Hello!
I’m Curtain and this is “Travian Beginner's Guide”. This guide is based on my experiences of the game and is aimed at beginner level players but feel free to read and comment on it even if you have more experience with the game.
As a disclaimer I want to mention that this guide is not the only or necessarily even the best way to play the game so experiment and enjoy this great game with your own style.
This guide is divided into three parts:
Introduction to Gauls
The first few days
Game beyond the beginning
Part 1: Introduction to Gauls
Travian has three playable tribes; Gauls, Teutons and Romans. For the purposes of this guide we will be selecting Gauls but feel free to follow along if you pick Romans or Teutons, the information in parts 2 and 3 especially will be largely universal to all tribes.
Before we dive in further, let’s look at the units Gauls have access to:
Phalanx - Powerful defensive infantry unit available from the start of the game, he moves fast for an infantry unit, he’s very cheap and quick to train. Phalanx is arguably the best defensive unit in the game and will form a back bone of any Gaul player seeking to defend themselves or their allies from enemies.
Swordsman - The offensive counterpart of the Phalanx, the Swordsman specializes in attacking. He is your go to unit when dealing with robbers or even enemy players. He is also unlocked from the start of the game.
Theutates Thunder - The first Gaul light cavalry unit is the Theutates Thunder (TT for short), he is fastest unit in the game allowing him to get to the target, carry plenty of loot back to base and be ready for another attack very quickly making him arguably the best raiding unit in the game.
Druidrider - The second light cavalry unit Gauls has access to is the Druidrider. Like the TT he is also very fast but unlike the TT he specializes in defense. Being the fastest defensive unit in the game, the Druidrider is first to the scene when you need to defend even your distant allies.
Haeduan - The Gaul heavy Cavalry unit is the Haeduan. He is perhaps the weirdest unit in the Gaul arsenal having high attack AND high defense but only against cavalry. Following the trend he is also the fastest Heavy cavalry unit in the game (though noticeably slower than the TT). That being said these features come with a high price and training time, which makes him a very situational unit. He’s the only Gaul unit I don’t recommend for beginners as despite his strengths he’s easy to miss use.
In addition to these Gauls have access to 5 other units, which have no large differences between the different tribes:
Pathfinder – Scout cavalry unit able to reveal information on your enemies and defend against enemy scouts attempting to do the same to you
Ram – Siege weapon that is designed to take down the enemy wall
Trebuchet – Siege weapon that can attack all the other buildings besides the wall damaging or destroying them
Chieftain – Very expensive unit capable of capturing enemy villages
Settler – Unit capable of settling another village
Each tribe also has a special building only that tribe can build. For Gauls this building is an extremely powerful early and midgame defensive building called the Trapper. The Trapper is able to build traps which will capture attacking units, entirely blocking small attacks and severely weakening bigger attacks allowing your units to finish them off easily. Later in the game armies become bit too big for the Trapper to effectively handle but for the entire start of the game it’s an extremely powerful asset allowing you to defend your village much easier than the other two tribes.
Trapper and the Phalanx working together will make a deadly combo for almost all attackers trying to steal from your village which makes Gaul defense extremely potent (especially during the early stages of the game). Gauls also have good offensive and defensive options in both their infantry and their cavalry categories while also having generally good stats for their price and training time. Unlike Romans and Teutons, the Gaul unit selection lacks a clear weakness which makes them excellent choice for anyone who doesn’t want to miss out on anything the game has to offer.
The game itself advertises Gauls as the best choice for beginners and I have to agree with this. Gauls can boast on having the strongest defense of all the tribes (especially during the early stages of the game). This is especially important for beginners who might have troubles defending themselves against more experienced players. Once you are properly established and familiar with the game, Gaul versatility will grant you the tools to pursue a variety of playstyles. This is especially important to anyone who is playing Travian for the first time and doesn’t know what part about the game they might like the best.
There is much more to Gauls than what I can cover here but the game wiki and the in game help function both have lots of stats and information to those who are interested to learn more about Gauls.
Part 2: The first few days
For the purposes of this guide I will assume you have registered on a new server less than 24h of the start of the server. This is the ideal time to join a server to get the best experience of the game. New servers start regularly so if no such server exists you can join the youngest server to practice the game and then join a fresh one when it does start. You can have one character (called Avatar) on each server so feel free to try them all if you wish.
Hop into a new server; choose Gauls for your tribe and governor as your role. If you are first time player take the time and first get to know the interface. As a governor we have beginner protection which means we can’t be attacked right now, this means we don’t need to worry about defense for a while. The beginner protection will expire after 7 days or when your village reaches 200 population. There are several things we could do at the beginning but generally speaking the first week is all about establishing your starting village.
While following along the guide make sure to get to know your surroundings, diplomacy is very important in the game and the kingdom you are part of might make or break your game. Don’t worry if the starting situation doesn’t look too good we can fix that later. Most important thing at this point is to figure out if your King seems competent and if you like your current kingdom and location. If there are any chats in the kingdom participate in those, if the kingdom is quiet consider starting a conversation yourself with your king and say hi. Your kingdom mates are your closest allies so get to know them. Most experienced players are also willing to help newer players out so ask them first if you need help with anything.
For this guide we will be following my favorite strategy which I like to call “fast settling”. This strategy focuses on defending yourself well and getting a second village fairly quickly hence the name. Our goals in the order we will complete them for the first week are:
- Establish our village
- Make sure we are adequately defended
- Settle a second village
The first thing we will want to do is get our village up and running, at the beginning it has essentially no structures and no resource income and we need to fix this. Start by reading through all the quests that are currently available for you. The quest system is extremely important to getting your village on its feet as quickly as possible. Always make sure to check any new quests as they appear. Our goal for this phase of the plan is to get all resource and crop fields to lvl 5.
Start by completing quests you see focusing on completing the quests regarding the fields first. A good starting point is the “One of each to 1” quest. A helpful tip here is that any building can be instantly finished when it has less than 5 minutes left to build, use this to your advantage to build fast. Only build buildings that have a quest for. Each quest will reward you with resources, before claiming the resources make sure you have enough room to store them. If you are running low on storage or the quest rewards are starting to get large just increase your warehouse and granary levels as they increase your storage space.
While doing this send your hero to a few short adventures. Don’t use the long adventure. Adventures will reward you randomly with different things. Equip any items you get and save any consumables until you feel like using them. You will eventually gain a level and when you do put the points into the hero resource generation. Any levels after the first you can alternate between the fighting strength and resource production.
At some point you will run out of resources when going through the quests, at this point you can claim some of the rubble inside the village, make sure to have enough storage space for all the resources before clearing any rubble though. You can also use the Hero to generate specific resource you are lacking.
Another way to gain more resources is the Robbers which you can find on the map. To kill them you will need units though so train enough Swordsmen to complete the “5 units” quest. Attack a robber hideout with your hero and all your units once the swordsmen are trained. The fight will be easy but it will get tougher in the future. Robbers will be your main source of income for the first days so attack them as often as you can. Make sure to fully clear each hideout so more can spawn in their place. Early game this means you will have to attack the same hideout multiple times for your soldiers to carry back all the resources. Once the hideout is fully cleared it will disappear completely. Robbers will reward you with resources as well as stolen goods that you can sell for resources. Before attacking make sure you have enough room for what your soldiers will bring back, same thing when selling the stolen goods.
