his resources on an expanding mace army, so you can be generally assured that he has few defences. Very early on, the likelihood of him having paladins is low. Even if he has them, on a purely resource basis, building 2.5 maces (100attack) is cheaper than 1 paladin (100 infantry defense). Therefore you should
- concentrate on building up your own village and troops, especially towards paladins as soon as possible
- hit him from time to time - if he is any good he will always dodge you - a good player will never let his mace army get caught by another mace army. However not everyone is a good player, so try at night or something, you just never know. He cant hit you back if you both have maces.
- dodge him all times. Make sure he gets nothing
- raid the surrounding villages often, make sure he gets less resources from them than you do. This limits him and enables you

Gauls vs Teutons - you are going to be hit a lot.
- you should always start gauls in the most aggressive way possible (read some of the aggressive gauls guides), else you fall behind to an aggressive teuton
- try to get to level 6 fields asap, use the free gold at the beginning (when you are weakest)
- 1 cranny is useful to save your resources when raided.
- get to TTs as soon as possible. 1 TT = 20 dead mace when you counter attack. The resource implications are obvious. Once you get enough, you dominate him. Dont give up halfway, make sure you finish the job - raid him as often as he would have raided you.
- the chance of you running into spearmen is moderately high. However, spears are so wood heavy that the teuton player will have to make a decision between spears and maces (which are equally wood heavy). The time you get to TTs should still be relatively early in the early game and the teuton player generally does not have the resources to get to paladins, a large mace army and lots of spearmen.
- as always, raid all the resources and prevent the teuton from gaining any. The teuton focuses on army building early on and will have a weak economy.
- Traps offer no real help to you, unless you need to store settlers or something similar for your alliance members.

Roman vs Teutons
- legions are slower than maces, but that is ok as you can now target the return of the maces in advance.
- Dodge any attacks, - maces are so cheap that they can attack a decent level wall full of legions and still get away with more damage given than received.
- if you have a decent sized roman village early on, the local teuton will almost certainly come to attack you. Be prepared to dodge or defend.
- Teutons have a weak defense to infantry early on, walking maces home will be very unlikely to run into resistance
- Romans have a hard time getting to EIs. Getting these against a mace heavy teuton will not always be a great victory for you. The teuton can gather the resources for spearmen very quickly through his raiding, therefore be careful.

X vs Gaul armies
- as stated before a good gaul player is very difficult to counter - the TT is fast and you cannot walk it home as a roman or teuton.
- Not only are there TTs, but swords as well if one player is building too much of anti cavalry. Always be careful, as gaul players often do have swords (some guides are all about TTs asap, but I often go for swords just to catch some early raiding as you can get to swords quicker)
- If he has got a decent army, the best way around this is to make a deal with this guy.
- Alternatively if teuton make a large spear army and hit his village repeatedly with what maces you have to induce a TT raid. Having scouts and keeping your spears on the move is a good idea. This is a very wood intense strategy and if he is outbuilding you, you are most likely going to lose. Gold is useful for making more wood/converting.
- with roman, legionnaires, and get the wall up as much as possible. TTs are expensive, so make it pricey for him to attack you.
- with gaul vs gaul, you also cannot walk troops home as you both have same speed units. Unless you have 2 villages, and he attacks your non main one, you can walk his TTs home. However, by this point, he will probably have built some phals by then. Although 2 good gaul players next to each other is very rare, it can happen. Diplomacy in this case is easier as defending for gauls is easier than attacking....

X vs Roman armies
- an expensive attacking unit and the most non specialised defensive unit is the legion.
- large numbers are pricey, and so grinding is relatively easy - 1 phalanx has more defense vs its offense, is cheaper, and can be behind a wall too.
- Walking romans home with maces is easy too.
- A good teuton player would generally always outplay an equal skilled roman imo.

[BlackPaladin]

E2. Server Progression (cont)

Early to Mid game
- players start on gathering cavalry units
- the attacking army is getting large.
- Second and third villages are appearing.
- Catapults are still relatively rare though but beginnning to appear.
- this part plays out similar to the first. For players with cavalry, counter attacking vs large mace armies is a definite way of slowing an attacker's aggression. However, they may start building spears as well, be careful. Scouting is helpful.


Middle game
- focus shifts to catapults, and dodging carries a side effect of building destruction
- later on taking over villages occurs very often
- The more annoying players catapult cranny players for fun.
- players with chiefs will mostly be 1-2, giving you advanced wwarning on which village they want to take (they will hit it over and over again)
- A good alliance is a very top deterrant.
- Failing that, your handling depends on the situation. You can try to counter the chieftans via the scorched earth or retaking the base.
-

Mid to End
- Focus shifts more to the WW, but village taking is still very important.
- Major wars and organised attacks are extremely difficult to defend against. There generally a couple of ways wars are fought
1. the "free for all" where an alliance just goes crazy and all its members start faking another alliances' members. Players who have chiefs start taking over villages at random, theres often a few localised battles where it is 1v1 or 2v2 etc. Being on your toes in this time will inevitably open an opportunity for you to damage a player.
2. the really organised attack - a whole alliance fakes you whilst locals really start pummeling you.

