Contents:

Introduction
Phase 1, Order of Tasks.
Phase 2, Raiding Oases.
Phase 3, Raiding players coming out of BP.
Phase 4.1, Gauls.
Phase 4.2, Teutons + Romans.
Setting up Farm Lists.
Phase 5, Village 2 Onwards.

[align=center]Credits[/align]




Introduction
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, a start game guide unlike any other! I've gone all out with this one. Instead of just writing the guide from theory, memory and knowledge, I'm writing this guide and putting it into practice at the same time. This eliminates any errors or oversights and gives tangible evidence of what can be accomplished if the guide is followed. To put it in short, I'm giving you the key to being one of the top players on any server you start!

Now I know if I came onto the forum and read about someone claiming to be able to improve my game, I'd want to see some evidence that the guy knows what he's talking about.

Since 2008 I have been a consistent top 10 raider and attacker in the first few weeks. Unfortunately i don't have evidence going that far back, but I do have evidence from one of my current servers. This is the first 3 weeks of my current uk1:


Ok enough of that, moving on...

One of the more difficult tribes to play the first few days is the tribe of the Gauls. As such I started uk2 2013/14 at the exact same time as starting this guide, as a Gaul. I wrote down the steps I took as I went. I don't claim to have the most efficient start game strategy, but you'll be hard pressed finding a better one. This guide can be followed regardless of which tribe you play, as it contains tribe specific chapters.

My results so far, and what can be your results if you follow the guide:
After the first 72 hours, I had 31 Phalanx, 29 TT.
By end of week one, the Sunday night having started the Monday, I had 300 tt and ended the week rank 5 raider, having raided 500245 res.
I sent my settlers off end of Monday, day 8 and settled a 150% 15c. I ended week two rank 3 raider, having raided 805308.

Phase 1, Order of Tasks.

With instant completion, this phase can be done within 2 hours of starting any server.

Steps upon logging in:
1: Complete Tutorial. (Send Hero to Furthest Adventure when the task comes up)
2. Build Iron mine.
3. Extend one more of each resource tile to level 1.
4. Build Granary.
(I do this now, because there is a chance my hero might come back with resources, and I would not want the res to overflow.)
5. One wheat field to lvl 2. One Wheat field to lvl 1.
6. Change Village Name. (If you are using this guide, feel free to signature your village name with my symbol: ☠)
7. Check Statistics.
8. Iron mine x1, clay pit x1, wood cutter x1 to lvl 2.
9. Collect 30 hero exp. When hero lvl's up, put 4 points on attack.
10. Main Building to lvl 3.

11. Open Map.
12. Short of wheat, so upgrade 2 wheat fields to lvl 1.
13. Build Market Place.
14. Last wheat field to lvl 1.
15. Make a trade. (I don't trade much, some people do and can make a fair amount through trades. I put up a trade and cancel straight away for this task.)
16. Upgrade 3 wheat fields to lvl 2.
17. Open Message.
18. Build remaining lvl 1 fields.
19. Upgrade Warehouse to lvl 3.
20. Upgrade Granary to lvl 3.

21. Upgrade remaining wheat field from lvl 1, to lvl 3.
22. Look at gold advantages.
23. Build Embassy.
24. Main Building to lvl 5.
25. Build Residence.
26. Upgrade Warehouse to lvl 7.

Ok. So this is where things can get mixed up a bit, depending on the server. Again, I'm just going to write down the steps that I'm doing for this server.

27. Upgrade 3 Wheat fields to lvl 3.
28. Can skip this step if you wish, I've upgraded embassy to lvl 3 and founded my own alliance.
29. Build Barracks and Cranny lvl 1.
30. Upgrade Barracks to lvl 3.

End of Phase 1.

Phase 2, Raiding Oases.

It is now 24 hours after registering. As a gaul, I could just wait and accumulate the resources needed for TT's. Soon as the 10th adv is done I would have enough resources to research TT's and train 4 or so.

But I've had a look and there is a 25% clay oases next to me which has the following animals:
14 Rats
8 Spiders
6 Wild Boars

Facts about oases:
travian.kirilloid.ru/oases.php
Oases start off 12 hours production at the start of a server. They accumulate resources based on an hourly production which is shown in kirilloid, depending on the speed of the server.
All the animals have different strengths, some being stronger against infantry than cavalry and vice versa:
answers.travian.co.uk/?aid=109
Animals in wheat/clay, clay, wheat/iron, iron oases, are going to be weaker than those found in wood and wheat oases, however the latter usually have less animals at the start so are good for using cages on.

