The Final Fate of Travian Champions?

Over five long months ago, I said that I was optimistic that I would be able to find a way to make room in my schedule to update this website regularly. Obviously,  I was way off on that call.

Since that time, I’ve kept hoping that things would balance themselves out for me in real life, and that I’ve be able to make a triumphant return to blogging about Travian and other online games. I really enjoyed this site, I kept it going for about a year and I had a great time doing it. And I didn’t want to give up if I thought there was still a chance that I could get it going again, in some way.

But, it’s been several months now, and after a new promotion at work, and taking some time to look at the amount of courses I still need to complete to finish my education (stupid education!) and how much work they’re going to be, it’s finally sunk in that going back to updating this site isn’t something that’s realistic for me, and won’t be in the future. Staying up to date on what’s happening on various Travian servers takes a huge time commitment. So does playing Travian at a high level. I probably should have come to this decision a few months ago, but I was holding out for a miracle. I really don’t want to give up on this site, but I really don’t think I have a choice but to pull out at this point. This is a hard decision because I love playing Travian, I can say without any exaggeration that it’s my favourite game I’ve ever played. If I could only play one videogame for the rest of my life, I would choose Travian in a heartbeat. Also, I love talking about Travian, I love writing in general, and I love WordPress. But I also love accounting, I love getting good grades, and love making $21 an hour.

So, well, that’s that.

I’m really proud of the work I was able to do with this site, even though it never really got to the level I wanted it to, it was still a big success. And I’d like to see it continue. So if there’s anyone out there who is a die-hard Travian lover who would be interested in taking this site over, and making it your own, please feel free to send me an e-mail at 1randomgeek@gmail.com, and let me know why you’d like to take over running this site and what you’d like to do with it.

Even though this site hasn’t been updated in months, it still gets over 300 hits a day. And on days where I’ve had a big story, I’ve had well over 1,000 hits per day. So there’s definitely a big readership out there for a site like this, and a lot of potential for great things you can do with it.

(I toyed with the idea of just turning this site into my own personal blog which I would just update whenever I feel like with any random thing I feel like, but I’d rather it just stayed Travian focused.)

I’d like to thank the creators of Travian for making such a great game, and to all the people at Travian Games GMBH who keep it running and keep pushing it to greater heights. I want to thank all of the administrators, multihunters, support crew, and everyone else at Travian.com. Thank to all the players who compete so hard who gave me so much to write about. I wish I could keep this running because there are so many great players and alliances who deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. Almost all the players who I talked to or did coverage on were great people who were really cool to get to know. Best of luck to all of you in the future. And finally, thanks to everyone who came and read this site while I was at the helm of it. I’m really happy it was able to achieve the success that it did, and I’m going to leave it up as long as people keep visiting it (seriously, 300 hits a day for doing nothing is actually pretty cool).

Peace out!

-Randomgeek

Website Status Update

Sorry I’ve been slow with getting the site updated again. I’ve been really busy these last two weeks, especially with my new job and my night courses I’m taking over the summer. And I’m also running low on sleep, which makes it hard to work on posts. I should be able to hopefully finish up the S9 stuff soon, I’ve almost got part 2 of the interview done and I plan on having that up later tonight. Still to come soon is the Hall of Champions entry for the server, my talks with some other S9 leaders on their thoughts about the game and it’s ending, and a look at the armies that were used (and the ones that weren’t). I don’t want to hold off on starting S4.com coverage very much longer, so I’ll try to get this all done as quickly as I can. Once I’m done covering S9.com I’m optimistic I can better integrate updating this site into my daily routine and get back to updating on a regular daily basis.

S9.com Roundtable Interview Part 1 (updated)

I conducted a special roundtable interview with leaders from all 3 of Server 9’s big alliances – TRUST, Chaos Factor, and Rangers – last Saturday, shortly after the game had ended. Posted below is the first part of this interview.

The players that were present were:

Rangers: Cupcake, Khess (aka Jess), Natasa (aka Manitowoc), Quietmonk

CF: Mooshie (aka Lone Tayra), Safi (aka Himanshu45754), Sparklyshiny (aka Elizabeth Swann from XYZ), Scorpio-Air, Jedeye, Borg_Splatter,  Big G (arrived part-way through the interview)

TRUST: Bratsoni, Meet The Band (aka Layla), Petervle, Snake Plisskin

(Note: Some of the players from CF weren’t actually leaders, just players who got invited by other CF players. That was a bit of a mistake on my part, but I think most of them still had interesting things to say.)

To make it easy to tell which alliance is answering, Rangers answers are in green, CF’s answers are in blue, and TRUST’s answers are in red.

Throughout this interview, I have added some footnotes to responses if I had clarifications or notes to replies that people gave, or if another player had a dispute or more to add with something that was said. They’ll appear throughout the interview as parenthesied numbers, just(1) like(2) this(3). You can read the footnotes at the bottom of the interview.

During the interview, some side discussions and some arguments went on between some of the people participating in the Roundtable interview, but I tried to keep players from talking when it wasn’t their turn (I wasn’t very succesful). Most of this has been deleted from the interview below, so I could just include my questions and the alliance leaders responses.

Thanks again to all the leaders who took part in this interview.

UPDATE: See footnote #9 below for two updates with clarifications from Inocka and Big G.

————————————————————————————————————-

Randomgeek: Okay, so I’ll start by asking the first question to Rangers: I’d like to first start by giving you the opportunity to explain in your own words why you decided to have Babuk withdraw from TRUST and switch to Rangers when it was on level 99?

