Crewchat Summary

The Travian Crew Chat happened earlier today (or last night depending on wat time zone you live in), and I’ll try to do a full report on it after a transcript of it is posted on the Travian forums. But here’s a quick rundown of some important news and things that were said:

• There won’t be a Christmas truce on Travian.com, but there might be a New Years Truce (it sounds like if they do decide to do one, they want to keep it a surprise)
• Travian 3.6 is here to stay, but there’s a possibility there might be classic servers that use version 3.0 or version 3.5.
• It’s unlikely that the Auto-Return function initially included in Travian 3.6 will ever return to Travian.com (but other Travian domains around the world might keep it).
• The Auto-dodge feature introduced in Travian 3.6 could be eliminated in the future, and the Rally Point change might be “adjusted”, according to Tschena
• New applicants for Moderators, In-Game Support, and Multihunters are welcome, send an application to admin@travian.com if you want to apply. The positions are all volunteer.
• There was lots of other important questions asked too, so stay tuned and I’ll try to have a summary up soon!

Browser Game of the Year

Travian is the only Browser Game I spend a lot of time playing, but if you play a lot of Browser Games, you might want to check out Browser Game of the Year competition over at Galaxy News.

They’re looking for enthusiastic players and browser game developers to by on the jury, and I’m sure that a lot of the people who visit this site qualify as “enhusiastic players”.

The awards are only for new games released this year, so Travian isn’t eligible. Imperion is though, I think.

Travian Crew IRC Meeting on December 9th

The admin of Travian.com announced that there’s going to be a special chat event where the players get to ask the crew questions on December 9th. Here’s the official announcement thread:

http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=130599

Text of the Announcement:

Dear players,

Ever wanted to ask the travian staff strange and unusual questions? Now you can! There is going to be a player-crew meeting on December 9th, from 7 – 10pm GMT + 1. The meeting will be on IRC, the channel will be announced later.

That’s 12-3pm if you’re in the Eastern Timezone, or 9am-12 if you’re in the Pacific Timezone like me. So I guess I’ll try to make sure I don’t sleep in that day.

If you miss the chat event, I’ll post the highlights on Travian Champions later! Just like I did with the crewchat earlier this year.

Travian is the #1 Search Term in Saudi Arabia

So in addition to being one of the most-searched items in France this year, Travian was also the #1 search term on google in Saudi Arabia, according to a report in Middle East Technology News. Quote:

According to the search giant, the most popular search in the Kingdom this year was the browser-based strategy game Travian, which is translated into many different languages including Arabic and currently has more than 41,800 players from Saudi Arabia alone.

Read the full report here: http://www.itp.net/578560-entertainment-dominates-saudi-minds-online/?tab=article

(Thanks to  http://twitter.com/BrowserGaming)

LMFAOD win S6.com

It’s finally over. LMFAOD have won Server 6, and they will go down in history as the last alliance to win Travian playing version 3.0! Congratulations to them on their very special victory and I look forward to adding them to the Travian Hall of Champions. 

Also, congratulations to their opponents, Space Lizards, for the amazing fight they put up. The skill level on this server was very high and it was truly a battle for the ages.

S6.com: High Praise For Codename

S6.com is about to come to an end, with Lethal’s World Wonder very close to clinching the victory for LMFAOD:

But right now, it’s time to appreciate the second-place World Wonder held by Codename, for how well it was played, how much defense it was able to have, and how it was able to take hits from the enemy’s biggest armies and still keep going.

Codename held the lead for a good portion of the endgame, and many of the attacks launched on it by Space Lizards did a lot less damage than expected, due to the huge number of defenses contained there. Space Lizards would have to come back to Codename’s World Wonder several times with massive armies that would easily flatten other Wonders. I don’t think there’s ever been a World Wonder that took on this many huge attacks and still managed to finish a close second.

The total defense at Codename’s was comparable to Cassini’s World Wonder from the alliance SBD on the last Server 8 – but keep in mind that SBD only had one World Wonder to defend! (and I think Codename still comes out ahead by a fair margin for total defenders)

So without any further ado, here are some of Codename’s Greatest Hits:

This Ram army couldn’t bring the wall all the way down, despite its impressive size:

From earlier in ther server:

And I’ve already posted this one, but it deserves to be posted again:

Here is what some of the Server 6 players are saying about Codename and how well defended his Wonder was (click here to read the whole thread):

Alha: Even if Lethal’s WW is very likely to be the first to level 100, I think yours was the one who won the game for you by taking all the hits.

