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The tendency for new players tends to be to build every possible building that can be set up in a village. This brings down crop and takes up valuable room for useful buildings. Here are the top 7 buildings that you do not need to build in every single village

1.       Siege Workshop: You only need to build one of these in villages that you will also be building troops in. Don’t build it in a feeder village and avoid bringing it to level 10 just so you can boost your population.

2.       Tournament Square: This playground looking infrastructure should only be build in village that have more than 10,000 troops in them. Ideally you want to have 1 – 2 of these and bring them to level 20. Don’t forget that to bring a TS to 20 you will need 3 warehouses.

3.       Hero’s mansion: If there is no oasis in the area and you don’t plan on building troops in this village, why build a hero’s mansion. There is no point.

4.       Black Smith or Armoury: You only need to build this so you can build a trade post. Once your trade post is build you can destroy it with your main building. By all means get rid of it.

5.       Treasure Chamber: If you have the extra resources then go for it. But remember that a TC takes room. On the plus side you get good culture points from it which will help your expansion.

If you optimize space you can build the buildings that may be useless, but they give you more culture points and greater flexibility in the game.

Harsh realities aside, there are many good reasons why you would want to be farmed at the beginning of your experience playing Travian. When most players leave the beginners? protection which lasts 3-7 days they get farmed for weeks. However the most farming takes place at the beginning of a server. As time wears on the players who stole everyone else?s resources have gotten sufficiently ahead that they don?t need to rely on raiding as much. But what have you learned from being farmed?Since it is highly probable that you will be farmed at the beginning of the game you need to prepare yourself mentally. Why would a player want to be farmed? In other words, why would they want to have their resources stolen from them by another player?1.     Being attacked at the beginning of the game makes you think about troops early on. If your villages are isolated from all others you are much less likely to build a large army and think offensively. Getting raided puts you in the right frame of mind you need to be in so that you will have bigger hammers than the other players around you. 2.     You build up good defence. Most players don?t have sufficient defence. They may build offensive troops, but they don?t have the defence troops to back themselves us. 3.     Be farmed brings you closer to other players in the game. Travian cannot be played as a single player. You must work with others in order to survive. If you are being farmed you will need to call on others for help to fight your attacker off. This builds rapport with the other players around you. It also develops team work.

Where you start a new game, the first thing you want to do is get all your fields up to level 10 in your spawn village. Right? Wrong. If you focus all your resources on your own fields (which no one can steal from you) you will not be quick enough to grab an oasis. There are a few unwritten rules that govern oasis and how other players’ oasis should be treated by you and your army.

1.       If you want an oasis that is right next to another alliance member, the first one to take it gets it.

2.       If you have a 15 – cropper village in the area, you should get priority over the best bonus crop oasis tiles in your 7 x 7. If someone else gets it first you should politely ask them to leave it to your cropper. You may have to take your case to the leadership of the alliance, since having a bonus oasis on a cropper is much more beneficial than it is to a normal 6 – crop village

3.       If you have a Non-Aggression-Pact with another player you are expected to respect his/her oasis and not attack it.

4.       If your enemy has a crop oasis that is connected to his/her 15 – cropper you want to grab it as soon as possible to starve the troops in the cropper. This may not have the effect of killing everything, but it will be a pain for the person who used to own it. They’ll probably fight back to get it, so guard it well.

These are the main points surrounding getting an oasis. Once you have a couple of level 10 fields, build hero’s mansions is all your villages and grab the oasis that are around you, especially if you are in a densely populated area with a lot of villages.

While your family might describe Travian as being ?mindless? and ?for kids,? there is no doubt that the game runs best when older and mature players play the game. So what can you do to appear as smart and experienced as you can? Here are a few pointers:1)    Village Names: Make your village names something that follows a series or group of words. For example, you could start with January, February, March, etc. . . Or, you could do Death Star, Endor, Tatoonie, etc. . . What you are communicating to other players is that you are a smart player and know that you will be covering all the planets/months eventually. This sends a ?big? message to others. 2)    When sending troops to raid with, send them in batches of 100 or 1000 rather than odd numbers like 493 or 253. If you send a nice round number it looks like you had 6000 troops to pick from and divided them equally. If you send 253 it looks you sent off all you have. 3)    Spelling and Grammar: Everyone appreciates properly spelled words with punctuation in the right places. No big player is going to think twice about a message like this: ?supp dud plz plz plz stop rading me!!!? It does not bode well for your public appearance. 4)    Don?t spam people who are raiding you. Even if they are attacking you and sending catapults, you should respond in a civil manner. Send one message and follow up with a second one a day later if you do not get a reply. 5)   Think Big and Kick Ass: Trump?s book under this title encourages his business audience to think in a big way. You can do the same in Travian. Send 400 scouts instead of 20; scout all the people in your area instead of scouting 2 or 3 rounds each day. These points will make you appear like someone who means business and is an experienced player.