Teuton Offense: Information and Consideration

Overview

There are a couple of different ways to play as an offensive Teuton. This post is not meant to tell you how to play as an offensive Teuton, but rather, how you can play as an offensive Teuton. This post contains some general information that I have found useful when working with new players on how to best build up their armies.

In order to have an effective army you must have ever type of troop: infantry, cavalry and siege weapons. You cannot ignore one and still have a good hammer at the end.

Hopefully you find this information useful. If you have anything to add, please feel free to do so in the comments!

Teutons, in my opinion, only have 5 possible offensive troops: Clubswingers, Axefighters, Teutonic Knights, Rams and Catapults.

• The Clubswinger
  • It is the cheapest troop across all the different tribes. It comes in at a total of 180 resources (wood, clay, iron) to make one single unit in the Barracks. They are also the quickest to train out of all the Travian troops. On a x1 server, the time that it takes to train one Clubswinger ranges from 12:00 to 01:37 (it can be further reduced with a helmet that affects Barracks and Great Barracks training times)
  • Across all troops they can be considered as a moderate attacker, however, when only comparing them against other "offensive" infantry" (Legionnaire, Imperian, Axefighter and Swordsman) they rank fairly low. In fact, only the Legionnaire shares as low offensive strength. All others are stronger per troop. At the base level Clubswingers have 40 attack strength. Where Clubswingers thrive is in the sheer numbers you can produce them in.
  • A main perk that a lot of players enjoy about a clubswinger is their ability to raid. They are not the quickest in terms of speed, but they are the most effective raider. What do I mean when I say “effective”? What I mean is, they have the lowest number of “full” resource hauls (50 per raid, per troop) to make in order to pay for themselves. A clubswinger, if coming home with a full haul will pay for themselves after 4 trips. This is almost 100% cheaper than for any other raiding troop.
    
  • Two really big cons of a clubswinger - they take up a lot of crop mid-late server, be sure to utilize croppers. They also are terrible at defense: they will fall over dead at the sight of a cavalry troop.
    
• The Axefighter
  • More expensive when compared to the Clubswinger. 275 resources (wood, clay, iron) will be needed in order to pay for this troop - about 52.7% more resources when compared to the Clubswinger. However, they do come with a 50% boost in attack strength at 60. Their train times do not scale quite as nice as their attack strength however and take 55.5% longer to train per troop when compared with the Clubswinger. (18:40 to 2:31).
    
  • They are the best infantry troop in terms of crop consumption:train time:strength ratios on the server. There are two infantry troops, Imperian and Swordsman, which are stronger, but both have significantly higher training times.
  • If you want more attack strength with less crop hassle - Axefighters are the way to go. They are marginally better at defense, but you still wouldn’t want them to be caught at home by an attacker.
  • Axefighters do have somewhat good capacity for raiding, however, their speed and cost make them less effective than clubswingers.
• The Teutonic Knight
  • This is the only cavalry troop that Teutons have that is worth anything on offense. They are almost 3x stronger than the Paladin. There really is not a comparison here. TK’s are the second strongest troop in the game, only beat out by the Equites Caesaris. TKs have 150 attack strength.
  • TKs cost 860 total resources (wood, clay, iron). They are not as effective at converting resources to attack strength, much like all cavalry troops in the game. However, in order to have an effective hammer - you must build every troop possible.
• The Ram
  • Teuton rams are the best rams on the server. They are 8.3% stronger per ram when compared to Romans and a whopping 30% stronger when compared to a Gaul’s rams. In addition to being stronger, they are also cheaper AND they train faster.
• The Catapult
  • Teuton catapults are the reverse of the ram. While still the cheapest ram (all Teuton troops are the cheapest), they are the most ineffective. How ineffective you might ask? A full 50% weaker than the strongest catapult on the server - Romans, and 40% weaker than Gauls. For this reason alone I typically try to sway Teuton players away from Catapults. Leave that to the Romans and the Gauls. It’s just much more effective to do so. Teuton’s pave the way!
    

Conclusion

So, at this point, I would consider your siege troop to be set (Ram) and your cavalry troop set as well (Teutonic Knight). The Ram is the more effective siege weapon for a Teuton. The TK is the only offensive cavalry troop.

However, it is a real decision between a Clubswinger and an Axefighter. To help you better make that decision - here is a useful example.

• If I had 20 days where I could build non-stop Clubswingers in my Barracks, and non-stop Axefighters in another - which would be stronger? (Barracks level 20).
  • I can build 891 clubs per day in village one, and 533 per day in village two.
  • That is a total of 17,820 Clubswingers in village one and 10,660 Axefighters in village two over the 20 days.
  • Another way to look at it: 712,800 attack strength in village one, and 639,600 attack strength in village two. If I focused only on Clubswingers, I would have 11.4% more total attack strength than if I only focused on Axefighters.
    • Of note: Crop would be 7,160 more expensive PER hour, or 171,840 per day.
    • If I had to pay for my troops, it would cost me 3,207,600 resources to build all my Clubswingers, but only 2,931,500 resources to build the Axefighters (a cost reduction of 276,100 resources OR 9.4% less resources).

From this information we can tell that Clubswingers are going to have more power if we are able to train them non-stop. However, it will cost more resources to produce them, and they will consume significantly more crop PER day.

Which troop you choose to build will rely entirely upon your capacity to bring in resources, as well as your ability to feed them

My general suggestion here (which I’m sure some will disagree with):

• If you cannot produce Clubswingers continuously, build Axefighters.
• If you are not extremely active, and online infrequently - build Axefighters.
• If you are not actively raiding - build Axefighters.
• If you do not have any croppers - build Axefighters.

I personally prefer the additional power that is given by building Clubswingers, but it’s expensive. It’s not for everyone. Adapt to the troop that best meets your needs as a player. Any offensive playing style involves a fair amount of activity. Clubswingers are just much more time, resource, and energy intensive than Axefighters.

Of note: All attack strengths mentioned in this post are based on no Smithy upgrades. I will make a post in the future about the importance of Smithy upgrades. This is just meant to be a base level look at playing as an Offensive Teuton with some base suggestions.

Quote from Wamic

Great write-up for my favorite tribe and the hot topic of Clubs vs. Axes.

Rams are awesome, and also surprisingly good at soaking damage! I like to cap catas at 250 then go full rams after that.

Thank you!

I agree on having a small number of catapults. They are useful for treasury attacks and catapult operations.

In my experience, I encourage people to have at least 300 catapults for these types of operations so that they can completely take two buildings in one go.