Odinstaff: It’s been an honour playing with you Code.
Your dedication, sleep less nights and the pounding you took proved an inspiration and we rallied behind you.

I will say every WW holder except Adelwar deserves to win.
But I feel Codename earned it.
Reddadude and BrushMonkey gave up the defense they had to ensure Code had enough to close out and I admire and salute their sacrifice.

Splatter: I’d like to give the entire Code team props for holding the huge def over the extended period of time they did. I’d also like to recognise the large group of people behind the Code plan management. Even though the account suffered a huge amount of attacks, those plans were always kept safe and only a minute amount of build time was lost, if any.

Author: CODENAME took down so many hammers that CWL had almost nothing left to go after lethal. Great job and I am proud to have you with us for the win. We could not have done it without you and this win is shared by all.

with this server nearing its end, there’s a lot to look back upon, but I think the amazing defense mounted at Codename’s World Wonder will be one of the things from this Server 6 that is remembered the most. Not surprisingly, Codename is certain to finish as the #1 defender.

Quote of the week

I posted Imram’s piece on why he’s in favour of the Travian 3.6 changes earlier, but I thought this part is worth repeating, with emphasis:

It now promotes simming and focuses less on aggressive farming. But then again, how aggressive you are depends on you as a player and not the game mechanics.

S6.com: Getting all caught up (thanks to Globetrotter)

This is possibly the best Endgame Analysis Thread I’ve ever seen. This guy puts me to shame:

http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=130199

I’m going to do a big quote from Globetrotter, and it will pretty much summarize what’s happened in the game since my coverage broke off. (If you’ve already read this, scroll down to the bottom to see an awesome battle report and hear what’s coming up in the future)

As I mentioned previously through the hammers stats, this last week has been one of the bloodiest ever. Huge hammers were unleashed from all sides and sent out on their final journey, carrying all the hopes of ensuring the success of their own people – even the last player in the current top #10 attackers of the week has scored more than many previous #1 top attackers …
WWs were zeroed, others simply changed hands… Leading WWs standings were shuffled over and over again, with one of the leading WW almost reaching its target, only to get delayed after its adversaries put up a desperate final effort to bring it down… Competing alliances finally made their merge official, and even started coordinated attacks against enemy strongholds… In short, an eventful week…

The first major news to be mentioned is of course the loss of 2 WWs for SL / OZ, with Lubricious losing his WW to the enemy after Phoca’s loss the previous week. This therefore gives SL / OZ’s rivals the advantage of 9 WWs v/s 4. However, needless to remind the public that the WWs of Adelwar, Hamper and Zorlin will not be contending for the race (especially that Zorlin has followed Adelwar’s steps in keeping only one village, the one with the WW). Therefore, this effectively gives an advantage of 7 to 3 WWs in favor of MFD+LOD+ONE+SE.

The second major news was the long awaited confirmation about the merger of the northern alliances. For some time, MFD and LOD had declared having a NAP only, and that they would not target one another until late into the game, depending on how the game went. But now, their official alliance was sealed as most of their WW holders rallied under the same tag: LMFAOD. They were also rejoined by their southeastern fighters and allies.

As for the week’s events and WW standings, well, lots of happenings there:

November 30th: The opening of the week saw Codename still in the lead @98, but still licking his wounds from previous strikes that managed to take the WW down a couple of levels as he had the level 100 very likely queued. Nevertheless, he was still 7 levels ahead from the nearest contenders, i.e. Sparticus (91), Fire&Ice (91), Shakal (90) and Bandrit (90).

But, with Sparticus also severely hit on November 25th, and practically stuck on level 91, the only real contenders were actually the 3 SL / OZ WW holders and of course, Codename. Or so it appeared to be the case at first sight… (but we’ll get to that later)

In order to secure Codename’s lead and give him enough time to rebuild, the LMFAOD command HQ had mainly one choice: strike at each and every SL / OZ WW hard enough to put it completely out of the race. Should the triple strike be successful, Codename would get a safe home run and give victory to all.