Natasa: I`ll take this one. Despite what everyone thought, I invited Babuk back to his original wing. All the confeds were same as in TRUST, so same team was there too.

Randomgeek: Okay, wait, so are you saying that TRUST is the winning Meta-alliance then?(1)

Natasa: The only thing that changed was the name of an alliance he was in, which was his original alliance in the first place. The winners are all who helped feed and build and defend Cupcake.(2)

Randomgeek: Okay, but is TRUST the winners then, in your viewpoint?

Cupcakes: Kama, May I?

Natasa: Sure.

Cupcakes: TRUST was a Huge meta.

(At this point Cupcakes got interrupted by other people at the Roundtable. After she and I both asked them to be quiet and they had settled down, I re-asked the question to hopefully get the interview back on track)

Randomgeek: Okay, so I want every Rangers player here to answer, is TRUST the winning alliance, and did Babuk just merely switch back to his original wing, not to betray Trust, but just to be a part of his original team?

Cupcakes: I will start. TRUST was a massive collection of players.  When you have thousands of players, it’s like herding kittens.  Some go your way the others don’t.  We played in TRUST until it was clear that TRUST was splintering.  Our splinter took the win.(3)  Kama, Please explain.

Natasa: Inocka was talking to me at the time it all happened. She asked me to drop Thunder confeds, but I refused. The only ones that were not on the list are the ones that never sent a confed offer in the first place.(4)

Randomgeek: Quietmonk, I want to hear what you have to say.

Natasa: Quietmonk was at work at the  time it all happened.

Randomgeek: Quietmonk, are you here?

Quietmonk: Yes I am here.

Randomgeek:  Okay, so what do you say, was this a TRUST win or a Rangers win?

Quietmonk: It was a win for those smiling.

Randomgeek: Okay, but I just want a straight answer, did Rangers betray TRUST and win on their own, or did TRUST win this (with) Babuk joining his origianl alliance?(5)

(There were more interruptions at this point – the roundtable was really going ballistic at this point. Again, Rangers and I asked other people at the roundtable to be quiet to let them finish answering. Is this an action packed interview or what?)

Randomgeek: Quietmonk, and any other Rangers leaders, please just answer this with a one word answer: Who Won, TRUST or Rangers?

Cupcakes: We have answered.

Randomgeek: Answer again.

Cupcakes: The players who are smiling today are all winners.

Randomgeek: Can you please just give me a straight answer to my question? That’s all I’m asking.

Cupcakes: Randomgeek, I’m not sure you understand Travian. It’s a complicated game.

Randomgeek: You’re not answering my question. It’s a simple question guys, just answer it.

Cupcakes: If you need a technical answer, then look at the server.

Natasa: We did not drop our non-Ranger confeds on purpose, although we were asked to, and we had a chance to.(6) Thunder did help us build our WW to some extent, and we are grateful for that. We did not back stab anyone, we did not steal a win from anyone, we just took Babuk home.

Randomgeek: Okay, so going by Natasa’s answer, TRUST is the winners. Do I understand that correctly(7)? Please guys, I’m trying my best here.

Quietmonk: We did not say that. Read into anything you want.(8)

(There were more interruptions here throughout – the interview didn’t get off to the greatest start. We’ll come back to this topic later in the interview anyway, so keep reading. I think the interview got a little bit out of control at the start, and Rangers really didn’t get a chance to finish on this question. But things did get better as the interview went on.)

Randomgeek: All right, I’m going to switch to asking CF questions now.

sparklynshiney: yay

Randomgeek: So CF players, here goes: Did you think that TRUST would prevent Babuk’s World Wonder from reaching level 100, and therefore you didn’t have to?

Safi (Himanshu45754): We at first thought so, yes. And as Rangers told us, they too thought so.

jedeye: Randomgeek, most of CF players were under (the) impression that we were gonna hit all 3 leading TRUST WWs.

Scorpio-Air: Well this is not as straight forward… Initially we thought TRUST will hit, then later we came to know Thunder will not hit, but they (thunder) wanted us to hit.

Randomgeek: CF question #2: If Trust and Rangers had starting fighting against one another, do you think you would have then had a chance to win, or was TRUST still too strong?

Scorpio-Air: We always had a chance.. however slim it was.

Safi (Himanshu45754): TRUST were not strong .. they were well organized which was something we lacked at server end.

Dave|Mooshie|Tayra: We specifically were told not to hit Rangers  up to level 93.

Randomgeek: By who, Tayra?

Dave|Mooshie|Tayra: Syed, Big G, Avie. Multiple big guys, so it was widespread.

Randomgeek: Did they say why?

Dave|Mooshie|Tayra: That Babuk would be switching.(9)

Randomgeek: CF question #3: Why didn’t you openly try to ally with Rangers yourself, especially after they broke up with Thunder earlier in the endgame?

Dave|Mooshie|Tayra: We took up the RT group.(10)

Borg, Splatter: Hmmm …. I think this comes down to the fact that Rangers at the very least were playing CF if not also Thunder. It was foolish to believe that Rangers would turn to CF as some perhaps did. I find it weird that in Quietmonk’s address in the forum he hinted that it was not a TRUST win and now they seems to distance from this stand.

Scorpio-Air: Dont judge us… Splatter. We knew for the fact that Babuk will change tag.

Borg, Splatter: Hmmm I’m not judging, I knew for some time about the offer that Rangers made with CF to change tags….. At the same time I think it has to be said that in hindsight not the best move.

