Posts by Three#US(1)

C’est vrai que nous allons voter pour ou contre le delete. Tout le monde suppose que le résultat du vote sera en faveur du delete, mais je ne le pense pas. C’est vrai qu’on ne gagne pas à tous les coups, mais, face à un obstacle, il est plus gratifiant de le combattre que de se soucier du vainqueur. Si vous choisissez cette voie dès le départ, et qu’en plus vous terminez vainqueur, c’est même beaucoup plus glorieux. Il semble que vous vous adressiez à des grandes gu…

Contrairement à la plupart des équipes, nous avons voté pour nos décisions

Hi before we start lets outline the intended audience for this guide

-Your casual (compared to most)

-Your new

-You have no played a server to its finish yet (6 months on normal speed)

In travian there are 3 factions they all have their advantages and disadvantages. In this guide i have selected to play Roman defence as a governor who does not farm other players. In travian you can play offence or defence but it is usually said you only play 1 role. This is because offence is all consuming and usually requires all resources available to play properly.

This is not an offence guide.

There are kings and dukes which receive additional resources because of their position.

This is not a king or duke guide.

Table of Contents

1 Games start

2 Resources

3 Troops for Roman Defender

4 The Start

5 Selecting a cropper

6 Capital City

7 Wide then Tall

8 What troops do you build

9 Treasures and Wounder

10 Why roman.

1 Game start

New player. Please start as a governor because that is what you intend to play. You will notice the map which is basically one big circle with everyone starting in the middle. The mountains which are placed around the edges of the circle and one in the very centre are where the wounder spawn. Eventually the whole game is centred around wounder and are the end game. As a new player you will be offered to menhir which basically means teleport to another king or dukes treasury to play for that team. Choose wisely because once things get started you will not be able to move anymore and you are stuck with the team you chose. Some hints for helping you choose the right team is a good team will spawn villages beside an outlying wounder and then menhir you to that wounder. If the player you are talking to have what looks like bronze silver or even gold stripes they are an experienced player.

2 Resources.

There are four resources three of which are generic and a fourth which is crop resource. Resources are power in this game and can be turned into troops or more resource income. Thats it. In this game there is something to be said for striking a balance between investing in your resource income and then building troops to defend. Troops once built will consume resources passivity (crop) but since the game lets you gold any resource into anything at a one to one ratio we will just say troops consume resources. 1 basic trooper consumes 1 crop an hour.

3 Troops for Roman Defender

Troops in this game are very basic i will not go into the exact details of every troop but as a roman defender you will only really build 1 type of trooper and that it. The praetorian. you should also build some cavalry scouts but they should never fight and are just a side note.

4 The Start

So this is not a start guild and instead of telling you what to build build for build we will talk about goals and priorities.

5 Selecting a Cropper

In travian everyone rushes their second village first. There are many guides you can find which outline how to do this. The purpose of the second village is to settle a cropper. there are unique tiles which have more crop fields then other fields. there is the 15 tile cropper and the 9 tile cropper. they are the big money in this game and selecting which cropper to take is an art in itself. 15 croppers are more valuable more sought after and require you to spend more on the game (money) to be viable. Which is why I will suggest going for a 9 cropper. There is another large reason for selecting a 9 cropper for your start which we will go into.

When selecting your cropper there are things to keep in mind. It will be the centre of your operations. You will want to settle a large majority of your own villages around it. This is why you want to settle a cropper near your own team, not in the middle of no where. Hopefully you will make this cropper your capital, which means that its your only location resource fields can be upgraded indefinitely. A village can only upgrade its fields to 10 while a city can go to 12 if it is a non capital. The quality of a cropper tile is determined by the oasis near it. the oasis can only be 3x3 tiles away from cropper tile to be utilized. They are %bonuses to resource income, and surprise surprise the oasis you want are crop oasis.

6 Capital City

So once you've read the speed settle guide and you have settled your 9 cropper of choice. Your next goal is to upgrade that 9 cropper. You should ideally upgrade your starting villages fields to all 5 then start traderouting everything to your cropper (don't forget to make your cropper your capital).

You need to spend gold to unlock traderoutes*

Your goal for your 9 cropper is to reach 500 population before your next culture slot becomes available.

Its like a race.

(Side note if you got not cropper please your starter as the 9 cropper for this advice)

Some things to keep in mind is you need troops, as a roman you should have legionnaires at the very beginning and a ballpark of around 100-200 before you exit beginner protection. after you have 250 legions you should produce prats to compliment them.