Now, the 25% clay oases, at first glance one might dismiss it, after-all, at this time I have not received the book or cages yet, so my hero, while being mounted, still only has 4 attack points.

But lets take a closer look. My hero has 72% health, and 20 spare ointment. The server has been going for 5 days, so the oases should be full and holding 4k resources. That means I can afford to take losses upto 4k in clearing it.

Using Kirilloid I can work out that my hero would die if I raided the oases straight away. However, if I use 1 ointment, giving him 73% health, then he would survive:
travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2.p…:p500r3#r3u14,8,,,6,,,,,U
Interesting fact about the hero: A hero will do the same damage whether he is on 100% health or 1% health.
I have found from using kirilloid over the years, that provided you make sure to put in all the correct information, it is always 100% accurate. So I can work out my losses to the point of having just 1% health left and know that is what will happen.
So this means I can in-fact raid the oases twice, with 4 attacks points, before the hero dies, for the cost of 1 ointment. A lvl 1 hero will take 2 hours to revive, and cost 1050 resources to revive:
travian.kirilloid.ru/hero4.php#tribe=3
So now the hero is reviving, and I've put my remainder resources into training 8 phalanx. The oases now has:
6 Rats
4 Spiders
2 Wild Boars

That looks much better! The hero cost me 1050 res to revive, but I'll be able to raid the oases and take 4000 resources without taking any more losses, so that's a decent profit and therefore definitely worth it, even if the hero was to die once more.

When it comes to raiding oases, these are the calculations one needs to make. No point having a healthy hero if you're not able to raid, there's no harm in killing your hero.

[B]Phase 3, Raiding players coming out of BP. [/B]

Right, so this is where we start to get a bit more hard core. I'm going to include screenshots to make things easier to explain.

Step 1.
- set aside a few minutes, open a new browser window.
- you're going to have two tabs open the whole time which you're not going to close. Tab one is going to be the map around your village.
- looking around the map you want to find the next village coming out of protection... earliest one I could find within 3 hrs was 10am. Don't pick a target that is too far away, remember you will want to raid it when it comes out of protection, and have your troops back for when the next target comes out of protection if possible.
- To see when a village comes out of protection, click on the village in the map, and hover your pointer where "send troops" is greyed out due to being in protection. As shown in the image, the time and date the players protection ends is then displayed.


Step 2.
- holding CTRL, click on the players name. This will open a new tab with the players' profile.
- click on the players village. This will take you to the screen shown below.
- highlight the html as shown and copy.
- close the tab.


Step 3.
- in the 2nd tab which you're going to keep open, open the links page.
- paste the html in the link target.
- write the date and time in the link name, as well as the village population.
- save!

Repeat this process and pretty soon you will have a decent list of links. These links will take you straight to the players village, so when the time comes you don't need to go searching for the village on the map. You will also be able to see if there has been change in the village population, so you know if the person is active or not.

Some general guidelines that I've come up with for adding villages which I usually stick to myself:

1. Don't put anyone over 70 population on, they're active. Raiding active players is a waste of time when you can be raiding an inactive player.
2. Any village over 25 odd population should be scouted to see if there's any animals before you raid it.
3. Keep the dates in order to avoid confusion.

After 10 mins or so, even though I'm a Gaul, I have a raiding action plan for the next 24 hours:


Personally, for the start of a server, I set my alarm for every single player coming out of protection that I want to raid no matter the time of day or night. Every single resource I raid is a step closer to village 2.

If you are a Teuton or Roman, skip to Phase 4.2.

[B]Phase 4.1, Gauls.[/B]

I've just done my 10th adventure, which enabled me to research TT's and put two on to train. It could have been a couple more, but I'd opted to put my raided resources over the last 24 hrs, into training phalanx instead. I now have 31 phal. If I get a full raid, which I've been doing everytime today, raiding the vills coming out of BP, then that is enough for one TT.

Over the last 24 hours I've completed the following steps:
31. Upgrade two wheat fields to lvl 4. (All other wheat fields are lvl 3, and the clay pits, wood cutters and iron mines are still on lvl 1/2.)
32. Build Academy to lvl 5.
33. Build Forge to lvl 3.
34. Build Wall.
35. Build Stable to lvl 3.

This is what my village looks like currently and how it will probably remain while I train up the TT's:


The job now is to train as many TT's as I can. I would like to be able to settle on day 8. Therefore I am going to spend the first 5 days of the server, just building up TT numbers. If I could have 150-200 TT's by the end of the 5 days, I'll be happy!

