Spikers of grey villages.

    Quote from Coldplay#US

    This is where you're wrong.

    Farming grey's isn't being active. It's clicking a button every 5, 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes to send 100 attack. That's not being active. Being active is scouting villages before attacking them. You are more than welcome to scout all the grey's before attacking them, now that would be active.

    Farming grey is much more active playing then spiking it. You have to at least click a button every 5,10,20,30 min. So your complains about not playing active when you actually support people who plays even less active are funny.

    The issue is that that balance between deff and off players was shifted by someone decision in favor of deff players. In that way that off players got no choice to counter that. Like I wrote they can see attack hitting them we got no chance to trace who defend. Apparently only one side during discusion was listened cowards like Coldplay who claim they want to play active game but they hide in shadow so we couldn't find them.
    I have never complained about spiking. The issue is that points for that were removed. So no one can see who does that.

    The point removal itself was done after a big discussion with the community.


    In my opinion, in this case it is actually normal that is this way.


    Normally the offensive players are much bigger and stronger than typical defensive players. So, as in guerrilla warfare, the only way to try and get ahead for defensive players is, doing as you say, hiding in the shadows and strike against smaller groups, since they could not take head on in open battle field the armies of big offensive players.


    But that doesn't mean it is one sided or that offensive players are at a disadvantage. You have a way to counter that defensive guerrilla warfare. By simply scouting before attacking, you know what defenses are waiting for you and you can decide how much force to send in order to defeat it...
    So, in reality, you as offensive player are still in control, as if you do the right way, you will still win every single time, either that or decide not to strike that particular village and just send your troops to another undefended one.


    So, even as it is now, offensive players still have a way to come out on top, and it is not a complicated one.

    From my recollection, the reason for removing the points was to stop awarding the spikers with Top Defender medals. Just stop and think about that for a moment - clearly there is some belief that it was not an intended playstyle.


    The idea of spiking really takes away from the purpose a Farm List. What's the point in paying for a Farm List if I can not use it?

    I can't even spy with my farm list, you expect me to manually spy 300 villages? But anyways, these spikers find greys with the hero + chicken boots and scouts at home anyways. I can't believe you are suggesting to scout every target before attacking.


    I'm not sure if anyone here who is defending a spiker has ever built a WW hammer before - but Time is something you can not get back in Travian

    Why should some casual player who trained 500 phalanx overnight get an advantage over me, a big spender, who has Golded my villages from day 1 to get Great Stable/Barracks running early paired with 24/7 active raiding? I cleared that village and made that player quit 1 month ago.


    Day after Day- I am ensuring my barracks, stables, and workshop never run empty. Ensuring my massive insanely negative crop production does not starve my units. Doing calculations to ensure my losses are not significant and timely.... As you can see the theme is here is time and work - there is no reasonable amount of effort I can make to counter a spiker even if I wanted to in the current state.


    Don't sit on the fence - give them defense points back to make them identifiable if you agree with spiking, or, find some other way to deter spikers.

    No the big ACTIVE offensive players are at an advantage against the Inactive/Barely-Active/Semi-active whatever players. Active defensive players who are farming as well also get hurt by spikers as well. In fact I'd argue it's worse when playing def because you don't want to be rebuilding raiding troops.


    Spikers isn't helping defensive players, it's helping players who log in 0-2 times a day make 300 defensive troops and throw them somewhere.


    I don't understand how this is an off vs def argument, it's an active player vs less active player argument.

    Not necessarily Greenman , any player could use that strategy, no matter how active or inactive they are.


    And since you can spy villages before attacking, you have a perfect counter against it.


    You have to think that the one sending those defenses is as well risking loosing them... so it is an even playing field for everybody.

    Quote from Unknown

    Not necessarily Greenman , any player could use that strategy, no matter how active or inactive they are.


    And since you can spy villages before attacking, you have a perfect counter against it.


    You have to think that the one sending those defenses is as well risking loosing them... so it is an even playing field for everybody.

    I feel like you're missing the point here.

    This point isn't from the spiker perspective, but from their victims perspective.
    Active gameplay, by farmers, can be punished by way less active spikers.

    This devalues activity, which is the opposite of what we want to see.


    To further illustrate:
    pasted-from-clipboard.png

    The issue is that passive players can punish active players through this mechanic.

    No active player will put their effort into random spiking over farming as farming will almost always be more lucrative for them.

    One of the biggest arguments against spiking is that it is a lazy tactic that harms the active players.
    Then people "argue" against that by saying "but active people can also use that tactic". However, active people never, or almost never, do that.


    Start a poll and collect the following data:
    - How many people spike.
    - How many people farm.
    - How many people are hurt by spikers.

    - How many people think spiking needs to be removed.

    - How many people think spiking should stay.

    Most importantly, correlate between these answers.


    I highly doubt that anyone who suffers from spiking would say it should stay. Like wise I don't expect any spikers to be farmers.

    I understand what you say, spiking can harm active players.


    But, why is it sending a farm list equal to been active?


    I feel, and this is a personal opinion, that active players can be active using scouts to make sure the farms they attack don't have any defenses or that they send enough troops to deal with the defenses that may be there.


