Merging troops

    I really like the idea of a player being able to consolidate their troops as off players typically need to be more active than other players.


    To balance this I would suggest this can only be done for level 20 troops so that time has been spent and also resource.


    This stops level 1 troops becoming level 20 for free essentially.


    But it also means when Off players lose their hammers they are less likely to leave the server as they can regain their troop numbers quicker meaning more immersive experience in Travian kingdoms.


    Another Idea that may be useful would be the use of a general to also add this mechanic,.


    Maybe the general can level up just like the hero and allow for a certain amount of troops to consolidate each level every 24 hours if the devs/other players are worried about monster hammers.


    *Edit* Ok so vefore i forget the general slots for upgrading could be as follows


    *infantry/amount/per24/h

    *cavalry/amount/per24h

    *Siege/amount/per24h

    *reduce 24/h delay for the above consolidation to 20h at level 100?


    This is my first time back to Travian since a very long time and I'm glad to have found the Kingdom servers as it is something fresh

    Unknown - I agree merging troops maybe making hammers super powerful - especially with you folks spending a lot of time hunting multi-accounts which do some version of this - will only make this worse.


    But merging only level 20 troops restricts it as suggested


    OR


    you make it that to merge troops


    1. you need a new building in every village which contributes e.g. a Castra of minimum level 10 (see Roman Castrum) that needs a lot of resources to build,

    2. Remember the building can be cata-ed down by rival kingdoms - and if so your merged troops demerge (can see a bit of implementation challenge e.g. track attack separately at village level like defenses)

    3. and a Castra can have a minimum level of stable and barracks before you can build...


    To get carried away, maybe level 10 Castrum allows you to merge your village troops with one other level 10 castrum for infantry only

    level 15 castrum allows you to merge horses

    Level 20 castrum allows you to merge catas as well

    Also the amount of troops merged could be limited to a certain number per 24 hours to stop massive hammers so it could be done like a party system as well where you spend x amount of resource to then add x amount of troops from one village to another (this number will be what the developers feel to be balanced)


    It has the potential to add so much to a game where it is already strategically sound. If this would to be tested/developed some how in the future it would be really interesting to see how players use this system during alliance wars :D!


    *idea from friend*

    He suggested maybe the building should be like a residence or treasury where you cannot gold the building either ?


    So it is a mid/late game tool


    **Another edit (sorry)**

    Another balancing thought would be that the amount of troops is linked to the CROP consumption of that unit so you will not have a situation where you could add 500 EC and another player adds 500 mace for the same cost/time


    so as an example lets say you could consolidate 500crop every24hour at the cost of 10k of each resource


    you could either chose to:


    select 125 EC

    Or

    select 500Imp


    Thank you guys for replying it is really cool to talk about these topics.

    Merging Troops

    I played on a Legends "Path to Pandora" server last year that had this function. When merging troops you had to pay the same amount in resources as it cost to build them....i.e.effectively making those troops double the price (bit like a Great Stable/Barracks). Instead of resources you could use Gold but there was a limit you could spend each day (and hence a limit on troop numbers per day). For me, playing mainly def, the cost was not worth it other than to tidy up a few troops here and there (but I am not the biggest Gold spender).


    I can see that it would be a more valuable when building a hammer. But I agree that limits should be imposed to avoid the concept of "buying a hammer".


    I am not sure how many servers this has been used in Legends but I presume there is some experience / insight around as to how it affected the game play etc.

    Quote from Unknown

    Mmmm it worries me that it could make some offensive accounts too over powered...


    What do you feel about this possibility? Merging troops, specially offensive could be dangerous in that front...

    Merged offense troops should have a countermeasure in the form of that the attack cannot be faked.

    A way to incorporate this and at the same time also bring a new infrastructural element to the game is to create some sort of an outpost/rally point outside of the kingdom where either 1 player can collect armies from multiple villages and send out attacks from, or even the whole kingdom can send some %(maybe 1k troops max) of their army and maybe the king could initiate the attack.

    Would also create a strategy for kingdom to sneak some closeby field near opposing kingdom where they can wage war on them(in case if they are able to hold that point). This would be of course a clear indicator of malicious intent so it makes an active point of target similar to treasuries as in the current game version.

    This outpost should cost some culture point of course and maybe have only walls/water ditch/granary/WH.