December 1st: And so, hostilities against WWs were resumed on the 1st of December; surely, hammers were already on their way a few days before.

Bandrit’s WW was the first to get a taste of what MFD was capable of… 92 was the level of the WW… 0 was its state at the end of the strike, with 6 hammers used. Lubricious’ WW was to follow. In Lub’s case, not only was the WW zeroed, but the village itself was captured by the SE coalition hostile to SL / OZ dominance, with the help of its northern allies.

December 2nd: That day wasn’t any quieter, as it was Fire&Ice’s turn to be at the receiving end of enemy hammers. After a lone hitter managed to damage its WW from 92 to 91 the previous day, the WW was finally damaged by a couple of levels more, and infrastructure suffered quite a bit. And this time, MFD had sent some of its own hammers to assist those of LOD, in one of the first joint operations against an SL / OZ WW.

Now, with 2 WW practically severed, and only one more to take down, the LMFAOD group felt that victory was finally within its grasp again, especially that armies were already en route to hit the 3rd SL WW under Shakal…

But this was again without counting on SL / OZ tenacity and will to fight… The same day Fire&Ice was struck, their leading WW under Codename came under huge fire from the biggest hammers seen so far on the server. The WW took a 3 level hit from 98 to 95, and infrastructure was damaged. Surprised? Well, knowing SL / OZ, one should expect anything and everything…

December 3rd: the northern armies finally landed on Shakal, knocking his WW from 92 to 84, and inflicting infrastructure damage as well, putting him behind Simethered’s WW.

BUT, as all of these leading WWs were taking hits, one of them was silently and continuously presenting itself as the real contender to the win. With a very steady growth after he got hit very early in the race, Lethal was catching up slowly but surely, and as WWs were knocked down or slowed down in front of him, he finally stole the leadership from Codename late on December 3rd… By the looks of it, he even has the infrastructure to go all the way…

But has he really gone unnoticed all that time? Surely LMFAOD hoped so and had in any case enough time to stuff him with defense, while on SL / OZ side, everyone hoped for yet another surprise.

December 4th: LMFAOD kept striking hard at Fire&Ice. With defense being shifted around between her WW and Shakal’s, LMFAOD seized the opportunity of striking at her non-stop, in an attempt to prevent her from rejoining the WW race. As a matter of fact, most of her villages came under fire, and it was recorded that she had lost a lot of pop overall. Shakal was already badly hurt, so it was very likely that LMFAOD would keep an eye on his recovery before striking again. Besides, he had the Natars heading his way…

As for Lethal, as expected, SL / OZ’s reaction wasn’t going to be long to come. By mid-day, 6 hammers tried the impossible to hurt his progression. As his name states, he was indeed lethal, for the sacrifice of those 6 brave armies was almost in vain. 2 Great Warehouses were hardly scratched, nothing that Lethal can’t recover from.

The WW standings shortly after the hits on Lethal are as follows (December 4th @ 13:00)

With those results on Lethal, one could state that SL / OZ have launched whatever they had left… “the dregs at the bottom of the barrel” if I am to quote one of the leaders… Having said that, Lethal now is in fact the favorite for the final sprint, and the road to the finish line seems clear for him (unless something unexpected occurs…)

I will probably show some more graphs once the WW level 100 is reached in order to show the progression of each WW holder. For now, I will stick to the following graph:

The graph includes the top 7 WWs of this week, and their progression over the past 2 weeks; you can clearly see Codename’s frustration, Bandrit’s WW collapse, Sparticus’ neutralization, the ups and downs of Shakal and Fire&Ice, and especially, Lethal’s steady progression, the current new WW race leader.

Codename:

Dec 2nd @ 19:30 (opening salvo, the others being spaced by a couple of hours)
The Rammer:
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1067779be70

The Cats:
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=106647840b8
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=106792af78f
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1069756cb99

Note, I separated the Rammers from the rest, as its owner deserves recognition for the amount of rams (and catas) amassed in this single strike.

