I recently came across a Travian strategy I’ve seen work like magic. However to implement it there is a catch: You need to have a team of dedicated players who are accountable to each other. This is relatively easy to accomplish if you use sitters and have sit-checks. It also helps to have a private forum externally hosted (not on Travian server) that stays up year-long. This builds up a sense of community.

The strategy players on your attacker’s mind a little, which is probably why it’s so effective especially since no one does it.

Let’s say you have an incoming attack. The typical thing to do is to message your alliance and send out a request (through one of the leaders) for reinforcements to the village that is suspected to have a real attack (with catapults and/or chiefs). Everyone in the alliance will send out 100 – 500 units to “help out”. If you have 60 members in your alliance, you can typically expect to get help from 10 – 15. Say each of these sent 500 troops. That gives you a maximum of 7000 defensive troops, coupled with your own to hold out against a 35,000 troop hammer.

Am I the only one who sees this not working? Type these numbers in a combat simulator and see what comes out. They ALL die.

Now what if you had 100% cooperation in your alliance whereby anyone who didn’t send 75% of their troops was immediately booted out? You’d have at least 25 players sending reinforcements (who are within range) and you’d have closer to 50,000 or 60,000 troops in the village to defend against the 35,000 hammer.

Some will die, but the attacker will take the most damages. This is called teamwork and when a team of friends who come back round after round prove themselves by working together like this they become unstoppable.

I won’t mention the name of the alliance I learned this from, but I will say that they were #1 on a speed server for the entire round.

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Question:
Hi Dan,
First of all, your ebook has been very helpful in preparing for my 2nd village. I managed to keep raiders off me by building crannies, though it made 2 other players hate me more so now they attack me and get my troops instead (they managed to wipe me out again, just so happened [...]

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