Defending the organised attacks
These are tough because not only do you not know where am attack will strike, but several attackers on one village, for example, will mean that village is crippled. You can call for reinforcements but where do they go? You have to use some common sense.

- Attacks arriving randomly over a large period of time are unlikely to be real attacks.
- A larger attack (more people involved) means it takes more effort, more planning, more time for all members to attack, and more clues to where the fakes are.
- note any new attacks that appear and find out their travelling speed (look at D. Manoevres for more help on this). You should be able to work out if a new attack is catapult, ram or chief speed if the attacker is within 30 squares.
- Targets are not often strategically important, ie they can fake your capital, but go for another village etc. Experienced players realise that if a large attack happens on your main village, this would be your priority and you will defend it with your allies, and the attacker will lose massive army after massive army.
- Just remember that the more villages they fake, the less perfect the fakes will be.
- Protect your key villages (only your main army maker village is good enough to be key, all else is expendable) with reinforcements, and hope they strike it amd lose large armies.
- Be preprared to send in catapult cutting waves in between potential catapult waves if you suspect catapults.
- Try to keep your defenses focused. One or two large armies in key defensive villages can mean a serious blow to the attackers. If a large army gets destroyed, you've eliminated a serious threat to your future WW, and that in itself is a victory. A crippled village can be rebuilt in a day with resources and gold, but a WW hammer lost halfway along the server is irreplacable.
- Retake/scorched earth your villages if you have the ability. Good attacks are ORGANISED, SCRIPTED and timed. However, they cannot possibly predict you taking your own village back and reacting quickly in response to their attack.
- If real attacks occur on many of your villages, you are screwed. However, you would always have been screwed if 25 people gang up on you. Again, try not to split reinforcements, unless you have enough. In this case, you were probably very unlucky or you have annoyed the hell out of a lot of people. A massive organised attack like that is pretty rare in a server - you are the flashpoint in a major war. Be proud... and make sure you show your shiny top defense medal!

Detecting fakes
After a while in the game you become quite good at recognising fakes through a strange mix of instinct, experience and pattern recognition. Previous experience with the attacker is essential to be very sure but without it, some traits of a fake attack:
- attacks which arrive in close time proximity, ie seconds apart, is a good predictor of a real attack
- some alliances like to send raiding waves before the main catapult waves to help clear the defense. Raids before main attacks are a way of doing it
- Times on arrival - organised attacks are scripted (script as in planned multilateral organised attacks rather than scripts as in the illegal hacking programs). Scripts require times. People normally don't use random times like "lets all hit him at 12:55:44 seconds. People say "13:00:00 exactly" etc. Be wary if attacks arrive at exactly a particular minute or hour, half hour, quarter hour etc. However, some very experienced planners DO use random times such as 12:55:44. They expect you to know this fact and exploit it by not timing it on the same second. So always remember such things can happen. Once you get the hang of finding fakes for the most part an experienced player will get a "feeling" that it is real or not by looking at it and will react accordingly.
- Conversely spending so much accuracy on a main attack means a lot of planning and effort from each attacker is needed if you want perfect fakes. No one in travian will perfect fake more than 2 other sites.
- your target is often scouted (this can be used as a ruse though)
- Many players fake using raids - you need to actively click on the "attack" rather than "raid" button. Laziness occurs, mistakes are made.
- Some good scripted village takeover attacks involves your village being reinforced when they are finished with their attacks (eg 6 main attacks, followed by 5 reinforcements). The logic is that the reinforcements hide with you real reinforcements. However, check your rally point(s) and get a good gauge on when are where the reinforcements are coming from. If you do find them from the enemy, not only is this a good clue to the real target, you can also vacate you village after the attacks go through, and pick off the reinforcements one by one when they arrive - you can attack your own villages, and they are vulnerable as your wall probably took a pummeling during the attack. The other beautiful part of this situation is that the reinforcements come in piecemeal AND they generally come in one type (eg anti-cavalry only or anti-infantry only ), so when you attack with a mixed force, you take less casualties than expected due to their weakness to one form of attack. Teuton reinforcements are usually spears which are weak to infantry, whilst romans love to send a horde of praes.
- similarly, the attackers may have even planned to send supplies to the village before the attack has succeeded/failed. Keep an eye out on the marketplace in case they do.

Just don't assume that all attacks are going to be well timed etc. It takes a LOT of time and skill to co-ordinate a good scripted attack. Most of the time, every alliance has a bunch of noobs who wouldn't know how to tie their shoelaces, never mind following an attack to the second. Even experienced players will make mistakes. So be prepared for random attacks which seem too bad to be real, such as raiding with a massive catapult army, clearer waves coming after the catapult waves etc. In some ways, these attacks are the most difficult to defend against.
Conclusions
In conclusion, defending is usually poorly done by many players. There is no magic formula, but you can use the situation to be creative. Just don't play defense too defensively. If you only defend, you will be overrun easily.

Enjoy!