Travian and my addiction

I’ve been asked and prompted by several others to write more on the browser game Travian.  On August 18th when I first wrote about Travian I had just started playing.  Since then I have moved to the Us 3x speed server with my Vault Network (VN) alliance.  We are currently a top 5 alliance touting the largest population and scores of any other alliance out there /boast.  The reason I decided to move to the speed server was two fold; VN was moving there and I like the idea of starting fresh.  The speed part of it really doesn’t matter all that much to me because given that it is merely a free little browser game that I tab to when I’m not doing anything else, any sort of enjoyment from it is fun.

I go by KeenTheMoD on my server and I am currently building up my village (KeenTheMoD’s Village) nicely.  Following the advice of others, I have been building my resources into a mighty fine economy.  Right now I am pulling 500+ of all resources an hour and will be nearly 600+ by the end of the day.  Things are expensive in Travian!  Even though I have a stronger economy than many, I never seem to be able to catch up to the population count of my friends.  They’re all 250+ and I’m at about 195.  Their armies are much larger but in Travian your army doesn’t count towards the pop.  Can anyone explain what they could be doing to get those pop numbers?  Anyway, my army is decent sized and I have a Hero unit now.  I forgot to mention that I am playing as Teutons this time because they are strong offensively and that’s going to by my playstyle once I am built up.

Many others have made the same remarks about Travian saying that it is addicting.  I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.  Why the game holds my attention more than other games which are much more complex, involved, engrossing, and developed truly boggles the mind.  Perhaps it’s that the game is so laid back and requires zero commitment that I don’t feel required to play it.  I truly lose nothing if I get attacked (sure I lose a few men but they’re numbers on a page) and if I suddenly stop playing no one is hurt by it including myself.  I’m out nothing!  I can only be rewarded for my time spent in Travian.  It’s a really good feeling.

So that’s my update on Travian.  I’ll continue writing little bits on the game as time goes on.  Hopefully by the time this comes up again I will be the Warlord of a massive army!

  • True words about not harming anyone but can only be rewarded for playing Travian.

    I keep it open on a tab while I’m blogging or surfing…normally both!

    How have you found the combat system?

    I have yet to get that far into the game…

  • I find the combat system to be fair and straight forward. The stats of units are plain to see and with the combat simulator there should be no surprises.

    If you’re attacking someone who has a strong defense then your attack variable needs to be higher than their defense. If you’re defending then you need to have a higher defense, etc.

    Stealing resources is a matter of overtaking their defense. When you get more units and build catapults you’ll be able to actually take buildings of the enemy and reduce them to level 1.

    I think it’s a fantastic strategy game that requires very little thinking. The game is mostly numbers and if you know that 1 is less than 2 then you’re fine.

  • Sounds interesting Keen – I bookmarked the site. Now I just have to find time to play it along with everything else I have going. 🙂

  • That’s the great thing about Travian. Everything takes real time to build so you can build a barracks and come back in 20 minutes when it’s done. Alt tab, build something new, and go back to whatever you’re doing.

    It’s a great filler.

  • I too have been hooked on Travian. I’m also on two servers. I don’t know why but I can’t stay away from it. I get very upset when a player 10x my size attacks me and destoys my army I spent so much time building. I know I don
    ‘t have a chance to win or even be on a winning alliance but yet I continue to sit by my computer and guard against any attackers.

  • I am not the one hooked on Travian. I have a husband who is who no longer spends time with his family because of this game. My husband no longer spends quality time with me his wife either because of the constant game and people talking with him all hours of the beeping day! Not to mention the fact this game encourages his already out of control insomnia!! Our son barely knows daddy anymore because daddy is always playing this game and barely even shows up at the supper table because of how disgustingly addictive this “game” is. It is just as bad as if someone is in a cult. I refuse to say any niceities about something that is tearing my family apart.

    Thank you,
    J.J.F.

