Village Specialization

There are three types of villages in Travian :-

• 6 cropper.
• 9 cropper, sometimes referred as semi-cropper.
• 15 cropper, sometimes referred as cropper.

A fully extended (L10) cropland produces 300 units of crop per hour (inclusive of Grain Mill and Bakery bonus). In summary :-

• 6 cropper produces 1800 crop
• 9 cropper produces 2700 crop
• 15 cropper produces 4500 crop

A fully matured village averages between 700 to 900 population.

The average army size each type can support without running into negative crop :-

• 6 cropper can support 1000 crop army (1450 with gold)
• 9 cropper can support 1900 crop army (2575 with gold)
• 15 cropper can support 3700 crop army (4825 with gold)

Six croppers are not capable of supporting large armies. So don’t try build your offense armies in either a 6 or 9 cropper. Your primary offense army should be built in your capital, which must be a 15 cropper with the highest crop oases bonus you can find.

Some players use a normal 6 cropper and build Great Barracks and Great Stables and then go on to build massive armies there. I’ve done that too but I didn’t quite enjoy the crop management issues. So I don’t recommend 6 or 9 croppers for building offense armies.

Your secondary offense army can be built from another 15 cropper with crop oases bonus. All other remaining villages, either 6, 9, or 15 croppers should be used as support villages, either for building defenses, sending crop or for any other purpose.

When building an offense army, an important rule is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What this means is that its better to have a single large army than multiple smaller armies of the same total size.

Two separate attacks of 1000 axemen each is weaker than a single attack of 2000 axemen. You also save a ton of resources since you don’t have to upgrade the blacksmith in different villages.

Defenses however can be stacked, as sending reinforcements from different villages has the same combined effect of a single large army.

This brings to the need for village specialization. There are a few types of specialization :-

• Offense village. I have 2 offense armies, primary and secondary.
• Defense village. There are 2 types as well, infantry and cavalry defense.
• Scouting village. I usually have 1500 scouts in them.
• Production village for generating resources.
• Troop support village for sending crop or storing offense troops.

Some players also have catapult village where they build tons of catapults in them. I find this to be unnecessary.

Each village has a special role and one village can play more than one role. Not all village types however are suitable for every role.

By necessity, your first village is a combination of the above roles, but beyond your first, every village after that should play a specific role.

For your second village, you can settle on a 6, 9 or 15 cropper. I personally prefer a 9 cropper followed by a 15 cropper for my third.

My 1st and 2nd village are production village and my third is my capital.

This is because 15 croppers require a strong economy to grow. And since its my capital, my offense army is built there, and it constantly needs to build troops. In the early game, a lack of resource is the restrictive factor. So having 2 production village does help lessen this problem.

Offense Village

Cropper type: 15 cropper with high crop oases bonus. The higher the crop oases bonus the better.

Your primary offense army must be built in your capital. It is the only village where your croplands can be extended infinitely. It must be a 15 cropper with as much crop oases bonus you can get your hands on.

I usually build my capital as my third village.

Protect your primary offense army. It is the most important army and don’t use them in vain. If an attack causes you to lose more than 50% of your army, then it is a bad move.

When you’re able to, upgrade barracks and stable to level 20 and build troops non-stop in your capital. You won’t be able to do this in the early game, so you can begin after 1 or 2 months into the game.

Gradually develop your capital and eventually, your primary offense army will reach a massive size. It will be the pride of your alliance, the envy of your allies, and the terror for your enemies.

Your primary army continues to grow and by end game, it should reach over 150k in crop size. At this time, use it to catapult other alliance’s wonder. See chapter “Building WW Army” for how this is done.

I have a secondary offense army as well but this happens a bit later, perhaps on my 5th or 6th village. It is also a 15 cropper with high crop oases bonus.

I use my secondary army as fodder to attack just about anyone and anywhere. Its also an escort for my primary army. Sometimes when attacking big players, my secondary army goes first, followed by my primary army behind it. It takes the brunt of the losses so my primary army will be relatively shielded from major losses.