When you do go city you should have 1 of every resource field type at 10 and everything else at 8. This is because the magic 10 unlocks unique buildings which give % bonuses to resources and also give population.

You should also be building village buildings the entire time you are working on your resource base. This is because Romans are the only faction that can do this.

Near the end when you are about to go city you will find yourself building useless buildings just for population. Anything and everything. Pay attention to how much population you gain for upgrading that building and then also how much it costs to do so. For example the Stonemason is what you want to achieve cheap population.

Once you make your capital a city you can breath a sigh of relief. The reason we do this is because if your capital is a city it generates a bonus 500 culture a day. This is like alot alot alot.

You will notice because you will see that your next culture slots will come very quickly after this.

7 Wide

After you've made your cropper a capital city, the flow of resources should reverse.

You want to send resources out of your capital to your various villages so you can upgrade them faster.

This is because resource fields have what is called diminishing returns.

The first few ranks of a resource field cost nothing compared to what they give, and the returns diminish with each rank.

Which is why you don't want to immediately upgrade your capitals fields to 18 instead you would rather improve your resource base in your other locations.

Celebrations are a way of gaining culture in exchange for resources.

You should ideally be always holding a small celebration in your capital city and maybe large celebrations in your smaller villages

You ideally want to start holding large celebrations in your side villages when your culture gen is around 2k a day.

This allows you to spawn more villages faster, then thus upgrade your resource base. (which is power)

then Tall

Once you have finished about 4-5 complete villages you want to now go tall.

You want to stop celebrations traderoute everything to your capital, and rush build its resource base with gold.

To give you an idea this should be occurring on day 60-70 server age.

8 What troops do you build

A roman defender should build legions at the start because of their duality for clearing robbers then also defending. but once that is covered build prats. The preat is famous for taking forever to build, to counteract this you either

A: have a high rank barracks

B: Build in other locations

I will not tell you troop counts you should have at different stages because maybe you lost or maybe you didn't lose any at all, but there are some things to keep in mind when deciding how many troops you need. Do you think your going to be fighting soon? maybe maybe not.

Troops consume resources so building them not only costs time and money but also passively eats your money.

I will say however building in other locations is a valuable way you defeat the preats build time. So please upgrade and use other villages to build them, not just your capital.

9 Wounder and Treasures

In this game treasures in a treasury will passively produce Victory points, scored when the game ends.

Wounder unlock the side not when posted at the wounder consume 1/2 crop for all troops

In this game you desire to control treasures while using wounder as the end game plan.

You want to build villages ideal within kingdom borders, near your capital, and near the wounder

eventually you want a mix of all 3.

10 Why Roman

Truly you don't have to be roman if your Gaul its phalanx, if your teut its spearman, and those are your following dominant trooper.

The other factions have cavalry defensive troops which means they can build faster.

Tips for Gold

While advancing your empire of villages remember you can always gold crop into more resource fields.

Gold truly helps when used in the right situations but can be used sparingly to good effect.

Main building is great for building your village faster. 10 or 15 is recommended.

I can not answer your question for predicting the size of robber camps, but yes it is based on number of troops you own, size and age of server. I would not overly concern yourself on predicting its size because basically

The more successful you are the stronger your robber camps are

there is no way of avoiding this

To help answer your question on how to deal with robber camps as a def player, Gaul has it the easiest.

You can let the robber camp hit your traps before you attack the robber then clear the robber camp and the troops will magically disappear from your traps

Another advantage Gaul have is they can build Hauds which are a duel role troop for clearing robber camps then serving as a defensive troop when the time comes as well

Scouting needs a rework in my opinion the current system where defender loses no troops has created a very flawed environment.

Because the defender loses no troops this game within travian been reduced to detecting if they were looking but not preventing them from looking at all.

preventing someone from looking entirely is close to impossible because if 1 scout survives they still get the report.

So why make the defender lose troops from scout attacks? wouldn't that make it worse?

I disagree, if you make the defender lose scouts and receive at some kind of ratio (say the defender gets a 50% bonus to its scout count when fighting) it would do a number of things, and then reactionary things as well.

First reaction is attackers would build more scouts, (because they can finally kill yours)

Second reaction is defenders would start building more scouts (and more then just enough to detect a scout attack)

Third reaction is you would have information wars where one kingdom try's to destroy the opponents ability to defend from scout attacks

Now if defenders were to finally lose troops at some kind of ratio (instead of just never) you got to make defending from scout attacks more meaningful (as a team game)

They should probably show up on the map as incoming attacks (i suggest a blue arrow to signify scouts only) Sorta like robbers are grey.

