Hello! I’m Curtain and this is “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. Today’s topic is wonders! The guide is divided into four parts: Introduction to wonders and how they work Wonders for governors Wonders for Kings, Dukes and other kingdom leadership Wonder build strategies and example Part 1: Introduction to wonders and how they work When you are playing Travian you might have seen some strange tall mountains spread around the map. These mountains are what will eventually become homes for the wonders. The wonder itself is a large team objective, which when completed will end the server. Wonders can only be built in the village that exists on each of these mountains, these villages are covered in clouds at the start but “unlock” or become uncovered after a server has been going for 111 days making them ready to be chiefed. The appearance of Wonders signals the beginning of end game on a server, which is a time where all the remaining kingdoms start to seriously duke it out to determine the ultimate winner. Each server has 7 of these mountains, each capable of housing a wonder so act fast if you wish to have one for yourself because these don’t last for long. There is one located at the center of the map at coordinates: 0.0, and 6 others around it at 22.45, 50.0, 22.-45, -22.-45, -50.0 and -22.45. When the first wonder is constructed to building lvl 100 the server ends, winners are declared and final scores calculated. Things aren’t quite that simple though; one can’t just take and build a Wonder like it’s nothing for many challenges lie ahead. Firstly you must beat the Natars guarding the village and then defend it from rivals and angry Natars trying to take it back, construct it faster than competitors and finally prevent it from being destroyed by your jealous enemies! Since the wonder is so important, here are some facts about wonders to help you on your way: - The first wonder to complete will end the server; this doesn’t mean who ever completes it wins though. The server win is still handed out by the victory points but wonders give a hefty percentage based bonus at the end. This means that while being the first to complete the wonder doesn’t guarantee the win it’s a big advantage that is hard to beat. - The wonder bonuses are as follows, 1st gains 50% more VP, 2nd gains 33% and 3rd 25% more. The last 4 gain 20%, 15%, 10% and 0% respectively. Wonders are ranked based on how high their level is when the first wonder hits lvl 100. If your kingdom holds multiple wonders, all the % bonuses get added together. For example if your kingdom has 5 million VP and holds wonders ranked 4th and 5th at the end, your end VP will be 5 million + 35% = 6.75 million VP - ALL troops eat only HALF of what they normally eat while staying in the wonder. This makes wonders great places to park your defense. That being said when you do park troops in the wonder you must feed them. This is because unlike normal defense call or stationary defense, the wonder holder has no chance of feeding the hundreds of thousands of troops on his own. - The wonder village itself is a 15 cropper, with all fields built up to lvl 10 just like ordinary Natarian village. Unlike normal Natar villages though, there is also a level 20 Mainbuilding, Granary and Warehouse to get you started on the construction. - The village naturally has the wonder construction site as well. The wonder is so large it takes the entire inner ring of the city, leaving it with only 16 normal construction slots (compared to 20 of a normal village) + the wonder + rally point - The wonder works like a Residence or Palace, meaning so long as it stands the village can’t be chiefed away from you. This is good so your enemies can’t chief the village so easily but also means once construction starts you can’t change the owner of the wonder anymore so choose carefully. - Unlike any normal village or a city, the wonder village has access to Great Warehouse and Great Granary buildings, which can house triple the resources of their normal versions, up to 300k on lvl 20. This is extremely useful as the last level of the wonder requires a whopping 1 million of Iron, Clay and Wood storage to fit all the required resources. - The wonder village is also the only village that won’t use your racial wall but instead has its own unique wall called “Natarian Wall”. The Natarian Wall entirely new graphics but regarding it’s stats it’s equal to a Teuton Wall (sturdy but relatively low defense %) - No gold can be used in the wonder; this means no NPC or no instant finish on buildings to name the 2 most important implications. Plus account and resource boosts apply normally - Natars will attack the wonder every 5 levels with 2 waves so don’t be surprised when you see the reports. Their forces get stronger as the wonder levels and during the last 5 wonder levels they will attack at every finished level as well. The Natars are unlikely to breach the wonder but if the wonder is managed poorly or the defense is too thin they will give significant casualties, especially on the higher levels. - Lastly the wonder village can’t be made your capital Here is an example on how your wonder might look at lvl 100 (Olympe - Com 2) :) Part 2: Wonders for governors In this section I will go over the 3 phases of the wonder construction from governors point of view and tell you what to do and how to contribute for the success of your kingdom. 