Travian
Encyclopedia
Travian is a massively multiplayer online
browser-based strategy game developed by the German software company Travian Games
.
The game's developers drew roughly from Classical antiquity
and particularly from the Roman Empire
to create a predominantly militaristic real-time strategy
. It has been suggested that Travians creators may have drawn from an earlier German board game, The Settlers of Catan
, for layout; there are similarities in resource development and theme as well.
Along with three English versions, and the original German version, Travian has been translated into over 40 other languages, and has over 5 million players and over 300 servers worldwide. In 2006, it won the Superbrowsergame Award, in the large games category.
Travian is programmed in PHP
and runs in most modern browsers. Travian was also the first game of its type to be playable on mobile phone
s. When played on a mobile phone, it used Java
. However, the Java application is no longer developed or supported.
as a Roman
, Gaul
or Teuton with two people—a population of two—in their village. The village has only one building in its village centre, known as the Main Building, around which are spaces for further buildings to be constructed. There are some prerequisites for constructing most buildings.
Outside the village centre there are 18 resource fields that are level 0. Every player's first village has the same distribution of resource fields, but additional villages may have a different distribution of fields. Each resource field is either a Woodcutter (produces Wood/Lumber), Clay Pit (produces Clay), Iron Mine (produces Iron) or Wheat Field/Cropland (produces Wheat/Crop). These fields produce a certain amount of resources per hour, depending on their levels. At level 0, each resource field produces two units per hour. There are also oases which can increase the production rate of resources, and can be occupied using a Hero when the Hero's mansion has reached a sufficient level. Resources are required to construct buildings, to sustain the population and to train and feed troops. (see below). A player can increase the production rate by upgrading the fields.
At the start of the game, the selection of buildings a player can construct is very limited. As the village is developed, a wider range of buildings become available for construction.
A greater aspect for the game is its troops. Troops are produced in the Barracks, Great Barracks, Stable, Great Stable and Workshop. They allow a player to raid other villages and steal their resources, which will benefit the attacker. When the Barracks have been upgraded to level three, the player may build an Academy, which allows them to research new types of troops; the player may also construct new types of buildings (such as the Armoury and Blacksmith ) once the Academy has been upgraded to a sufficient level. A Stable allows cavalry to be trained. These units are faster and more expensive than infantry. The Workshop allows siege engines—rams which destroy walls and catapults which destroy buildings—to be manufactured. These units are slower and more expensive than infantry and cavalry. Administrators, known more commonly as chiefs, are units which persuade enemy villages to join the attacker's realm. Units which gain experience in battle, known as Heroes, can be trained from an existing unit in the Hero's mansion.
The ultimate goal of Travian is to construct and upgrade a Wonder of the World (see End game) to level 100. The World Wonder requires millions of resources and takes a large amount of time to complete. Once a World Wonder is upgraded to level 100, the game ends and the winner and their alliance is announced. A player needs a construction plan in order to be able to construct a World Wonder; these plans are obtained from Natarian villages (see End game).
A ranking system has been created that determines the players' rank from raiding, attacking, defending and building. Players can earn medals for their profile page by taking a top 10 place in the ranks. If a player gets themselves into the top 10 ranks, and earns a medal, it will contain information about the category, the position they came and of what week in since the start of the server they earned it.
There are three tribes available to be played, the Romans
, the Gauls
, and the Teutons
. Each has its own characteristics. The Romans cities build faster than other tribes, the Gauls defend better than the others, and the Teutons are geared towards an aggressive style of play. However, each tribe can be played defensively or aggressively, so the actual style of play always comes down to the individual.
A fourth tribe, known as the "Natars", are an NPC
tribe who were—according to the game—the enslavers of the Gauls and the Teutons before the Romans invaded Travian. The Natars enjoy many benefits normal tribes do not, but only come into the game as part of the end game sequence.
Another NPC tribe is the "Nature" tribe, which the creatures occupying abandoned oases belong to. Unlike the other four tribes, Nature troops do not attack but players can attack these nature troops.
A player may also choose to create an Administrator (Senator, Chief or Chieftain) instead. These units need a level 20 Academy first. They allow the player to conquer another player's village and make it their own, but a player's last or only village (i.e. the capital) cannot be conquered this way.
. To be successful, players often need to work with others in an alliance and with allies. It is impossible for any single player to win alone.
Resources can be traded between players, and towns can be reinforced with another player's troops. An in-game alliance
feature is available, providing the main catalyst for strategic
play within Travian; players join and fight together from mutual benefit. Within an alliance, players can view attack and defense information for all alliance members, and also benefit from improved communication tools such as mass alliance-wide in-game messages.