You could also make defending against these attacks harder (since they now show on the map for once)

You could create some kind of formula where a scout attack would only show up within the last hour or so before landing.

You could also make it so the more scouts sent, the longer the distance, and level of the rally point? (oo thats a good one) and the smithy level of the scouts (WHO DOES THAT) determine the amount of warning time you get for the attack.

Some interesting things as a defender and attacker this brings to the tribes is also debatable.

Roman scouts will be king after they unlock the horse trough,

Teuton scouts will be early game king

and Gaul will be middle of the road.

/debate

Quote from Be2-e4

I usually recommend one haedu-village, otherwise only phalanxes and optionally a few druid villages to def accounts in my kingdom, the last one highly depending on the general kingdom state.

Yes I totally agree haedu's are a 1 village

An underappreciated fact about the game is every type of troop has a place.

Haeduan are essentially the Gauls Legion

A duel role troop that is good in offense and def they come at a premium however so why on earth would you build them as a defensive player over cheap phalanx or druid riders.

Well before i go into my best reasons why i will tell you a very basic reason why.

You must clear robber camps as an effective governor and why tie up crop consumption in def-less swordsmen and thunders when you can have a trooper which will clear these camps but still preform well in def.

That is the basic concept that most players grasp and appreciate however what i will point out next is something most players do not understand well.

They consumes 3 crop so i put in brackets what def they have in terms of 1 crop (so they are comparable)

When you smithy a troop there stats change however so lets study them when fully upgraded.

An Haeduan has

88.1 Inf Def (29.36)

208.8 Cav Def (69.6)

Now lets compare them to the Druid Rider (there immediate competitor in the role)

145 Inf Def (72.5)

76 Cav Def (38)

Now I am going to show some quick math to highlight there average def by combining inf def and cav def (the number in the brackets) then dividing by 2 to give a defensive value which ignores unit type

Haeduan Total

(98.96/2= 49.5)

Druid Rider Total

(110.5/2= 55.3)

So why did i do that? well as it turns out Cav def and Inf is unanimous once you are dealing with a balanced attacker

What do i mean by balanced attacker?

If your attacker has about equal attack values in inf offense and cav offense that is a balanced attacker.

As it turns out when defending against a balanced attacker both defensive values are munched together by the game and your troops preform based on their average def.

Let me Highlight this with examples

If you don't believe me run these examples in the simulator and discover for yourself

75 clubs attacking 50 Haeduan

Attacker loses 100% defender loses 100%

Now lets add 20 Knights to the attacker to make it a balanced force

keep in mind we just added alot and i mean alot more attackers but how do the 50 Haeduan preform now?

75 clubs and 20 knights attacking 50 Haeduan

attacker loses 91%

Now lets add only 20 haeduan to the defender side because that's only fair if the attacker gets extra as well

75 Clubs and 20 knights against 70 Haeduan

attacker loses 100% defender loses 66%

See where I am going with this?

All late game hammers will have a fairly balanced force there fore we should only be paying attention to there combined average def which was

49.5 for had's

55.3 for riders

when you really think about it Druid Riders only preform 10% better then Haeduans per crop, not to mention you can now clear robber camps and when defending with Had's I would not be overly concerned about there lack of inf def.

Another point is when sniping attacks more often then not the pesky ones are pure cav attacks when defending against pure cav attacks the had's give almost a breathtaking 70 def per crop while your riders will get squashed at 38

but oh wait i will because upgrading your capital to a city is a significant advantage, please someone back me up on these fools

Quote from Be2-e4

Do never upgrade your village to a city

I will do never that

haters only hate

THE TROOPS

Phalanx

Your bread the phalanx is the cheapest def per resource unit in the game decent speed and fairly balanced stats.

Swordsmen

Your early game raider, robber camp clearer, and is good to notice has the same amount of inf def as a phalanx. (WHAT?)

Thunders

Your raider with ridiculous speed and good carry capacity. Expensive per power but why need power when you never fight?

Druid Riders

Your answer to heavy inf armies, think of it as your butter for your bread. Slightly more expensive then phalanx.

Haeds

They are jam to your favorite sandwich. Sniping enemy cav farmers. Very expensive, Very Late game, Very tasty.