Despite the huge ram-hammer, the wall wasn’t completely knocked down. This gives an idea once again regarding the defense behind Codename’s walls, as seen in the BR below:

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=106275bc0c9

Lethal:

Dec 4th @ 12:00
http://4travian.org/log/44d319456130…fe77af9375b9bf
http://4travian.org/log/85d565893caa…d1dcd711c68771
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=11026144001
http://www.travian-reports.net/us/ra…id=1102647d27d
http://www.travian-reports.net/us/ra…id=110268332fd
http://4travian.org/log/9a9d4ce5d11e…14dc9b5904a640

Thanks to the amazing defense there, the impact of the hammers was minimal. It was clear that SL/OZ lacked an additional ram hammer to secure the way.

On the SL / OZ front – 3 out of 3 WWs
________________________________________

Bandrit:

Dec 1st @ 07:10
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10352196e5c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=103523bc0f9
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10352410975
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1035250dd1f
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=103528e9906
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1035276f25f

Decoy or no decoy, overkill or no overkill, the hammers here were impressive and did their job. Bandrit’s WW went from 92 to 0 in no time, with only the 3 last hammers aiming at the WW.

Fire&Ice:

Dec 1st @ 08:43
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10332878cdd

Despite being a lone hitter, this hammer still managed to take out one WW level.

Dec 2nd @ 07:47
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10557001bfc
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=105571e2bef
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1055691cfaa
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10557744938
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1055914e990
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=105609b344c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1056406fe3e
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10565939804
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1056681a395
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1056787ce5c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10570491884
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=105867f1cba

The defense put up at Fire&Ice seemed also pretty huge, as many of the hammers that had targeted the WW did less damage than what they could have done on other WWs. Fire&Ice seemed to be at that time SL / OZ’s bet for the win.

Shakal:

Dec 3rd @ 19:09 (opening salvo – the other strikes landed a few hours later)
http://logmyteuton.com/show.php?q=1920509275821402362
http://logmyteuton.com/show.php?q=1221559377891595096
http://logmyroman.com/show.php?q=1423519780173562320
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10719332da4
http://travian-reports.net/uk/raport.php?id=334917f316c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=107196fd6da
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10720025d50
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=107194b5abf
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=107186b8a9d
http://logmyroman.com/show.php?q=1620509388184250201

Shakal wasn’t spared, and before defense could be moved from Fire&Ice to him, LMFAOD were already on their way to him. There was no need for major hammers out here to do the job.

================================================== =============
Voilà for the latest with the info at hand. I hope to have delivered so far a very fair analysis of the events, staying as objective as possible. For those who are wondering who’s side I played on, well… let’s say that it is a small alliance in the SW who’s leader has held a WW and unleashed quite a number of decent hammers throughout the end game

(Seriously, I cannot get over the dedication and thoroughness that Globetrotter is showing in his analysis threads on S6.com. And the battlereports that other people are sharing too are very impressive and comprehensive. Follow this thread and you won’t miss a thing.)

Here’s a real gem of a report from that thread, showing the huge defense at Codename’s World Wonder:

I’ll try to post more on S6 later. I’ve got a lot to write about between this and S1.com, S7.com, other servers, and more on Travian 3.6. Not sure if I’ll be able to get to it all. But I promise a big wrap-up on S6 when it all ends. I have some colour commentary to add to Globetrotter’s play by play.

S6.com: The bigger they are the harder they fall…

I apologize again for not being able to stay up to date with everything that’s happening on Server 6 at Travian.com (not to mention Sever 1 and Server 7). I’ve been very busy, and keeping up to date with a Travian endgame can be very time-consuming. For a good wrap-up of what’s been going on, I suppose this thread is the right place to start (I’ll try to read through it all when I have the time).

It’s obvious that a lot of destruction has swept across the server, and here are some highlights of it. First let’s look at the current standings:

Geez, where do I even start? In the space of a week, several World Wonders have changes hands and the map has been re-drawn.

I didn’t spend much time talking about it earlier, but LoD and MFD merged their sides together, in order to fight against Space Lizards/CWL/Oz and their allies. Back when this was a three horse race, CWL and Co. were the biggest alliance of the three, but as you can see now, Space Lizards have lost their world wonders. I wouldn’t have expected to see such big losses like that, from a well-organized and effective Meta-alliance. This is the first time I’ve seen something of the sort.