    If the solution is so simple, just scout before raiding, why not just do that? Every active player can do that easily and could even be beneficial since you are getting rid of defenses in small numbers easily instead of having to face them in bulk in a single village with many defending...


    So, yes, I understand the concern, but I feel that the current situation can actually be good for offensive players.


    You really exaggearate the farmers 'suffering'.

    Active gameplay is another exaggeration, because sending farm lists isn't active. One might say that adding grey's to his farm list and destroying their residence/palace & wall is hard, but I dissagree because it's not. It's spending less than an hour a day on that if you know what you're doing.


    Basically, what ya'll say is: "give us some bots to farm with infinite resources in them and no troops or walls or whatever". You don't want to be active and scout without farming because then it won't be lucrative enough for you.


    Anyways, I really don't understand what the point of bringing back the deff points for defending a grey village is; People will get medals for spiking, and I assure you that you won't be able to destroy all of the deff players spiking your greys. It doesn't matter how many people farm (the number, by the way, is less than 10% of players in most servers), or how many people spike, or any of those things. You don't have solution for your problem with spiking, and I don't think there is a solution.


    Lastly, I would like to mention that most top robbers when I played in 2020, in multiple servers were people using bots. People using bots don't really suffer from spiking since they can make their farm list delete red/yellow swords from it, and not send it again, so i recommend farmers just do their thing, deal with their losses and stop complaining. You had it too easy for way too long, you shouldn't mind some troops dying on you.

    I understand the mechanics of spiking.. and forcing players who use the farm lists to be more attentive... to avoid abuse of its power.. I don't have a problem with that..

    We do need to understand that this is a nerf.. lets be honest.. And maybe it was required.


    The points I think we can all agree on are...

    1. Farmers.. me included.. are complaining because we have gotten used to sending the absolute minimum of troops.. 1 troop where possible..

    2. Spikers do not know when the village they are spiking will be attacked in force.. they take a risk


    Currently I am seeing villages spiked with just 2 troop.. put a single haeduan and single druid in there in a small farm.. and it beats every single raiding troop... by the time the spike is discovered, scouted, someone sends a larger force.. the spike has killed 40 troops.


    Combat simulator will show that a raiding imperian will suffer 84% damage... a mortal wound.. and the defenders only 19%... but next battle.. the 19% magically heals, rounded down to an integer of 0 in the code somewhere.. and they are fighting fit for the next battle..


    I have 2 alternative suggestions for spiked grey villages with someone elses troops in there:


    • Instead of the 84% being rounded up to death.. it is applied as a chance to die.. 84% of the time.. the raider dies.. and 16% of the time, they get away... and conversely, 81% of the time, the defenders survive, and 19% of the time, they suffer a loss..
    • Keeping track of these 19% is difficult.. if not impossible.. However.. if we all agree that a grey village is inactive.. no one is providing tender loving care, or even the most basic routine maintenance... that the water supply is left to ruin.. constant spikers pollute everything with ablutions .. we could perhaps agree that a grey village does not offer the ideal base from which to defend.. And then the programmers could simply apply a discount to the defensive value of the troops spiking.. putting the spiker at a disadvantage.. and level the playing field back to a happy medium. Maybe even a progressive discount based on how long the spike has been in village.. or how long the village has been grey..


    Personally, I prefer the first one.. if you are going to spike a village.. you have to commit decent troop numbers.. and then you risk losing decent troop numbers.. Currently the ability to destroy huge numbers of troops with such insignificant risk is out of proportion..

    saddam hussian#EN thank you for your comment and thread.


    I have moved the content of the thread into this recent one where we talked exactly about the same.


    You will find interesting comments and opinions regarding reinforcing grey villages.


    What do you think about the opinions of others?

    spike inactive just punch players who spend actual time on the game to and compete main benfit of travian + is the farmlist option so what the point of getting it if not be able to use it its not a valid strategy its just not fun, while competing for top robber is important factor of the game and that just ruin the Competition for somone spending the time

    If you want to encourage "active" (whatever this means) farming and discourage grey farming (which, for the record, people must pay gold to be able to do), I feel like it would also be fair to encourage def players to be more active themselves. They should defend their fellow kingdom members from farmers instead of greys who have left the game already


    Quote from Unknown

    But, why is it sending a farm list equal to been active?

    Why is sending reinforcements to a grey equal to be active? It requires a single click, while sending farmlists requires one every few minutes.
    And if spiking is not considered to be an "active" act why is it rewarded? (by hiding the spiker's identity)

    Quote from Unknown

    as in guerrilla warfare, the only way to try and get ahead for defensive players is, doing as you say, hiding in the shadows and strike against smaller groups,

    but in real guerilla warfare I can capture / kill the enemy and identify them. Why is this not the case in travian if we're trying to imitate this kind of "feeling" so badly?


    You also mentioned scouting multiple times but conveniently ignored Paul's comment that shuts your perfect scouting counter strategy down:

    Quote from PaultheGaul

    these spikers find greys with the hero + chicken boots and scouts at home