How I play it out the first 2 weeks troop count wise.

· No real troops to speak of. Maybe 20 swords?

· Second village.

· 100 phalanx 100 swords

· Beginners protection ends.

· 250 phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders

· Get that level 10 emmisary? (fields should be at least 7)

· 500 phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders

· Go to city. (you should have 1 resource tile at 10 rest 8 and build the % bonus building to rank 3)

· Build fields in your lesser village to 5.

· 750 phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders

· Consider rushing a second emissary?

· 1k phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders.

· And that’s all folks!

Your troops should always be at an oasis at the begging on the game, with your main town and then cropper town you should have 2 oasis’s available to you (hopfuly) or at least 1

You use to swords and thunders to break the easy targets, you are not the kingdoms muscle, just the janitor.

Picking Village locations.

Coppers? But don’t go too far. Your best bet is a player who quits/inactive and his tile becomes available, keep an eye out every day by zooming out on the map displaying croppers on the map and then notice any tile without a box around it.

Oasis are your key to victory take a look at your kingdoms map, pick those tiles which are heavy a resource next to an oasis of that resource type or 50% CROP Oasis or better yet 2 very good oasis.

Keep in mind you have to beat the other players at that oasis. For control. Pick Oasis’s which have weak small in size players near it. Build as close as possible to both oases

Location is somewhat irrelevant as long as it’s within your kingdom.

A normal tile with a 50% crop oasis in your kingdom and another 25% crop oasis nearby is actually on par with a 9 cropper in crop production, and will also produce more resources to boot.

Once you have as many Oasis’s covered as possible, Build strong holds,

Cluster your villages, around your city, or by your treasuries or the wonder.

Why cities or why villages?

2 Village produce more for cheaper investment then 1 maxed out city

However there are reasons you go city

Your 3^rd slot should always be city in your starter village because of the flat 500 culture it gives (instead of the normal 200 for none capital cities)

Go Cities if your kingdom is weak, it’s easier to defend 1 place then many. You can feed a larger army in 1 place passively and present a harder target

Spread out if your kingdom is strong, go as many villages as possible and get those oases!

In the late game you will always upgrade your 9 and 15 croppers to cities, flat out because a city cropper will produce more crop then a village cropper and a normal village (there’s only so many of those special tiles don’t you know)

How do you organize your villages?

There are 3 types of villages, You should have a ratio of 2-3 placeholders per Defensive stronghold

And your defensive strong holds should be your croppers

Placeholders which have 3 crannies and a trade route setup to transfer the resources out every hour to your strong holds, you never build smithy barracks or troops or anything really in the placeholder, just the fields. Think of them are your farm.

Defensive strong holds which have a bunch of troops posted, high walls, and good location (Defensively) this is where you max out your smithy and barracks to 20.

Your 1 and only robber camp clearer which will have 1k swords and Haeds and a single ram, this 1 village should always exist throughout the game, coming into the late game you stack Haeds in the village so it becomes a dual role village. You siege the robber camps with this village, and get value, Swords are cheaper per resource per power, but Haeds are duel role and are worthwhile for that reason. Your hero should be based in this town.

Interesting Tips,

If your in the mid game where you control about 4-5 villages and you actually start upgrading your smithy, there is a certain strategy I like to use as long as my opponent is not breathing down my neck and I have a lot of time to build my troops

I will build all of my troops in 1 location and send them to defend my other villages (also to just feed the buggers), but their place of origin is 1 place

You ask why?

Because you will only have to upgrade 1 smithy and 1 smithy only. To affect your entire army.

This strategy becomes a little cumbersome after a while, however it has merit, especially if you have time.

Gaul is the only faction which can produce defensive troops from both cav stables and inf barracks at the same time

This is why you keep druid riders in your back pocket, I personally suggest stacking phalanx and nothing but phalanx because you get much more bang for your buck from them

until you lose troops and are trying to recover troops as fast as possible, then you build both types.

Anticipate this and upgrade your stables for this reason ahead of time lvl 10 is a good starting point.

Druid riders are also your butter, and if your finishing off your army (crop consumption wise) build them at the very end as bread with butter tastes much better.

As for Jam, Jam is for those special dukes who have the income and nothing to do but sit around and wait to snipe cav attacks and boy are they good at sniping and defeating cav attacks.