This does not mean that I do not use my primary army to attack unescorted. I still do depending on the situation. Any high risk attacks will always be shielded by my secondary army.

Furthermore, I also have a third offense army. This is not primarily for offense, but due to the necessity to raid, you will need a lot of raiders. When you have had a lot of raiders, this village then doubles up as an offense village. The plus side for this is when the primary and secondary armies are out attacking, the third offense army continues raiding uninterrupted.

Many good players build only one offense army. That will work too, but personally I prefer to have several armies to attack with. The reason is because later on your primary army will be converted into a World Wonder army. Once it becomes a World Wonder army, you can no longer attack with it. This is when your secondary army will take over the role as primary attacker.

In your offense village, build axemen, Teuton Knights, rams and catapults.

For Romans, it would be imperians and equites caesaris. Gauls would be swordsman and haeduan.

Scouts must always be present in every village. That goes without saying. I have at minimum 30 defensive scouts in every village. That’s not a lot. Its just to catch any enemy scouting attempts.

Do not build any defensive troops such as spearmen or paladins. All defenses will be supplied by your allies or by your other villages.

In my offense villages, I have multiple granaries. The number of granaries depends on which stage of the game, but by endgame, I have 4 to 5 granaries. Build Tournament Square up to level 20, a fully upgraded Rally Point. Blacksmith will be maxed out at 20, with axemen, Teuton Knights, rams and catapults fully upgraded. Once upgraded, the Blacksmith is demolished to make space for granary.

Do not build armoury, sawmill, iron foundry, brickyard and cranny. Residence, hero mansion and walls are built as required.

Six Crop Village

Do not try to build an offensive army with infantry, cavalry and siege weapons in a six cropper. This is the main mistake I see with most noobs. That would be like forcing a round peg into a square hole – it won’t fit.

Six croppers are not capable of supporting large armies. So they are suitable as defensive villages, production villages, scouting villages and to a lower extent, troop support villages.

As a production village, its main function is to push resources to your other villages. It is the bread and butter of your economy. You need to raid often from this village. Therefore build clubs, paladins and scouts.

That’s it. I build Paladins not for any combat purpose, but to support the higher goal of raiding.

If you’re a Gaul, then it should be swordsman, TTs and Pathfinders. As for Romans, it would be legionnaire, equites imperatoris and equites legati (scouts).

Here’s my typical troop composition of a production six cropper :-

• 1100 clubs
• 150 paladins
• 50 scouts
• 200 spears

Total crop consumption : 1650 crop.

Hourly crop production : 0

I’m a gold user, so if you’re a non gold user, just scale back a bit to fit into your hourly crop production. You can go into negative crop as long as you actively raid.

I don’t build blacksmith, armoury, high level barracks and other non essentials. The blacksmith exists only to support the building of stable, and once it is done, I demolish the blacksmith. My barracks stop at level 10.

Instead, do build and fully upgrade all resource structures. Build a fully upgraded Main Building and Marketplace – and over time a fully upgraded Embassy and Academy. These are culture point generators and are a must in all villages, whether six, nine or fifteen cropper.

Fully upgrade the Warehouse and Granary. These two structures must be fully upgraded in all villages. If you play this game right, you will need all the space. Even two fully upgraded Warehouses are sometimes not enough even in the early game.

So if your Warehouse stopped growing at 21400 capacity, then you are broke and you’re doing something fundamentally wrong.

You will need to push resources constantly to your other villages – build a Trade Office level 10. By end game, it can reach up to level 15 but I barely go beyond that as Teuton merchants have a large capacity.

Other structures are optional, such as Hero’s Mansion, Residence, Townhall, Walls etc are built as they are required.

As a defensive village, its main function is to supply defensive troops and to send reinforcements to villages under attack. It also doubles up as semi-production village.

Build two types of defensive village. The anti-infantry village and the anti-cavalry village.

