Offense vs Defense

Should you play an offensive or defensive game?

Let’s say in footfall. What are your chances of winning if you were to play on defense all the time? Your chances are between slim to none.

And what are your chances of winning BIG if you played on defense all the time? The answer is not a chance.

In Travian, if you want to win big, then play an offensive game – because that’s where your best chances of success is.

Playing an offensive game means farming aggressively and cropkilling defiant players. When their villages have grown large enough, you conquer them. You should totally dominate your area.

Raiding and conquering are a form of leverage. Raiding is using other people’s resources. And conquering is using other people’s time and resources.

Fact is, you cannot hope to grow big by depending on your own production. As an indication, by month two, I have around 200 farms with daily raids averaging over 500,000 resources. By mid-game, it grows to around a million resources.

Can you see how easy it is to tower above the rest with a 500k resource boost every day? Conquering is also the fastest way to grow, so be sure to plan early who are your intended targets for conquer.

What playing offensively is not? There’s a saying in the Marine Corps to “choose your battle and battlefield wisely”. Playing offensively does not mean attacking every player in sight. Fight the good battles and stay away from those that cause you a resource drain. Do not use your army to attack unprofitable players.

But what about defense? I believe the best defense is a good offense. If you play the game right, nobody will try to farm you and that itself is the best defense.

But occasionally, some farms will try to attack you out of vengeance. When that happens, round up your catas and cropkill the player.

You may have heard of some glory stories of how some small players managed to defeat bigger players by using well prepared defenses. Some players truly believe they can win the game through well prepared defenses.

I can tell you with absolute certainty this is bollocks. If you know what you’re doing, your army will not be wiped out while attacking. And you cannot hope to damage your enemy’s village by defending.

There is only one word of caution about playing offensively all the time. By mid game, you would have built up your hammer to between 30k to 60k in size. My own hammer is 55k in month five.

At this stage of the game, a hammer becomes more valuable than a village. If you lose your 55k hammer, it will take you months to rebuild that army, losing precious time. But if your village is seriously hit by cata fire, you can very quickly rebuild.

With gold and alliance resource, you can rebuild your village in a matter of days. But a hammer will take months to rebuild. So know when a hammer is more precious than a village.

I highly advocate an offensive game because of the leverage you gain. The more leverage of raiding and conquering you use, the better you are in reaching the top.