Hi All
I first played Travian in 2007. I've played a few servers, but not as many as most of you since I missed many years in between.
Cheating, Bots, Scripts and Multiaccounts is till ruining this great game, and with respect to the challenge that the game admins have in front of them Travian Games does not do enough to eliminate it. Technology wise, I can understand the complexity of the challenge.. combined with the scope for contractual disputes given some players pay money, I would say their hands are tied.
But us, as players, we have no restrictions on what actions we can take against players that cheat, and there are many of us, a burden shared is a burden halved..
All it takes is a little combined will and commitment to do the right thing as a group, and we can relegate cheating to the absolute fringe of the game, a one off instance that the cheating players realise is ultimately futile, and provides no long term benefit.
Currently, there is too much benefit to a cheating player, let me play out a scenario for you. A new server starts, and you have this great team of active players as a premade team. You end up with these 6 or 7 players in your area that are active, and their troop counts are fantastic.. they raid hard and you know their fire power will come in handy when the real wars start, so you add them to your kingdom. You start wars, and the fire power these players have helps you win.. players that were in smaller kingdoms join yours, and you continue to grow. One of the players you took in promises he is great with scout ops. When you are attacked, magicallly, 1000 scouts are sent out at every possible launch time of the attackers players, with every tournament square combination, and he checks the hero XP hundreds of times in 4 hours and tells you which of the attackers/targets combinations definitively proves where their hero was and was not to determine where you need to defend... its great.. you don't lose battles, you bunker hard and save defensive troops through overwhelming numbers.. and you continue to grow. During the server, some of these players are banned, some multiple times during the game, but they tell you - oh - it was just this little thing, one time, it was an accident or the game admins made a mistake. But now you are dependent on them... too big to fail, too powerful independently, and you know, well they are mutli accounts so killing 1 is actually killing 6.. Eventually you win the server, but all your hard work, and that of many of your players was not really achieved fairly.
This will become the new norm unless we as a group of players and leaders in this game decide to stop it.
For some players and teams, this will hurt at first.. some of you are sheep and without these cheats, you don't stand a chance.. Its ok, no one will remember your name.
My proposal is not game mechanics related.. it is not some rule buff, no complicated thing.. just us players making a commitment.
The Travian Fair Play Charter.
I hereby commit to the Travian Fair Play Charter.
I promise to not use scripts, bots or have more than one account, for any reason.
If I am in leadership, I will kick and farm any player found to have breached these rules, whether Travian admin has banned them or not.
If I am not in leadership, and I discover that my leadership is participating in these cheats, or allowing other players to cheat without any punishment or consequences, I will delete my account.
I would like to know if the wording needs to be changed.. I would be interested to hear if you are prepared to commit to this charter..
But if your comment is along the lines of this won't work.. don't waste your effort... It does not interest me to hear it because I know from experience.. community based movements have massive power.. it just needs to start somewhere.
