ae ae

I you’ ve ever been bored in a class or at a job where you’ ve had access to a computer,
you’ve probably spent your fair share of time goofing off, either by checking your email or
surfing the net. Maybe you’ ve wished that you could play a game to help pass the time, but
most games either need to be installed or downloaded, which is a no-go on most computers
you come across in your daily life. Travian is a free browser-based game, meaning that

no downloads or installations are necessary, and you can play it on any computer that is
connected to the Internet, so it’s easy to play from school, work, or at home. Even your cell
phone will suffice if you have it hooked up to web! Travian is fun and simple to understand,
but it also has a lot of depth and strategy to it. And best of all, you get to play with over
40,000 other people at the same time.

Travian is somewhat similar to Civilization in that each player controls their own empire,
and builds their own towns and armies, which struggle for dominance with other players. But
it’s more epic in scope than any other game I’ve played, besides having tens of thousands of
different rulers for your empire to compete with, playing one game from start to finish lasts
nearly a year. The game takes place in real time, so even when you're asleep your cities are
still producing resources, and other players are still taking actions around you. This makes
knowing how to defend yourself essential, because you can be attacked while you’re away
from the computer. Luckily, the game heavily favours the defender, so if you play smart, you
should be able to manage. Once you’ve fortified your cities enough, most other players will
leave you alone and look for an easier target,

But that easier target is always another player, and that’s what makes the game so exciting.
There are no computer-controlled cities to raid, only humans with tricks up their sleeve. You
can never be sure about what the retaliation will be like when you launch an attack. If you’ve
ever heard the expression “man is the deadliest prey,” this game will teach you how true
that is. In my first month of playing, I was at war with a nearby player. After my armies had
defeated his, I thought he was no longer a threat, and I started to raid his cities mercilessly.
Then he got a friend who had armies eight times the size of mine to attack me from the other
side of the world!

I decided from that point on not to mess with him again.

The setting for Travian is a historically based world where players choose from one.of
three civilizations: Romans, Gauls, or Teutons. Eachone has different units and different
abilities. Romans are recommended for first-time players, because they have well-balanced
army units and construct buildings the fastest, making it easy to spend your resources. Over
50% of the total players choose them. But if you look at the list of top players you'll see a
lot of them are playing as the defensive Gauls or greedy Teutons. The game uses a simple
resource system; wood, iron, and clay are used to construct buildings and train troops, and

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crops are used to feed those troops. Your cities produce those resources automatically, but
you can also raid other players to steal their resources (later in the game you can conquer
entire cities!). The size of the map dwarfs even the largest ones in Civilization games. No
one player, or even an alliance of players, can hope to conquer the entire world, even in a
year’s time.

So how does someone win this game and triumph over the other 40,000+ players? After
300 days, a “world wonder” can be built, and whoever can finish building it first (which
takes weeks to) is declared the winner. Players form huge alliances in order to be a part of
the winning side. In the game I’m currently playing in, there are four alliances racing one
another across the finish line, and each one followed quite a different path to get to this point,
proving that there’s no one formula for success in this game. One tried to dominate the game
militarily, one preferred to gain strength through diplomacy and trade and used force as a
last resort, another liked to use tricks, spies, and propaganda to weaken the other alliances as
much as possible, and the last one (which I’m in) was the result of several different alliances
uniting together just as the game neared its end.

What makes the game such a good time killer is that you can log in for as long as you
want. If you just have a few minutes then you can just log in, give some build orders, make
some trades in the game’s marketplace, and tell your armies who to attack, and then it will
all happen while you’re away from the computer. On the other hand, if you want to spend
hours playing the game every night, you can do that too, but it’s not necessary. You can also
play on as many different servers that you want, including a “speed” server where games last
for just four months instead of a year.

The game is played by millions around the world, though it’s just starting to catch on in
North America (apparently it’s huge in Europe). In my alliance, my closest partners are from
Qatar and Iran. We take most of our orders from a nurse in London, England who is almost
always online when she’s at work, except for when she’s busy with a patient. Just getting
to be a part of a team like that is an interesting experience, and because you play with these
people every day for hundreds of days, you get to know them a lot better than you do in a
game like World of Warcraft. Diplomacy is the most important part of this game; too many
players don’t take the time to communicate with other players and just focus on building
their cities and armies. Making friends who will back you up with their armies when you
need them is much more critical. To help facilitate this, there’s an in-game email system, and
each alliance has its own forum and chat room. So it’s good to talk to other players as much
as possible, and you’ll find that no matter where they’re from, a lot of them are people who
are just as bored with their classes and jobs as you are.