Space Lizards have lost both Phoca and Lubricious’ World Wonders, and Bandrit’s is surely out of the game at this point. It must be a bitter pill for them to swallow, but LoD and MFD combined must have just been too big for them.

LMFAOD stands for LoD, Myth, Fun, One, and Dino. I assume the “A” is for “and”.

Convienently, the acronym can also stand for “Laughing My Fucking Ass Off Dieing.”

 Now that they hold 7 of the 9 World Wonders that are still in contention, the LoD and MFD Merged alliance looks like they will almost certainly win, once they can recover from whatever damage the other side has inflicted on them.

After the alliance merged, but before Space Lizards lost their World Wonders, Codename looking to be on the verge of victory, but the other side manged to take it away from him. But the defense at Codename’s World Wonder was huge, and this big hammer didn’t do nearly the amount of damage it normally would:

 

The defense at Codename’s World Wonder must have been huge in order to turn that monster away. Congratulations to Brezzok&Anarchy and the defenders of Codename for both doing a great job.

But Codename’s World Wonder looks to be in trouble now, as Codename has been reduced to just 5 cities. And besides his World Wonder city, only one of them has a population over 300 (He actually had only 4 left but then he managed to conquer another recently). So it looks like he’ll have a hard time protecting a World Wonder construction plan from this point on.

Still, even with Codename in trouble, LMFAOD seems to have an overwhelming advantage. I’ll try to stay up to date with this server and do a final report on it when it ends.

Poll Results: How many servers do you play on?

A little while ago I put my first poll on this site, asking how many Travian servers they play on. Here are the results:

I only play one server myself. Between that and running this site, that’s all the Travian I can handle! Almost half the respondents see things the same way. Playing one server allows you have a life outside of Travian, and once your account has become big enough, there’s enough action on one server to keep you busy if you’re a player that likes to keep raiding, attacking, and building.

Playing two servers seems doable, but I don’t know how people play 3 or more, but apparently some of you do. I guess with dual accounts it becomes easier, but even though I love playing Travian, I wouldn’t want to play it that much. But I tip my hat to those of you who do. You’re hardcore.

I think by nature I tend to like to finish a strategy game before I start a new one. Back when I used to play a lot of Civilization, or other Strategy games (Any Birth of the Federation fans out there?) I would only have one game going at a time, and I think that just naturally carries over into Travian. I don’t like having to split my focus – or split my Gold, for that matter.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll! I’ll have a new poll on the site in a few days. I plan on making this a regular feature.

In Favour of the Travian 3.6 Changes

I’m planning on posting part 2 of  my “Thoughts on Travian 3.6” later today. In the meantime, I thought I’d share this piece written by Imram, a player who supports the Travian 3.6 changes that was posted on the Travian.com forums.

It’s nice to hear that someone likes these changes. Even if I’m not happy about Travian 3.6, knowing that other people are makes it more bearable. (Note that Imram is against the “Auto-recall” feature, which I’ve said before is by far the worst idea from Travian 3.6. Hopefully that part of Travian 3.6 will be deleted.)

 

Imram:

Why I support T3.6

1. It limits/eliminates Micro-farming
- With RP limitations, the farmers are actually forced to actually think instead of mindlessly sending out wave after wave every time they return even though they bring minimal bounty. It actually gives small nub players a fighting chance to actually LEARN to LOVE the game instead of being farmed to deletion/inactivity. I can relate to the feeling of desperation when some big army dude keeps sending troops around even though he gets nothing from when I first started the game.

2. It injects new strategy and tactics into the game.
- I’ve lost track of how many times alliances send out MMs to mass-fake enemies with literally thousands of fakes per wing and how with enough fakes it’s nearly impossible to detect reals with the endless onslaught of incomings. Alliances now have to make sure each and every player takes part in ops instead of just simming behind the alliance meatshields. Offensive operations now require better planning and coordination but they’re still possible.

