Travian: how do you play it?

Well... how do you play Travian? Are you defensive? Are you offensive? What race do you chose? What server are you on?

These few questions do have a sense, I'm not just into listing them. It depends on the server type (speed or normal) and your own way of playing.

Here are the 2 types of players you'll encounter in Travian:
1. Aggressive.

This is the player with an extensive list of farms who's entire day means scouting - attacking - scouting again ... Most of the time he's playing Teuton since the race is "designed" for aggressive playing. The Clubswingers carry the most resources as compared to a Legionnaire or a Phalanx and that 60 resources for each soldier are something quite useful.

Best idea for them is to make a small army fast and keep on adding new soldiers and farms to their list. The soldiers in the Teuton army are not as expensive as the other races, even if not as good as the Roman troops in the end.

The aggressive player has a small population, but you'd be amazed to see how many troops he can amass. You might have the "pleasure" to discover he's researched all the troops already and when you least expect it a 400 population Teuton might strike you with catapults and all the other expensive troops.

Most of the time he's got very small resource fields and he's on a negative crop. But as long as there are neighbours to raid, the war still rages on. This type of player is found on most servers and he does better than others especially in non-gold servers without speed features (server 2 comes in mind).

2. Peaceful

I won't say that the peaceful players are Sim City players, not even say that Sim City playing is bad. I recall playing on S3 as a "development focused" player and it was quite OK. I had a good population and that meant a nice place in the top.

Still on many servers a peaceful player has to work more and face the kind of player I mentioned in the first category. They are focused on getting those resource fields to a higher level, on not having a negative crop, on getting many villages and being loved by the neighbours, as opposed to the attacker type who has the entire neighbourhood hate him ...

Most of the people who are playing this peaceful game are using Roman or Gaul race, some chose Romans because of the double building possibility (they can build a resource field and a village building at the same time) and the good quality of the army. Others use the Gauls because of the double cranny and the traps that can make an attacker's life miserable.

Even if it's harder at the beginning to work like this, if they are hard working and have serious crannies to keep Teutons out of their resources, hard work will pay off.