Next steps.
-Phase 3 is being repeated again and again, new farms coming out of BP the whole time. All I'm doing is raiding them as they come out and putting the resources into tt's.
- Upon reaching 30 odd tt, I started to upgrade my stable. I now have 44 tt and a lvl 6 stable.
- I've now start to upgrade my lvl 1 fields with spare res. So if I can't put a tt on to train due to lack of res, I put a field on to build.
In the end I upgraded my stable gradually all the way to lvl 12, having a constant queue of tt's training. I stopped training tt's when I reached 300 in number, and went for v2. If you're not interested in getting a 150% 15c, you could easily just keep going and build 1k+ tt's which would put you way ahead in the raiding tables.

[B]Phase 4.2, Teutons + Romans.[/B]

Right, as soon as we have the lvl 3 barracks, we're going to want to start training infantry:

31. Put 5 infantry on to train.
32. Upgrade all fields to lvl 2.

Because we're not going to go for cavalry, either Tuet or Roman, we don't need to build a stable. That gives us a lot more population consumption to work with than the Gaul. Now the following steps are probably going to take the Roman longer than it would the Tueton, but that's to be expected.

33. Train 35 more mace, 55 more legs.
34. Upgrade fields to lvl 3. (lvl 3 fields give 2 Culture Points each.)
35. Train 40 more mace, 60 more legs.
36. Build Cranny to lvl 10.
37. Build 10 crannies to lvl 3. (lvl 3 cranny only costs 550 res, but give 2 cp.)
38. Build Embassy lvl 3. (Can build higher depending on res income.)
39. Build Market Place lvl 3. (Can build higher depending on res income.)
40. Build Academy lvl 3. (Can build higher depending on res income.)
41. Train infantry till end of day 4.

At this point, it really depends on your res income from raids. You may wish to continue training more troops, or go straight for v2.

Going for v2.
42. Upgrade MB to lvl 10.
43. Upgrade Academy to lvl 10.
44. Build Town Hall. (If two parties are needed, then start the first party now.)
45. Build Residence to lvl 10.
46. Hold party.
47. Train 3 settlers.
48. Found v2.

[U][B]Setting up Farm Lists[/U][/B]

Intro:
Setting up a good farm list can take quite some time. I think I put in a total of around 3 hours work into setting up my farm list on uk2. However, once I'd finished, I was able to simply log in a few times a day, send the raids out which took a few seconds, and then continue with whatever else I had to do... and still end up in the top 10 raiders.

The more work you put in, the greater your rewards. I'm lazy... and lack the discipline needed to maintain top 10 raiding throughout the server. However, some of you reading this, will have the discipline needed, and simply lack the experience and knowledge needed. So hopefully as you read this guide, you'll gain what is needed.

Anyway, without further ado.

Start game farming rules

These are the rules I have for myself and my duals:

Rule 1: Under no circumstances should we put players we know are active, in our farm lists. An active player can choose to build defense at any point, causing unnecessary losses and work of having to remove them again from the farm list. Furthermore, we want active players to grow, because we want them later on to either be good allies or have decent villages for us to conquer.

Rule 2: Under no circumstances should we be hitting an active player, even a once off, that has a reasonable amount of defense troops 20+. The only time we should be clearing defense, is when we've scouted the player and seen that their warehouse is full and they are therefore inactive.

Rule 3: Scout everyone above 40 population in the first week that is within range. We don't want to be hitting a wall of defense- it can happen with players as low as 9 population, but is extremely unlikely.

Number of troops.
Many people make the mistake of adding all their farms into one single list. But what I propose to be more effective, is to have multiple lists, based on distance.

I have created a table, showing the production you can expect at different populations, and therefore the amount of troops that need to be sent per tribe, and the regularity.

[table='width: 500']
[tr]
[td]Population+ Production PH[/td]
[td]2 pop, 80 prod[/td]
[td]70 pop, 180 prod[/td]
[td]100+pop, 300+prod[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Teuton: Every 60 mins.[/td]
[td]2 Mace[/td]
[td]3 Mace[/td]
[td]5 Mace[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Gaul: Every 60 Mins[/td]
[td]2 Phal[/td]
[td]3 TT[/td]
[td]4 TT[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Roman: Every 60 mins[/td]
[td]2 Legs[/td]
[td]2 EI[/td]
[td]3 EI[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

So when adding farms to your farm list, you can use the above table as a guideline to determine how many troops to assign to each farm. You'll notice the Romans and Gauls have cavalry raiding as well, which is due to their infantry not being altogether the most effective raiders. Obviously you should manage the amount of troops you put in your farm list per farm, depending on how regularly you're able to send off your raids. If you can only log in 2 hours for example, then it may be worth adding an extra troop per farm...

