Com1 Server Analysis

Hello everyone,

This is Obi-Wan. I would like to give my analysis for the server on various topics and give highlights of the server from my perspective. This will somewhat be a mixture of analysis and giving shout-outs. I will divide the parts in sub-categories, hoping that it makes it easier to follow (and if you find some parts uninteresting, just skip it). Apologies in advance that this might be a long post (and for the typos, to be edited later on) I will try to be as objective as possible, reflecting upon last months. Obviously most of these will include my perspective and personal take on some issues. As some of you know, I joined Billion account, soon after the artefact releases - so that my analysis will be a bit weak on the early game and more detailed after artefacts time. After a quick run in com7, this was the first real server I took seriously, after a 5 years hiatus from travian. It took me some time to realize that things have changed since then. On one hand, the server was plagued with bots, spiking, multies etc. it was great to see how much the gameplay is improved. Mechanically, nothing much changed except alliance bonuses, which creates an interesting dynamic where alliance members have an incentive to free-ride in a shared goal. However, it was interesting to see how efficient players got over the years.

PART 1

Billion Account
I have met Richard and Zee in com7, fighting against TEN - our common enemy back then. It was me and my dual, seramana, returning to travian after a long break. TEN was by far the strongest team in that server against a bunch of new players and unorganized folks. It was a clean wipe from them there. However, I tried to give them a good run for their money, trying to fight back alone as a regular member of an ordinary alliance with no leader. I disliked everything in that server, except our ops with Richard & Zee, later which we kept in touch and they invited me over to Billion to get revenge from TEN. I had enough of travian back then and it took some convincing to join, after artifacts time. The idea to smash TEN with this account with great potential sounded pretty tempting and I could not resist. Shortly after I joined the account, Zee and seramana got really busy with real life and Richard started to split his attention in between multiple servers. Well, little did I know was that we were actually allies with TEN and fighting an unbeatable enemy called Villains...

I had a very little influence on early the account setup. The account has three clusters - we had a spawn area with one spawn hammer and 5 feeders, 1 capital hammer and 2 off-hammers right next to the capital, with 15 other feeders and last, settled 6 villages in WW area. The capital and off cap hammers were right on the Villains border, combined with large boots, I knew we would make a great threat. We simmed all the hammers to a decent size, by raiding from all 4 of them while waiting for the ops (that was promised) to happen soon. We waited too long and ops were not coming (Noel was busy), so I suggested to do organize one myself to Mazzi. By that time, we were fed up waiting, Richard has already splatted our cap hammer trying to steal UB. I am fortunate that Mazzi trusted me as a total stranger and newbie, and luckily mads came around that time to help with ops. My responsibility was to be OC which later extended to taking role on WWk hits, scoutings, artifact arrangements and general management stuff. So, thanks for the opportunity, Mazzi. Now, Billion account could do what it was built for - demolish many targets using multiple ops hammers using location advantage (being on the border) and large boots. Billion has already accomplished a lot before I joined, and I am pretty proud of what this account achieved overall: From having 4 full pages of attack reports, to stealing UT or from ghosting enemy WWr/WWks (Narcos and Nocturne) to chiefing enemy WWks (Wooky). So, a big shout-out to Richard, Zee and seramana.

Situation after Artefacts Release
From what I understood, Villains were top contenders for the server from the get go. They have very skilled and experienced players and a large pre-made players who has been playing together for quite some time. When I joined the server, Villains were dominating top raiders by big margin, artifacts were somewhat evenly split, and there were so many active large accounts in Villains. I remember checking top 20 (40) population and attackers. It was amazing to see a total domination by villains, it was around 80 percent of the accounts, belonging to Villains. That being said, although it was few in number, I knew SGR had some amazing accounts themselves too - investors, wolf, templars etc. I remember people being quite negative for our chances against them, even if we outnumber them. To my experience, only effective number matters - so, SGR's numbers indeed seem inflated. I knew that there were good players in SGR, so I was being optimistic about our chances, given that we take initiatives for the remaining part of the server. I am told that I say these because I dont know the opponent, I have never played against them. I didnt enjoy the pessimistic atmosphere but I respected the experience.