Since the maximum number of members in an alliance is 60, 'wings' tend to form as an alliance develops. Splitting into wings entitles having multiple sub-alliances, often with similar names, acting as one alliance but in different areas of the game. Players in the same alliance may attack each other, but this would be considered treason
. Towards the end of a round, different alliances often join together, resulting in larger coalitions (known as meta alliances); other diplomatic agreements include non-aggression pacts
(NAP) and confederation
s.
A ranking system determines alliances' rank from attacking, defending, raiding and growth. Alliance earn medals for their profile page by ranking in the top 10 for a category. The medal will contain information about the category, the position they came and when they earned it.
, are released. As the players on the server begin to build the Wonder of the World, the plans of which they have captured from the Natars, they meet resistance from both enemy players and alliances and the Natars. With every five levels that the Wonder is upgraded, the Natars attack the villages containing the Wonders until level 95, when they will then attack upon the completion of every new level. The first player to build their World Wonder to level 100 wins the server, which stops and restarts after a period of time (generally about 3 weeks). Then a new game begins, and the cycle repeats.
Version 3 featured oases which could be annexed, and would supplement the player's hourly resource production, as opposed to the oases in version 2, which were only present for visual appeal. Version 3 also introduced 'heroes', units which gain experience in battles. In version 3, the maximum level buildings can be extended to have been increased; moreover, the resource fields in the player's capital village can be upgraded infinitely, at least theoretically. In practice, crop fields and clay pits can reach level 19 and woodcutters and iron mines can reach level 18, if the player does not have the Great Warehouse or Great Granary artifact. This requires the village centre to have 12 warehouses and 7 granaries. An edition of this version where events take place three times faster, known as Travian Speed3x, was released later. Update 3.1 introduced "quests", which players can complete to receive rewards in the form of resources and game Gold from the Questmaster.
On March 16, 2007, an announcement was made about the release of Travian Classic, known as Travian 2.5, which was based on version 3 but had certain features disabled in order to make it similar to version 2. Version 3.5 was first implemented on the original .org server (German
) in early February, and was implemented on other servers with the game restarting in mid-2009. It reintroduced artifacts—items which give the players bonuses once captured, e.g. more storage space—into the game. It was followed by version 3.6, which made several Plus! account-only features available to non-paying users, along with newly added features.
In July 2010, an announcement was made saying that developers were working on a Version 4, set to be released in 2011. Version 4 was released in February 2011.
The change log of Travian versions can be found on Travian FAQ. It has not been updated since 2008 to reflect changes made since.
s. Later, an option for purchasing 'Gold' replaced the one for buying 'Plus' on most servers. The introduction of 'Gold' allowed players to directly influence the game mechanics: for instance, by increasing resource production, instant completion of building and researches or applying a strength bonus to troops. Accounts upgraded with Plus allowed building queues, larger maps and other functional abilities. These effects can be replicated with user scripts, but implementing these can result in a banning of the offending account as they are against the general terms and conditions of Travian. The Gold club, available since version 3.6, features attack lists and valley searches. Travian has also included a "Travian Shop" which includes Travian-related items like clothing and mugs.
implementing a system against users of these, which is still active in the game. The system was made to detect users of bots and scripts, and then prompting them to fill in a CAPTCHA
, later this was enhanced to give immediate punishment.
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
browser-based strategy game developed by the German software company Travian Games
Travian Games
Travian Games GmbH is a German video game development and publisher, specialising in browser-based multiplayer games. The company entered the market in 2004, have over 240 employees in Munich Germany alone and others all over the world, and has published seven massively online multiplayer...
.
The game's developers drew roughly from Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
and particularly from the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
to create a predominantly militaristic real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
. It has been suggested that Travians creators may have drawn from an earlier German board game, The Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop their settlement while trading and acquiring resources...
, for layout; there are similarities in resource development and theme as well.
Along with three English versions, and the original German version, Travian has been translated into over 40 other languages, and has over 5 million players and over 300 servers worldwide. In 2006, it won the Superbrowsergame Award, in the large games category.
Travian is programmed in PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and runs in most modern browsers. Travian was also the first game of its type to be playable on mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s. When played on a mobile phone, it used Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
. However, the Java application is no longer developed or supported.
Overview
Every player enters Travian as a leader of a small villageVillage
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
as a Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, Gaul
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
or Teuton with two people—a population of two—in their village. The village has only one building in its village centre, known as the Main Building, around which are spaces for further buildings to be constructed. There are some prerequisites for constructing most buildings.
At the start of the game, the selection of buildings a player can construct is very limited. As the village is developed, a wider range of buildings become available for construction.