I’m a Teuton, so my anti-infantry unit is the Paladin while the anti-cavalry unit is the spearman. I will build either one of these in my village, but not both.

Here’s my typical troop composition of anti-infantry defense six cropper :-

• 200 clubs
• 600 paladins
• 50 scouts
• 200 spears – from another village

Total crop consumption : 1650 crop.

Hourly crop production : 0

For an anti-cavalry defense six cropper :-

• 200 clubs
• 1400 spearman
• 50 scouts

Total crop consumption : 1650 crop.

Hourly crop production : 0

The 200 spears are my standard defense which I place in all of my villages. They are not there to defend against conquers or cata attacks – they are just to deter petty raiders from raiding me.

All spears are supplied from my first village (the village I start out with) until I have my defense village where that role is then taken over.

As with all villages, the standard buildings of Main Building, Marketplace, Embassy, Academy, etc must exist. So I’ll refrain from mentioning this in future references.

But what’s different with a defense village is I build a fully upgraded Armoury and upgrade either the spearman or Paladin all the way to level 20. This is also the reason why you don’t mix the building of spearman and Paladins in the same village – saving you the need to upgrade both units twice. This is no hurry though and gradually done over time.

Build a Tournament Square and upgrade it as needed. The Tournament Square will enable you to reach vast distances quickly, and this is especially helpful when reinforcing team members who are under attack.

Just keep in mind a Tournament Square has no effect for the first 20 squares.

Your capital is the most important village in your kingdom. Place your anti-cavalry (spearman) defense village closeby while the anti-infantry (Paladin) village can be a bit further.

We have so far covered production village and defensive village. But what about your first village?

Your First Six-Cropper

You start out with a six-cropper and that’s going to have a somewhat different configuration. None of the concepts explained earlier apply to your first village.

Because you need to raid, and you need to attack, and also defend all from this village – afterall, that’s your only village in the very early game.

My first six-cropper typically has clubs, Paladins, scouts, spearman and siege weapons.

Here’s the typical troop composition of my first six cropper :-

• 1100 clubs
• 150 paladins
• 60 scouts
• 200 spears
• 20 rams
• 60 catas

Total crop consumption : 2080 crop.

Hourly crop production : 20 crop

I have conquered a 25% crop oases and plus 25% gold bonus, I can support up to 2100 troops. These are typical numbers only as my actual numbers hovers in the region.

In the early game, before conquering a crop oases, my army is somewhat less – less spears, less catas, less rams, etc… but the ratios would roughly be the same.

Notice I don’t build axemen or Teutonic Knights. In the early game, I have very little spears and scouts, giving more priority to the humble clubswinger.

This is the number one mistake I see too many newbies make. They try to fit everything into their first village. Do not build offense troops, especially the Teuton Knight because you cannot support them. These are reserved for your offense village.

The Gauls should build lots of phalanxes, and then some TTs, druidrider, haeduan, siege weapons, etc. The Romans too make the mistake of building the Equites Caesaris (heavy cavalry) and they upgrade them in the blacksmith or armoury. And then they wonder why they’re not as strong as they’d like to be.

Remember what I said about fitting a round peg into a square hole? They can ill-afford those troops, not in the early game and their economy is simply not strong enough.

Your first village needs to be a basically general village with emphasis on production. That is build raiders, some scouts and some catapults. Do not build offense troops especially heavy cavalry.

Anyway, the early game is given more in-depth coverage separately.

Eventually, your first six-cropper village can be converted into a Rain of Fire village. See Section 7.6 Offensive Strategies for a detailed explanation.

Scouting Village

I designate one village as my scouting village. It can be a 6 or 9 cropper, and will typically have 1500 scouts. I have seen some players train up to 5,000 scouts, and the largest I have seen is a 25,000 Equites Legati army. Again, I think this is just plain silly and unnecessary.