Artefacts

It would be unfair to analyze small diets and trainers in isolation. Both teams approached those differently. Villains had 4 small diets while SGR had 2. Villains decided to hold onto the diets on large anvils (except Snoopy) which helped the garage fellow WWk troops and push massive anvils. On the other hand, SGR used diets on key raiding WWks, which led them hold a large standing defense. UT steal was game changer for this particular reason. Our main WWks would be able to utilize halved training time while holding onto their large standing defenses. This not only helped them feel safe but also helped many defenders to grow bigger. On the other side, however, the small artefacts were in Villains favor. On paper, it looks an equal 3-3 split. When you look more closely, most of SGR's WWks are capital WWks while almost all Villains WWks are non-cap WWks. This is probably due to better planning of WWks on Villains side and/or higher experience and activity from WWks. Apart from Get Schwifty and Solidfan, I dont recall any mid-sized WWk that used trainer. If used properly, this potentially means much bigger WWks for Villains. This combined with losing another small artifact, making it 4-2 on Villains favor, I am confident to say that Villains had a upper hand by a good margin on small trainers.

Villains also had an upper hand over SGR in eyes department. UE holder WetWilly was amazing, scouting everyone left and right, using multiple villages. Similarly, CarelessCat did a great job - quick access to most of SGR players with its central location. SGR didnt have any large eyes (the only existing one got stolen by a multi-account), weakening the protection of key targets, such as valuable artefacts in SH area. However, bert and LE (first Richard and then pari) did a good job on fulfilling the endless scouting requests as sitters. This server has shown the strength of UE to me, once again.

Going to late game having both UD and UA, gave an upper hand to SGR, on paper. I argued this in other threads, I will repeat again. UD is very useful, but it is a misconception that it is overpowered. As long as you establish a good WW feeder cluster, good and active NPC villages, and a couple of MMs for push, you are good. We have seen Villains survive just fine (and even increasing defense numbers) for 4 days straight without any diet, a weak WW cluster and at 17M def. On the other hand, UA is only useful if you use it. SGR failed to use it everytime. In some cases, Villains did a good job on hiding their WWrs; on others, it was more obvious but hesitation costed SGR greatly. You would see a 1 Villains WWr doing the same damage as 3 SGR WWrs.

Overall, I believe that artefacts were evenly distributed up until SGR has stolen UT. In general, I dont believe that there was a huge disparity, coming from artifacts.

Defense
SGR had large defensive accounts, a good SH setup. However, DC was on the shoulders of very few people. I heard that more people were involved in DC in the beginning of the server but some left their role due to lack of ops from Villains side. I recall some isolated (2-3 man failed ops, some coordinated fakes) attacks from Villains but nothing to amount to a serious threat. Luckily, it was enough this server. It is something SGR needs to work on to up their game against more active opponents. Props to especially Valt, for doing an amazing job at investors' defense. Some special notes on defense on investors - it was the day me and mads were working on ops and I had plans to go out with friends later that night. Valt reached out to me for some crazy scouting demands (I was taking care of Lady Envy account at that time), because many of our WWks were under attack. I think timed scouts are well understood and known to be effective by most players. However, he was asking 7 players to be scouted for 6 possible launches. This amounted to 50+ timed scouts to be sent during the day while organizing the ops. I canceled my plans to go out, slept barely a few hours, monitoring ops launches and trying to nail the scoutings. So, Valt, it is not that I dont understand timed scouting, it was just very difficult for me to do, because of time constraint (and the constraint of having scouts ready for Lady Envy). I think I ended up selecting a few key targets for scouting. Scouting on Cyrus helped us rule our quite a bit of options (anything in the boonies wouldnt be possible, biggest candidates were Duom and investors). With the remaining scouts available, we selected LoMo to check for everything after investors - Duom, Templars, Wolf. We hit the lottery on investors. LoMo managed to hide 19*4 spears in that tight window which I found very impressive. I checked any other target that is launched in that time window (made a circle in the map, putting LoMo in the center and investors on the line - tracing any other WWk along the circle's line). I couldnt find any and Valt was suggesting investors should be real. We went for it, and it was the correct call - splatting 16 hammers. This success didn't come without a cost - we had to use the defense which could have gone to WW, making Villains' op not totally useless. But knowing that they depleted all their offensive power, we knew that we could defend WW full force from know on (which didn't happen, sadly).