A greater aspect for the game is its troops. Troops are produced in the Barracks, Great Barracks, Stable, Great Stable and Workshop. They allow a player to raid other villages and steal their resources, which will benefit the attacker. When the Barracks have been upgraded to level three, the player may build an Academy, which allows them to research new types of troops; the player may also construct new types of buildings (such as the Armoury and Blacksmith ) once the Academy has been upgraded to a sufficient level. A Stable allows cavalry to be trained. These units are faster and more expensive than infantry. The Workshop allows siege engines—rams which destroy walls and catapults which destroy buildings—to be manufactured. These units are slower and more expensive than infantry and cavalry. Administrators, known more commonly as chiefs, are units which persuade enemy villages to join the attacker's realm. Units which gain experience in battle, known as Heroes, can be trained from an existing unit in the Hero's mansion.
The ultimate goal of Travian is to construct and upgrade a Wonder of the World (see End game) to level 100. The World Wonder requires millions of resources and takes a large amount of time to complete. Once a World Wonder is upgraded to level 100, the game ends and the winner and their alliance is announced. A player needs a construction plan in order to be able to construct a World Wonder; these plans are obtained from Natarian villages (see End game).
A ranking system has been created that determines the players' rank from raiding, attacking, defending and building. Players can earn medals for their profile page by taking a top 10 place in the ranks. If a player gets themselves into the top 10 ranks, and earns a medal, it will contain information about the category, the position they came and of what week in since the start of the server they earned it.
Player Accounts
Each account in the game is known as a Player and is ranked against other players. No person may play more than one account on a given server (or game). However a player account may either be played by a single person or a group of people. If played by a group it is referred to as a dual account . People playing on a dual account are called "duals" or "co-players". This sharing of a single account allows for people to share the time burden and costs associated with playing. They must follow the same rules as if they were a single person playing the account and they may not play other accounts at the same time on the same server.Tribes
Roman army
The Roman army is the generic term for the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the kingdom of Rome , the Roman Republic , the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine empire...
, the Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
, and the Teutons
Teutons
The Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greek and Roman authors, notably Strabo and Marcus Velleius Paterculus and normally in close connection with the Cimbri, whose ethnicity is contested between Gauls and Germani...
. Each has its own characteristics. The Romans cities build faster than other tribes, the Gauls defend better than the others, and the Teutons are geared towards an aggressive style of play. However, each tribe can be played defensively or aggressively, so the actual style of play always comes down to the individual.
A fourth tribe, known as the "Natars", are an NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
tribe who were—according to the game—the enslavers of the Gauls and the Teutons before the Romans invaded Travian. The Natars enjoy many benefits normal tribes do not, but only come into the game as part of the end game sequence.
Another NPC tribe is the "Nature" tribe, which the creatures occupying abandoned oases belong to. Unlike the other four tribes, Nature troops do not attack but players can attack these nature troops.
Villages
Along with the village a player starts out with, one can also found or conquer additional villages. These additional villages increase total resource production, cause population growth and help support larger armies. To found a second village, certain preconditions must be met. These include creating and leveling up certain types of buildings, along with earning a certain amount of culture points. Culture points are automatically produced daily and accumulated, based on the amount and type of buildings in the village(s). Almost all buildings made in Travian give the village culture points. Production of culture points can be sped up by hosting parties in the village Town Hall. After the required amount of culture points are achieved, and the player has built the required buildings to the required levels, the player may train 3 Settlers to go and found a new village at any vacant area chosen. Settlers must be given 750 of each resource before they start their journey.A player may also choose to create an Administrator (Senator, Chief or Chieftain) instead. These units need a level 20 Academy first. They allow the player to conquer another player's village and make it their own, but a player's last or only village (i.e. the capital) cannot be conquered this way.
Alliances
The game is heavily geared towards cooperative playCooperative gameplay
Cooperative gameplay is a feature in video games that allows players to work together as teammates. It is distinct from other multiplayer modes, such as competitive multiplayer modes like player versus player or deathmatch...
. To be successful, players often need to work with others in an alliance and with allies. It is impossible for any single player to win alone.
Resources can be traded between players, and towns can be reinforced with another player's troops. An in-game alliance
Alliance
An alliance is an agreement or friendship between two or more parties, made in order to advance common goals and to secure common interests.See also military alliance and business alliance.-International relations:...
feature is available, providing the main catalyst for strategic
Strategy game
A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome...
play within Travian; players join and fight together from mutual benefit. Within an alliance, players can view attack and defense information for all alliance members, and also benefit from improved communication tools such as mass alliance-wide in-game messages.
Since the maximum number of members in an alliance is 60, 'wings' tend to form as an alliance develops. Splitting into wings entitles having multiple sub-alliances, often with similar names, acting as one alliance but in different areas of the game. Players in the same alliance may attack each other, but this would be considered treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
. Towards the end of a round, different alliances often join together, resulting in larger coalitions (known as meta alliances); other diplomatic agreements include non-aggression pacts
Non-aggression principle
The non-aggression principle , or NAP for short, is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate...
