Before You Start

I won’t lie to you.

Travian is a very time consuming game and it can be a productivity killer. There’s a direct relationship between the amount of time you spend in this game and the speed of your growth. Its no secret the more time you spend, the faster you will grow.

I wanted to set some expectations that there are no two ways about it. Me and my buddies dedicate hours every day playing the game – I would put our online hours to be anywhere between three to eighteen hours a day.

That’s a lot of time, you might say. That’s right!!! And that’s why this game is best played by a team of two or more players. There’s even a term coined for it. We call it dual player, dual account or co-player. A husband and wife team makes a good combination. So does siblings in a family, or friends and colleagues.

Sometimes you will find requests on the Travian forum asking for dual accounts.

As the game progresses, many players will quit the game. Even big players at the top of the rung quit and one of the main reasons is because too much time is needed that they can’t cope with real life commitments.

So if you’re thinking of registering multiple accounts, one for you, one for your friend, and one each on multiple servers – then don’t.

My advice is to you is one account, one server, multiple players.

Travian is slow paced game in the beginning, but once you have multiple villages going, the pace speeds up and that’s when you’ll appreciate the insight of having multiple players.

But that does not mean you can’t make more efficient use of your time. By adopting the strategies I will explain later in this book, you will learn how to play smart and make better use of your time.

Travian Plus and Gold

You probably already know what is Travian Plus and Gold. So I’m not going to try to explain something you already know. But if you don’t, then there’s a separate chapter dedicated to Travian Plus and Gold.

Instead, I’m going to explain why anyone should use Travian Plus and Gold. And to clear the myth whether its unfair or cheating to use Plus and Gold.

First, Plus and Gold are the bread and butter of the game developer, Travian Games Gmbh. Without Plus and Gold, there would be no income for the company, and with no income, there would be no Travian for you and me.

Yes, the game is free to play, but it is not free to develop and maintain. Thousands of dollars are needed every month for the infrastructure, server maintenance, staff salaries and development costs. It is Plus and Gold which fund these costs.

So it is a very unreasonable request to ask Travian to drop Plus and Gold. Its like asking someone to work for free.

But what about advertising and banner ads? Can the company make money from alternative forms and keep it free?

First, Travian is as a profit based company. It would be silly for a game company to develop Travian and use advertising as a form of income. You don’t develop games and then use advertising to make money. For that, you would develop a website portal which is more suited to advertising.

Second, the problem with advertising is that it slows the loading speed and detracts from the game experience. While some don’t mind irritating banners, but most serious gamers do. This will turnoff serious gamers who will look for other alternatives to Travian.

I would like to clear the myth that there is nothing wrong with using Travian Plus and Gold. Neither is it unfair. Neither is it cheating. Only those who don’t use it says its cheating.

But I do agree that Plus and Gold are powerful tools and will give any player an edge over those who don’t use it. In fact, I can guarantee you that all top players use gold.

How can the use of gold be considered fair then? For a very simple reason. Gold users are paying for it, and non-gold users aren’t. If you don’t want to pay the bus fare, then you have to walk. That’s abundantly fair. Hoping for a free ride is the one that’s absurd.

I’m sorry if the message is not warm and fuzzy, but it’s the truth.

Travian Plus and Gold should form an integral part of your game, as important as your calculator, pen and paper. There’s no question that all top players use it and they are so important, that it deserves an entire chapter on its own.

You can read all about it later, but for now I just wanted to say that while you can play without Gold, but I don’t recommend it if you’re really serious about getting ahead.

And in case you think that a certain player is good only because he uses Gold, then that’s bollocks too. I have seen many Gold users who are still at the bottom of the rung, so Gold is not an automatic passport to the major leagues.

As the common saying goes; “skills beat noobs with gold – skills plus gold is unstoppable”.

But how much of Plus and Gold do I use? Here’s an indication.

Sometime around my second village, I activate the 25% bonus for lumber, clay, iron and crop and keep them continuously activated until the end of the server. I activate Plus around the 3rd village, and its also kept activated until the end of the server.

The Attack Bonus and Defense Bonus are rarely used – only when major attacks are happening. As a World Wonder host, the Defense Bonus is constantly activated.

The Instant Complete and NPC Merchant are used sparingly, and only when necessary. If possible, long buildings are queued overnight and I trade at the marketplace to reduce dependency on the NPC Merchant.

I don’t exactly keep track of how much I spend on buying gold, but I know the figure is in excess of USD100 by the end of the server. This is not considered a lot. Some top players I know spend a few hundred dollars on gold.

I also know some players who play entirely without gold (or almost entirely). So there are two sides of the coin.