Scouts are a special unit, and upgrading them in a blacksmith helps reduce casualties caused by defending scouts during a scouting attack. The Armory also increases the effectiveness of defending scouts. Either way, scouts should be upgraded at least to some levels although they are not as important as offense and defense troop upgrades.

As a general guideline, the defending village must have at least 1.75 times more scouts to kill all the attacking scouts. Use as a guideline only as this is only the base value and can vary slightly.

Scouting villages also double as production villages.

Troop Support Village

Troop support village are also known as crop support village. You will need many troop support villages if you are going to support a massive offensive army.

These villages either send crop to the offense villages (eg. The capital) or they hold troops from the offense village (as reinforcements). Sending them as reinforcements saves you the trouble of regularly sending crop but you need to recall your troops when you want to use them.

Either way, your offense villages will need multiple granaries. Build as many troop support villages as needed. You can use 15 croppers for troop support. If that’s not available, 9 or 6 croppers are also good. Remember to pick those that are closeby and with crop oases bonus.

If they are 6 or 9 croppers, these also double as production villages except that troop support villages do very little raiding, or none at all.

In Summary

Except for your first village, every village should have a specific role. How many villages you want to have of each is up to you. But as a general rule of thumb, I use the following :-

• 1 primary offense village (capital, 15 cropper)
• 1 secondary offense village (15 cropper)
• 1 third offense village (15 cropper)
• 1 Rain of Fire army village (usually my 1st village)
• 1 scouting village, doubles as production village
• 2 to 3 anti-infantry defensive village
• 3 to 4 anti-cavalry defensive village
• as many troop support villages as needed

You’ll notice that I have four attack villages. Yes, I attack a lot. By end game, you should have at least over 30 villages.

At the onset of the game, plan your kingdom well. Decide on your village types, where and when you intend to build them.

Also don’t forget to consider oases. A 6 cropper with 100% crop oases is much better than a 9 cropper without any crop oases. Do the math.

The Ideal Capital

So just what are the buildings you should have in your capital? Firstly, I recommend that you build your World Wonder hammer in your capital. With that being said, here’s the configuration of my capital :-

Village Type

• 15 cropper
• At least 100% crop oases bonus. The higher the better. The highest is 150%, but these croppers are rare.

Resource Fields

• 15x Croplands Level 18
• Clay pit, Iron mine, Woodcutter Level 15

Village Buildings

All structures fully upgraded to level 20, or level 5 where appropriate (eg grain mill, bakery).

• Main Building
• Rally Point
• Grain Mill
• Bakery
• Marketplace
• Stonemason
• Earth Wall
• Tournament Square
• Barracks
• Stables
• Workshop
• 3x Granary (240k capacity)
• 7x Warehouses (560k capacity)
• Hero’s Mansion Level 1

Some observations:-

Note: I don’t have a Palace. It’s demolished as soon as three chiefs have been trained. The blacksmith is also demolished as soon as all offense troops are upgraded to level 20. Train only offense troops in the capital.

The Hero’s Mansion is only level 1. It’s needed because you need to send your hero back and forth to other villages. But when you really need the granary capacity (such as when sending the WW army), the HM can be quickly demolished and another granary built in its place.

It’s also possible to build an aditional granary, and maintain either the Marketplace OR Hero’s Mansion. When you need to send the hero in, demolish the Marketplace and build a Hero’s Mansion. After the hero has arrived, demolish the Hero’s Mansion and build the Marketplace. For this reason, the Marketplace and Hero’s Mansion are not built past level one. You will still own your conquered oases even if the Hero’s Mansion has been demolished.

A variation to this strategy is to demolish one warehouse after all croplands have been upgraded to Level 18, and build a granary in its place. I’ve never done this though, but its for players who feel uncomfortable with such a small granary capacity.

And lastly, I would like to add that you can support a 250k World Wonder army with just level 18 croplands, and a 240k granary capacity. Therefore I’ve not found any need to build level 19 croplands or granaries above 240k capacity.