5 Ideas we would like to get commented by devs

Dont think they would.

At least not if both alliances have spent approximately the same amount of recourses.

Dont see them defending 100 locations successfully if they wont even know which locations will be hit.

Maybe give it a thought and let it sink in. The situation is when you have used the same amount of resources, which approach is more "effective". Full Attack or 2/3 Attack and 1/3 Defense in this game.

More attack troops let you also farm more.

They would also take devastating damage for sure on many cities even if they would have gained approximately 10-30% more resources in the game and have more members.

Also, i would guess any alliance would rather have a war with 2/3 attack 1/3 defense + scout alliance than 3/3 attack one of similar size.

If you think about "catching the armies" you can do it with your Axemen if you want, which have low defense against attacking Axemen, which have high attack. As at least 2/3 of your troops are attacking troops too, but ours are attacking, and yours try to intercept our attack. If you attack with 2/3 you are attacing with less than us, and defending 3/3 with 1/3. Its clear to me which side gets worse damage, and is more crippled after one exchange. For example, the 2/3 attack alliance will almost certainly lose 1/3 of their troops and the 3/3 attacking alliance wont. So after the exchange, they have more troops for another go. I think im pretty sure that Offense wins against Defense in this game.

So there are some reasonigns behind my suggestions earlier. Simple Minded Annihilation is what i would call that strategy, full offensive.

Its not clear to me yet, can you or can you not see the attacking army sizes. If you would see the army sizes, then making "defensive armies" would be adviceable again. The whole purpose of not making them is the thing called "Fake Attack". It is a strong advantage for the aggressor against the defender. Especially if it is a game mechanic which cannot be affected. All i wrote above is applied only if you can use the "Fake Attack" approach. If you cannot, defensive troops would be viable.

Not saying i plan to do any of that, just saying what i think would be effective in a given situation. How to use your resources in the most effective way. The full purpose was trying to explain why i dont like the "Fake Attack" as would seem it is and tried to give suggestions for people to go around it. But probably its a major no go, as the gold buying player base would be furious if anything is done to that feature in the game. So nothing more about that. Still, there might have been some ideas that could lead to something actually viable in the game. There have been some ideas from other people that i think are good too, so the developers are doing the right thing when asking from the players what they do or do not want.

I also noticed Travian Legends special server standings, the top players were Huns. Huns gain access to fast and strong offensive units, but lack almost any good defensive units. Of course they win the server by large margin, as they specialize in strong and fast attacking troops + raiding and their "balancing weakness" is defense. It enables just the type of gameplay i described, to go even full offensive if needed.

One thing to do is, to make the spotting a bit random, so the code would check a spotting roll that is affected by number of scouts or other modifiers and their upgrades, and the estimate is not always accurate, so the player might get wrong information too. So you cannot always trust what your intelligence services are telling you but they can give you estimate. Of course one troop approaching is very hard to mistake for a 100 000 strong invasion army and vice verca. But it might be hard to know sometimes, is a large force around 10k or 100k with a glance, or without closer inspection. Also, the report could change and there could be checks when they are closer, so even the spotting distance could be divided into short, medium or long distance. But these type of approaches are probably too complex for this type of game.

The entire "Fake Attack" feature is viable in a fantasy setting where they use Illusions or Sci Fi setting where they use Holograms. Then you really might not know. My one suggestion was to include Magic or Mysticism to Travian in some way. For example Hero skills, Perks or so. A Mage Hero could do just this, shroud the approaching army that it cannot be seen, or use an illusion to mask it as a larger or smaller force. This again, sounds more lika Travian 2 than a new feature in the game.

So, my final suggestion is not only continue to Improve Travian, but to plan for Travian 2 too.

Quote from Istonius#EN

Dont think they would.

At least not if both alliances have spent approximately the same amount of recourses.

Dont see them defending 100 locations successfully if they wont even know which locations will be hit.

Maybe give it a thought and let it sink in. The situation is when you have used the same amount of resources, which approach is more "effective". Full Attack or 2/3 Attack and 1/3 Defense in this game.

More attack troops let you also farm more.

They would also take devastating damage for sure on many cities even if they would have gained approximately 10-30% more resources in the game and have more members.

Also, i would guess any alliance would rather have a war with 2/3 attack 1/3 defense + scout alliance than 3/3 attack one of similar size.

If you think about "catching the armies" you can do it with your Axemen if you want, which have low defense against attacking Axemen, which have high attack. As at least 2/3 of your troops are attacking troops too, but ours are attacking, and yours try to intercept our attack. If you attack with 2/3 you are attacing with less than us, and defending 3/3 with 1/3. Its clear to me which side gets worse damage, and is more crippled after one exchange. For example, the 2/3 attack alliance will almost certainly lose 1/3 of their troops and the 3/3 attacking alliance wont. So after the exchange, they have more troops for another go. I think im pretty sure that Offense wins against Defense in this game.

So there are some reasonigns behind my suggestions earlier. Simple Minded Annihilation is what i would call that strategy, full offensive.

Its not clear to me yet, can you or can you not see the attacking army sizes. If you would see the army sizes, then making "defensive armies" would be adviceable again. The whole purpose of not making them is the thing called "Fake Attack". It is a strong advantage for the aggressor against the defender. Especially if it is a game mechanic which cannot be affected. All i wrote above is applied only if you can use the "Fake Attack" approach. If you cannot, defensive troops would be viable.

Not saying i plan to do any of that, just saying what i think would be effective in a given situation. How to use your resources in the most effective way.