  • It sounds like your husband needs to take a “technology fast” from Travian as well as other Internet sites for 40 days. I did this with my wife last holiday season, and it was very positive. In the case of Travian we all need to remember “it’s just a game” and there are certainly other life priorities, like time with our spouse and children, which should be MUCH more important than playing games online or elsewhere. I hope this situation has gotten better since you wrote this comment in October. My wife and I recorded some reflections as a podcast last year after our “technology fast,” and you might want to share that with your husband. I highly recommend the idea of an evening technology fast, in which you end up spending that time together talking, reading, planning, playing games, etc. This was a great thing for our marriage and our communication as a couple.

  • this game is affecting my studies but still i like it i play it all day after each math prob i open up the wondow to see if i can do something

  • In response to tranquilia05 and travian tearing her family apart, thank- you for sharing.
    My husband is out of work AGAIN he plays about 18 hours a day. Barely leaves the house if he has too he makes sure he won’t get attacked first, he sleeps in his “office” about 2″ from the computer, gets on first thing in the morning and starts all over again.
    If we speak to him he snaps at us, if the internet goes out he freaks, he stopped washing and wears the same clothes for days on end. Last year it went on for 10 months, until his unemployment ran out, we had no $$$$ at all he didn’t care, now we are going on 3 months and I am at my wits end

  • That’s the great thing about Travian. Everything takes real time to build so you can build a barracks and come back in 20 minutes when it’s done. Alt tab, build something new, and go back to whatever you’re doing.

    It’s a great filler.

  • Sorry man but just a stupid game. Take a good look at the guys you had been playing with. I doubt that they can even find a country like Holland on the map (if the name wasn’t written) or if they know anything about the French Revolution. They improve their “methodology and diplomatic skills” as much as they do by playing tavli.
    ————————-
    juliana

    Travian and my addiction

    Drug Rehabilitation Programs

  • Hello, I am a travian addict.

    I first started playing 2 years ago on http://www.travian.com.
    I was introduced to the game by a good friend of mine, from real life (when I had one).

    We had played a game called darkthrone (dunno if you ever heard of it) , but we eventuyally were getting bored with it and had decided to move on. Aj gave me the site where we promptly signed up for speed 3x.

    I hurriedly began building my village in earnest and made myself a small army of 150 footmen and thought i was safe, boy was i wrong.

    I went to bed secure in the thought my village was safe from being looted and plundered by my neighbors around me.

    the next morning i logged in to find my village had been raided and all my stuff stolen. I was irate and then messaged the guy and called him everything under the sun.

    To my dismay he replied with catapaults completely destroying my village and all the hard work i had managed to accomplish with it.

    I ended up giving up and moved over to com3 for a fresh start. We managed to get a little alliance off the ground and My growth was pretty decent until one day a neighbor came along and bashed me hard with cattys… he claimed i was a threat to him and his alliance and unless i wanted to survive i had to send him resources everyday…

    As i wanted to save all of my hard work, i immedietly complied and prospered again.

    Soon my good friend told me of a new ukx server, the server was new, so we went there looking for greener pastures.

    since i had some experience in the game i knew what i needed to accomplish and I set to building my military right away. I began rising through the ranks and joined the number one alliance with no problems.

    for while things were ok, but then the alliance began having problems (internal communication breakdowns and whatnot) and some players were not happy.

    It was there i was introduced to skype. I was invited by a few players so i downloaded it and got my name. This is where my addiction truly began.

    I met a lot of my alliance members online, we talked and found out how unhappy we all were, split off into our own alliance and surpassed the alliance we were in in both population and also in troops.

    Our alliance also earned a lot of respect through defending others, attacking others, and also the way we handled business. Our whole alliance was on skype and we fought our way through the game enduring war after war.

    When it came to endgame we had earned a lot of respect and joined up with some of the best alliances in the game, we then went on with them to win the server after fighting many long battles with our enemys.

    Now saying all this doesn’t even come close to covering what happened in that server, but thats as basic as I can make it.

    I see some comments saying the game is stupid, and for you to think that you have never truly played the game or have played it and just got owned on it and gave up.