The reason SGR didn't defend some other WWks attacks properly (like Sankets) was also due to hesitation - a similar we have seen on switching to UA. There were multiple attacks, and the consensus wasnt there. I scrambled a very last minute all in call (some ridiculous 3.5 hours before the hit) in the morning which I think was another fail from our side. That being said, we had a serious talk about this and fixed the decision making in this font in the next wave, defending Vendetta and Snoopys. In sum, in Villains' perspective attacks on WWk period mirrored mid-game: They did a great job in defense (recall that amazing all in defense call 36 hour in advance), while failing to deliver offensively.

PART 2

I just had time to keep writing - thanks wishmaster3 for summarizing our ops, saves quite a bit of work A few additions:

In 4th OP, Bert and Ernie gave an ultimatum, that he wants go splat everything, else, he is suiciding them to elsewhere. I dont blame him - it was a huge account and he was the only one taking care of it (Also BB too I guess, as sitter <3). I agree that if we went for only Tyrant, we would have gotten it, especially if we sent B&E on Tyrant (close in location, with LB).

In 6th OP, we brought down the main NPC village to single digit loyalty twice. If one of the many things went good, we would have cheifed that NPC. It was still amazing to kill most of DE's and WetWilly's troops on NPC villages that are probably used to raid resources to fill up NPCs.

In 7th OP, we guessed a small hawk switch on Foley. So, hero fakes on Foley were sent way before the switch, making them much more believable. I want to a bit careful here and give Villains the benefit of the doubt, and say that if all real attacks were timed nicely, they may have defended the WWks better. Seeing big gaps, they might have thought that they can save the village by golding up or inserting defense in between the attacks.

In 8th OP, killing defense was really important. It is one of the very last chances for people to use their off. It was actually the last time they could have threatened chiefing a WWk (last Villains WWks launched shortly after). Knowing that it would end this way, I would make the same choices. Unfortunately, you dont take your troops with you to the next server, so you have to use it and you have to kill enemies. Unless, you are looking for killing natars for free off points...

Ops

I have always enjoyed an aggressive playstyle. So I cannot imagine playing in an alliance of SGR/TEN or Villains' caliber and being ok with no ops. These are some of the benefits of having regular ops, more that what people think:

• The actual direct damage.
  1. Defense that is killed, which would have been used for WW. SGR killed millions of defense just in ops. Especially chipping away huge anvils helped going into the late game.
  2. Croplocked capitals/hit feeders. Most often than not, these need to be rebuild. Hence, it creates an opportunity cost for the time and resources which would have been used to train more troops/developing the account further.
  3. Chiefing the WWks/big anvils. This is the high risk/high reward case. Needless to say, in case of a success, it is a huge blow to the enemy.
• Psychology of a constant red sword. Regular incomings make players frustrated, annoyed and demotivated. Especially, if you are one of the small/medium accounts that do not get any call for defense, you start to question leaders' decision making. I do not think there are many players who enjoy a purely defensive strategy.
• Motivation of participants. People who participate in ops get more engaged to the team. They would be more active in general, helping the alliance not only in ops but also with defense calls/resources etc. Especially, if they see success, they trust OCs and leaders judgement for the future as well. Accomplishing a common goal creates a unity. It helps tremendously, going into late game.
• Early defense accounts. Those who utilize their OPs hammers and go splat and start training defense. Especially when there is not enough time to train a respectable hammer, it is very valuable to splat hammers for a good cause, a few weeks before plans release and go defensive. It is much better than holding onto your hammers till the end of the server, eating the crop for no purpose. I know that many of our op participants had enough time to train big anvils. We had over 300k defense in Billion, by the end end of the server.