    *Other way to create some better offensive effect is to be able to use natarian troops from these kind of outposts. I feel that every player new to the game hits that point where they understand natarians will only ever be NPC and it somewhat disappoints them.

    eeeeh... I think off players will got a much higher advantage then defenders, Imagine a teuton player, spaming clubs in 15 villages. There will be no reason for a player to use GB, GS. Why would they use it when they can open another 3 villages and build clubs there with no loses what so ever? A teuton can build on x3 server 2,7k clubs / day.. Even now armies with 200k clubs are pretty common for a gov, now, if this merging feature would be added that will meant that dukes / kings with a lot of villages would have armies maybe with 1 milion clubs without a problem, because they don't need to build GB, GS. So they don't need cities, just spaming villages, and building racks on level 20 and start poping out clubs. And this merging feature will add another thing. If your main village is about to get deleted by enemy attacks you can just dodge these attacks by merging your army with much smaller army and moving these troops to a completly new village. So your army will be untouchable. Fakes from villages with 300 pop will start to look dangerous, because players can just move their armies whatever they will like to.

    Btw, You can even use this "merging" for a jumping strategy, you can just settle right next to an enemy treasury, use gold to build 1 granary, fill that up, and merge your army there, if you will combine this with Vacation you can have a village right next to a treasury, with your main army, and with that ability to stop your Vacation whenever you want, you will just wait for your troops to merge in that village and then remove your Vacation and siege that treasury... This will be a new "jumping" meta...

    Ive been thinking a bit more about the idea of an outpost as a collective effort of a kingdom to build rally points for multiple tribes and it doesnt even have to be working as adding offensive forces together in 1 attack. Though this would help for smaller kingdoms to make juicy wall breakers with the right set of skills and too powerful kingdoms might have to change their game strategies.

    They would rather get to use their own units separately from common rally point. There are still a lot of benefits and new options that mixing tribes is bringing to the table. For starter a variety of units to choose from assures that a defensive roman and defensive teuton could operate from the same village without the fear of sweeping cavalry or infantry attacks that they haven’t prepared for alone.It also lets you introduce offensive gaul with the mix and that is very versatile trio and highly functioning to correlate surplus resource with the correct unit.

    This idea gives a lot of ground to play on:


    How many stables, workshops or barracks in the village?

    What sort should the wall look like?

    Are all the different special buildings allowed in the same village?

    What is the building order like/ can everyone build it simultaneously?

    Which tribe merchant types are working in the marketplace?

    Is travian plus or res/crop bonuses allowed in that village if 1 of the players has them activated?

    Can it settle or chief any other villages?

    Would not be sure about settling from that village since who would control the next village…still all of them?


    I will try to give my minds eye view of how it should look like…

    Comes with its own plusses and minuses and not being able to settle from 1 village would actually not have too great effect. The benefits far outweigh the losses in terms of user experience and many new strategies are brought to the game. Better chance for those villages to spot an attack since more eyes are checking on that village from time to time. There will be more of incentive for player over the world to look out for these villages and new to the game players can have quicker learning curve when managing same village with more heads to think with.

    A weak side effect might be rally points limit of sending out attacks for mass raider, but yet again if the other two don’t send out much attacks, then even that strategy is still on the table in hybrid villages. A Bonus would be that all 3 players support that village, so it grows quicker and it therefore doesn’t have problem of building troops and buildings at the same time.

    It also inspires communication and opens many doors to take travian next even in the further future. (One could even think of the idea of mixing tribe units at some point in the development of the game, like TTs getting even faster from learning from training in the same village as roman cavalry or teuton scouts learn to ride horse and become EL etc, but that is too farfetched for now).

    At the same time hybrid villages lessens the major problem of multiaccounting because what would be the point of merging with your own fake accounts…that’s too much to hassle, especially if mixed villages of different persons have greater potential to be strong foe so multiaccounting strategy has less chance of successful outcome. I also have a kind of feeling that it helps smaller kingdoms to fight metas…only if they don’t let sabotagers join their forts of course.


    Think of it like a village becomes city at some point during evolution when players have enough CP. The same way 3 players use CP to make a united village. Each tribe sends 1-3 settlers and then they all get to reside there. Or maybe more suitable if senators and chieftains are sent since it’s a big leap in village strength which also looks more political representation of unification of tribes in a certain point in the game.

    I think this should be 1 time deal like merging of 2 kingdoms or making a village into a city, but hybrid villages are able to chief other hybrid villages because then 3 players lose a village and other group of 3 players take over that hybrid village which gives possibility to acquire a stronghold inside another kingdom that could disrupt its integrity.

    I would leave the basic village layout stay the same, but give some other little perks. Because when 3 players lose an expansion slot on 1 village, they should gain something special in turn.

    Therefore I suggest that there can be built maximum 3 barracks and other type of troops training facilities simultaneously for each tribe to use on their own, but if the building slots are limited, then they have to choose what needs to be built there because its hard to fit 9 war buildings in 1 village and leave enough room for all the other necessary buildings. This naturally keeps room restrictions on those villages and makes player want to change some buildings during evolution, but also introduces idea of fast growing offensive army in one spot and faster regeneration of defenses after taking a hard hit.

