Building A WW Army

A World Wonder Army is a super large army built for only one purpose – to cata the World Wonder village of enemy alliances. It is a one shot army, meaning once it is sent to attack an enemy WW village, it will never come back. The WW army will do as much damage as possible, and also die in the process.

Here are some examples of WW Armies:

There is no restriction to the size limit of WW Armies. The bigger, the better. Sorry to be a nag, but I want to quash all doubts that there is no such a thing as too big.

The size of the WW army is only constrained by building time. As you can imagine, it takes many months to build such a large army, so time is usually the limiting factor.

In building a WW Army, train only offensive troops. See section on The Best Attackers.

Building Times

Here are the build times for a level 20 barracks/stables/workshop.

Teutons

	1 clubswinger	= 122 seconds	→ 708/day	21240/month
	1 axeman	= 203 seconds	→ 425/day	12750/month
	1 TK	= 500 seconds	→ 172/day	5160/month
	1 ram	= 567 seconds	→ 152/day	4560/month
	1 cata	= 1216 seconds	→ 71/day	2130/month

Romans

	1 imperian	= 324 seconds	→ 266/day	7980/month
	1 EC	= 594 seconds	→ 145/day	4350/month
	1 ram	= 567 seconds	→ 152/day	4560/month
	1 cata	= 1216 seconds	→ 71/day	2130/month

Gauls

	1 swordsman	= 243 seconds	→ 355/day	10650/month
	1 Haeduan	= 527 seconds	→ 163/day	4890/month
	1 ram	= 675 seconds	→ 128/day	3840/month
	1 trebuchet	= 1216 seconds	→ 71/day	2130/month

You will need a lot of time to build a large WW Army. Some players dedicate almost the entire server in building a World Wonder army. My advice is to start no later than month eight. By month eleven to twelve, you will need to use your WW Army.

Using the Great Barracks and Great Stables

Because of the long build times, some players resort to using Great Barracks and Great Stables to build a WW Army. While you can train troops twice as fast, but there are some disadvantages to using a GS/GB.

First, there is no such thing as Great Workshop. So your catas and rams will still churn along at normal speed.

The construction cost of a Great Barracks/Great Stables costs three times more than a normal barracks/stables. Any troops trained from a GS/GB also costs three times more. Additionally, a GS/GB cannot be built in your capital.

If the enemy discovers you are building a WW Army in a non-capital, they will no doubt try to conquer your village in order to eliminate your army. Be careful where you park your troops. If your troop storage information leaks to a spy, the location of your WW Hammer village will also be revealed.

It is very difficult to defend a non-capital WW Hammer village. All it takes is constant fakes for about a week, before the real attacks arrive to clean and conquer. In a drastic move, you will need to move your capital in order to save your WW hammer.

So while you can use the GS/GB to build a WW hammer, but I don’t recommend it.

With proper planning, you are better off building your WW hammer in your capital. Its not only cheaper, but also much safer because your capital cannot be conquered, has a much higher crop production and is more difficult to destroy due to the stonemason.

To build your WW Army from your capital, you need about three to four months of build time. Depending on how large you want your WW army to be, somewhere around the eighth month, start to build your WW Army in your capital. The barracks, stables and workshop must run non-stop – probably queued for up to seven to ten days.

Also it goes without saying, your WW Army is an offense army. Therefore, fully upgrade it in the blacksmith, including rams and catas.

Your hero must always be fully upgraded with the offense bonus. If you do not have enough experience, send him to your WW village to gain experience. Spend all experience points on offense bonus.

A hero’s mansion in your capital is not required as long as your hero is already based in your capital. Otherwise you need to build a hero’s mansion level 1, send your hero there, then demolish the hero’s mansion.

Support Structure

Keep your WW Hammer building project a secret. If the enemy finds out, you will be targeted.

But as a WW Hammer builder, you need support from your alliance. You need to send your troops to other player’s villages for storage. Choose only trusted members, so you can be sure they do not disclose that you are a WW Hammer builder, or the location of your village.

As troops are trained, send them off to other player’s village for storage. Let them feed your troops while you train more. Continue to send troops away and spread them out to different villages in order to reduce the risk of losing a huge chunk of your army to a surprise attack. As mentioned, it is safer to park your troops in oases.

If you need more parking space, speak to your alliance leader. They understand that as a WW Hammer builder, you will need support.

Keep an eye out on your troops everyday because sometimes irresponsible players tend to let them starve or they are killed in an attack. Let them know that they should send your troops back if they come under attack. You’ll be surprised on the number of players who think Teuton Knights are good defenders.