3. Botters will lose out
- I’ve heard from a “friend” of mine that the most of the free scripts around no longer work with T3.6. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it’s a hell of a good thing for legitimate average Joe travian players like me. Heck most top raiders are just scripters/no lifers anyway. I know from personal contacts and experience that a LOT of the old top raiders just used scripts to farm and usually deleted when they got pounded/lost army.

4. Cheaper PLUS and more free options for non-Gold players + more expensive additional shizz for gold players
-Hell yeah I’m in heaven

5. Auto-avoid
-It’s a bit like GoD-modding for paying noobs/lazy players but then again most players can avoid attacks (some even claim to be able to avoid 1 sec counters ) anyway so I don’t really see a problem with this regardless of what most people claim. You need Gold Club to use auto-avoid so more paying noobs = more revenue for travian = more fun features for us non-paying players

6. Trade Routes
-It reduces micro-managing and lets us focus more on the bigger picture instead of shifting resources every few hours from all villages to army village/capital. Micro-managing = suckage imho.

Edited Additions

Some bad points:

1. Faking will suck since you’re only limited to a set amount of outgoing attacks at any one point. This will affect midgame and endgame immensely. If the limit could be avoided for fake attacks that would be awesome but if not then a compromise for a higher Rally Point limit would be appropriate.

2. It now promotes simming and focuses less on aggressive farming. But then again, how aggressive you are depends on you as a player and not the game mechanics.

3. Sniping armies with the movement speed artifact and ghost armies will be impossible if the target player sets the auto-avoid on.

Disclaimer:  This is my personal view and you can flame me all you want. It won’t change anything. However I believe that the auto-return is waaaay too overpowered and seriously imbalances the playing field between the conservative gold user and the gold extremists.

Forum Banner Competition

There’s a forum banner competition happening at Travian.com. Here’s the official thread. The entry deadline is December 13th.

(I’ve thought about making a new banner for this site too and me and Oggles have talked about what we’d like in a new one, but if anyone wants to give it a shot e-mail me and let me know.)

Speed Raiding in Travian 3.6

One player has made a handy guide for how to get your raiding set up fast with the new Travian 3.6 features. Read it here:

http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=130402

Quote from the guide’s intro:

This guide is not for those of you that dont mind spending hours sending out raids each day… This is more a guide for lazy people like myself or people that genuinely dont have much time for raiding

My Thoughts On Travian 3.6 (Part 1)

Ever since Travian version 3.6 was announced, there’s been a big reaction from players on the various Travian forums around the world. I’ve posted several stories about Travian 3.6 on this site, but I haven’t really gone through how I feel about the new version of the game in-depth. Now that it looks like it’s here to stay, and that most, if not all, new future servers will be using this version, I thought I’d take the time to put all of my thoughts on Travian 3.6 together, so that my readers can know where I stand on things. 

Besides affecting me as a player, the changes to Travian 3.6 will also be affecting this site, in ways that no one besides myself has probably even thought about. But I’m sure that people who regularly visit this site will want to know how this site will be changed by Travian 3.6.

Let me start by saying that I’m a big fan of Travian. That’s probably pretty obvious because otherwise I wouldn’t have started this site, but I think it’s important that I preface what I’m about to say with this. Travian is, without a doubt, one of the best games I have ever played. Maybe my favourite game ever. It’s definitely right up there with Starcraft, Civilization, etc. When you like a game that much, it’s understandable that when a change is announced that you think will make the game worse, you have a strong reaction to it. Many other Travian players felt the same way.

Some of the changes introduced in Travian 3.6 were understandable, even if I didn’t like them. But some of the other changes could really alter the way the game is played, and I don’t think that I will like the new version Travian as much as I like the old version. And when I’ve already sunk a lot of time into this site, the prospect of that happening is depressing, to say the least.

With that being said, I also feel as though we should give the game designers at Travian Games the benefit of the doubt. Surely they wouldn’t screw up their own game. There’s too much money on the line for that to happen, right? It would never be allowed. They must have some reasons for making these changes. And no, I’m not just talking about making more money. Because if the changes are unpopular and make the game worse, then they’ll end up making less money. I believe that the designers think these changes are good, and I’m going to try to see their side, even if I don’t agree with it. So I’m going to try to do posts that explore what the reasons behind these changes are.