Quote from Bigheaded#EN

I wouldnt even call it a post beginners protection guide. It's just a very long way of suggesting:

As gaul: get 2 cranny, third if needed

get a level 7 trapper (upgrade upto level 12 if needed)

Make use of oasis bonus. (if the bonus doesn't work, it's because the oasis needs to be attached to your kingdom, the guide didn't add this bit )

This literally covers a maximum of the first week. Ideally like day 2-3.

Is this for both of your villages?

I'm also presuming you're expecting your reader to have common sense of when to build them, but saying this common sense is that if you're being attacked and you can't repel the attacker is to get cranny's.

Nothing wrong with going overboard, but 4 bullet points sums this up.

I have high hopes for part 3 where getting a city, town hall expanding comes into play as there's too many first week guides and not enough main play guides.

Display More

This is true good summary Big Head

I will spend more time on the mid to late game Gaul Guide

You may care to listen to what I have to say as I ended Com 7 slow speed server as Gaul with the most troops in my kingdom (aside from my king) numbering over 100k worth of crop consumption troops all at max rank smithy. I was Number 14th defender on the server but would have been higher if I had actually lost my troops. I was also the Number 1 contributor to the wounder, by a long shot.

One thing I will point out is that every single type of troop to Gaul posses is essential to their success. (they all have a good place and should at certain points be built)

If you read my Stage 1 guide to a strong start, you would quickly realize I am a defensive village builder at heart.

Let me now discuss what I as a player would do post settling my 9 cropper (which was as close to me as possible) as a defensive Gaul player.

In this early game to mid game guide i will talk about the under appreciated strategy of being an ugly target that just grows and grows.

• Cranny
  
• Oasis's
  
• Trapper
  

1- Cranny

If they can't loot anything they are not going to attack

This is a very simple concept. They scout you, they see you have no available resources to loot... They never attack.

At the very start coming out of beginners protection 1 max rank cranny does serious work.

You can do the math yourself or you can trust me when i say it gives you at least an 8 hour buffer before anything it loot able in your town.

As you develop you build a second cranny (cuz were trolls) and you always maintain that 8 hour buffer so you can sleep like a normal human being but still be a competitive player.

Cranny's are very cheap and will do more work then you realize.

This leads into my next point

2- OASIS

Because there is nothing to loot, why defend your village. They could be doing so much more. They could be farming an oasis!!!

all those troops you built can now be farming a duel oasis that your kingdom owns, the resources they produce will feed their upkeep and produce 1 additional resource of that oasis's type.

WHY WOULDN'T YOU?

Some underappreciated facts about oasis's is some of them have what you call a wall.

They give % def bonus's to troops in them. at the begging this is so much that it is more then your wall will grant.

So be smart, pick that oasis with the higher % def, post all your troops and hero in it, and congratulations you just became a tougher target.

WHILE MAKING MORE INCOME!?!

If i go over the max troops which can produce in that location i will usually troll and just send more then 250 to the oasis, for the following reasons.

-United your troops are stronger

-More troops stationed means higher chance you will be the top person in that oasis.

Another Underappreciated fact is a trooper farming an oasis is on par to a resource field improvement post level 5

Resource fields have diminishing returns. You must pay more to get the same increase in income.

Once your fields are all at 5 you may as well build that 250 troops right then and there, because those troops will produce the same amount for the same cost, but then again, there also troops.

Unlocking the Second oasis slot is situational (depends if you have a good second oasis to choose from) But you should seriously consider it once you become a city, or just before becoming a city in your main village.

3-Trapper

Since none of your troops are home its time to dig deep and have some kinda deterrence.

The bane of every good player.

The last thing they want to see.

Your best friend that consumes no crop.

A level 7 trapper is what i suggest building the day you come out of beginners protection. It will trap 100 troops costs nothing to build, expect the traps themselves add up to costing more then the building itself.

Traps will capture as many as they can. some times this is everything. If that occurs it is the best strategy to release the enemies troops and just laugh at them. This is because they will get their friends and break your traps anyways. And Traps cost alot. So why do that?

If you peacefully release the troops the traps never break they repair, and you do not have to build more. they quickly realize you have alot of traps and they steer clear of you.

Sometime they attack with too much, and then traps break killing 25% of the troops. This could be worse then it sounds, because 25% of a units cost, is almost = to your traps cost. Both sides lose, and he hates you because he lost troops when he didn't think he would.

Next time I log on when this occurs I will spend everything on rebuilding those traps.

I will then send a msg to that player which is short and politely says hey i just logged on, and I just rebuilt all of my traps just for you...