On the other hand, if you are in an active neighborhood and you never get bounties over 80, then there is no point sending more than two troops, so edit your lists according to your own personal circumstances.

So now we know how many troops we should send every hour to our farms, we'll want to set up our farms in such a way, that they'll all be raided once an hour.

Setting up the lists.
For example, a mace travels 7 fields per hour. Therefore we'll want all the farms within 7 fields of our village, in one list. In the 2nd list, we'll want all the farms from fields 7-14. In the 3rd list, all the farms from fields 14-21. And so on. This may be better explained visually so I'm going to use my uk1 Teuton account as an example:


Whats the reason for having them in these lists, rather than one big list, or just multiple random lists? Its all about effective raiding.

If I log in, and all my troops are home, I send them all off, to each of the lists, starting with list one, having the nearest farms. If I do not have enough troops to raid all the farms in all the lists, then I put more troops on to train. What I don't do, is send the troops to list 1-3, then when those troops come back, send them to lists 3-6. If I were to do that, then it would be at-least 6 hours before any of my troops came back, which means 6 hours lists 1-3 have not been raided.

I will instead, only send off my troops once an hour, and every time starting from list one. This way ensuring that all the farms that I have troops for, closest to me, get raided once an hour. At the start, I might only have enough troops for lists 1-2, which means that lists 3 onwards don't get raided at all... that's fine. If there's 80 res in a farm in list 1 and 80 res in a farm in list 6, but I only have two troops, then obviously I should take the res thats closest so that I can train more troops quickly. As I train more troops, I'll start to have enough troops to send to list 3 as well, then list 4 and so on and eventually yes, I'll have enough troops to go fetch the res that's in list 6 as well.

Adding farms to lists.

Brilliant, now that we have our farm lists organized, lets add some farms to them. To do this quickly and efficiently, I personally need to concentrate, so first and foremost, I set aside a dedicated time.

Then follow these steps:

Step one: Open a new browser window.

Step Two: Open up 2 tabs (don't want any other tabs open that might distract me);
Tab 1, open the map around my village and have it on full-screen.
Tab 2, open the farm list.

Step Three: Looking on the map, check the co-ords and population of the farm I'm wanting to add to my farm list, go to tab 2, add the farm to the list "New Players".

Step Four: Repeat step three, working across the map from one end to the other end. Example: 20|20 across to 40|20, then the next row from 20|21 to 40|21... till I get to 40|40.

Step Five: When I start to lose focus and need a break, or my session has come to an end, I write down the co-ords I've done so I know where to pick up from next time.

Step Six: When I have a chance, I will go move all the farms from my "New Players" list, into their appropriate lists.

Finding in-actives.
After aprox 7 days, inactive players under 2 pop will be automatically deleted. This is why early game raiding is crucial to make use of while you can. It is also advisable to put your raiding income into production, so that when the majority of your farms dis-appear, you have an income to back you up. I usually don't bother raiding past week 5 or so, having put the resources I raided in weeks 4-5, into my resource fields.

However, if you wish to continue raiding, being disciplined in maintaining your farm lists;

1.
gettertools.com/ts2.travian.co.uk.3/2-Region-Inactives
This tool is great further into the server for finding players who have developed their villages and then for some reason or other gone inactive without doing the decent thing and telling you...

2. A handy little tip which will find you surprisingly good farms:

Sunday, midnight, when the statistics have reset, go look at the top 10 defense statistics. Keep refreshing the page and gradually you will see players gaining singular defense points. A player gains singular defense points usually because they have a wall and/or residence and have been raided, killing a single offense unit. One would only raid a player and be willing to lose a troop every-time, if the bounty is worth it. Therefore the chances are good, that the players in the top 10 defense at the start of the week, have a good production and are inactive... Enter these players into your "New Player" farm list. Scout them to make sure there's no defense and are in-fact inactive... once you've determined that they are indeed inactive, feel free to go knock down their wall and resi, and add them to your regular farm list.

This way, not only have you gained an extra farm, but you're also hindering other people's farming by stealing their farms, thus gaining an advantage over them.

