Travian tips

A while ago I published a post about Travian, the massively multiplayer online browser-based strategy game in which you can choose to play one of three tribes: Gauls, Romans or Teutons. This game can be quite daunting to new players, so I thought I would share a few basic tips to get you started.

Crannies! Crannies! Crannies!
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of building crannies. These enable you to hide the resources that you produce putting them beyond the reach of raiders. The larger cranny capacity you have the better, but be aware that raids that include heroes may be able to dip into up to 20% of your crannies. So to be fully protected you will need more cranny capacity than the amount of resources that you will produce while you are not playing.

Dodge attacks
If your resources are safely hidden in crannies, there is little point in leaving troops to defend your village in the early stages of the game. Make sure that they are always out raiding. When you finish playing for the day send them off on long raids timing their return for after you are back on your computer.

Raid wisely
Once you have a few troops built you will want to raid. Start off with Natar villages and oases that have no animals present. As people stop playing the game their villages will become inactive providing good targets. Getter tools has a good feature that you can use to search for inactive villages.

Various national servers are available and you may find less populated servers, such as those in the United Kingdom, a better place to learn the game. To find the servers nearest to you, visit the United States site and look at the top of the page.