In this server, I was fortunate to take on the responsibility of an OC. More importantly, I was lucky to have mads on my side to make them. Making ops is time time consuming, however if you have a buddy to delegate some work, it takes over a big burden. First, you share the responsibility. If things go badly, you can have a reference partner on why you make those specific decisions. This helps you to trust your ideas and go for riskier plans. Second, you share the work. In some ops I was busy, in others mads was. So, we did not contribute equally in every op, however, I believe that our total contribution was at a very similar level. This is something not so easy to achieve. To my experience, one person tends to take over majority of the work and the other one stays tangential to what is going on, basically free-riding. This was not the case, and I am very grateful for mads' contribution. Third, share an experience. I have talked to mads every single day, last 3 months. This is more often than anyone else in my life. We celebrated together, even the small things; we faced the failure together. This is what makes travian fun for me. We had our frictions here and there too but luckily, our personalities matched nicely. So, thank you mads, for being there.

As for all our other ops contributors, thank you! Sereyvuth, Tutakamun, joey, Jocke, Triumvirate, lolol, scooby, eatmyweapons, neutral, ChillyWilly, Templars (splatting two hammers in two ops, lul), Bow, mulone, Cuvvy... I am forgetting many of you, apologies. Thank you for being there and accommodating to all our demands tirelessly without complaining for a bit. Sometimes we forced you send outside your online times, sometimes you sent reinforcements instead of attacks or forgot to put cavalry in attacks. None of that matters, I salute you all.

Lastly, lack of ops from Villains. I will not keep bashing Villains for the same thing, as there is another thread for this purpose. I will just restate that, the blame should be shared here. Any few decent and experienced players can organize ops. Activity is surely not an issue for Villains, it is a matter of getting hands dirty and getting things done instead of complaining. "op was promised to us by James" is not a good enough excuse. Things get in the way or not turn up as expected, this is life. You need to adapt to it. 180 players, many pre-made teams, two of the known teams with expertise in this game. You cannot afford to fail finding some players to take over the OC role, if you are Villains. If a player has never done it before, s/he can start doing it this server. Just start basic, with a few accounts on small targets and as you gain experience, you do a full fledged op.

WW

This was one of the best WW races I have witnessed. I was added to WW room, and ended up taking the role to arrange the WWk hits. It was around the time fnx showed up as well, I think. This was as stressful as it was rewarding. I had a lot of heated-debates with fnx. We had different ideas in almost every aspect and both of us were very stubborn. It took some good amount of effort and convincing to get on to same page. The first issue was to decide on the number of trains: 2 or 3. Did tonnes of simulations, had 4-5 versions of the train arrangements. We finally decided on 3 trains. Some ghostings, starvations and lost small trainer messed up with the plans (and almost gave me an heart attack), but it was executed more or less according to the plan.

We actually have a 0'th train too. It was not expected or agreed on. With Decoy surviving and Get Schwifty getting ghosted, we scrambled a quick attack somehow nicely spaced out. Our TEN buddies were also on the way, it was not coordinated from a single center but we pulled off a decent series of hits. Rough's random hitting MB was super lucky as well as seeing Villains not switching to LA.

The first train did lesser damage than expected. This is the time we had to deal with CT. We made some forced decisions and hit much earlier than I planned. It was not a good decision and overall I am not very happy with this train. If CT launched to SE WW of TEN and we kept our original plan, we would have been better off, without a doubt.

The second train also did lesser damage than expected. This is due to such an early call, made by Villains. Interestingly, the defense call was made even before a single WWk was launched - an incredible 36 hours in advance! We had enough firepower to bring Villains WW down just below our WW, which was the minimum success criteria for us, ad my worst case simulation. So, congrats Villains for the defense call.

The third and last train was the most stressful one. We were pressured a lot to launch early and get done with this. However, I knew that the optimal decision to hit as late as possible, with the given number of defense from our scoutings. If a single thing goes wrong, it is on me and fnx. Geko's ghosting made things more shaky too, but we still had enough. We made a complicated plan, maybe even more than we should have made. We asked players to send fake trains every 12 hours for a good 3 days (was initially 5 days). Note that these are all the WWks that are relying on raiding for feeding. So days of waiting was indeed painful (No garages or troops sitting home possible, since scouts can catch troops and crop drop). fnx and I were sitting multiple WWks, making sure that everything goes according to the plan. For example, in one of the fakes, Wolf send his WWk to retrieve resources from one of his feeders. This means triggering an attack on alliance page and in case of a spy, the fakes are given away. So, we quickly calculated the land time and sent 10s of fakes landing right after that so that Wolf's raid appears on the alliance page only briefly. In another issue, Geko didnt have standing defense and King Koopa was raiding her to starve it. We managed to gather the defense right in time to avoid starvation. In the end, everyone sent as requested. The result was heroic. We won the server and we needed every single WWk for that.

