Games Walkthrough

Introduction

This guide will explain to you the basics of turning your village into an
economical powerhouse, and it will teach you how to defend your resources
effectively and with minimal expenses. If you want to be a heavy attacker who
leaves behind a series of burning villages right from the start of the game,
this is not the guide for you, although you may find it beneficial to read it
anyway - even heavy attackers will need some economy. However, if you don't mind
biding your time and staying relatively low-profile for about 2 months before
happily and easily grinding those nasty heavy attackers into the dust, please
read on.

Also note that in my opinion, a defensive strategy does not mean you shouldn't
attack. It just means that attacking serves the higher purpose of maintaining a
high growth rate and does not become a goal in itself, and that economy is the
most important goal.

I will try to cover all the fundamental principles, and explain these with
examples. I will also spend some time on the psychological and interactive
aspects of playing a game like travian. After the theoretical part, I will give
a walkthrough for the first 2 months of the game.


Why romans?

Romans have expensive and slow units, why would I want them? A good question,
and this guide could be used without too much trouble by a gaul, and even by a
teuton (although the teuton will have better strategies available). But the good
thing about romans is that their units, while expensive, are the most powerful
in the game. No other race can match the raw power of roman infantry, not even
with cavalry. Praetorians and Imperians are the best specialists in the game,
and legionnaires are among the best generalists. At the start, training costs
really hurt since at that moment these costs are the limiting factor for
military size. Later in the game it is space efficiency that counts, meaning
attack/defence power per unit of crop produced. And that is where Romans shine.
Therefore our strategy will be targeted towards reaching this point as quickly
as possible by putting a lot of effort into building a strong economy and
keeping military and other expenses low during development.


Principles

Have patience
When you start playing, you will quickly notice that Travian is a slow-paced
game at the start and that it takes you weeks or months to get anywhere.
Therefore, the first principle is: have patience! Even though development may
seem slow at times, keep the longer-term goals in mind and you will notice you
are getting ever closer to them.

Set goals
That immediately introduces the second principle: Work towards long-term goals
and don't let events (such as attacks on you) carry you away from them. Instead,
deal with these diversions and then immediately return to your long-term goals.

Maintain exponential growth
The third principle of this strategy is: maintain exponential growth. This means
you continuously have to invest your resources in such a way that they increase
your growth rate. This means you will grow ever faster and faster, allowing you
to eventually catch up and pass people who initially may seem to grow faster.

Don't get into conflicts
You are not out there alone, and people (especially children in web games) are
less reserved than in real life. Many players around you will be immature and
react emotionally and with verbal violence to your actions, or derive enjoyment
from acting bad . Some will even go to great lengths, hapering their own
growth, just to annoy you, others will abuse you if you give them half the
opportunity. The most dangerous (and the rarest) will try to play psychological
games with you.

You cannot avoid this, but you can do a great deal to stay out of trouble. Make
friends, join an alliance, and be polite but firm. Never give in to threats,
harassment or extortion, but don't provoke people by being smug, defiant or
triumphant. Be firm, rational and calm, don't hesitate to call bluff and never,
never, react to insults or do anything that might insult people yourself. Don't
get into pissing contests about who has the most allies. And stay away from the
few really big and organized alliances.

And finally, don't offend people with your actions. Sure, you can attack them,
but don't do it ten times a day, and politely react to messages asking you to
stop without promising to and then breaking your promises. Be honest and open
that you will attack them again if they dont defend themselves. They will still
hate you, but they will be less likely to invest a lot of time and effort in
destroying you.

In short, don't do anything that will get you dragged into long-lasting and
potentially growth limiting conflicts.


Guideline

Based on these principles, we can now formulate guidelines:

1.Most important: invest resources into production fields
2.Only build buildings when you can easily afford them in terms of hourly
production
3.Only build buildings when doing so will make you grow faster
4.Build a minimal defence that is just big enough to make raiding you
unprofitable
5.Build offence to raid inactives and undefended actives only.

Author : http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bentoft/

Source : http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bentoft/romans.txt