    An Another perk I would give the ones, who choose to settle in same village is making that village with 18 fields of crop(6 crop fields for each player), because it wouldn’t be able to keep all the troop count fed in any other way. They would already have to share resource production of 1 village with 2 other players so that’s a loss for the net income of the kingdom.

    For creating a non crop resource income for these villages, I would even bring an option of claiming external resource mines from the empty wilderness areas on the map that look like forests, claypits and iron mountains. The hybrid village itself could be founded only on wilderness areas that look like crop fields or lakes since some crop oasises look like lakes aswell so the idea of 18c village would be concise. Its also a method to create satellite buildings, keeping kingdom infrastructure intact and give guarantee for each tribe to get boost of their own essential resource income.They can upgrade these satellite mines level by levels with much bigger values so there is more incentive to build them , but the satellite mines/woodcutters/pits can be raided(resource collection work a bit like tribute collection), but only be catapulted when attacking a Keep itself? So it kinda acts as a single village, consisting of external fields on map that provide it with wood, clay and iron and the crop comes from itself.


    These villages should have simultaneously 2 fields upgrading and 2 town building slots plus the idea of multiple walls surfaces when picturing 3 tribes in 1 village. 3 Walls that every tribe player can separately build, so this village gets possibly 3x less time to get it strong again. But the downfall could be that they cant all max out their own type of wall…if one built to level 20 then other 2 can only build theirs to level 15 and 10. So its possible to try different variations and find out the best one (or maybe all tribes max to lvl15 and every player can only repair 1 wall). When letting simultaneous upgrading work for other buildings in that village and bring about a new era of travian experience, add another layer to kingdoms union, an extra step in gameworld evolution and invent a flash town which built by multiple kings or governors gets 4x building speed(2x from roman and 2x1 from other two tribes). Almost looks like 4x server speed village has appeared in 1x server, but only in building time, not resource. Resource wise 3 times slower because 3 expansion slots go in 1 village if its chosen to not put other types of wilderness working as satellite mines or use these ones as non-crop Keeps. Other tribes also bring bonuses to this village with their special buildings to compensate the loss of resource with tons of strategic maneuvers.

    Mixed tribes and pure crop villages gain a big motivation for players to play a server until the end by allowing virtually every player in the game get a good chance at having access to excellent cropper at some point

    in the game, which also makes it harder for those who managed to fast settle the first gameworld best croppers and make it possible for governor trios to match the power of a king. Kings should also be able to join these triple player villages so they can give back some taxes by helping build a united village, so virtually every player has the chance of becoming part of the kings bonuses during the game which also grows the number of successful kingdoms and therefore weakens the metas.


    I would like to call this fast arising and hybridized village the “Keep”

    Give it a great story and draw some fine art in there and call it “Kingdom Keeps” ..at least that’s my vision of it.. has some extra layers of meaning there by saying kingdom keeps it together ..or can you keep your Keep?


    So the Keep has its plusses and minuses… having access to coupling a Keep with oasis can also compensate for the loss of kingdom total resource income plus it enhances the chances of cropless players. Also this could be arranged like the mother villages have to be cities or at some certain pop or need maximum level residence/palace for a Keep.



    This idea could go even further and let the same sort of tribes also settle in same villages and create hybrid villages of their own sort.

    I do really think it prevents multies from the soul since it promotes cooperation between individuals from across the globe since that’s the best way to keep the villages up…24/7

    Though it doesn’t prevent multies in the sense of people making accounts that are just built up to be raided for start bonus by raiding em empty, but it instead gives a little extra benefit from teamwork of those who choose to work together and the reward from cheating doesn’t account up anymore against cooperative gameplay. So the multies die out when 3-player teams from all around the clock work together.

    Some extra ideas to give little buffs to the Keep-


    By having a Keep inside borders, it increases all surrounding friendly villages def by 25%...inside enemy borders it supports attacks from all friendly villages by 25%

    The Keep will slow down armies that move past it

    act as scouting tower so you see if passing attacks are fake or not?

    Might lower influence on enemy kingdom.


    ---

    Extra ideas for special skills and external buildings:


    Roads work when village is placed next to it then merchants and troops move quicker to next village that’s been made near to the same road.

    Roads can be made from 1 treasury to another treasury and villages that create Keep, get a road connected also.

    When villages are on that road then there is influence of kingdom.

    Roads can be attacked and catapulted by attacking either treasury or villages on that route.


    Ability to build trenches few tiles from their villages- where troops from that village can be placed temporarily and make another raid so they get better surprise element. These trenches are visible on the map at 1 side of the tile. They can be attacked there with no defense, but attacks incoming there cant be seen.Teutons can fool enemies, by pulling out from the trenches back to home villages so others have to make empty trips there and when attack from trench has been made, then troops return to home village after.