Organizing it all was really stressful and I havent planned WWk hits since I returned to travian. So, I learned a lot from fnx. He knows a lot of tricks, and has thousands of ideas. Not all of them are useful and most of them are impractical - as in we live in an ideal world. However, the ones that are practical are just awesome and sometimes, game winning. Even if we had our disagreements, we managed to pull this off. I think it was pretty majestic, with all the back and forths... not knowing who will win till the very end. So, kudos to fnx for all his input and help.

Also big thanks to tonzofgunz and Tarkelic, the WW holders. Old enemies, new allies. They have put some serious amount of work on this server. Although I didn't approve sharing WW with TEN at first, it was the right call.

Some special mentions:

Noel - When you actually play, you are a beast. Hope you find more time to play more regularly. Organizing plans grabs in your car was unforgettable.
LK - Keep being a noob. Lets play some other games soon.

James - You are not as bad of a guy as others say. Keep being around.
Sarcy - Shame that we didnt get to play together. Admirable work with the WW.
TEN guys - Snake Plissken: Finally we planned some ops together in the very very end. I remember com7 when we were fighting for the biggest zoo in the server. It was a pleasure to play alongside this round. Mist4: Amazing help with the Wooky chiefing and a very impressive WWk considering when you started building it.
Sankets and Wolf - Ethical or not, these were the best WWks I have ever seen in my life. Amazing work.
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Lastly, I want to give some shout-outs to the highlights of this server. Note that I wasnt around early game. Call it Obi's end of server awards. (I am stealing the template from uk servers)

IGN (single or dual-account): Billion

Alliance: SGR

Your Set-up and Achievements: Three clusters (spawn, capital and WW area). 4 ops hammers - 1 in spawn, 3 in capital area. We hit many targets in multiple ops, chiefed a WWk (and a top raider), ghosted a WWr (Narcos) and WWk (Nocturne), helped to steal UT.

Best Player on the Server: Not an easy choice, but I will go with Wolf Throne. I do not approve the personal farms, but the impact he did was hands down the best. He killed the most non-Natar troops in this server, he made a record-breaking WWk. He joined in some ops. Also his central presence was also weighed heavily on enemies.

Best Offensive Player in your Alliance: I will put multiple names here: Tutakamun, Sereyvuth, lolol and Vladiu. First three was there almost all the ops we did. They executed the ops almost to the perfection, did everything as asked without questioning. Vladiu caused a lot of hassle to the enemy. Ghosting Mugiwara as well as knocking down enemy capitals with his central location was great to see. He had an impressive 600k off points as well.

Best Opponent (offensive): Fainting Goat. As I told to them in private too, they had such a good account that this was an underachievement. They built a massive account with not only multiple hammers but also a WWk AND a WWr. They have taken down all the local threats as well. If they were taking part on ops and actually attacking SGR/TEN, I would have been more confident nominating them for the best offensive opponent. Overall, great job!

Best Defensive Player in your Alliance: This one is tough to say, since there were not many tests to prove themselves. I will put Random Variable and Baguee here. Random Variable was a huge defensive account with high activity, as well as extremely helpful in the WW defense. Baguee was a great help on arranging SH defense with his high activity, making sure that the artefacts are defended (sorry for starving your troops <3). Amazing display lads.

Best Opponent (defensive): Tasty Tea. With his huge druid anvil, he was everywhere. Everytime we thought we killed his anvil, he came with more. It was frustrating at times to be walled over and over again. I am happy that he got the credit he deserves, with 22 defense medals and as the best defense points in the server. He was also one of the very few central account that we failed to breach the defense.

Best Leader (Your own): Mazzi. I cannot single out one person to be the best, it was more of a synchronization of multiple people with different responsibilities. And it was Mazzi, who coordinated that, so he gets the credit.