Randomgeek: Here’s my first question for TRUST: I don’t think you ever really trusted Rangers, so why did you put the game on the line in this way?

layla (Meet The Band): You need someone who was doing the negotiations to answer that. Inocka would be best but maybe Bratsoni can chip in.

Pieter (Petervle): Don’t know much about it either, but Inocka told me she didn’t want to break her word by hitting them.

Snake Plissken(11): From the JD point of view, our allies ally was our friend.

Bratsoni: I was there. I can answer it pretty accurately. Me and Inocka had made promises to natasa/mowgli/khess that we wont hit them. Simple as that. And we kept our promise. Next question Random.

Randomgeek: Thunder was secretly helping JD and other SW alliances for several months, with the intention of having them betray CF and join Thunder. Leaders who took part in this often talked about how Thunder was playing the game with “honor”, and are now very upset with Rangers for betraying them. I understand the two betrayals aren’t exactly the same thing, but aren’t these two actions a contradiction, to some degree?

Bratsoni: Snake is better suited to answer that. After he says his piece I can say Thunder opinion also.

Snake Plissken: Working with Thunder started in a cordial way when we initially rebelled against the south, they helped us and in time we returned the favor helping each other out with artifacts and such, the decision to work with Thunder was there since roughly December towards end game , personally am I upset with the rangers, no not really, switching at the last moment, okay, I get why they did it. So yes it is a contradiction to some degree.

Bratsoni: Us working with JD isn’t something new.

layla (Meet The Band): On the other hand, JD had confeds with Thunder wings for 6 months. If CF didn’t want to believe it its their fault. It was there all the way.

Bratsoni: It was known as layla said for months. It is a contradiction…kinda, I will semi agree there.

Pieter (Petervle): In my opinion there is a difference, cause JD came out with enough time left for our enemies to react. Rangers came out exactly one hour before end game, without giving the enemy time to react. That’s a key difference in my opinion.

Randomgeek: Okay. Back to Rangers now. How much time was left before the end of the game when Babuk switched alliances?

Natasa: 1 hour, but not because we planed it that way, but because we had to wait for Babuk to come on line.

Randomgeek: Would you say that you betrayed TRUST, yes or no?

Cupcakes: We feel that you are leading the questions.  I hope you have so many Yes/No questions for the other Factions.  No, we did not betray Trust.  We fulfilled a promise.

Randomgeek: What was the promise that you fulfilled?

Cupcakes: Quietmonk will answer.

Quietmonk: Well it was very simple I told Brantsoni we would retag at level 99.

Randomgeek: Okay. I’d like to have the details about when you made that promise, but you can just PM me then, I’ll move on to the next question.

Quietmonk: I told him we would do this 11 months ago. lol (12)

Randomgeek: Okay, good to know.

Bratsoni: No, I object. I want to answer here. He mentioned my name.

jedeye: Yeah let Brats answers here.

Randomgeek: Okay, fine Brats, go ahead but keep it short.

Bratsoni: That was a promise he made, when there was not even Thunder, we were CareBears…I didn’t even remember it, until 3 days ago. But what about the promises that natasa/khess and mowgli did? That’s why this move was just from a guy that his ego was hurt. 

 

Randomgeek: Brats, you’ve made your point. I get what you’re saying. I’m going to move on now.

Natasa: You can PM me about that anytime, Brats, now let’s just finish this.

Randomgeek: CF, question for you: What would you say was the turning point of the endgame? How did things get to point where it was clear that you couldn’t damage TRUST’s World Wonders enough in order for your side to win?

Dave|Mooshie|Tayra: End Point: Would have been Watchers World Wonder going down, and the loss of the (3x building stability) artifact.(17)

Scorpio-Air: Turning Point for us was hit on The Watcher.

Safi (Himanshu45754): It was not when we lost the artifacts, plans or even the World Wonders. It was when our leaders vanished, one after the other. We had no one to guide us, no one. We were left in the dark, and we didn’t know what to do next

Dave|Mooshie|Tayra: Especially after The Watcher’s World Wonder was attacked.

Safi (Himanshu45754): No, it was before that, Dave.

sparklynshiney: It was before Watcher died, way before.

Randomgeek: TRUST, when Ranger’s World Wonder was nearing the last levels – level 95 and up, and still CF didn’t attack them, didn’t you start to suspect that something strange was going on?

Bratsoni: We had a vote at around that time, cause Tauno and Channing and some others wanted to hit them. The voting went in favour of not hitting, 

layla (Meet The Band): I have to say here, yes, I know you promised that, but I have to say, if I had known what I have heard until now, I would’ve voted otherwise. In fact, I wouldn’t have even bothered to vote. I had armies with Babuk’s name written on them ready to roll out from deep NE at any second.

Bratsoni: We know layla.

Snake Plissken: From our point, we could not effect the outcome at all at that point.

Pieter (Petervle): Well the problem with rangers is they lie so much we didn’t know who they were lying to I guess.

Randomgeek: Okay, another question for TRUST: Given that people had their doubts about whether they could trust Rangers, why did leaders feel the need for Rangers to be a part of TRUST? 

Pieter (Petervle): I can’t comment on that, don’t know enough about it to answer

 

layla (Meet The Band): Randomgeek, again, the person to answer that is Inocka. Bratsoni and Mwood were also in the table with Rangers.