Phase 5, Village 2 Onwards

Intro:
In this part of the guide, I'm simply going to give a build order. I wrote a mid-game guide in 2009 which remains widely used to this day. This is a bit of an update, but without all the maths and figures... you'll just have to take my word for it or go work out the maths for yourself

Many people make the mistake of founding their 2nd village, and then continue throwing parties thinking that village number 3 is of high importance. It is not.

At the start you can only throw parties that give 500 cp. If you put those resources into your fields instead, then you will be able to catch up on culture points by throwing grand balls later on, which you'll be able to afford due to your high resource production. Not only that but you'll also be able to build lvl 20 market places, and many other high culture point producing buildings, which you would not be able to afford building if you'd not invested in your resource fields.

I could do the maths and figures as I did in the previous guide, but I'm not going to as I've done them before so am confident that the following steps are most efficient:

Founding V2 Onwards
Soon as your 2nd village is founded, upgrade all your fields to the same level as the fields in your 1st village, whether that be lvl 1, lvl 3, or lvl 6. The lower resource field lvls always give a higher res output, to input ratio, than that of the later lvls. So basically, the lower fields should always be done first throughout your account. From there on out, upgrade all your fields in both villages equally, moving res from village to village as is required, till all your fields are lvl 8 in both villages.

Regarding the building of factories in your 6c, Kirilloid once again comes in very useful:


In your 15c:


Once you have your factories as shown above, and your Bakery at lvl 3, you can then afford to spend a day putting all your resources from both villages, into building your hero's mansion in your 2nd village to lvl 10.

When you have founded your 50% wheat oases, you then continue upgrading your fields to lvl 9, after which you build your lvl 4 bakery as shown above. Once all fields are lvl 9, you then again put all your resources into your hero's mansion and build it to lvl 15.

When you have conquered your 2nd 50% wheat oases, you should nearly have the required culture points for village number 3- throw a couple of parties if needed.

Soon as village 3 is founded, you'll want to put all your resources into the fields, and bring them up to the same lvls as your other two villages- lvl 9's. Once that is done, upgrade all your fields to lvl 10 in all three villages.

When all your fields in all three villages are lvl 10, and the factories are completed, put all resources into lvl 11 wheat fields in your 15cl. Once all lvl 11's are done, put all the res into your hero's mansion, upgrading it to lvl 20.

Lvl 20 Hero's Mansion Onwards.
As soon as your lvl 20 hero's mansion is complete and your 3rd oases is conquered, you can now afford to start throwing grand balls in all three your villages, putting all remainder resources into upgrading your wheat fields in your 15c.
You'll want to maintain 24/7 grand balls, and founding new villages as soon as the cp is available, putting all resources into the new village fields, getting the new village to lvl 10 fields, and holding grand balls as well. You'll find you will be able to found a new villages every 5 days or so.

Because you built your fields to lvl 11 in your 15c first, you are able to hold grand balls in all your villages 24/7, and still have plenty of resources left over to continue upgrading your wheat fields to lvl 18 before mid-game arties arrive, thus providing the storage space for your hammer/anvil.

If you do the above, you will have achieved your goal- enough resources to build a hammer/anvil as well as having plenty of storage.

Credits

My special thanks to:

Coffer, who approached me upon seeing the start of the guide, and willingly offered to sponsor the uk2 account with gold. Due to his sponsorship I was able to extend the guide from a simple start game 1 week guide, to a more comprehensive guide stretching far into the depths of the server.

Lord Kyrill, for being a reliable sitter when needed.

Kyle, for joining me on the account and being good company, and for suggesting that I write the guide in the first place.

Moog wrote:

Dear Aslan, I know you're awesome early doors, but you do have a tendency to chicken out and give up mid-server. Could you please point me to a decent mid to end game guide, so I don't get such a poor rep. Thanks everso.

Dear Moog, I think you are mistaking being destroyed and then deleting, for chickening out. As being destroyed is an end in itself, designed to be made possible by the game designers themselves, I believe that the game is still being played correctly should this end come about.

Regardless however, it is not every server that my enemies do manage to destroy me before end-game, and as such I do have some experience and in-fact do have a guide which was written a while ago:

forum.travian.co.uk/showthread.php?t=54083

It is in-fact this guide which I wish to update and include in this guide as well. But really, I shouldn't worry about the end of your game yet if I were you, as you have a tendency to make a pretty poor display of your server starts, let alone the rest of the server. So the first few chapters of this guide should keep you going for now

The Adventure start in August, so probably won't be here for the end of s2. But by all means, feel free to write us an end-game guide