Best Leader (Not your own): tonzofgunz. Although his team came here weak, he help the core strong. He not only forged a respectable threat in SE, but also accepted the challenge to run 2 WWs simultaneously. It is not something everyone dares to attempt. Well done buddy. A second place award goes to Christiana, as I assume that she was responsible for amazing display of defense in Villains.

Funniest Person: Puggles. You have a great sense of humor. Please keep making village-art (seal). And special shout-out to quick beam, although we haven't talked as regularly. You are super witty and genuinely funny.

Stupidest Decision: Raid attempt: http://travian.kirilloid.ru/re…HS5KGkQhdKhDBX6BoEMBMS6BA I think it is self explanatory.

Most Underrated: This is a tough one, but I want to say Zyked. He did some formidable damage, being very close to the border. He was a threat overall, up until he lost his hammers. If ops were in place, he would be a devastating force. After he splat, he helped the WW by simming 10 WW villages, and I assume a big anvil alongside.

Best Noob: Actually, I dont know anyone who is new in travian. I will say, lolol, if you are new You have been amazing, as said above. Also, as always there is forever noob Nenad.

Most Overrated: I will say BKK here. With the support and income he got, I was expecting a much bigger WWk. I think Natar farming/spikes/defending with ECs impacted your growth quite a bit. It was not a poor showing by any means, but was below my expectation by a big margin.

Memorable Moment of the server: Wooky chiefing. The details we worked on this with mist4 and Cuvvy a.k.a. Bert&Ernie was amazing. We discussed how to do it for many days, and the execution was flawless. Along with its preparation, it was an epic moment, personally.
Soundtrack to your server: Of course:

Thanks LK

So... This is it from me. This is it. I hope some of you will find this interesting, and maybe useful. Feel free to put up your own analysis and give your own server awards.

Best,
Obi

BKK! wrote:

I'm curious to know what you mean by the amount of support that you say I may have I gotten. As far as the income, it was pretty misleading as much of the raiding resources were stored up daily to feed troops during my sleep hours. Maybe you guys noticed a major drop in raiding during off hours but maybe you didn't. I won't deny, I am pretty disappointed in the outcome of my hammer. I know it could have been much better. There were just too many mistakes, losses, starvation, just overall bad account management and especially at the end when my activity dropped quite a bit close to the holidays (I elected to be one of the earlier launches but that never happened). I've always said in our chat rooms that I probably have one of the worst managed accounts of the server, after James. Of course, if you've ever played with me, you know I always play alone so that had part to do with it. I like the challenge (torture) of it. While did have some good sitters, I didn't want to expect too much from them and one went to help sit the WW as well.

While I am quite flattered that you would have such high expectations of a noob such as myself, I've never really been a flashy player. I wasn't really planning on playing this server but just came back to have fun and play with some friends and talk smack in the chat rooms. I've never been a fan of the garaging, resource pushing, private farms, as well as other ethically borderline activities which have become all too common nowadays. This is pretty much the main reason why Travian has lost interest to me and I'm sure many other players as well. If I wanted to attempt a record, I could have grabbed 3-4 equally skilled players, did some pre-server account planning and very well could have accomplished it together.

Anyways, just thought I'd respond and I gladly accept my award for being the most overrated player on the server. A server that, at times has been slow, boring, sometimes exciting, it's had its ups and downs but I had a good time for the most part. Big ups to Villains for having me as part of the team and congrats on the win by SGR and TEN. It was well deserved.

Sincerely,

BKK

Show All

Hey BKK, nice to hear your perspective on this. To be honest, most of these awards dont mean much - as I have very partial information as to the history of these alliances and I have been away for good few months of the server. You may say that these are based on my observations alone which are bound to be faulty by its nature. That's why I was hoping that some other people could do their own analysis (and awards, if they feel like it), to get perspective that I do not have.

I think it shows how highly we regard you as a player. It was an account which we all were worried of. The support I was meaning was the regular artefact usage (trainer, eyes, storage) as well as sitters (well, I was imagining a better coverage in most part, but yeah). Obviously, I do not know the intricacies of the situations, but as yourself has said, mistakes really seem to have affected the account. I salute your take against private farms and garages, I hope more and more players will adopt this approach, going forward.

Like I said, it wasn't a poor WWk by any means. Hope you will keep being around to play with these folk.