 

Bratsoni: It was simple, I was against it at first. I didn’t want rangers in, no one did. Except Inocka, she trusted Khess and Mowgli a lot, so we took her word for it, because she thought that the words of those people meant something. (SIDENOTE: WE DONT BLAME INOCKA FOR NOTHING. If it wasn’t for her, Thunder wouldn’t exist)

Randomgeek: Rangers, Did you ever think of quitting the game, when things were going badly for you, or were you always resolute to stick it out to the end?

 

Natasa: Rangers are not quitters, never were, never will be.

Quietmonk: You can not beat a man who will not quit.

Randomgeek: Given that the Babuk switching alliances has generated a lot of anger, and that you still would have won even if he hadn’t switched, do you think it was worth it?

Cupcakes: We only care about our friends.

Quietmonk: When you make a promise you should keep it.

 

 Jess (aka Khess): We didn’t expect such personal insults, for a game, for a tag, while we knew the win is for all those who helped, fed, and supported Babuk’s World Wonder.

 

Randomgeek: So Jess, are you saying that everyone from TRUST who helped Babuk is a part of the win? (13) 

 Jess: Yes. And I thank them for that…

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading part one this Roundtable Interview.

 

Part two will be posted on the site sometime in the next few days!

 

 

FOOTNOTES 

1. I hope it doesn’t seem like this is an attempt by me to get Rangers to say that TRUST is the winners too because I was a player in TRUST, though I think it may have seemed that way to Rangers leaders during the interview. After any game of Travian ends, I routinely ask for clarification (if any is needed) from the leaders of the victorious alliance about which of their confederates should be listed as the winners on my site, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. In the past I have always listened to what winning alliance leaders had to say and made the entry according to their specifications, and if Rangers had given me specifications I would have followed them, but they chose not to. (Here’s some good examples of where I got clarifications from other winning alliance leaders and used them on my site: On the recent Server 2, MDA leaders told me that 3 wings tha were allied with them were not worthy to be listed in their entry into the Travian Hall of Champions, and so I removed them from the entry on the site. And on the the recent Server 7, I was told to add alliances that weren’t confederated with the winners to the Hall of Champions entry because they had been a big help to the winners even though they weren’t allied with them officially in the game.) Most alliance leaders don’t have a problem answering a question like this, but once again Server 9 is an exception.
2. This isn’t the first server where I’ve seen a player say “the winners are everyone who helped support the winning World Wonder, regardless of which alliance they are in”.  I think this is an acceptable way to view the game, but as someone who runs a site that list the winners of each server, I really need a list of the winning alliances to make an entry. It  would be impossible for me go and figure out which individual players supported the winning World Wonder, which is why I list the winning alliances. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m not going to get a simple, easy to follow list for this server, so making the Hall of Champions is going to be a little bit difficult for me. Expect the entry to look a little different than the other ones on my site.
3. Cupcakes says that Rangers played in TRUST until it was clear that TRUST was splintering, but I’m nearly 100% certain that no other alliances splintered from TRUST beside Rangers, or even thought about doing so. None of TRUST’s leaders have ever talked about other TRUST groups possibly leaving. At this point CF and TRUST were interrupting Rangers, and the following was said:
   Safi (Himanshu45754): Rangers.. why are you acting like it was a last minute decision?? I knew about it for weeks. I am confused.
   Bratsoni: We as TRUST didn’t (know).
   Dave | Mooshie (CF-SW): You played both sides guys. 
   Safi (Himanshu45754): And it was smart. So why are you afraid to admit it?
   Dave | Mooshie (CF-SW): They had hinted about jumping for a while.
   Scorpio-Air: Well Brat, Inocka too knew it.
   Bratsoni: We were fearing it would happen, we didn’t know it (would).
   Safi (Himanshu45754): The story in short is that both sides were wary and expected the other side to hit Babuk.. and they didn’t realize that no one made any move till it was too late!
4. I’ve got an interview with Inocka that I’ll also post on this site in the near future, so you can read her take on the series of events that Natasa is talking about. The two of them had different descriptions about what happened.
5. I should have just dropped the question at this point instead of persisting with it. Oh well, live an learn.
6. TRUST’s leaders say that they never asked Rangers to drop the confeds, but Natasa is right that Rangers had time to drop the confeds if they wanted to.
7. I was jumping to conclusions here at the time, she didn’t really say that.
8. This isn’t exactly what Quietmonk said here, but I think he made a typo and this is what he was trying to say. 
   “Think about it however you want to” seems to be the common thread running through all of Rangers responses to the questions about who the winners are. So I guess at the end of the day, that’s what we’ll have to do. That’s why there won’t be one single definitive list of the winners of this server on Travian Champions. I’m going to be presenting different possible lists of winners, and readers can determine for themselves which one they think is the “right” list. There’s not really a clear single answer to the question “Who won S9.com?”
9. Big G showed up later in the chat, but he wasn’t there when Tayra said this. It’s too bad, it would have been good to hear what he had to say about this. If I can find a place where he talks about this I’ll add what he has to say here.
   UPDATE: I talked to Big G about this and here’s what he said after reading what Tayra wrote:
   Big G: There are 2 reasons why I asked my guys not to hit.
   1. There was the deal with babuk.
   2. Secondly, and most importantly, the hammers will have done nothing if they had been launched at that time. What will 3-5 hammers, the largest probably about 140k, and the smallest about 60k, do to a level 93 WW with a lot of def. Even when I managed to gather more hammers, they didn’t do any damage.
   Big G also said that he was the one who ordered the last-minute attack against Babuk that unfortunately didn’t arrive in time.
   Also, Natasa from Rangers spoke up at this point, and had the following exchange with Scorpio, before Safi nicely used the argument they were having to sum up how each side was hoping the other one would lose the stare-down and hit Babuk:
   Scorpio-Air: But they (thunder) wanted us to hit.
   Natasa: Same as CF asked Thunder to hit us.
   Scorpio-Air: No, I got a message from Inocka that Thunder wanted us to hit Babuk.
   Natasa: I got a message from Inocka that CF asked her to hit Babuk.
   Safi (Himanshu45754): “I got a message from Inocka that CF asked her to hit Babuk.” “I got a message from Inocka that Thunder wanted us to hit Babuk.” Everyone, look at this please, and you will know everything. 🙂
   UPDATE: This is another thing that gets talked about during my interview with Inocka, and her side of the story is very different from what Scorpio says. She says that she never told CF that Thunder wanted them to hit Babuk.
10. After TRUST kicked Rangers off their side earlier in the endgame, some of the Rangers wing in the Northeast did join CF, but the majority of Rangers stayed as their own separate group, which was then later re-allied with TRUST.
11. Snake Plisskin was the leader of JD, which officially became a part of TRUST later in the endgame, so most of his answers in the interview focus on their view on things. They were located in the Southwest, unlike most of the rest of TRUST which was in the north.
12. I’m not sure if this “we made a promise 11 months ago” answer is supposed to be a serious answer or a flippant one, but in either case it’s an amazing thing to say something that early in the game and then have it come true in the end despite the very bad odds of such a specific sequence of events playing out. This “promise” was only known to a very small number of players, the majority of Rangers and TRUST members had no idea about this private conversation that took place between Quietmonk and Bratsoni during the earliest talks between KISS and Carebears. I asked Quietmonk more about this “promise” in a private interview and I’ll put his answers on the site in a later post.
13. I asked Jess this via PM but she wanted to have this posted in the main chat. Her answer here, while saying that she does consider TRUST players who helped Babuk to be the winners, doesn’t contradict what Rangers leaders said earlier about everyone who helped support Babuk being winners.