!~ENJOY~!

This strategy usually gets amazing results, as long as you log on regularly that is and dutifully rebuild those traps.

So what makes traps so frustrating to the elite players?

I will tell you.

YOU CAN NOT OUTNUMBER TRAPS

The single biggest thing large players have going for them when killing and looting smaller players is they can outnumber their opponent and have minimal loses.

But traps are different.

THEY ALWAYS KILL 25% which resource wise is <TIT FOR TAT>

AS A FARMER THOSE PLAYERS THAT DID THIS I WOULD HATE, TRY AGAIN, HATE, AND EVENTUALLY LEAVE THEM ALONE BECAUSE IT WAS NOT WORTH MY TIME?

****************Please note that trappers and cranny's fall off as you become larger.****************

Trappers are not worthwhile investments over level 12ish

Cranny's can only protect so much once your income becomes higher and you need to post troops, I do not suggest over 3 crannys and you will eventually deconstruct them because you need the space.

This is a post beginners protection early game guide

I believe my strategy is designed better for the average player

people breaking out of beginners protection with no army or wearing chicken boots rather are easy pickings, they are what most people thrive on, We all go to sleep we all look away from our compu from time to time

You don't nessesarily have to build a defensive army, I think my point was you should sit in beginners prot for a bit to have some kind of army coming out the gates

Hi Guys and Gals,

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the classic

build crop fields to 3 rush the residence and grab a cropper as fast as you can; deconstruct your starter village then sit in BP as long as possible strategy.

Its a very successful strategy used by many however I have a different approach.

• You will have a larger resource base in the same amount of time as these "cropper rushers"
• You can still grab those croppers before most, realistically you will get a 9 cropper
• You will get out of BP faster and with a larger army

So In my guide I will not discuss every step by step of how you build the village but I will just talk about the differences in my strategy.

I will rush crop fields and resource fields all to level 3 as fast as possible and cash in their corresponding quests

Once I have everything at 3 I will then begin rushing my second village,

• I too will build the residence to 5 use the quest to reach 10.
• build 3 settlers as fast as possible.
• deconstruct the residence and cash in that resources to hold a celebration.

Because I built my resource fields all to 3 and no further, I will be reaching that race to 3 settlers later then the people planning on deconstructing their starter.

So the Key difference in my starting strategy is I WILL NOT DESTROY MY STARTER

Once I have realistically settled that 9 cropper I will change my strategy again.

This is essential, because you want to now delay reaching 200 between your 2 villages as long as possible.
If you were smart you would have only built 5 additional troops for the quest and be sitting at 13 troops + hero when you settled your second village.
Beginners protection is now your best friend because you are easy farm otherwise.
I start building spears, phalanx or prats in my main village depending on my faction. Since you are not deconstructing your starter, you will be dangerously close to surpassing 200 pop right off the bat.

Here are some key note tricks to suppressing your population but still being productive, as you build your army.

• Crop fields give no population until after level 5
• A wall up to level 4 gives no population
• DO NOT BUILD A STABLES
• DO NOT BUILD YOUR BARRACKS UP PAST 3
• DO NOT REBUILD YOUR RESIDENCE LOL THEY COULD NOT CHIEF YOU IF THEY WANTED TO
• DO NOT BUILD ANY MORE RESOURCE FIELDS IN EITHER VILLAGE THEY GIVE MUNDO POP

All of your investments should thus be into building crop fields to 5 in both your villages while building defensive troops in only your main town,
(DO NOT BUILD BARRACKS IN YOUR CROPPER YET OR CRANNY OR OMG ANYTHING REALLY JUST THOSE CROP FIELDS)
on a side note you'll want to build a level 1 market place and setup a trade route to your main town to move the resources it produces out.
All the while you should be building your army. The size of your army exiting Beginners protection should be very large because you have a nice fat resource base between your 2 villages. I usually exit on day 4 or 5 depending on how a feel about my neighbors.

I fully suggest waiting until you have an army numbering around 100 defensive troops with hero depending on your environment.

Once you leave beginners prot your going to want to build a cranny in your cropper and enough trade route so that they can never loot any crops from it.

You never defend your cropper. It is just a placeholder If they can't loot anything from it, its just a fancy waste of time to them. because they do not have catta.

By day 4 or 5 my 9 cropper will be just as developed as a deconstruct rusher, I will have a larger army, and I will have a second village with all fields at 3.

You will not be top of the population rankings because only bad people think that matters.