Display MoreHmm leo#EN(19) i disagree with your disagree'ing
spiking affects all..... not just large players, It affects smaller players too, it's just larger players can recover easier from it and usually have a way to counter it, so in reality the smaller players are hurt more by losing the few troops they have & usually means they will delete rather than recover
I don't farm, I'm not here to rant about it. But I still don't agree with it, there is little to no skill involved in sending a few troops to a grey village and feeling accomplished at killing troops in 1's & 2's, if you find pleasure in doing this then travian probably isn't the right game for you.
As for not being to possible to have a decent account without farming, I disagree with this also. true i play as King atm, but even as a non farming part time Gov I still had a decent enough acc to be able to be in the HoF and support the kingdom and the WW in a massive way, you don't need to farm if you have good eco and infra.
I think Activity is the main difference between what you would call "elite" and "average" if you are active enough you can also become a top player (being given the right guidance and advise from a good kingdom also has a big impact)
It seems we're both citing anecdotal evidence here. In my experience, "smaller" and average players aren't raiding greys or anything. Not even part time. You were able to build a HoF account because you are an elite player. Do you think a new player can do that? In my mind, and I'm not HoF level so correct me if wrong, to get there you have to have one of the following:
A) be a top raider
B) be a king/duke of a top kingdom
C) have a great capitol that's able to produce the resources
plus the ability and knowledge to pull an account together to build the troops. Being elite means knowing and executing on this. Average and new players can't do this. I agree activity makes a huge difference, but I just don't see how you can build 100k troops without one of these three. You need 75k resources/hr as Be2-e4 points out below. With 3k per village, you'd need 25 villages. I'm not counting wheat because feeding troops or a cropper because we're assuming new or average player.
One crucial difference in our arguments is that you assume average players raid grey villages but, again, that has not been the case in my experience.
Display MoreMh, there are a few flaws in your arguments.
1) You don't need to farm at all to pay the training cost of gb/gs, it costs only ~75k for teutons and ~77k for romans per hour. A very good capital can produce this alone, but the more realistic case is that capital + 7-8 side villages produce this amount. Upkeep is where it gets tricky, not training cost.
2) You don't need that much raiding troops. I don't think that I use more than 30k clubs for farmlists at once usually, if so much at all. If you raid with roman EIs, you need way less, because they're twice as fast and carry double the resources. Every (even non farming) offer should have these amounts, if he doesn't, raiding won't help him either ...
3) Depending on how good of a start you have you can very well have 80k+ capital production. I can't really come up with com numbers, because I usually play de locally. But 130k+ production in an average account, that keeps an eye on economy is easily possible in the mid game. A economally good account can easily have 200k+ production in the late game. That's about 33 million per week. I really don't know com numbers, but I doubt that they are so much more in top10 raiders lategame? I mean, you talk about 5 million per week, no offense, but your account shouldn't have a smaller production than that anywhere midgame.
4) Most people just farmlist with their hammer, no need to train additional troops, just farm with the ones you already have.
5) It is easy in terms of it is not complex at all. But it's a repetitive and time consuming task. Yet any new player can do it easily.
Also experienced players have a much easier time to farm not-so-experienced (but active) players, smaller kingdoms, and so on, the last 2 off accounts I played I would say it was about 50 : 50 in terms of farmlists and other farming.
1) "Good capitol" assumes experience and knowledge that most players don't have, in my experience. I clarify because maybe I'm just playing with the wrong new people.
2) I have a hard time convincing these players that you don't have to build even troops for each type and that you need more than 100. "30k clubs" is a huge difference between new/average and the top. Early in my current round, I was scared to build that many troops because feeding them seemed impossible. I asked a player on the forum dm how to do it and how to raid because after years I was tired of getting stuck. I agree they should have this many but there are plenty of people who wouldn't believe that other people have that many troops and are in awe when it politely visits their village with a destroyed village.
3) New/average players don't know this. I literally asked a question (that I believe you answered) about building a capitol here. My 150% cropper only got to 60k and I've been playing since T3.5 (I've never been able to get to the "elite" level). Maybe it would be best to collect data through a poll on where people's production is at the end of a round. I don't think many people would have it close to how you describe.
4) Farmlist assumes people know how to raid, that it's worth it, and that they pay for plus.
I understand that in principle this is doable. I'm saying that people don't know how or that it's worth it. New players CAN do it. They don't. It takes a lot of time to learn this and their aren't any guides on raiding or building a capitol. There are "quick start" guides but nothing that says you should have a certain level of production mid game or that 30k clubs is expected. Even if it was, rarely do new players visit the forums. It typically involves joining the right kingdom and learning from them, which again takes luck and knowledge of the game. One of my biggest struggles is that I've always stuck with smaller kingdoms that are always destroyed. It took learning the lesson that top players are MUCH better before I could even get remotely close to learning how to raid and build a suitable offense.
Now, the argument that keeping greys incentivizes players to raid those instead of smaller/newer players is valid. I just don't know the best way to encourage new/average players to follow all of this advice that you've laid out. Do you include raiding greys in the tutorial at the beginning of the game? Do you describe building a solid economy and typical troop counts in a guide? I think we can agree that by answering these questions we solve the larger issue in closing the gap.