Glitched!

I’ve almost got part 1 of the S9.com Roundtable interview done (I’m splitting it into two parts because it’s pretty lengthy), but now WordPress is glitching up and I’m having trouble finishing it. I’ll try to get it done soon, hopefully this will pass soon. This seems to happen often when I have posts that are more than 2000 words long.

S9.com: TRUST and CF Both Win the Stare Down, But Was That More Important Than Winning The Game?

On Thursday I posted my recap of the S9.com finish that I wrote for Travian Magazine, but I also wanted to do some more in-depth analysis of the ending, so that’s what this post will focus on (and after this I’ll try to finish posting the interview – I’ve ran into a glitch with getting it done the way I wanted to, but I’ve come up with a solution that should work).

In an earlier post about the S9.com endgame, I talked about how when Babuk’s World Wonder took the lead, both TRUST and CF were locked into a stare down. Both sides were expecting the other to make the first move and launch the attack on Babuk’s World Wonder, which had a clear lead in the standings. As days went on, the stare down continued, and both sides refused to act.

For TRUST, they thought that they had their side’s World Wonder in the lead, and that CF was just trying to get them to waste their own armies in attacking it. They thought that eventually CF would have no choice but to attack it themselves. The longer CF went without attacking it, the more they thought that CF was trying to goad them into action. Their leaders had also “given their word” that they would not attack Babuk and thus they wanted to hold themselves to this promise (more about this in a later post…)

For CF, who had been the ones to initiate the stare down by hitting TRUST’s other leading World Wonders, they thought that TRUST was just trying to push them into action against a world wonder that TRUST had no intention of letting win themselves. And they didn’t want to waste their precious armies on a target they though they didn’t have to hit, because they were behind at this point and they knew it, so they had to make every army left count (the general consensus among S9 players was that while CF still had several larger armies left at this point, they likely didn’t have enough to damage all of TRUST’s other top 3 World Wonders twice, which they would need to, as everyone knew that TRUST had enough to take down Big G, the only CF World Wonder in striking distance at this point).

Both TRUST and CF thought the other was trying to trick them. But instead, Rangers tricked them both (or betrayed them both, depending on how you look at it).

Apparently some CF leaders (but I emphasize only some) had attempted to make a deal with Rangers for Rangers to switch the World Wonder to CF when it reached level 100 (I’ll talk more on this in a later post – but ugh, I feel dirty just thinking about something like that). Of course, as we can all see, this didn’t happen – Rangers only wanted the level 100 World Wonder for themselves.

Apparently some other leaders from CF did finally realize that TRUST wasn’t going to hit Babuk, and that no rogue TRUST players were going to do it for them (which was a possibility I’m sure all 3 sides in this had strongly considered), so they did launch some of their big armies against Babuk, but unfortunately for CF, and ironically even more unfortunate for TRUST, they did not arrive in time. Thus Babuk got to level 100 without ever facing a major attack besides the Natars (at least to my knowledge).

This staredown between CF and TRUST was something that both sides viewed as being important to win, but both of them knowingly took a big risk in waiting, and in the end they played with fire and got burned. If either side had been the one to slow down Babuk, they would both look a lot less foolish right now, and we likely wouldn’t have had this bizarre finish (This was probably Rangers one and only shot at doing what they did). It should also be noted that both sides had some internal dissent over whether or not they were doing the right thing, but in the end they stuck with this course of action despite the objections of some of their players, who now can get a small amount of solace from saying “I told you so”.