    For me the game is addicting because a single player does not make it in the game. In order to win you need a LOT of friends, and you all need to work together.

    Being on skype and battling others while at the same time talking and meeting new people is the best part of this game. Maybe it is just numbers on a screen, but the beauty of this game lies in its team oriented design.

    I have made a lot of good friends over this game, and a LOT of enemys as well, but at the end of the day when we turn the computer off because we are exhausted from staring at the screnn for 12 to 18 hours at a time, we know its only a game and that its the people we know there we want to see tommorow.

    Sure killing your enemys army and raiding your neighbors is a bonus, but its the people that make the game.

    I currently play on 2 servers, http://www.travian.co.uk, I play on 3x under OrionStarr, and on uk 5 under Black Dog.

    If you are a fellow travian addict and are in need of someone to talk to just give me a shout :p

    Regards

    OrionStarr Aka Den

  • Hi
    Travian is one of the most fun and enjoyable MMOG out there,
    I play Travian since its first server started 3-4 years ago.

    The creators of Travian developing the game all the time, improving it and keep the fun up to date.

    Now days, they have so many server (I stopped counting) for every country there are at least 5-6 server and one speed server.

    I play from home, work, Internet cafe’, even from my cellular!!

    You can say I’m an Travinholic 😉
    There are so many like me..
    Old people, business man & woman, students, house-wives, & kids.
    All getting involved in the most fun game on the net.

    Travian is truly one of the best!!

    For the love of the game,
    Amit

  • this game has runied so many people!with miles upon miles between people i just found out that”I LOVE YOU BABY!” is not part of the game so this means that their are alot more then the game going on,these are people that are in the chat rooms for a relationship! can some please prove me wrong? are their actually chat room relationships going on?i would think when a person says I LOVE YOU BABY,hun…ect this is from the heart?

  • My husband plays Travian whenever he can. Like a previous writer, he ignores his young son and me his wife. I’ve tried everything but he spends a fortune on the game and thinks I’m in the wrong. Our family has been completely destroyed by his addiction. So please think carefully about what you’re doing. It’s a game and is it worth losing your family over and destroying their lives? Has any other family member in a situation like this got any positive suggestions for help?
    Thanks, Em.

  • i am a kid and i have read through these comments and tbh i think ur lives are sad! being addicted to a game ffs. what sort of sad person gets addicted to a game?
    i played this game once and it sucks

  • I ran into this blog googling travian husband. I can see that there are the wives, the gamers and the kid. I am married for 3 and a half years. My husband loves any sort of game so he started his first travian account first year of our marriage. After a while my husband started spending the nights at the computer playing travian. I gave him an ultimatum… either the game or us. He deleted the account. A couple of months ago I met one of my highschool classmates and she told me his husband plays travian as well. I mentioned that to my husband and he opened a new account. then again he started spending more and more time on the server. he started hiding and sneaking. One day I ran into his conversation with a girl from travian. Of course nothing good could be there. He said that for the game’s sake he flirted with her . I know that that is a lie,,, But still for a game he has been lying, hiding and so on. He deleted his account. I am afraid I can not go trough another travian episode.
    So to the wives… I truly believe someone who is uncapable to realise family and real life are far way more important than a game is unworthy to have one.I know is hard,,, but is better alone than alone in 2.
    To the gamers…The kid said it all: ure lives are sad. And playing the game -u only go deeper in ure sadness. I know it seems like a comfortable world, perhaps a challanging one( for the ones that are not too smart) but you must have failed or given up on your real lives. You just one to fill gaps. They will never be filled because they are not in the game in the first place.
    the best of luck to everyone

  • Dang. I play Travian, and I’m 14 years old, and I’ve been reading through the comments. While this game is very fun, it should not be above family. No game should be above family. While a lot of people who play it have real lives, A lot of people are probably 30-year old losers who still live with their Moms. There are some very sad comments in here. For those who are losing a family member to this game, I’ll pray for you.