Travian feels like an incredibly large and long game of Risk thats focused almost entirely on resource and village management. New players start off by selecting one of the three available civilizations; The Romans, Gauls and Teutons. Each civilization has a variety of unique units and special civilization bonuses. For example, the Romans have the upper hand in Infantry units and gain higher defense bonuses near walls but suffer higher development expenses than the Gauls and the Teutons. The game’s building mechanics function in almost the same way as the Space browser based MMO Astro Empires, where buildings are upgraded and units are trained when the construction timer reaches zero.

New players will have to focus on quickly building up their village to deter neighbors from raiding their newly created towns. I highly recommend beginners to read the “Roman guide” below, even if they’re not playing Romans, as the guide provides insight on what you should focus all your development efforts on. The goal is to spend all your resources on upgrading buildings that will reduce your construction timer, so you can expand at a faster rate.

The first time you play Travian, you’ll have to play for a good 2 hours or so in one sitting in order to get your village up and running with the basic upgrades. After that, you can easily check up on your village for a few minutes a couple of times a day, as upgrades will begin to take hours before they’re completed. You’ll also have to make sure you keep up with your diplomacy, as alliances are a huge part of Travian. If you attack a player that’s in a strong alliance, odds are his allies will team up and destroy you, unless of course you talk your way out of it by lieing and claiming that you’re simply counter attacking, as that particular played attacked you before.