During my coverage of S9, I always said that the politics of Server 9 were complex and that they would play an important part of the game’s outcome, but I would never have guessed that the outcome would be something as strange as this. This endgame had by far the strangest and most complex politics of any of the Servers I’ve covered on this site so far. And I’ll try to break down those politics a bit more before I close the book on this server, and I’ll also be posting reaction to the outcome of the game from various players. Stay tuned for more soon!

I think a lesson that all players can take from this outcome is that in Travian, doing nothing is sometimes the most dangerous course of action an alliance can take.

New Features on Travian Servers

Travian Servers will have 3 new features starting today. An official announcement was made on the Travian.com forums here. 

The 3 new features are:

1. Players can use BBCode in In-game messages
2. Players can set restrictions on what their sitters can and can’t do
3. Players can share battle reports with other players on the same sever

To be honest, I don’t quite understand the sharing battle reports feature. Can’t we already do that? I don’t quite get what this is improving. We’ll still need to go to an external site if we want to show the battle report to players who aren’t on the server or save it after the server ends.

I’m happy about the BBCode feature for In-game messages, that should make them more interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing some alliance getting creative with using it. Here’s just a quick example of what you can do:

The word “Randomgeek” is a functional link, you will get taken to my player profile if you click on it.

Just imagine if an alliance wants to send out a mass message to attack or defend or send resources to another player – now you can put the name of the player, or even the coordinates of a village, directly in the message as a clickable link! You can also put the link to an alliance profile in the message, and the link to a battle report.

All this plus smileys too!

For an example of everything you can now put into a message, check out this post on the Travian forums: http://forum.travian.com/showpost.php?p=1612915&postcount=9

You can also now set sitter restrictions. Now you can give your sitters the ability to spend your gold! Be sure you trust them first before you do this though – if you don’t like how they spend it, you can’t get your gold back!

You can also take away a sitter’s ability to send raids, to send resources, and to send reinforcements. So if you just want your sitter to focus on building troops and infrastructure, but not have the ability to use your valuable resources, you can limit what they can do however you like. Here’s what the checklist will look like (note that letting them spend gold is checked by default, so be careful to change that if you don’t want your sitters touching your gold).

Server 7 Restart Announced

Just in time for players who are finished with Server 9, it’s time for the return of Server 7! The server will begin in just over a week from today, and pre-registration starts next Wednesday. Click here to read the official announcement.

The Server will Travian version 3.6 but without the Rally Point Restriction or the Instant Recall function, both of which are seemingly gone from Travian.com for good.

You can view the Hall of Champions entry for the last Server 7 here: https://travianchampions.wordpress.com/world-com/s7-com-09-10-travian-3-3/. The players on the new server will certainly have big shoes to fill!

Deadline Day for Travian Magazine, take two

I wasn’t completely happy with my first version of the story for Travian Magazine, so here’s my second edit which I’ve resubmitted, and hopefully they can use it instead (even though it’s technically past their deadline). 

Server 9 came to an end on May 22^nd. The winning World Wonder switched alliances with one hour left in the game, giving a controversial, and for many players unsatisfying, end to the game. Server 9 was the first server on Travian.com to give players the full Travian 3.5 experience, previous servers were upgraded to version 3.5 part-way through.

The winning World Wonder was held by a player named Babuk, who was a member of the Meta-alliance TRUST, and prior to that a member of the Meta-alliance Rangers, who had a bitter past with the Meta-alliance Thunder, which was a key part of TRUST. The two alliances had fought a fierce war earlier in the game, and prior to that, several leaders of Rangers were in a Meta-alliance called KISS that fought against Carebears, which was led by several of the leaders that went on to lead Thunder. So there were definitely lots of chances for bad blood to build between the two sides, and harsh words were exchanged that obviously left lasting stings. At the beginning of the endgame the two had allied, thus creating a united north, but then TRUST leaders voted to kick Rangers out of the alliance because they felt they couldn’t trust some of them. However, a few weeks later, the same Thunder leaders (perhaps naively) voted to let Rangers become a part of their team again.

At the end of the game, the Thunder leaders had seemed to put the past behind them, and as the ending shows they were willing to let a World Wonder held by a Rangers player build to level 100. But apparently (and I admit I’m speculating as to Rangers’ motivations, I don’t claim to speak on their behalf), Rangers had not put the past behind them, and without the consent of other TRUST leaders, they withdrew Babuk from the TRUST alliance and switched him to Rangers when it was too late for anyone else to do anything about it.

It should be noted that Rangers did not drop their confederations with the TRUST wings that they were allied with, so some could interpret this as still being an overall win for TRUST. Rangers only had 1 World Wonder construction plan when Babuk and the rest of Rangers rejoined TRUST, so they would not have had a chance to reach level 100 without being a part of TRUST.

Rangers apparently had secret talks with some of the leaders of Chaos Factor, the Meta-alliance that dominated the Southern quadrants of the game. Apparently they had told leaders of CF that they would switch their World Wonder to Chaos Factor at level 99, and by promising this they had kept themselves safe from any Chaos Factor attacks. Obviously, this was a lie and Chaos Factor’s leaders who were talking to Rangers fell for it. The CF leaders who made this deal kept other influential CF leaders the dark about it, and most Chaos Factor players had no idea these negotiations were going on. Several Chaos Factor (and TRUST) players still had large endgame “Hammer” armies that went unused, as military force took a back seat to secret discussions and sneakiness. Instead of the outcome of the game being decided by which side had bigger armies and better players, as it is on most Travian servers, the outcome was decided by secrets and deceptions that went on between a handful of individuals.  