2.1 Set up phase This phase starts from the first day of the server and lasts till the day the wonders spawn (server day 111). During this time it’s important for the kingdom but also for the individual players to set themselves up for success. For a governor this means primarily 5 things: Pick a wonder you want to build up and settle at least one village near it. The more villages you settle near your chose wonder, the easier it becomes for you to contribute to it so don’t dally. You will want at least 1 well developed village with defense production and large market place capacity before the wonders spawn, ideally more than one. Don’t just blindly start settling your closest wonder at the game start though as there is no guarantee that your team will eventually go for that one. Talk with your team about wonders from early on and decide as a group which wonders you will attempt to take and settle near that one. Sometimes the wonders are quite far so remember that the village will initially grow much slower so settling too early could cripple your growth. Listen to what your team leadership is instructing you to do, especially if you are unfamiliar with the game. Team kings are often experienced players with multiple servers behind their backs so they have some experience on how the end game goes so listen to them. That being said bad kings do exist so don’t take everything what they say as a holy scripture. Talk with your other leaders like the dukes if you doubt what the king is saying. Train either a wonder hammer if you are an offense player capable of such a feat (it’s pretty hard) or alternatively train some defense with which you can help out on the wonder defense. Talk to your leaders and ask what you should do if you aren’t sure. Attempt to gather enough gold for a plus account as this is extremely important in feeding your troops and supplying the wonder with construction materials. Around the time wonders spawn the plus account for the entire round costs about 50 gold. This is easily doable simply by doing daily missions and selling adventure loot you don’t need as this gains you a lot of silver and silver can be converted to gold. Be thrifty with your gold and it will be more than enough. If you are purchasing gold then buy the plus account at latest when the wonders spawn. If you are active or simply want more responsibility, ask your king for a special job. There are several things the team needs to succeed, all the way from training the wonder scouts to sitting some account. Be active and ask for more responsibility if you think you can handle it. 2.2 First days of the wonder This is the time between wonders appearing and the essential buildings being completed inside the wonder village. This phase is very simple for you if you prepared yourself well for the wonders. Simply put don’t attack the wonder under any circumstance (the king has this part under control and any unanticipated attacks will at best be waste and at worst teamkill so don’t do it). Usually very quickly after the wonders have spawned the king will instruct when it’s safe to send defense, simply send some of your defense there after this time. IF the king doesn’t give timing for the defense, don’t send any until you see the wonder change hands into your kingdom. Half of your defense is a good rule of thumb but it could be higher or lower than that as well, ask your king if you aren’t sure how much you should send. Prioritize units that are slow to be sent to the wonder (infantry defense or defense from villages that are very far from your teammates) and leave the fastest troop’s home to respond to normal attacks (cavalry defense and defense based in a village which has a tournament square) After you have sent your defense start up a trade route to the wonder (you did unlock your plus account right?) for at least half the crop value of the troops you send to defend it and you are done. So for example if you sent in 7500 phalanx and 1500 druidriders, the normal amount they would eat would be 7500 + 1500 * 2 = 10500 crop an hour, so in a wonder they would only eat 5250 so a good trade route (or trade routes from several villages) would be about 5500 an hour. More is always better but never send less than the amount of troops you have as that will quickly lead to either starving or your troops being kicked out. This is the phase when you should stop settling new villages (chiefing is still alright) outside of strategic reasons (for example a new treasury if you are a duke). 2.3 Finish strong Your wonder is now secured, defended and supplied but now is not the time to rest easy as the true challenge is still ahead. Firstly you will need to make sure your own wonder goes ahead on schedule, this means sending steady stream of resources, crop and troops to it. As the wonder level gets higher and higher, the construction will need more and more resources so be vigilant and set up trade routes for some resources right at the beginning but pay close attention to what the wonder team tells you about the resource situation and adjust based on that. Especially at the start the resource need is typically very low but towards the end everyone needs to put their contributions to the pile for the construction to go ahead. Remember that the wonder is a team objective which means you should do your best but if the king asks for 300k iron that doesn’t mean you should just send that by yourself. Keep adjusting based on instructions and your account size, smaller players are expected to contribute less than big ones so take your position in the kingdom to account as well, don’t starve yourself out so much that you can’t train more troops. Now that the resources are taken care of we need to keep the wonder defended. For this you should aim to continuously train and send more defense there both to