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I have no idea anymore what you are even suggesting lol. But anyway good luck with your quest

Istonius#EN I see you making a lot of comparisons, but did you play a server yet? Maybe you should try & play out your ideas ingame & then you might understand the importance of having both Off & Def players

"Offense is the best Defense" they say, until you're actually being attacked and then "100% Defense is the best form of Defense", those Off troops aren't gonna protect your kingdom, your villages, your WW, your treasuries, your treasures or your VPs (which is what the game is based & won on)

if your enemy mass scouts your kingdom (and they will) they will see how little def troops your team has & you probably won't last very long after that.

But also this game is about choices & a lot of people actually prefer to play Defense, so making the game just focus on Off troops you are reducing the battlefield by 50% (probably more)

The thing is, if you play full offense, the opponent have to think about those things you said too.

So if an alliance of 50+ strong players who have the largest offensive capability on the server state in public that they will respond to any approaching, even scouting with full scale attack, targeting all resource and crop fields (no need to target buildings), the would be attacker will have to think about this. That is the form of defense the full offensive approach represents, a threat of stronger counter attack than your attack.

So, when planning to even scout an alliance like that, you have to think about the consequenses. As in, do you want to lose up to 80% of the resource production you or your alliance have and most likely around 1/3 of your troops + face starvation.

If you are in position to do so, you can even state that the retaliation will be used against everyone in the alliance of the player who scout, raid or attack any of the alliances villages or those under its "protection". This way the opposing Kings might be very clear to their vassals, to never scout that alliance. So when you even scout to notice that they have "no defenses", you will be struck bad as a response.

If you would be amassing defensive troops, you would not have that capablity. You only have it because others make part defense part attack, and you go full offense as an alliance. You of course should secure the best farms to raid more, and grow more. You have better capabilities for that if you play strong offense vs defensive or balanced play.

So you use the threat of your counter invasion as a defense.

This is probably a strategy no one uses, or have used before to that extent. So you really do not know how that would go.

To some extent, every large alliance uses a threat of their counter attack as a defense. Even the balanced or defensive types. The weight of the threat however is different if you use your resources on offense.

The ability to Fake Attacks makes this even stronger. Even the opponent uses heavy Scouting and you wont, they wont know what or how its going to happen and you are the one who knows it instead. You can also either hit the capitals with strong forces or leave them all under fake attacks, as the defenses will probably pile up on these cities. This way the smaller armies that you have plenty, that are made instead of defensive armies, will cause havoc on smaller settlements, and sometimes utterly destroy them. Or target one capital with strong force, and leave others under Fake Attacks to give a message, that capitals are not safe, and to force the defensive troops to pile on these locations. Lets say an alliance that had around 500 villages and is hit so that either 450 of them lose all production, or are destroyed, leaving 50 player alliance with 49 cities (50 capitals minus one). They cannot win anymore. Might be you cannot either, but you probably still fare better than them. So the question is, do you really want to Scout ?

If your alliance is not one of the biggest in the server, you cannot hold this policy. Its way harder to do this alone, but a large group of strong people can easily do this, or a similar thing.

And of course, if someone wants to join playing defensively in such an alliance, accepting it would help to grow the alliance in power, but to convince that person to produce attacking and raiding armies instead would benefit it more. A Scouting player would probably be more benefical than a defensive one, but if you think about it, those scouting armies could also be attack armies too which means, more potential for destroyed resource fields or crops for the opponent. It really does not matter where the opponent have its defenses that much, as you hit all but capitals and the scouting and moving the defensive armies is another mind game you do not have to be part of if you do not want to. The defensive troops you scout might as well not be there when your armies arrive, so better that there are more armies that do than not. Alliances probably invest heavily on protecting their villages from Scouting, especially the ones that matter so, you can just let them and have more attacking troops instead for their to worry about. You can still use scouts as minor squads for raiding and general information.

Lets say you have 10 cities and made 9 offensive armies in each of them. One larger from capital that you support with 1 city, and 8 smaller ones. Lets say all of your 50 allies have similar composition and same amount of vllages than the opposing alliance. That amouts to 50 larger armies and 400 smaller ones. The opposing alliance probably have as little as 100 larger armeis and 50 smaller ones at most. Rest of them are Scouts and Defensive troops, or so called support cities with no army at all. It wont matter if you lose one or two armies, you just build them again and still have more than the opponent. They will defend their capitals and their capitals contain their so called "Hammer" which cannot be in the city as your attacks start arriving, so draining the defensive troops from other cities to capital.

You dont need to raid with raid specific troops or so called Raiding Armies. You have so many offensive ones that you can just use them, it makes no difference. The thing that matters, is that when your alliance goes full offense, all your troops are the best attack types of your given Tribe. Raid units and defensive units go obsolate fast, and scouts are probably as far as i understand, always obsolate beyond raiding. The only units that should matter in the end, are the amount of best fully upgraded attacking units and siege engines you have. The thing might be different in Legends, as you need to protect the Wonder as a team. Alternatively, you could always aim to destroy otrhers and never make one yoruself, but then you cannot win in there as the winning condition is upgrading that building to 100. In Kingdoms i believe, you gain the winning condition by acquiring resouroces through offense.

Because of this, i would not choose Gaul as a Tribe in that kind of Alliance, only Romans and Teutons. Still, the Gauls seem to be the most popular Tribe. If you really want 1/9 of your armies to be defensive, Teutons have the best anti cavalry and Romans have the best anti infantry. These could be piled up where the Treasures are located to gain as many armies as there would be members. So each would have one defensve army full of either Spearmen or Pretorian.

If you want to have different offensive roles, then one or more persons might build one larger army and fewer smaller ones, and the rest would build the armies that raid and attack in bulk.

PS. Another Idea: If 2 server would start at the exact same time, the End Game could be the two servers battling it out, and only the winning server would "win" and the winning players would be the top of the winning server.

PS 2. I do not have to research a game involving military strategy much, as i have a lot of experience in this. The game i usually play is Steel Panthers. So building armies and using your "points" efficiently is known to me. It is a game where you choose an army with same point value than your opponent, trying to evaluate what your opponent will do, and then deploy that army and do a battle as turn based military simulation. One thing i have learned, that min maxing your resources and just guessing with pure instinct and experience is way more efficient with a given point limit than actually investing on information gain or similar means - Just use the points to gain more regular troops instead, you will need them. Also, having more brute force almost always wins, especially if you know how to use it. There are also many mind games you can just ignore. But in Steel Panthers, the advantage is strongly in defensive positions, so the best attack is to advance fast and establish the defensive position as far as possible in the same time than flanking and controlling your opponents movement with artillery. To have more assets for this is in my opinion almost always better than specialized and expensive approach with less units. This is the mind set i think also Travian with, but in Travian the stance is different: Defend with Offense when in Steel Panters it is to make offense with defense. In setting like Travian that would probably mean you encircle a city and make a blockade to starve it out, but the game mechanics wont allow that. Then you would of course do it with using defensive troops, and when the opponent tries to break that containment they would have to attack on your position. This would change the way you would have to think about defensive units when the mind is set on offense.

In terms of Travian, the "Points" you have in use means Crop - As in how many troops your crops can support, and this is your supply. To use your supply as efficient as possible is a choise you have to make. It makes up your Troop Composition, which you want to be more efficient than the opponent. If you gain an advantage, multiply it 50 times in an alliance and the advantage grows even wider.

RTS Type of games have this same approach. They have Supply Limits and sometimes the players even destroy their own troops on purpose to free up supply for a better composition.

Quote from Istonius#EN

The thing is, if you play full offense, the opponent have to think about those things you said too.

So if an alliance of 50+ strong players who have the largest offensive capability on the server state in public that they will respond to any approaching, even scouting with full scale attack, targeting all resource and crop fields (no need to target buildings), the would be attacker will have to think about this. That is the form of defense the full offensive approach represents, a threat of stronger counter attack than your attack.

So, when planning to even scout an alliance like that, you have to think about the consequenses. As in, do you want to lose up to 80% of the resource production you or your alliance have and most likely around 1/3 of your troops + face starvation.

If you are in position to do so, you can even state that the retaliation will be used against everyone in the alliance of the player who scout, raid or attack any of the alliances villages or those under its "protection". This way the opposing Kings might be very clear to their vassals, to never scout that alliance. So when you even scout to notice that they have "no defenses", you will be struck bad as a response.

If you would be amassing defensive troops, you would not have that capablity. You only have it because others make part defense part attack, and you go full offense as an alliance. You of course should secure the best farms to raid more, and grow more. You have better capabilities for that if you play strong offense vs defensive or balanced play.

So you use the threat of your counter invasion as a defense.

This is probably a strategy no one uses, or have used before to that extent. So you really do not know how that would go.

To some extent, every large alliance uses a threat of their counter attack as a defense. Even the balanced or defensive types. The weight of the threat however is different if you use your resources on offense.

The ability to Fake Attacks makes this even stronger. Even the opponent uses heavy Scouting and you wont, they wont know what or how its going to happen and you are the one who knows it instead. You can also either hit the capitals with strong forces or leave them all under fake attacks, as the defenses will probably pile up on these cities. This way the smaller armies that you have plenty, that are made instead of defensive armies, will cause havoc on smaller settlements, and sometimes utterly destroy them. Or target one capital with strong force, and leave others under Fake Attacks to give a message, that capitals are not safe, and to force the defensive troops to pile on these locations. Lets say an alliance that had around 500 villages and is hit so that either 450 of them lose all production, or are destroyed, leaving 50 player alliance with 49 cities (50 capitals minus one). They cannot win anymore. Might be you cannot either, but you probably still fare better than them. So the question is, do you really want to Scout ?

If your alliance is not one of the biggest in the server, you cannot hold this policy. Its way harder to do this alone, but a large group of strong people can easily do this, or a similar thing.

And of course, if someone wants to join playing defensively in such an alliance, accepting it would help to grow the alliance in power, but to convince that person to produce attacking and raiding armies instead would benefit it more. A Scouting player would probably be more benefical than a defensive one, but if you think about it, those scouting armies could also be attack armies too which means, more potential for destroyed resource fields or crops for the opponent. It really does not matter where the opponent have its defenses that much, as you hit all but capitals and the scouting and moving the defensive armies is another mind game you do not have to be part of if you do not want to. The defensive troops you scout might as well not be there when your armies arrive, so better that there are more armies that do than not.

PS. Another Idea: If 2 server would start at the exact same time, the End Game could be the two servers battling it out, and only the winning server would "win" and the winning players would be the top of the winning server.

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But what if teleporters come in and take your land or even worse, call you sir?

Quote from Istonius#EN

The thing is, if you play full offense, the opponent have to think about those things you said too.

So if an alliance of 50+ strong players who have the largest offensive capability on the server state in public that they will respond to any approaching, even scouting with full scale attack, targeting all resource and crop fields (no need to target buildings), the would be attacker will have to think about this. That is the form of defense the full offensive approach represents, a threat of stronger counter attack than your attack.

So, when planning to even scout an alliance like that, you have to think about the consequenses. As in, do you want to lose up to 80% of the resource production you or your alliance have and most likely around 1/3 of your troops + face starvation.

If you are in position to do so, you can even state that the retaliation will be used against everyone in the alliance of the player who scout, raid or attack any of the alliances villages or those under its "protection". This way the opposing Kings might be very clear to their vassals, to never scout that alliance. So when you even scout to notice that they have "no defenses", you will be struck bad as a response.

If you would be amassing defensive troops, you would not have that capablity. You only have it because others make part defense part attack, and you go full offense as an alliance. You of course should secure the best farms to raid more, and grow more. You have better capabilities for that if you play strong offense vs defensive or balanced play.

So you use the threat of your counter invasion as a defense.

This is probably a strategy no one uses, or have used before to that extent. So you really do not know how that would go.

To some extent, every large alliance uses a threat of their counter attack as a defense. Even the balanced or defensive types. The weight of the threat however is different if you use your resources on offense.

The ability to Fake Attacks makes this even stronger. Even the opponent uses heavy Scouting and you wont, they wont know what or how its going to happen and you are the one who knows it instead. You can also either hit the capitals with strong forces or leave them all under fake attacks, as the defenses will probably pile up on these cities. This way the smaller armies that you have plenty, that are made instead of defensive armies, will cause havoc on smaller settlements, and sometimes utterly destroy them. Or target one capital with strong force, and leave others under Fake Attacks to give a message, that capitals are not safe, and to force the defensive troops to pile on these locations. Lets say an alliance that had around 500 villages and is hit so that either 450 of them lose all production, or are destroyed, leaving 50 player alliance with 49 cities (50 capitals minus one). They cannot win anymore. Might be you cannot either, but you probably still fare better than them. So the question is, do you really want to Scout ?

If your alliance is not one of the biggest in the server, you cannot hold this policy. Its way harder to do this alone, but a large group of strong people can easily do this, or a similar thing.

And of course, if someone wants to join playing defensively in such an alliance, accepting it would help to grow the alliance in power, but to convince that person to produce attacking and raiding armies instead would benefit it more. A Scouting player would probably be more benefical than a defensive one, but if you think about it, those scouting armies could also be attack armies too which means, more potential for destroyed resource fields or crops for the opponent. It really does not matter where the opponent have its defenses that much, as you hit all but capitals and the scouting and moving the defensive armies is another mind game you do not have to be part of if you do not want to. The defensive troops you scout might as well not be there when your armies arrive, so better that there are more armies that do than not. Alliances probably invest heavily on protecting their villages from Scouting, especially the ones that matter so, you can just let them and have more attacking troops instead for their to worry about. You can still use scouts as minor squads for raiding and general information.

PS. Another Idea: If 2 server would start at the exact same time, the End Game could be the two servers battling it out, and only the winning server would "win" and the winning players would be the top of the winning server.

PS 2. I do not have to research a game involving military strategy much, as i have a lot of experience in this. The game i usually play is Steel Panthers. So building armies and using your "points" efficiently is known to me. It is a game where you choose an army with same point value than your opponent, trying to evaluate what your opponent will do, and then deploy that army and do a battle as turn based military simulation. One thing i have learned, that min maxing your resources and just guessing with pure instinct is way more efficient with a given point limit than actually investing on information gain or similar means. Also, having more brute force almost always wins, especially if you know how to use it. There are also many mind games you can just ignore. But in Steel Panthers, the advantage is strongly in defensive positions, so the best attack is to advance fast and establish the defensive position as far as possible in the same time than flanking and controlling your opponents movement with artillery. To have more assets for this is in my opinion always better than specialized and expensive approach with less units. This is the mind set i think also Travian with, but in Travian the stance is different: Defend with Offense when in Steel Panters it is to make offense with defense. In setting like Travian that would probably mean you encircle a city and make a blockade to starve it out, but the game mechanics wont allow that.

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Hello Istonius

I think you are a bit off topic.

This is a thread talking about improving travian kingdom , not creating travian 2 or games that does not exist.

If you do want to give suggestion, I would suggest you to play a few round of servers first before giving ideas.

I doubt if you ever played this game for once from what you've commented

Quote from Istonius#EN

The thing is, if you play full offense, blah blah

TLDR:

The thing is if "Your" team only play full Offence, then even more reason for "My team" to build Def, you go full on offensive attack us, maybe we kill some or all your Off's, we defended all our important places & you cannot do the same, so then what? You have no troops, but we then can pillage and farm all your treasuries & villages because you have "No Def" so then you lost twice, you lost all your Off & all your treasures & lots of villages, because you think this game should only be about Off

Really ?

The thing is we would not attack your team. If you would play full defensive, we would happily focus on other stuff and let you be.

Result is we would grow faster as we do everything else what you do, but also raid and attack, which you wont do as much with full defense.

Attack forces you to defend, defend does not force you to attack.

Having an offensive approach does not mean you have to attack. It means you have the capability when needed to do so. This is what United States does with their army. Their capability (as in "points") is almost solely used on attacking units (as in Aircraft Carriers and Fighter Jets). It does not mean they attack, but they have the means to do so. US Army Composition is a real world example of this type of thinking. It has other advantages too in the means of Power Projection, making your political weight much heavier than with only defensive capabilities and thus, having your way.

So you not attacking us is good for us, you making defense units in fear of our offensive capability is also good for us, and we not attacking you is also good for us as we wont lose troops, meaning resource and capability to use them to grow, as in to build up our offensive capabilitis in case of a greater foe.

If we would be alone in the server, with only 2 alliances. Then the situation would be different.

One of the main rivals going full defense is only benefical. One less alliance to worry about.

The ideal gain would be only use the offensive capability to gain more offensive capability later, it is an investment for the future. So you calculate do you gain or lose, and only use it if you gain or feel like it.

Using it as a threat in a promise of retaliation is gain, as it will keep the ones harboring offensive thoughts about your alliance at bay. It has similar effect than those defensive troops.

Other teams going full defense is pretty much what we would wish for, as our own defensive capability is low and we thrive on a promise of mutual destruction in a way, that hurts the opposing nation more than us. Both would be crippled in the process so it is not sought after. Using force also have consequences and can lead in gaining enemies. The offensive force should be used to secure growth - as in claiming the best land and farming opportunities which enables your alliance to grow above others. That is the main reason you build it for.

This whole thing relates to the subject and suggestion regarding Fake Attacks. The point is that it seems broken and because of it, offensive type of game seem broken as in, Imbalanced.

"But what if teleporters come in and take your land or even worse, call you sir?"

lol, exactly.

Quote from Istonius#EN

Really ?

The thing is we would not attack your team. If you would play full defensive, we would happily do other stuff and let you be.

Result is we would grow faster as we do everything else what you do, but also raid and attack, which you wont do as much with full defense.

Attack forces you to defend, defend does not force you to attack.

Having an offensive approach does not mean you have to attack. It means you have the capability when needed to do so. This is what United States does with their army. Their capability (as in "points") is almost solely used on attacking units (as in Aircraft Carriers and Fighter Jets). It does not mean they attack, but they have the means to do so. US Army Composition is a real world example of this type of thinking.

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I didn't say we'd go full Def, we'd be both Off n Def

same as in football, you have strikers & defenders (one is weak without the other)

if you want a team that can thrive on a server then a balance of both Off players & Def players is required

if you only build Off, then you will be targetted heavily & will need Def more than you care to realise atm

Might be, i think it depends a lot in your position.

If the Kingdom is small, i am sure they have a lot of that. I think that larger Kingdoms or Alliances can afford to build more offensively and smaller ones are forced to think in a defensive way. Those who dominate over others, tend to rarely think like that.

Thoughts about Heroes / Suggestion:

3 Hero Type to choose from: Warrior, Thief, Mage.

Warrior would be strong against Thief in Individual Combat

Thief would be strong against Mage in Individual Combat

Mage would be strong against Warrior in Individual Combat

Thief gains abilitis that are related to Raiding, Troop Movement or Speed, Stealth / Resource Gain.

Warrior gains abilities that are related to Combat and Troop Support.

Mage gains abilities that are related to cunning or magic. Stronger end level perks or spells might have strong negative drawbacks.

Each hero can choose or advance one special skill or perks for each 10 level of advancement. Perk Tiers open with each 50 level and for example, 3 skills to choose from each perk level which the hero can choose and advance 2/3. (or both, special skills and perks - basic stats like now each1 level, special skills each 10 level, perks each 50 level, new tier each 100 level)

Hero basic stats would differ somewhat. Mage would be the most vulnerable to physical damage and so on, but later gains powerful abalities that might temporarily negate damage partially or completely. (globe of invulnerability, stone skin or similar). Mage would start the weakest but end up the strongest. Thief would be best spport and Warrior best to support troops, as in also very powerful in the late game. Thief would also boost scouting and gain abilities for scouts.

Basically the skills would have a cooldown, which is shorter based on the current skill level on that ability. For example, one use in 48 hours upgrading up to 24 hours. Some could be passive abilitites, always on.

This way players could also customize their heroes for their given role as a Governor. For example, one who specializes in Scouting or Raiding uses Thief. One who specializes on large "hammers" choose Warror and one who specializee on cunning (fake attacks and so), deception and powerful siege effects (end game abilities like Meteor Swarm - which acts like multiple catapult waves).

Mage skills would also be the most versatile, so a combat or support mage would be an option too.

I can later invent the abilities and their tiers.

For example, Here is a quick suggestion for Mage:

ABILITIES: Abilities are Skills with cooldown, that the chracter may choose to use to give one time effects. Abilities have 1-10 levels, increasing the effect and lowering the Cooldown each level.

COOLDOWNS: Short (8h), Medium (24h) and Long (48h). Cooldowns shorten as the Ability Level increases up to half: (4h) for Short, (12h) for Medium and (24h) for Long. (Changed cooldowns to 12, 36 and 72)

PERKS: Heroes gain one Perk each 50 levels, so first perk is gained on Level 50. Characters may only choose two of the three perks, but may also choose to gain lower level Perks even they would be allowed to choose also higher level perks. On Perk Tier III, Heroes may only choose one.

TIERS: Characters gain access to Tier II Perks and Abilities on level 100, and Tier III Perks and Abilities on Level 300.

MAGE ABILITIES TIER 1: (Choose 2)

Cantrip: Enables the use of any Tier I Mage Ability with lowered effect, Low Cooldown (12 h).

Magic Missile: Generates minor Combat Damage. As rest of the combat spells, must be activated before combat and is used on one combat only, Low Cooldown (12 h).

Stone Skin: Makes the Hero resistant to Physical Damage for a short time, Short Cooldown (12 h)

Lighten Load: Enables the accompanied troops to carry more while Raiding, Short Cooldown (12 h)

Quicken: Greatly improves the Hero Travel Speed for some time, Short Cooldown (12 h)

MAGE ABILITIES TIER 2: (Choose 2)

Fireball: Generates Medium Combat Damage and Low Siege Damage, Medium Cooldown (36 h).

Globe of Invulnerability: Makes the Mage Invulnerable for a short period of time, High Cooldown (72 h).

Armor: Improves the Defense Bonus Attribute that is gained from Hero for a Short Time, Medium Cooldown (36 h).

Enchant Weapons: Improves the Attack Bonus Attribute that is gained from Hero for a short time, Medium Cooldown (36 h).

Mist: Conceals Traveling Troops for a time period depending on the Level of Skill, Medium Cooldown (36 h).

MAGE ABILITIES TIER 3: (Choose 2)

Meteor Swarm: Creates medium combat damage and high siege damage, High Cooldown (72 h)

Haste: Improves Hero and accompanying Troop Travel speed, Medium Cooldown (36 h).

Slow: Decreases attacking army Travel Speed that is attacking the location the hero occupies, Medium Cooldown (36 h)

Divination: Scouts any location on Map. Strength of Scouting improves with Skill Level, Medium Cooldown (36 h).

Dispel Magic: Negates any Lower Level spell effects in the same combat than mage with increased Power for each Level of Ability, Medium Cooldown (36 h)

MAGE PERKS TIER 1: (Choose 2)

Quick Learner: Gain one level of any Tier 1 Mage Ability immediately. May be taken 3 times.

Wits: I (Decrease Ability cooldowns by 10%) - II (Decrease Tier Ability Cooldowns by 20%) - III (Decrease Ability Cooldowns by 30%)

Intelligent: I (No Restrictions on choosing Tier I Mage Abilities) - II (No Resrictions on choosing Tier II Mage Abilities) - III (No Restrictions on choosing Tier III Mage Abilities)

MAGE PERKS TIER 2: (Choose 1)

Transmuter: Gain 20% Power on Travel Spells. May be taken three times.

Enchanter: Gain 20% Power on Support Spells. May be taken three times.

Invoker: Gain 20% Power on Combat Spells. May be taken three times.

MAGE PERK TIER 3: (Choose 1)

Archmage: Gain 20% Power on all Spells.

Diviner: Passively reveals attacking armies Troop Size that are attacking the Town the Hero resides in.

Sage: Have no restrictions on learning Tier I & II Mage Perks and Tier I, II & III Mage Abilities.

ROGUE: A Hero that is specialized on Information, Recources and Hero Kill.

THIEF ABILITIES TIER I: (Choose 2)

Backstab: Improves damage against Enemy Hero in Combat, Short Cooldown (12h).

Pickpocket: Generates small amount of random Recources, Short Cooldown (12h).

Scout: Generates scouting information from a location in same way as Scouts with power related to the Ability Level, Short Cooldown (12h)

Blend: If the Hero is traveling alone, he cannot be detected. This skill have rather large duration, Medium Cooldown (36h)

Rumors: Generates a random piece of obscure knowledge of any location within Players quarter of the Map. The information becomes more accurate when gaining Levels on this Ability, but is never more than a glimpse, Medium Cooldown (36h)

THIEF ABILITIES TIER II: (Choose 2)

Poison: Greatly improves the damage done to other Heroes in combat, Moderate Cooldown (36h)

Hunt: Automatially clears amount of location Animals depending on Ability Level. From Level 5 onwards, starts to capture them, Moderate Cooldown (36h)

Extortion: Steals a small amount of random resources from a village within players quarter as it would have been raided successfully, can be negated by Stationary Scouts. After 5+ can target a village anywhere in the Map, Moderate Cooldown (36h)

Information Network: Scout Action against a location within Players Quarter of the map or Weaker Scout Action against a location within anywhere on Map. Can be made without being in that location, Medium Cooldown (36h)

Misinformation: Next scouting attempt on the Heros location produces misinformation. Ability Level acts as a power check to see if the power actually does anything and how well it decieves the Scouts that scout the location, Medium Cooldown (36h)

THIEF ABILITIES TIER III: (Choose 2)

Throwing Daggers: Deals an amount of damage to Enemy Hero in combat which is calculated before the combat, Short Cooldown (12h)

Smoke & Mirrors: Reduces Damage the Hero recieves in this combat from 20% to a maximum of 80%, Short Cooldown (12h)

Shortcut: Shortens the time Hero and any accompanyng Army travels to the location, Long Cooldodwn (72h)

Coercion: Steals an amount of chosen resource (or little of each) from any village, Can be negated by Stationary Scouts, Long Cooldown (72h)

(one missing here)

THIEF PERKS TIER I: (Choose 2)

Cutpurse: Generates small daily income at random. May be taken 3 times.

Outlaw: Generates extra loot from Bandit Camps and Hideouts. May be taken 3 times.

Ranger: Improves Hero Travel Time on map when traveling alone 20%, 40%, 60%. May be taken 3 times.

THIEF PERKS TIER II: (Choose 2)

Merchant: Improves Resource Gain from Hero Attribute 10%, 20%, 30%. May be taken 3 times.

Scout: mproves accompanying Scouts Scout Capabilities. May be taken 3 times.

Beastmaster: Improves the strength of Nature Troops within the Heros location. May be taken 3 times.

THIEF PERKS TIER III: (Choose 1)

Guildmaster: Able to improve Recources Attribute to 200/200.

Weaponmaster: Able to learn Tier I Warrior Abilities.

Arcanist: Able to learn Tier I Mage Abilties.

Quote from Istonius#EN

Might be, i think it depends a lot in your position.

If the Kingdom is small, i am sure they have a lot of that. I think that larger Kingdoms or Alliances can afford to build more offensively and smaller ones are forced to think in a defensive way. Those who dominate over others, tend to rarely think like that.

If you attack a kingdom with defence, your army will die and You need to make more to attack again. If someone attacks you they lose nothing and can attack again when the troops are back.

Quote from Istonius#EN

The thing is, if you play full offense, the opponent have to think about those things you said too.

So if an alliance of 50+ strong players who have the largest offensive capability on the server state in public that they will respond to any approaching, even scouting with full scale attack, targeting all resource and crop fields (no need to target buildings), the would be attacker will have to think about this. That is the form of defense the full offensive approach represents, a threat of stronger counter attack than your attack.

So, when planning to even scout an alliance like that, you have to think about the consequenses. As in, do you want to lose up to 80% of the resource production you or your alliance have and most likely around 1/3 of your troops + face starvation.

If you are in position to do so, you can even state that the retaliation will be used against everyone in the alliance of the player who scout, raid or attack any of the alliances villages or those under its "protection". This way the opposing Kings might be very clear to their vassals, to never scout that alliance. So when you even scout to notice that they have "no defenses", you will be struck bad as a response.

If you would be amassing defensive troops, you would not have that capablity. You only have it because others make part defense part attack, and you go full offense as an alliance. You of course should secure the best farms to raid more, and grow more. You have better capabilities for that if you play strong offense vs defensive or balanced play.

So you use the threat of your counter invasion as a defense.

This is probably a strategy no one uses, or have used before to that extent. So you really do not know how that would go.

To some extent, every large alliance uses a threat of their counter attack as a defense. Even the balanced or defensive types. The weight of the threat however is different if you use your resources on offense.

The ability to Fake Attacks makes this even stronger. Even the opponent uses heavy Scouting and you wont, they wont know what or how its going to happen and you are the one who knows it instead. You can also either hit the capitals with strong forces or leave them all under fake attacks, as the defenses will probably pile up on these cities. This way the smaller armies that you have plenty, that are made instead of defensive armies, will cause havoc on smaller settlements, and sometimes utterly destroy them. Or target one capital with strong force, and leave others under Fake Attacks to give a message, that capitals are not safe, and to force the defensive troops to pile on these locations. Lets say an alliance that had around 500 villages and is hit so that either 450 of them lose all production, or are destroyed, leaving 50 player alliance with 49 cities (50 capitals minus one). They cannot win anymore. Might be you cannot either, but you probably still fare better than them. So the question is, do you really want to Scout ?

If your alliance is not one of the biggest in the server, you cannot hold this policy. Its way harder to do this alone, but a large group of strong people can easily do this, or a similar thing.

And of course, if someone wants to join playing defensively in such an alliance, accepting it would help to grow the alliance in power, but to convince that person to produce attacking and raiding armies instead would benefit it more. A Scouting player would probably be more benefical than a defensive one, but if you think about it, those scouting armies could also be attack armies too which means, more potential for destroyed resource fields or crops for the opponent. It really does not matter where the opponent have its defenses that much, as you hit all but capitals and the scouting and moving the defensive armies is another mind game you do not have to be part of if you do not want to. The defensive troops you scout might as well not be there when your armies arrive, so better that there are more armies that do than not. Alliances probably invest heavily on protecting their villages from Scouting, especially the ones that matter so, you can just let them and have more attacking troops instead for their to worry about. You can still use scouts as minor squads for raiding and general information.

Lets say you have 10 cities and made 9 offensive armies in each of them. One larger from capital that you support with 1 city, and 8 smaller ones. Lets say all of your 50 allies have similar composition and same amount of vllages than the opposing alliance. That amouts to 50 larger armies and 400 smaller ones. The opposing alliance probably have as little as 100 larger armeis and 50 smaller ones at most. Rest of them are Scouts and Defensive troops, or so called support cities with no army at all. It wont matter if you lose one or two armies, you just build them again and still have more than the opponent. They will defend their capitals and their capitals contain their so called "Hammer" which cannot be in the city as your attacks start arriving, so draining the defensive troops from other cities to capital.

You dont need to raid with raid specific troops or so called Raiding Armies. You have so many offensive ones that you can just use them, it makes no difference. The thing that matters, is that when your alliance goes full offense, all your troops are the best attack types of your given Tribe. Raid units and defensive units go obsolate fast, and scouts are probably as far as i understand, always obsolate beyond raiding. The only units that should matter in the end, are the amount of best fully upgraded attacking units and siege engines you have. The thing might be different in Legends, as you need to protect the Wonder as a team. Alternatively, you could always aim to destroy otrhers and never make one yoruself, but then you cannot win in there as the winning condition is upgrading that building to 100. In Kingdoms i believe, you gain the winning condition by acquiring resouroces through offense.

Because of this, i would not choose Gaul as a Tribe in that kind of Alliance, only Romans and Teutons. Still, the Gauls seem to be the most popular Tribe. If you really want 1/9 of your armies to be defensive, Teutons have the best anti cavalry and Romans have the best anti infantry. These could be piled up where the Treasures are located to gain as many armies as there would be members. So each would have one defensve army full of either Spearmen or Pretorian.

If you want to have different offensive roles, then one or more persons might build one larger army and fewer smaller ones, and the rest would build the armies that raid and attack in bulk.

PS. Another Idea: If 2 server would start at the exact same time, the End Game could be the two servers battling it out, and only the winning server would "win" and the winning players would be the top of the winning server.