(NAP) and confederation
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
s.
A ranking system determines alliances' rank from attacking, defending, raiding and growth. Alliance earn medals for their profile page by ranking in the top 10 for a category. The medal will contain information about the category, the position they came and when they earned it.
End game
Each Travian server ends with the "end game" sequence. For normal servers the sequence begins after about 260 days, and for Speed3x servers, it starts after about 100 days. After this time has elapsed, the Natars, a vicious tribe controlled by the computerNon-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
, are released. As the players on the server begin to build the Wonder of the World, the plans of which they have captured from the Natars, they meet resistance from both enemy players and alliances and the Natars. With every five levels that the Wonder is upgraded, the Natars attack the villages containing the Wonders until level 95, when they will then attack upon the completion of every new level. The first player to build their World Wonder to level 100 wins the server, which stops and restarts after a period of time (generally about 3 weeks). Then a new game begins, and the cycle repeats.
Version history
EWLINE
|
EWLINE
|
Version 3 featured oases which could be annexed, and would supplement the player's hourly resource production, as opposed to the oases in version 2, which were only present for visual appeal. Version 3 also introduced 'heroes', units which gain experience in battles. In version 3, the maximum level buildings can be extended to have been increased; moreover, the resource fields in the player's capital village can be upgraded infinitely, at least theoretically. In practice, crop fields and clay pits can reach level 19 and woodcutters and iron mines can reach level 18, if the player does not have the Great Warehouse or Great Granary artifact. This requires the village centre to have 12 warehouses and 7 granaries. An edition of this version where events take place three times faster, known as Travian Speed3x, was released later. Update 3.1 introduced "quests", which players can complete to receive rewards in the form of resources and game Gold from the Questmaster.
On March 16, 2007, an announcement was made about the release of Travian Classic, known as Travian 2.5, which was based on version 3 but had certain features disabled in order to make it similar to version 2. Version 3.5 was first implemented on the original .org server (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) in early February, and was implemented on other servers with the game restarting in mid-2009. It reintroduced artifacts—items which give the players bonuses once captured, e.g. more storage space—into the game. It was followed by version 3.6, which made several Plus! account-only features available to non-paying users, along with newly added features.
In July 2010, an announcement was made saying that developers were working on a Version 4, set to be released in 2011. Version 4 was released in February 2011.
The change log of Travian versions can be found on Travian FAQ. It has not been updated since 2008 to reflect changes made since.
Financing
Travian was initially financed through players upgrading accounts with Travian Plus and web bannerWeb banner
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser...
s. Later, an option for purchasing 'Gold' replaced the one for buying 'Plus' on most servers. The introduction of 'Gold' allowed players to directly influence the game mechanics: for instance, by increasing resource production, instant completion of building and researches or applying a strength bonus to troops. Accounts upgraded with Plus allowed building queues, larger maps and other functional abilities. These effects can be replicated with user scripts, but implementing these can result in a banning of the offending account as they are against the general terms and conditions of Travian. The Gold club, available since version 3.6, features attack lists and valley searches. Travian has also included a "Travian Shop" which includes Travian-related items like clothing and mugs.
Bots and scripts
In Travian, there has been widespread usage of so-called "bots" and "scripts", automating actions for the player. This led to Travian Games GmbHTravian Games
Travian Games GmbH is a German video game development and publisher, specialising in browser-based multiplayer games. The company entered the market in 2004, have over 240 employees in Munich Germany alone and others all over the world, and has published seven massively online multiplayer...
implementing a system against users of these, which is still active in the game. The system was made to detect users of bots and scripts, and then prompting them to fill in a CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade...
, later this was enhanced to give immediate punishment.
Further reading
- Christoph Klimmt, Hannah Schmid, Julia Orthmann. Motivations of browser gamers: The case of Travian players, 2008
- Christoph Klimmt, Hannah Schmid, Julia Orthmann. Exploring the enjoyment of playing browser games, CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2009 - liebertonline.com
- Ingo Thon, Niels Landwehr, Luc De Raedt. Travian Meta Alliances, ingothon.de
- Giannis Milolidakis, Chris Kimble, Demosthenes Akoumianakis. A Practice-Based Analysis of an Online Strategy Game
- Jakob J. Assmann, Philipp Sandner, Sophie Ahrens; Users' Influence on the Success of Online Communities, Institute for Information Systems and New Media, LMU München, Munich (DE)
- Jakob J. Assmann, Marcus A. Drescher, Julia V. Gallenkamp, Arnold O. Picot, Isabell M. Welpe, Rolf T. Wigand, MMOGs as Emerging Opportunities for Research on Virtual Organizations and Teams, AMCIS 2010 Proceedings, Paper 335 http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2010/335