The top attacker on the server was TheGaul from Thunder^. The top defender was The Watcher from CF. The largest player was Refbabo from CF-V. Impressively, CF had 9 out of the 10 largest players, four of whom were in CF-DW. Thunder~ was both the top attacking alliance, and the top defending alliance out of the alliances that didn’t have World Wonder holders.

I think that’s much better, don’t you?

By the way, the magazine needs reporters for Servers 8 and 6, so if you’re playing on one of those servers and you’d like to write a report on it, e-mail admin@travian.com!

Deadline Day for Travian Magazine

Sorry the site has been slow on updates lately. It’s certainly not for lack of content – I’ve got tons of stuff to write about and put up on the site! It’s more a matter of me not having much free time right now. I’ve started a new job recently (yay, more money!) and the commute takes a long time to get there, and my summer course load is heavier than I thought it would be.

And then there’s my parents and their yardwork. Get a smaller place already Mom and Dad, all your kids are old now!

With only enough time to get one thing done, I decided to finish the Server 9 update for the next issue of Travian Magazine. I’ll put it up here as a preview. I tried to be fair in it:

Server 9 came to an end on May 22^nd. The winning World Wonder switched alliances with one hour left in the game, giving a controversial and for many players unsatisfying end to the game. Server 9 was the first server on Travian.com to give players the full Travian 3.5 experience, previous servers were upgraded to version 3.5 part-way through.

The winning World Wonder was held by a player named Babuk, who was a member of the Meta-alliance TRUST, and prior to that a member of the Meta-alliance Rangers, who had a bitter past with the Meta-alliance Thunder, which was also a member of TRUST. The two alliances had fought a fierce war earlier in the game, and prior to that, several leaders of Rangers were in a Meta-alliance called KISS that fought against Carebears, which was led by several of the leaders that went on to lead Thunder. So there was definitely lots of chances for bad blood to build between the two sides. At the end of the game, the Thunder leaders had seemed to put the past behind them, and as the ending shows they were willing to let a World Wonder held by a Rangers player build to level 100. But apparently (and I admit I’m speculating as to Rangers’ motivations, I don’t claim to speak on their behalf), Rangers had not put the past behind them, and without the consent of other TRUST leaders, they withdrew Babuk from the TRUST alliance and switched him to Rangers when it was too late for anyone else to do anything about it.

Rangers had also apparently made a secret deal with some of the leaders of Chaos Factor, the Meta-alliance that dominated the Southern quadrants of the game. Apparently they had told leaders of CF that they would switch their World Wonder to Chaos Factor, and by promising this they had kept themselves safe from any Chaos Factor attacks. Obviously, this was a lie and Chaos Factor’s leaders who were talking to Rangers fell for it. The leaders who made this deal kept other CF leaders the dark about it, and most Chaos Factor players had no idea these negotiations were going on. Several Chaos Factor (and TRUST) players still had large endgame “Hammer” armies that went unused, as military force took a back seat to secret discussions and sneakiness. Instead of being decided by the thousands of players on the server, the end of the game was decided by the discussions that went on between a handful of individuals.

The top attacker on the server was TheGaul from Thunder~. The top defender was The Watcher from CF. The largest player was Refbabo from CF-V_JR, and CF pulled off the impressive feat of having 9 of the 10 largest players, four of whom were in CF-DW. Thunder~ was both the top attacking alliance and the top defending alliance not to have a World Wonder in it.

I’ll try to have more S9 stuff on the site soon, I really hope I can get to everything!

S9.com Roundtable Interview coming soon!

Man, I just did the most epic interview in the history of Travian Champions, with a Roundtable discussion of players from Rangers, TRUST, and CF from Server 9. I can’t wait to put it up on the site, but it’s going to take me a while to edit all of it and put it into readable form. It’s so long that I’ll probably have to split it into two parts, and I still need to talk to a few other alliance leaders as well.

I’ve got to do the dishes tonight, and do some studying as well (lousy summer course!), but I’ll try to get it done and on the site by tomorrow. Big thanks to all the people who came to the interview.

Expect an update later tonight where I get into the news of what happened in Server 9 final hours, as best I can.

S9.com: The Final Results

Server 9 is over, with Babuk finishing as the winning World Wonder.

But the real story may be that he switched alliances at level 99, from TRUST to Rangers. And many players are shocked that this has happened (I know I am, though I’m going to try to get the full story before I rush to judgement).

Here’s the final standings:

Note that Babuk joined Rangers on the last day of the Server, and that the alliance was specifically renamed Rangers on the last day as well (previously it was called “Tonto.” So this was definitely a deliberate act to put the name “Rangers” as the winning alliance at the top of the rankings as the game ends. Before the World Wonder race, Babuk was in Tonto for his entire playing time of the game (it was originally called KISSNW7).

Here’s a shot of their closing alliance screen. Babuk is listed as “The Winner”. They are listed as being confederated with several, but not all, of alliances in TRUST.

Stay tuned for more Server 9 reaction and coverage!

Website Update

Anytime I go several days without blogging, it’s always a bit awkward getting back to doing it regularly, and it’s been 11 days, one of my bigger “off” period since I’ve started this site. So I might be a bit awkward at first, but I’ll try to get back to daily updates, and devote a significant amount of coverage to the end of S9.com. Which appears to be very close at hand:

I’m sincerely sorry for not having more coverage on the Server 9 endgame while it was happening. I was spending a lot of time trying to help my Meta-alliance get the win, and it looks like those efforts will help pay off (of course I was just one of many).