replace the losses to Natars but also to strengthen the defense as the wonder rises. As time goes on you should also increase the % contribution of your troops to the wonder from the initial 50% up to the 90-100% of your defense for the last few levels when the threat of enemy all-out attack is highest. Listen to your king on that as well. Always remember to keep your crop trade routes updated with your increasing numbers of defenders. You should always cover at least all of your own troops but the construction itself will also need some crop so it’s a good practice to contribute bit more than what your troops eat. Think it like this: Pretend we have total of 10k defense which costs us 10k an hour if we keep it home. If however we send it to the wonder we only have to pay 5k an hour leaving a 5k “profit”. If you now set a 7.5k crop trade route to cover for your troops and construction you are still left with 2.5k crop in “profit” so don’t be stingy on the crop. During this phase, you should gradually stop all but essential spending on your villages and instead spend 95% of your resources to troops and resources to the wonder. Only add absolutely necessary buildings and repairs like additional barracks or smithy levels for more troops or bigger marketplace for more trade capacity to the wonder. It’s not worth it to do things like upgrade fields once the game is this deep as the payout happens after the game has already ended. Last but not least; stay active, contribute to best of your ability, communicate with the team and listen to the instructions given by your leadership. Also remember that things might look tough but you never know how situations flip on the wonder phase so if you already made it to this phase of the game it’s usually best to just stick it out till the end if not for yourself but for your team. Part 3: Wonders for Kings, Dukes and other kingdom leadership First of all read part 2 as you will still need to do largely the same steps as anyone else when trying to contribute to the wonder and its success. That being said the responsibility lies much more in your shoulders than on the governors. For the purposes of this part I assume you have completed one server as a governor to qualify as a king. That being said, on with the show! 3.1 Set up the kingdom It will be up to your responsibility to lead the kingdom to a successful endgame. For this purpose you will need to set up the kingdom early for the spawn of the wonders. This means instructing the governors on how they should do things but also to think long term and estimate your position in the end game and how realistic it is for your kingdom to hold a wonder. Sometimes it’s better to accept defeat and admit you aren’t strong enough on your own. This could mean you have to merge up with a stronger kingdom (or assimilate few smaller kingdoms yourself) to strengthen your team before the eventual wonder race. A good rule of thumb is to look at the current server player count and see if you and your alliance of friendly kingdoms have at least 1/7th of that. For every 1/7th of the population your group controls you can take 1 wonder. Once you have decided to go for a wonder and decided which one (or which ones if you intent to take multiple) it’s time to start preparations for it. Here is a small list of things you will need (each is per wonder). It’s up to you to find players to fill these tasks. Wonder holder Wonder team Wonder cleaner 4-6 Chiefs very close to the wonder Several support villages from governors near the wonder Additionally here are some optional but extremely helpful additions: 6. Teuton scout stack for defense 7. Roman scout stack for offense 8. At least 1 “granary” village from the wonder holder and possibly more from some of your other players Here are some additional details about each. 1. Wonder holder should be very active, preferably experienced player who is willing to use gold. While gold has only limited benefits in the wonder the occasional instant merchants can be invaluable. Plus account is mandatory and crop bonus highly recommended as well. The player can be of any tribe but roman players have a slight advantage for they can improve the fields in the wonder to raise population at the same time as they are building the actual buildings inside the village. This is a small advantage though so don’t feel forced to choose a Roman, activity and experience are the most important things. Another must is for the chose person to unlock some if not all of the extra building queue slots; this will lessens the need to micromanage the wonder and helps to keep it building around the clock. Gold using account also has access to the extra building slot cards which are quite helpful; if you choose a non-gold user, see if he can save any of these he finds to be used in the wonder. 2. The chosen account needs a wonder team as well. The wonder could run out of crop in as little as an hour so it’s important to have access to the wonder around the clock. This means 2 sitter’s minimum. Additionally you can set up a secret society with village details being shared so more people can keep an eye on the crop levels as well. If the wonder holder is the king or one of the dukes they automatically have this ability as well. Duals are a plus as well. A good wonder team hence is minimum of the king + 2 sitters + the dukes, but can sometimes include more people as well, such as experienced governors. Make sure that at least one person of the wonder holder and his 2 sitters has actually built a wonder before, so if it’s necessary he can instruct the other two on what to do and what to build.