But what really peeves me off, and I realise that I’m in a unique situation here, is that Travian 3.6 messes with why I started this website in the first place. I started this site to record the winning alliances of, what I considered at the time, the grandest, most competitive, and hardest to win strategy game in existence. I was massively in favour of all of the major changes made when they introduced version 3.5, which gave the game even more depth and helped balance the three tribes. I thought that a near-perfect game was going to get even better.  And I was excited to see what they would eventually do with Travian 4.0, which I was sure would bring even more improvement to the game.

With the introduction of Travian 3.6, now I’m instead worried about the future holds for Travian, and whether or not the game will get better or worse. And in the meantime, I’m stuck covering (and playing) a game that I’m a less enthusiastic about than I once was.

Travian 3.6 sucks all of the life out the metaphorical room when it comes to blogging about Travian. It’s hard to write about how great the endgame of Server 6 or Server 7 is when you know that version 3.6 is on the horizon, and it’s probably not going to be as much fun to cover as previous rounds were. It’s like trying to have fun when you know that in a few days something bad is going to happen.

We’ve just about reached the ending of the first server on Travian.com to be played under Travian 3.5 rules. I was all ready to write a post that got reactions from players on that server regarding the changes introduced with Travian 3.5, and how they affect the game. Now writing all about that seems almost pointless. The game will be so different in Travian 3.6, what’s the point of even talking about how Travian 3.5 changed the game?

I really liked Travian 3.5. A lot of players did. And we barely even got a chance to enjoy it before it got changed to Travian 3.6. The introduction of the artifacts brought about countless new strategies to the game, and other Travian 3.5 changes were sure to have interesting ramifications on the game as well. But now we won’t get to see what they would have been. Instead the game takes a wild turn in a direction that none of us saw coming and none of us asked for.

Also, when I hear that several of the best players really hate these changes and don’t want to play Travian anymore because of them, well that just disappoints me to no end. I created this site to be the Travian Hall of Champions, but now a lot of those players who would have made it into the Hall of Champions are just going to leave the game. It remains to be seems how widespread this is, but so far this is a significant and disappointing development.

My plan for this site was to really roll it out to all English-speaking servers once Travian 3.5 games reached their endgame. By doing it this way, my plan was to give myself enough time to get the site set up, build a following, and develop routine that would let me have the site perfect just in time for the new version of the game to run its course. It also gave me a clear way to draw the line as to when the Hall of Champions started, which is something that I really wanted to have.

Now we have this odd situation when some servers will be recorded as being Travian 3.5 and some will be Travian 3.6 and the two versions are wildly different and most skilled players favour the old version. It puts me in a bad situation but I’ll try to make the most of it.

There’s a lot more I’ll say about Travian 3.6 in the near future, and I’ll be taking an in-depth look at the changes, what people’s reactions to them are, and why they were made. I just wanted to start by getting this off my chest, and I actually feel a bit better now that I’ve finally gotten this out of my system. I’d love to hear people’s comments and if you like Travian 3.6 feel free to respond and say why. I’d actually like to hear it and I think it would help cheer me up a little to hear from SOMEONE who likes these changes.

Tangent: How this affected me as a player: I haven’t spent any gold since the Travian 3.6 upgrade was announced. I log in less time per day, do less raiding, and check my sitters accounts less often. My enthusiasm isn’t there right now. Hopefully it will come back soon.

Two New Quests Added to the Taskmaster

Two new quests have now been added to the Taskmaster, it seems. The 23rd quest will be to build an embassy, and the 24th quest will be to join an alliance.

This will push first time players into joining alliances earlier.

On one hand, being a part of an alliance in Travian is a very important part of the game, so getting players to find this out is may be a good thing.

On the other hand, this will lead to new players joining alliance long before they’ve really gotten the hang of things. And it will encourage more new players to start alliances of their own, which generally is a mistake.

In any event, you definitely expect to see less small players who are unaligned in the future.

The rewards for completing these quests will be pretty small.

For building an Embassy, a player will receive 100 wood, 60 clay, 90 iron and 40 crop.

For joining an Alliance, a player will receive 120 wood, 140 clay, 90 iron and 50 crop.

 

Here’s a picture of the new final quest: