Kingdom Positions

Ok, i didnt know. Hope you have a good King. I suppose you do as you are Loyal to him.

All the best Govs are usually taken. I wouldnt want to come in between you and your Kingdom. That wouldnt feel right.

Sounds like things Governors should worry about. The most important decisions for Kings are decisions by which the Kingdom Stands or Falls.

Those are also not things for this Thread. This is about Kingdom Positions.

I have another thread for that, but i wont be focusing on Robbers. Everyone knows enough of them already.

Sure

Well, if they would follow My Guides, they would probably fail in it anyway.

Yeah, spoken like a True Plebian.

Someone with no Grand Vision can never riste to stand above others.

And besides. That is what ThEy want you to think.

And besides, if you would just tell me what to do. It would be all so much easier.

POSITIONS

DEFENSIVE GAUL: Generates Phalanx + Druidrider and pushes Resources to Crop Capitals. Finds the 5 Clay spots in the map for either Cities or Capitols. As a secondary role, some of them might Raid with small number Theutanes Thunder from Inactives further away.

SUPPORT GAUL: Produce Phalanxes and Heduans, which can also used to defend distant Crop Capitals from Cavalry Snipes together with the Attack players possible Spearmen. These Gauls aim to take a 7 or 9 crop as their Capital, and will also produce a small amount of Catapults which might not be upgraded fully in case, that their Heduans are used to attack, but they will still not produce Swordmen.

SUPPORT ROMAN: Generates Legionaires + Equites Cesaris + Catapults in one location which usually aims to be either a City or Capitol with 5 Iron. This army can be used in Attack or Defense, and rest of the locations that produce troops generate Pretorians. As Defensive Gaul, also pushes resouorcs to Crop Capitals. If scouting is decided upon, it is mainly done by one of the Support Romans. Support and Defensive players will prioritize Resources over faster Settling.

ATTACK ROMAN: Have priority to generae Imperians + Cavalry + Catapults on the Crop Capital, but can as well generate a smaller Legionaire based army on a City. There should be fewer attack romans than Teutons, for example in 2:10 ratio and their main objective would be to preserve and generate armies for later stage of the game.

ATTACK TUETON: Have priority on generating large and expendable Clubmen + Teutonic Knight + War Machine armies, and takes priority on Resource Distribution when developing Capitals. Some Attack Teutons might also generate a number of Spearmen on their Support Villages that are located next to a Crop Capital, especially if its 5 Wood or 7 Crop.

DISTRIBUTION: Out of the King and 50 players, on top of Dukes, there will be 18 Attack Governors, 21 Support Governors and 9 Defensive Governors. The Governors are distributed as follows:

KING: 3 Defensive Gauls, 2 Support Gauls, 5 Support Romans, 5 Attack Teutons, 1 Attack Roman

DUKE 1: 3 Defensive Gauls, 2 Support Gauls, 5 Support Romans, 5 Attack Teutons, 1 Attack Roman

DUKE 2: 3 Defensive Gauls, 2 Support Gauls, 5 Support Romans, 5 Attack Teutons, 1 Attack Roman

The Support Romans that may turn to Attack Romans are drafted among the Dukes Governors.

All in all, each Branch have the following positions:

1 Teuton Defensive King

2 Teuton Defensive Dukes

9 Defensive Gauls

6 Support Gauls

15 Support Romans

3 Attack Romans

15 Attack Teutons

18 Teutons, 18 Romans, 15 Gauls

VILLAGE PLACEMENT: Defensive and Support players prioritize settling within the Kingdom Borders to generate Revenue, and produce their City within the Borders. Attack players prioritize on settling near their Crop Locations.

CROP LOCATIONS: Some, but not all of the Attack players will prioritize for fast settling, and if there are plenty of available Crop Locations for example, if the server got low amount of Players, they can be taken by other players prioritizing Supports first and only then, Defensive players. If there are still plenty of locations left, each Attack player may aim for two. One for their Capital, and one for their City. Especially the ones who are in no hurry to settle, producing the city first on a 9 crop, and the capital later on a 15 crop far away. This is also a good solution for a Support player which is then turned into an Attack player. If there are enough Crop Locations, there can be as many as 32/50 Hammers in each Branch. This is only limited by the amoount of Attack/Support players and the number of Crop Capitals they can muster. The Attack Teutons will produce the Hammers fastest, then the Attack Romans and the Support Romans that are not immediately turned to Attack Romans will only generate End Game Hammers.

STRUCTURE: All of the players positions are very simple and clear, and must follow a coordinated doctrine that can be executed within short notice. The Command Structure is made so, that King discusses with Dukes, and each of them distribute orders for their Dedicated Governors (15, 16, 16).

COMMANDER: Commander is one of the two Dukes, nominated by the King. Commanders word outranks the other Duke, when giving a Defensive Order while the King is not Available without any action of the King. A Commander can also give Attack Orders, if the King have first nominated so to a given time frame.

PRIMUS PILUS / FIRST SWORD: Is a ceremonial position that is awarder to the player within each Branch, who among the participating Governors had the highest Attack Score in the last server.

LIUTENANTS: Kings and Dukes nominate one Liutenant among the Attack Governors within their region which supervises is the ordered Attack Pattern coordinated as efficiently as it should, and informs the Rulers of any players for their possible deficiences. Usually the attention of a Liutenant means, that there will be a discussion regarding that govenor, and is that given player even fit for the team, which in extreme cases might result as a demand to renounce their Badge. Liutenans cannot give an Attack Order in any circumstances.

SENTINELS: King and Dukes will nominate one Sentinel from Defensive Governors within their region that can in the time of unexcepted need, coordinate the defenses within their region. Kings or Dukes word always overrides a Sentinels - The Sentinels have a say only if Kings decision is not available, and neither of the Dukes are either available, or willing to give an Order to Defend. And even then, they can only coordinate the Defense within their own region.

PLAYER ACTIVITY: The demand for player activity follows a hierarcy of King - Duke - Attack - Support - Defensive. King and Dukes MUST be active, and Defensive players can be very laid back as long as they have a sitter that can produce infrastructure and send the resources / troops when neccessary.

CONCEPT: Each Branch acts in a similar way to a Franchising concept, that can be copy pasted endlessly, and this is why it is easier to coordinate. The use of Tribes and Governor positions, and the use of Resources is optimized as a concept, that works in a similar way to an Ant Colony building for the Kingdom and not for the Individual. Everyone have their role, and all except the Attack Patterns are kept as simple and repeatable as possible. Each Governor should follow the optimal build paths when building their Infrasatructure, Troops and deciding when to send resources. Each individual can still make their own choises and have their own distinctive style, as long as it does not break the concept by acting outside of their role.

USE OF GOLD: Each player is at least required to buy the +25% resoource bonuses, and the Starting Package that gives you 6k Silver to play with in the beginning is highly recommended. Kings and Dukes are excepted to use NPC trade to trade Resources for Crops and Attack players are excepted to turn Crop to Res and Res to Crop, especially if they are building a 15 crop capital.

RAIDING: Attacking or Raiding anyone that belongs to another Kingdom is Strictly Forbidden, and only availble if that Kingdom have been nominated as a target. There are two type of targets, ones any individual can raid or attack freely - Usually meaning a much smaller Kingdom that resists being Assimilated and are thus nominated as Farms. And Feuds, in which case individual attacking is forbidden and the attacks are always coordinated as a group. This usually means, that the target is a bigger Kingdom that have conducted agression towrads ouer, or one of our Branches. Attacking and Raiding any individual that does not belong to a Kingdom is always accepted as long, as a King or Duke have not marked that individual as a forbidden target. Inactives, be it outside or within any Kingdoms borders are always Legimate targets and attacking any Oasises follow the same rules as it would have been an individual, so an Oasis that have been claimed by another Kingdom can only be attacked if that Kingdom have been nominated as a Target.

KING AND DUKE POSITIONS: I have been thinking about this, and given the strong response, it is one thing that i am a bit unsure about. But i still think this is a matter of play style more than being a superor choise, and that sacrificing positioning to gain 9 or 15 crop for them is a mistake. Their positioning is also mostly dictated by their placement on the map, and can they be adjanced to each other than do they have a crop capital. If not, i except that from time to time, they will need to NPC Trade res for crop to be able to support are the defensive troops that are positioned there. I do not still need a reason for Goverments to place their troops on Kings or Dukes Treasury to only be able to feed them, but except them too do this themselves.

ROLE OF A GOVERNOR: Individual Governors do not need to understand, read, or even agree on any of the above. They only need to understand and accept their own role to follow the orders their superiors have given to them. Which almost always is either a Order to Defend or an Order to Attack which are given to each Governor that are part of that operation at the same time, and the usual patterns are made clear to them before the start of the server.

Had to cut this to a separate message. 10 000 letter limit again.

Made some adjustments for the positions. There is no such position as Defensive Teuton anymore, as it is reserved for Attack and the Defensive aspect of the Tribe is reserved for Kings and Dukes. The reason for that is, because Roman and Gaul bulk already have 50 def against Cavalry, so there is plenty of that and Paladin loses clearly to Druidrider. The tougher wall rarely becomes a factor either, as the ones that got attacked are usually the Attack players and of course, Kings and Dukes. If there is more Crop Capitals available than usual, Support Romans are easily transformed to Attack Romans.

As for Treasury positioning. Taking a 15 crop, making it a City and a Capital, lumping all Resources in the engire Kingdom there and giving the enemy only "one target to strike" is maybe the worst of the ideas that are given to me in this Thread. How i see this, it basically forces you to defend that site every time, lumping up your defenses there making all the rest of your Kingdom vulnerable. Better to have more targets that the opponent must choose from as it also makes your Defensive Choises more unpredictable. In one target setup, no matter how well you know its a setup. You can never just ignore it. This might result on rest of your Kingdom to get easily destroyed. (other treasuries, crop capitals, cities, support villages and all)

If this is the way all the "good Kings" are doing it, defeating them might turn out to be rather easy. That setup basically say to you as an attacker that hey, here is all my defenses, you do not have to attack there but you can freely destroy everything else in my Kingdom. The whole concept of Treasuries does the same, but if there are more of them the targets are less valuable, and might be ignored more easily. This makes the attacker more unsure where to strike, and how to divide their troops and is it even worth it if they by some miracle get caught. Also, if you do this after the attack, the treasuries you are abadoning were crop capitals werent they ? They are not same as nothing, but are in fact high priority targets regardless do they contain Treasuries or not. Emptying them from Treasury does not help at all.

But i suppose you mean, that all the rest are 4446 and that one is 15 that is being defended and then i come again to the same problem. I would not attack the treasuries that are 4446 even they would contain the treasures. I would rather go for a 15 crop capital. Those are way too valuable. If i can Fake Make someone to defend an 4446 just because there are Treasuries, i think it a good choise.

So no, i do not like making one of the Treasuries a high priority target, nor making sacrifices to make them all so.

People who have invited this style might only see one aspect of this game, and that is amassing large amount of troops to one location making it a priority above anything else. I think they are somehow blinded themselves. They also seem to defend their believe in this so strongly, that all other type of gameplay is made impossible to think about. I think this is a flaw, and makes everything more predictable in a game, where the most important thing is to elude and predict how your opponent thinks. So how i see things, many people who think of themselves highly, might only have grasped the surface of strategies that are involved in this kind of play. You are basically conducting a Psychoanalysis on your opponent and these kind of setups can make it way easier than it could be.

So, there are these kind of things beneath that many people might not understand, or be aware of. So as a King, you NEED to know how the opposing King thinks or acts. That is crucial. Way more crucial than lumping all the troops in the same location to gain some kind of imaginary advantage. Or even sacrificing other aspects to be able to do that.

There are some reasons why i am still not entirely conviniced about your methods of play. That are they really as superior as you might think. You of course, might think that i just dont know what i am talking about. But i, on the other hand think i know exactly what i am talking about. This thing does not relate to Travian. There is a Science behind it, and that Science is called Psychology.

How to understand and predict what other people do and why, and how to guide them to make the choises you want them to make. This becomes extremely relevant when you plan your attacks and defenses on a Kingdom wide scale. And gaining and advantage in this, is crucial.

Whe it comes to war in this game. If by making your choises you can make your opponent to attack the locations you want them to attack, and can make them defend those locations you want them to defend is a key to your success as a King. If i cannot make you understad that, i do not know how i can help you.

How i see this King / Duke positioning. You are sacrificing on taking the small advantage, and giving a large advantage on your enemies instead. There is nothing more to me in it, and i do not see it relevant at all. Especially if it hinders my decision making when making the most importat decisios in the game. As in, where to attack and what to defend.

It very much seems, that i see this game from an entirely different perspective than the rest. To me, its a psychological guessing game. To some, it might seem like a game of die hard mechanics. To me, the mechanics are there to gain an advantage on the guessinig game, which is the main point. There is no other uses for it than that. If you win on the guessing game, you win no matter how the mechanics look on either side. As long as they are not entirely unbalanced. Like the other Kingdom being several times larger than the other.

I hope this clears some things for you, if you really do not see this fact.

If you want to see fiction that resolves around this thing, i might suggest an anime called Akagi. The game they play is not Travian but Mahjong. But the two in their core, are very similar. As is Poker but Mahjong is more. But inistead of Tiles or Cards, you have Governors who generate Troops.

In Mahjong, the best way to play might not be to always gather the most valuable hand. Sometimes you need to pretend to have what you dont, hint to things or brute force your way in to destroy the hand the opponent is developing.

I have also noticed, that all players seem to assume, that they are left to produce their hammers uncontested. This might not be the case. Sometimes you have to sacrifice your own build to destroy your opponents aim. And you can never hold on empty dreams, but must be eager to discard them when needed.

I have already seen many this kind of individual play from veteran Travian players. You see an attack coming from the attack leader of a server who is not part of any Kingdom. What do yoo do - Evade because it looks scary. And what does arrive, 50 clubs to steal your Kings Tribute. A bold and irrational, or even a "stupid" move. But it works.

You must be aware of what i wrote above. You just might not be able to relate it to Kingdom Building and the decisions that are made in it. Or at least not to my decisions of what and why.

And iribya have hinted earlier, that she might fake her location where to build an army and so. So she is at least attempting to play the same game than i am. But too bad for her, as that kind of thing wont give her any advantage against me. In fact, the opposite. There might be a King too, that is a similar to all my trying to affect him/her. Might be, that iribya is this way. But on top of that, my composition is very good. So it is usually better than the opponents in itself already. There have also been people, who say they just ignore any talks or other kind of psychology around the game and focus on the gameplay. That they can do, but they cannot ignore the affecting that happens within the game, when using the game mechanics to do so.

These kind of things are usually loops. So you get advanced on something, conduct and take pride on all kind of fancy cleverness and then in the end, realize they are all for naught and what really matters is the basis that you learned when you were a beginner. And actually, that when you advance further, all those fancy shanenigans are nothing but a hinderance to you and wont fool anyone worth fooling. So the way a newbie plays, is actually at the same way less and more advanced than what experienced people come up with. If the player is truly a newbie, it is usually less refined resulting in worse performance but if a veteran plays like a newbie, it is usually because he/she have realized its the way to do it and all that "advanced" stuff is same as nothing. Its usually so, that you do that "advanced" stuff to a newbie, and it wont work because they dont understand the whole idea of it. It only works on other "advanced" people who think the same way than you do. But nothing restricts a veteran to think like a newbie, and become immune to all of that "advanced" mind game they try to conduct on him/her. So how Advanced is that really, if it wont even work on any other people than those who use the same exact thing and to those, it only works because they do use it too. So you might as well stop the whole thing. "Where do i make my hammer" "Where do i make my chiefs" - Newbies do not care, and probably wont even know what Chief does. And neither should you. And after you have done that, all the "advanced" players think you produce your troops from someplace else because of what, and only the newbies think you produce them where you should. So, playing it normally like a Newbie actually plays in your hand. No one would ever guess, that you produce your hammer in your crop capital. Only a newbie does that. And that you are not. So it basically does not matter at all. They might think whatever. And whatever they think, does not matter either.

If you need numbers the thing i mean is this:

If you have 300k offensive troops gathered on one spot as a Duke

vs

You have 270k + 30k of troops gathered in two spots as a Governor

Both of these 270k and 300k are still going to be annihilated if the opponent catches them

The whole utility and value comes to that in the end, do the opponent catch them or not. On top of offensive stance being bad for King or Duke, breaking the coherency of the whole setup.

The advantage you gain for having 300k in one location instead of 270k in one and 30k in one is not clear to me. The result still the same. 300k is not enough to break it, and both armies will be annihiilated if caugth. So there is no real difference that matters.

It doesnt even matter are the numbers 260k + 40k or 250k + 50k. The result is still the same. You have the exact same amount of crops in your use and will have the exact same amount of troops at your disposal. That is what matters the most. And the one who utilizes scouts less, will have more troops when the same amount of crops are divided.

Also, if your Attack Patterns is always the same, and you never split armies, or never use smaller, so called Rain of Fire (RoF) armies and only use big Hammers that strike in one location. You become more predictable. Throwing different kind of attacks at your opponent keeps them guessing. Sometimes you might even end up being caugth while hittinig a location, and still overpower the defenses because the opponent split them on several locations. No one does that ? Well, take a few one of those without defending and you will. Because then you have Experienced what it does to your Kingdom and this Experience starts to dictate your Thought Process.

If you need numbers again and think that support villages do not matter. You Kingdom got 50 players and each of them have 8 villages which 6 of them are seen as support. You have 300 support villages and 40 of them got decimated in one day next to no losses on the attacker (because you did not defend them). Still does not matter ? (And then you see 20 attack waves coming again at your supports - Let this continue and you lose 300/300 of your supporot villages within few days and are left with only treasuries and capitals.)

Your Culture production is annihiated, your Res prod is annihilated and your Troop production and support is annihilated. Basically your Kingdom is decimated - You cannot let this happen.

This is basic military strategy.

Could i also ask, stop quoting DrugsInc in my Threads. This would be much appreciated.

You seem to fail to understand the circumstances. Most of the crop locations are spread all over the map and if you want to take them, you must make villages outside of your borders. Smaller servers work different way than servers with thousands of players, that are clumped up that there is almost no free locations to settle. Smaller servers are usually made so, that there are around 80%+ empty land, where no one have settled, and crop locations are usually available long after the server have started. This is the setup i plan my Kingdom on. As it is only played in Night Pact 1x servers. The server you think it is for, is COM x3 which is isnt.

This is why Attack Players will have to settle on crop locations that might even be far away. I thought this would be clear to all.

Robber Camps is the only reasonable of your comments, as i do not fully understand the mechanics yet. So if you want to elaborate, give me the full mechanics of how Robber Camps spawn.

Other points you make, i think are not improvements, or impliment any changes. You just envision how everything could made as bad as you can think, which i can assure you will not be the case.

Except 250k + 50k armies hit 2 location instead of one. So if 300k and 250k hammers get caugth, 300k hammer does not cause any damage to the infrastructure, as 250k and 50k hammers do, and on top of that you only lose 250k of troops instead of 300k when they are caugth.

This is a bit disheartening, as i get the feeling that veterans of this game do not even grasp the basic concepts of military strategy.

You fail to see, that 300k army and 250k and 50k are fundamentally different, and have different properties on them, so you cannot compare them like you do. Again, you only see the one location you hit, and you suppose the opponent will also do the same. This is why you would lose the exchange as you seem not capable of comprehending any other ways of thinking. So a challenge for you might be to widen your perspective, and start thinking other solutions than always doing the same thing over and over again. You cannot improve if you dont.

These comments make it very clear to me, that you fail to understand my concepts. And that is an advantage to me. You have no clear vision what i would be doing and i know exactly what you will do. These things will come to you as surprises within the game, and then it is too late for you. Later, when you have more Experience, you might predict what is to come a bit better than you can now.

So, at least for the DUKE positions. A certain understanding of basic strategic concepts are required. Which i still am unsure of, do any of the ones who reply here do have. I cannot have a Duke who does not understand what is happening within the Kingdom.

As for robber camps, i found this:

"They spawn randomly within kingdom borders. The number of camps depends on the kingdom size, it may very well happen thst you get none for a long time and then suddenly a lot start to spawn near you"

"randomly" does not seem like some sort of pre arranged formula ?

So i would ask, what is the exact mathematics behind the Robber Camp spawn. And why does my Kingdom supposedly not spawn Robber Camps ?

If you mean that attack players have crop capitals that are outside of your borders. You cannot help that. You have to go where the crop locations are to get them, there is no other way and you are sure to know that too. You take as many of them as you can, no matter where they are on the map. Not going for them would really mean that you have less crops than you could. So, if there is a free crop location anywhere within the map, you should aim for it. I thought this is self-evident.

So i kind of assume when i write, that many things does not need to be explained.

So, you could still qualifiy for a Governor. But understandinig the basic concepts helps them too.

But i gather, that these concepts i am gathering are too advanced, so most of the player base cannot comprehend. The good part is, that it is really not needed for the Governors, but is a must on the Dukes.

The sad part is, that this is all very simple and basic, and yet too complicated for you.

What is probably the case still, that my representation is lacking in itself, and that is the reason you fail to understand what i try to represent in here. This is very likely to case. So this is a challenge for me to improve in. Representing what i want to say more clearly. Still, if no Dukes are found that understand the concepts i represent, the Kingdom can never be formed. This might very well be the case.

Then the benefit would only emerge if some already existing Kingdom gain some inspiration or insigth through this Thread. This is a Guide after all. There really might be some individuals that find some use for it.

These concepts are very simple, so maybe its just me that is complicated. So i gather my representation is seriously lacking and that is bad on my part.