The goal of this Travian tips guide is to teach you intermediate players how to build massive armies often referred to as “hammers”. After the beginning phase of the game is over building huge armies is your primary goal. Your resource production will soon greatly out pace your need for resources., and I hope this article will give you some Travian Tips to accomplish that. However, there are still limiting factors on growth and army size that every large player must deal with. The first limitation most players face is that offense is very slow to travel over long distances. And, the attackers troops must all be produced from one village, while the defenders armies combine from many villages. However, it is very easy to use villages as storage for your troops. Because of the nature of offense in Travian combined with the power and expense of blacksmiths and armories, it is the most efficient strategy to produce army in only a handful of specialized villages.
By focusing your army production in a handful of key cities you can greatly increase the efficiency of your empire. Focusing your armies is a key Travian tip. You will only need blacksmiths and armories in 2 or 3 key cities instead of 20 or more. You will also not have a need for a level 20 barracks or stable outside of these cities. Although, many players become bored late in the game and max out all their buildings for “population”. Your capital should always be the site of your main offensive army, and if you plan to be a very large player, you should found a 15 crop capital with at least 100% food oasis. You can find such a village with crop tools from our tools section. It is very important that your Capital city produce 3 senators and not be used for settler production. These Senators will be the foundation of your mid game assault force. They will devastate an enemy city’s loyalty in one attack (and make Big parties more effective). This tactic takes care to execute as conquering senators disappear permanently when the target city reaches 0 loyalty. For more information on conquering refer to the Conquer Guide
The only drawback to this strategy is that you must constantly ship resources from your satellite villages to your production centers. A plus account makes this task easier, especially for Roman players who have great difficulty sending out all their resources without level 19 trade offices. Also, it becomes more difficult to raid from villages that have no army of their own. However, as an empire reaches a large size, raiding small targets becomes less and less productive, and most of the action switches to large hits from your key cities.
While it may seem easier to produce defenders in every city. One of my best Travian Tips tells you it is by far more effective to produce defenders in 1 or 2 key defense cities that posses level 20 armories and upgrades for each defensive unit. These defenders can then be “passed out” to other cities to reduce the strain on your crop supplies and add greater security to your empire.
Placement of your “key” production cities can be very important. Your Capital should become the focal point and center of your empire as it is the source of all of your power and influence. Centrally located defense cities also make it easier to send defenses out to the farthest reaches of your empire more quickly. However, a secondary attacking village may be located at the edges of an empire to extend influence and farming range.
The last and most important specialized city which many players often neglect is a scouting village. One village can easily hold 1500 scouts (double for Tuetons). This village will ensure that you can always scout any enemy no matter how large.
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