Expect more updates over the next few days, I’ve got a lot to say about Server 9 and I’ll try to get to it all.

Bizarre Forum Thread of the Day

Sometimes Server 9 weirds me out: http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=136239

S9.com: The Stare Down

I’m low on time so I’ll have to keep this post short, but there’s a lot to say about the current events in the S9.com endgame.

Thunder pulled the trigger on their expected attacks on The Watcher’s World Wonder (I expected that they would wait a few more days, so this was a small surprise for me that it happened already). The infrastructure was hit hard enough to slow it down, and these are the current standings:

TRUST will now pass CF in the standings, and they might be able to get several World Wonder out ahead.

Before the attacks on The Watcher, he had a population of 809, and he’s now down to 724, for a loss of 85 points. That’s not enough to take him out of the race entirely, but it should be enough to get at least of one of TRUST’s World Wonders into the lead, and maybe as many as four depending on how fast Sakeman, Bratsoni and Cleopatra can build.

Babuk is the clear leader in the World Wonder race now, with a population of 826 and nearing level 80. This means we’re in the situation that some players were speculating about: the leading World Wonder in the hands of a Rangers player, allied with Thunder. As I’ve reported earlier, TRUST and Rangers were allied at the start of the endgame, then Rangers was kicked off the team because Thunder didn’t trust them. But they later patched that back up, but will the one-time fierce rivals be able to stay together now, with the game and the glory on the line?

CF is probably betting that they can’t, and there’s nothing that CF would like more than to see Thunder attack their own side’s leading World Wonder.

(Sakeman is further back than he looks if you’re just going by the levels. His total population is about the same as Bratsoni’s, meaning he has a lot less infrastructure and storage space than Babuk does).

Stop for a second and just think about everything that’s going on behind the scenes now. Who knows what hidden cards CF has up their sleeve, but you can expect them to use every one of them to try to push the always interesting Rangers/Thunder relationship over the edge. I’m sure there’s plenty of discussion going on, even if we’re not seeing very much of it on the Server 9 forums.

CF are probably having their own internal discussions as well. What if their gambit fails and TRUST’s allegiances appear to hold? How long will they wait before attacking Babuk? Will they let it reach level 90? Level 95? Level 98? Or is it possible they will let it actually go all the way and consider that a Pyrrhic victory? The stare down is on, and we’ll see who blinks first!

In other news, TRUST dealt CF another big blow by managing to steal The Watcher’s 3x building stability artifact!

Will CF transfer their one remaining stability artifact to The Watcher, or will they leave it with Big G? It will be interesting to see what they do (or don’t do).

And who will Thunder give the building stability artifact to? Babuk? Or maybe Sakeman? Whoever gets it will be an indication about who TRUST is banking on to be a winner (note that Inocka and Cleopatra already have 3x stability artifacts).

This is another big artifact loss for CF. If they can lose an artifact that valuable at this stage of the game, there’s still a chance they could end up losing one of their two remaining World Wonder building plans.

Speaking of artifacts, TRUST moved the 5x Stability unique artifact from Bratsoni to another player. This was possibly just for safekeeping, and not because they want it transferred to another player, but still it’s worth keeping an eye on.

I’ll post a lot of battlereports later tonight! I’ve got to be heading off now, so sorry it has to wait.

These attacks cost Thunder a lot, but the attacks on Bratsoni’s World Wonder did the same to CF. And because Thudner has more World Wonders in the game, CF needs to be ahead of Thunder on offense from here in order to win.

How much will Lord of Ultima Change the Online Strategy Game Marketplace?

The Online Strategy Games Blog (one of my favourite blogs after my own) has a guest article by Jonah Alexander in which he speculates about how the new Lord of Ultima game being released by EA (Electronic Arts) will affect the Online Strategy Games marketplace. I recommend reading the whole things, but here’s part of it:

The addition of EA into the market, at first glance, might seem unfair to many of the smaller, low-budget teams already making strategy games, but I wouldn’t be too worried about them. Consider that many of the titles currently on the free-to-play market are essentially clones of popular games, usually with a slight graphics or theme change. Their game plan is probably something along the lines of create as many mediocre games that play like the successful games as quickly and cheaply as possible and chances are we’ll make profit.

My hope is that EA’s level of quality for Lord of Ultima will force some of these quick-cash-in developers to at least put a little bit more polish into their games in order to try and keep up. I’m not knocking anyone for being not having a huge team or being restricted by a low budget, but a lack of quality is certainly something they can address.

I think it’s more likely that if Lord of Ultima proves to be a runaway success, then quick-cash developers will just try to imitate it as quickly as they can. Lazy game companies out for a quick buck aren’t going to suddenly morph into hard-working game producers with original ideas just because Lord of Ultima is succesful (which I’m not completely convinced it will be, but I wish it the best of luck).

It’s sad that there are so many online games that are just pale imitations of Travian and other succesful games, but it’s nothing new to the videogame industry. There were dozens if not hundred of Super Mario Brothers rip-offs that no one remembers anymore.

It was the same way with Pong, as this great video illustrates: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/62615 (I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to this guy ever since I started this blog)

Anytime a game is succesful, you get bad imitations. It’s happened with Travian, and it will happen with Lord of Ultima too if that game manages to go far.