So, you’re an active raider 10 days into the game and ready to found your second village. But, where to put it? This guide will cover the criteria for village placement.This guide is intended for new players who haven’t much experience with founding villages, but may also be useful to experienced players who haven’t put much thought into where they place villages.
The basic assumption of this guide is that you are in a major alliance. This means that no major alliance members should farm you without causing a diplomatic incident. If you are a lone player, the guide should still be helpful, but you are asking to get farmed or even conquered at any time. Therefor unallied players should focus heavily on defense. The alliance is a lot like organized crime because the alliance offer you protection, and you offer them troops. Few successful players make it long without joining a big alliance.
Village founding options:
1. 1.Directly next to your capital
2. .Relatively close to your capital (one screen away)
3. Semi-close such as within 3 screens
4. Extremely far away
Option 1 is probably most common because it allows for quick transport of resources and troops to the new village. This makes for ideal protection of new villages, as well as a great place to store extra offense troops from your capital because they can be quickly recalled for attacks. However, this approach has several drawbacks which most don’t consider. This selection does nothing to increase your raiding range. It also means you won’t get extra oasis for your new town. Also remember that most players move their capital early on to a large crop village to support a larger army. Which means these villages will end up not being as close to defensive troops as you may like late in the game.
Option 2 is my primary choice for all new villages including my second village. I enjoy having a raiding force in each new town and the new village can be planted directly next to good farms. I also maintain more oasis throughout the game with this strategy. Although, some may consider this option too risky because you tend to encroach on others more frequently and have a longer period for reinforcements and supply. I have found that my satellite villages rarely fall under serious attack, and when they do the attacks come from far enough away that it is very easy to defend.
Option 3 Is often usd to found 9 and 15 crop villages as you don’t have much choice as thier location. Or, this option can be used to increase the distance between your empire and a farmer. Sometimes this option can be helpful if you want to place a city near larger allies for protection or to protect a smaller ally. It can also be useful to leap frog away from allies to expand your raiding range. Large alliances create huge dead zones where unallied farms never survive. This makes the game very boring for a farmer, and placing your villages away from the main cluster can improve your resource gathering.
Option 4 is usually a last ditch effort to get free of a farmer after option 3 fails to elude him. It is similar to starting your account over, but it uses your capital as a leg up. I don’t believe many serious players found resource clusters in the void around the outside of the game as troop transport times are wicked. But, this can be a viable choice for new players looking for some peaceful simcity play. Option 4 can also be used by members of large alliances to find “dead zones” in their quadrant where no allies exist. By moving your empire to the heart of a dead zone it will make for a very active and aggressive game. To find such zones, create a list of all the alliances allied to your own alliance and input them into a Travian map tool such as those in the map tools section.
By following Option 2 your empire expands much like a command and conquer base that will eventually stretch far and wide in all four directions. I try to keep all of my border towns within 2 hours of my 9/15 crop capital because your only real offense will come from that town. With each new town you found, try to plant it right next to your best farm, and within range of at least 2 oasis. Also, you’ll want to give your allies some space because sharing farms and oasis is always a bummer. When selecting villages you want to take special care to avoid large aggressive players. While many players are content to ignore another large player 2 screens away, if you found a village within sight of their capital you may just start a war that will be very costly. Of course if you have your eye on some soon to be farms… a perfect way to get a foot hold near them is to found a village there. Most players will be afraid of players much larger than themselves, so they will ignore your town despite your inability to defend it. By the time they realize you are about to conquer all their villages you have 2 senators with in 15 minutes of their entire empire.
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