PS 2. I do not have to research a game involving military strategy much, as i have a lot of experience in this. The game i usually play is Steel Panthers. So building armies and using your "points" efficiently is known to me. It is a game where you choose an army with same point value than your opponent, trying to evaluate what your opponent will do, and then deploy that army and do a battle as turn based military simulation. One thing i have learned, that min maxing your resources and just guessing with pure instinct and experience is way more efficient with a given point limit than actually investing on information gain or similar means - Just use the points to gain more regular troops instead, you will need them. Also, having more brute force almost always wins, especially if you know how to use it. There are also many mind games you can just ignore. But in Steel Panthers, the advantage is strongly in defensive positions, so the best attack is to advance fast and establish the defensive position as far as possible in the same time than flanking and controlling your opponents movement with artillery. To have more assets for this is in my opinion almost always better than specialized and expensive approach with less units. This is the mind set i think also Travian with, but in Travian the stance is different: Defend with Offense when in Steel Panters it is to make offense with defense. In setting like Travian that would probably mean you encircle a city and make a blockade to starve it out, but the game mechanics wont allow that. Then you would of course do it with using defensive troops, and when the opponent tries to break that containment they would have to attack on your position. This would change the way you would have to think about defensive units when the mind is set on offense.

In terms of Travian, the "Points" you have in use means Crop - As in how many troops your crops can support, and this is your supply. To use your supply as efficient as possible is a choise you have to make. It makes up your Troop Composition, which you want to be more efficient than the opponent. If you gain an advantage, multiply it 50 times in an alliance and the advantage grows even wider.

RTS Type of games have this same approach. They have Supply Limits and sometimes the players even destroy their own troops on purpose to free up supply for a better composition.

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If you want to play WOW go play that then. Travian already gives perks for hero levels by allowing players to increase hero strength, attack power, defense power, or resource income. It's quite easy to jack a hero up to lvl 250 in the game so your ideas would only make imbalances in the game.

Also, try and simplify your ideas, nobody wants to read a novel.

P.S. You can't win a server without ample defensive players, let alone build the WW.

Things can be balanced if you make them so. Making imbalanced games is poor design. So thats not an issue. Issue is, people dont like the idea of having hero options.

There is different hero speciality for each Tribe already in Travian. For example, Roman hero is different from Gaul, having +100 Attack Power per pick instead of the usual +80. That is Hero Customization to make them feel unique and different.

You dont build WW in Kingdoms. Its Legends, where they try all kind of new things. They even have 5 Tribes and now they are Beta testing 6th. Kingdoms is still stuck with 3 Tribes. You could also argue, that adding new Tribes adds Imbalances in the game and nobody wants them. But some people get bored to always play the same tribes, and want variety.

There is an example in RTS gaming from a company called Blizzard. The only thing that was ever changed in my knowledge in Starcraft 1 was Zerg Spawning Pool price from 150 to 200 because of early Zergling rushes were too dominant. After that, i am not aware they ever changed anything. Its not like the game is simple and easy to balance, they just made it right from the start. Starcraft 2 for example, is probably not even made by the same people who made Starcraft 1, and Starcraft 2 just had a new balance patch. Starcraft 1 have also never added or removed unit abilities. Starcraft 2 have done that tens of times. Its clear which game was balanced better before publishing it.

I do have tons of ideas, but maybe its better that i wont tell them in public.

Quote from Istonius#EN

Things can be balanced if you make them so. Making imbalanced games is poor design. So thats not an issue. Issue is, people dont like the idea of having hero options.

There is different hero speciality for each Tribe already in Travian. For example, Roman hero is different from Gaul, having +100 Attack Power per pick instead of the usual +80. That is Hero Customization to make them feel unique and different.

You dont build WW in Kingdoms. Its Legends, where they try all kind of new things. They even have 5 Tribes and now they are Beta testing 6th. Kingdoms is still stuck with 3 Tribes. You could also argue, that adding new Tribes adds Imbalances in the game and nobody wants them. But some people get bored to always play the same tribes, and want variety.

There is an example in RTS gaming from a company called Blizzard. The only thing that was ever changed in my knowledge in Starcraft 1 was Zerg Spawning Pool price from 150 to 200 because of early Zergling rushes were too dominant. After that, i am not aware they ever changed anything. Its not like the game is simple and easy to balance, they just made it right from the start. Starcraft 2 for example, is probably not even made by the same people who made Starcraft 1, and Starcraft 2 just had a new balance patch. Starcraft 1 have also never added or removed unit abilities. Starcraft 2 have done that tens of times. Its clear which game was balanced better before publishing it.

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popcorn.jpg

Meme Squad arrived.

I think you owe this thread one suggestion now, posting off topic and having nothing to give.

I would suggest you give 5, how can we Improve Travian Kingdoms ?

Quote from Istonius#EN

Meme Squad arrived.

I think you owe this thread one suggestion now, posting off topic and having nothing to give.

I would suggest you give 5, how can we Improve Travian Kingdoms ?

The first 1 or 2 pages are filled with good ideas/things the devs could follow up on.

Imo new features arent relevant as long the game is being plagued by cheating and punishments are (still...) too soft.

Alot of the features on page 1 and 2 are actually requested for years and when i see it already takes over 1 months to get a bit of feedback from the devs, i don't have much hope much will be done.

Yeah i spotted some good ideas there too. For example, a possibility for 5x and 10x servers. Some people would like that. If the server usage seem too taxing, maybe so that only one 5x and 10x is open at once and only after it is finished, it will start again within one week.

Some of them, i didnt think was good or necessary though.

Here is a suggestion that have probably made many times again: Add a special server on Kingdoms too with similar kind of mechanics than in Legends, and 5 playable Tribes.

Quote from Istonius#EN

You could also argue, that adding new Tribes adds Imbalances in the game and nobody wants them. But some people get bored to always play the same tribes, and want variety.

You didn't finish a server so don't talk about all community thanks