Travian Guide in the Beginning - Protect Resources and Build Up Defences

After playing Travian for some time, here's some tips that I've gathered from other players and various online forums.

Resource Building
In the beginning, build the resource fields and crannies (more on crannies below). Continue the process until the villages reach levels where you need more resources than your storage allows, then it's time to upgrade the warehouse and granary.

It makes more sense to upgrade the resource fields in sequence, i.e. no point building a level 6 fields when you can upgrade other level 4 to level 5 fields. Some feel that for crops, you can make an exception and build one field to level 5 as soon as possible in order to get the Grain Mill. Depends on players I guess.


Build Crannies
There will be other players who want to farm you. If they can get resources from the farming, they will be back for more. So build crannies and once they can't get any resources from you, they will just find another farm. Of course there are crazy players who come back with catapults to destroy your buildings when they can't get any resources, but these players are few. Do note though that Teutons can capture about 1/3 of the hidden resources in crannies. So it is better that you use up all the resources in your villages and don't build your warehouse to a extremely high level before your defences are up. No point having your resources stored in the warehouse, unused and only to be stolen right?


Add to the population
One way that other players used to detect farms is the population size. If the size remains constant, there is a likelihood that the villages are inactive and thus good targets to farm. Good targets because it is likely that once the initial troops are wiped out, the inactive village wouldn't build more troops. There are software to track inactivity, where players can see scan any inactive players with distances indicated.

Protect your army
Troops are needed to bring the resources raided from your villages. So if you can kill the enemy troops, you reduce the losses in your resources. If the attacker loses sufficient troops, your villages look less attractvie to him as farms. For defence, try to build up your wall till as high as possible. Different races require more of particular types of resources for their walls. E.g. Gauls need more lumber while Romans need more iron.

A high wall level will give your troops a higher defence bonus, such that small amounts of enemy troops will be killed even when there is only a wall with no troops in your villages.

After the wall, build traps if you are a Gaul. Else start building your defensive troops. Click through the 'Instructions' on the left of the screen to scroll through your troop types and know which are the defence type troops. E.g. for Romans the praetorians are the best defending troops against infantry and the legionnaires against cavalry.


After you have sufficient troops (some say the figure should be near hundreds), you should start to build an armoury and upgrade the armour. High armour give the troops a greater defensive bonus.


Diplomacy & Others
When you are ready, get an embassy so that you can join an alliance. Also, get the rally point build up. It's in the centre of the village. Next is to get a scout. You will need the academy to research such scouts. Scouts are useful to detect scouting from others, and of course, for you to scout others.


Well, this is a war game and so you will be attacked at some point in time. Try the following when you are being attacked. Some pictures of the attack messages (and others) are shown in an earlier post on the Review of Travian.

Safeguard the resources
Resources are what help you to re-build after an attack. The paragraphs above should have sufficient tips for safeguarding the resources.

Contact the attacker
There are times when soft diplomacy works. Write a message to the attacker and ask him to look for other farms. Heh. Sometimes, point him to the inactive player tracker software and he might just leave you alone. Else you can also ask your own alliance leader for diplomatic assistance if you have an alliance.

Defence Strategy After the First Attack
Your troops are greatly weaken after the first attack, or they could simply have been wiped. While you are starting to build the troops, the attacker send more waves of attacks. Don't leave your weakened troops or those small clusters to die! Send them to a nearby village, could be yours or another friendly player. Simply 'reinforce' that village and build up your troops to a sizable amount again before sending them back. Just note the crops consumption in that temporary village and make sure there is food for the troops. If that temporary village belongs to another player, send some crops along as tokens of appreciation.

Ask for Help
There are times when we all need help, that's what friends (and alliances) are for. Contact your alliance leader and ask politely if anyone has troops for assistance. Most ideal if you could post some previous history of the battles for others to gauge the strength of attacks.

Related Posts: Travian Guide Part 2, Simple Review of the browser game - Travian