A common question regarding a WW Hammer is how can you possibly feed a 150k or 200k crop eating army? While you can build them since they are stored in other player’s villages. But when you withdraw them, you will run into negative 150k to over 250k per hour.

Probably the granary capacity is only 400k, and in less than 2 hours, the granary will be depleted. Worse yet, you can’t even ask for alliance crop because if you do, spies will report that you are asking for crop, alerting them that your WW Army is on the move.

To set the record straight, my crop was at negative 180k per hour for over 60 hours when my WW hammer was used to attack the enemy WW village. Granary capacity was 400k, warehouse 480k.

You will need some kind of preparation in order to feed such an army.

The key lies in your support villages. Designate between four to six villages, which are closest as WW support. Build high level granaries, at least 240k capacity in each village.

You’ll need to build this early, sometime when you’re building your WW Army. Stockpile crop and before withdrawing your WW Army, ensure their granaries are full or almost full.

While your army is enroute, use all your villages to push crop to your WW Hammer village. By now you should have over 30 villages. Additionally, ask trusted alliance members to send you crop.

You can ask for crop from players who have kept your troops while you were building your WW Army. So only they will know you have withdrawn your hammer. Do not ask for alliance crop.

Due to the limited crop support, there will be plenty of times when crop is not arriving. During these breaks in crop arrival, use your WW support village to send crop. Having a large warehouse helps too because you can NPC resources to crop.

Also very important is you will need a sitter during this time. Your granary can hold only 2 hours worth of crop to feed your army, so your account has to be attended every two hours until the attack arrives. NPC resources to crop as needed.

This may be a difficult time, but when you see the enemy’s Great Warehouse reduced by your army, you’ll feel that it was all worth it.

WW Ram Hammer

There are two types of WW armies. A Ram Hammer and WW Hammer.

A Ram Hammer’s task is to lower the walls of enemy WW villages. It clears the way for succeeding WW Hammers so they cause more damage.

Romans and Gauls are not suitable as ram hammers because their rams cost much more and have longer building times. A Ram Hammer should always be a Teuton.

A decent WW Ram Hammer should have the following:

• 45000 axeman
• 15000 Teuton Knights
• 10000 rams

Again, this is only a guideline. The bigger, the better. On my server, our ram hammer had the following:

• 48909 axeman
• 21442 Teuton Knights
• 13014 rams
• 1767 catas

The catas were unnecessary, and should have been used to build more rams.

Every alliance needs to have several ram hammers. A 1:4 ratio would be a good balance.

WW Hammer

A WW Hammer attacks after the Ram Hammers. Its role is to deliver the actual structural damage to the World Wonder village. Usually the target is the Great Warehouse because that provides maximum mileage in terms of build time.

A good composition for a WW Hammer is the following:

• 60000 axeman
• 20000 Teuton Knights
• 1000 rams (optional)
• 5000 catas

Again, this is only a guideline. The bigger the better. Romans may have more imperians and lesser Equites Caesaris. The more catas, the better. If possible, pump up the cata numbers to 8000 or 10,000. The axeman to over 100,000 is even better.

Every alliance needs as many WW Hammers as they can get. They have to be as big and as many as possible. The number of World Wonder hammers is the deciding factor in winning the WW race.

Banned Account Storage

This is a trick or flaw in Travian that you can exploit. Register a second account on the same server. Make sure its quite far, at least 20 hours away by cata speed,

When you’ve trained a large army, send them to reinforce this second account. While your troops are enroute, get that account banned. You can do so by sending some vulgar message to a friendly player, and get him to report this second account to MH.

While that account is banned, troops in it will not starve. They will continue to eat crop, but when crop reaches zero, they won’t die. When your troops arrive, you’ve just got yourself free crop until the end of the server.

In order to lift the ban, you have to contact MH. So as long as you don’t contact MH, that account will remain banned forever. That’s great news, because your troops not only eat FREE crop, but they also cannot be attacked in a banned village – keeping them safe from enemy raiders.

This is a great way to store large numbers of troops, especially the World Wonder hammer. You can withdraw them anytime from your rally point.

I’ve been using this simple trick for many years now. And I constantly steal over 100,000 crop per hour by storing them in several banned accounts. Whenever you need to offload a large chunk of army, just rinse and repeat the procedure with another account.

Remember the key is you need to send them before the account is banned, because once its banned, you can’t send any troops there. And don’t get caught doing it – because its illegal.

Unfortunately this trick was discovered by MH when I had published it in my newsletter. One of my subscribers took that tip and reported it to MH. As a result, MH is now aware (as of August 20th 2009) and has been vigilant about this practice.

If they catch you doing this, they will deliberately unban the account without notice so your troops will starve. Be cautious if you still use this exploit.