Travian (6/10 by [Hedda])

Travian is a strategic, real time, pseudo-historical game.

Home-page: www.travian.com (Translations in many languages exist, www.travian.se for example.)

When you start the game you are in charge of a little village of Romans, Gauls or Teutans. First you have to build production and then a cranny where you can hide your resources when the overmighty enemies try to plunder your village.

Good things

You can start in the campaign a little after it has started and still have a chance thanks to the crannies which make you safe from attacks (at least for Gauls). The only problem is that you need to protect your army from madmen and superpowers if you get an army to raid the inactive members. The way to protect it is to send it on a long mission as the armies can't be attacked when they are moving.

There are also interesting trade, you can found new villages, conquer non-capitals and join alliances. Must important is however that you build up your production in the beginning. Later on the strategy in wars and how you build your army is important.

Bad things

It's a pain in the ass that you have to sit near the computer all the time. I'm not kidding here: You have to there all the time, if you want to develop fast and the ones who can be most hours at the computer wins. In the beginning you can collect huge amounts of resources because people play like idiots or simply aren't active.

You are allowed to have "sitters" though. It's other people you play the same game as you and do your orders for a while when you're away. But the rules say that you aren't allowed to use that for 24 hour presence, what-ever that means. The English rules state that that you aren't allowed to be more than one person that plays on one account, while it seems OK on the Swedish servers.

If you pay, you get access to things like being able to order constructions of 2 things in a row, instead of having to wait for the first to be completed before you can order another one. Luckily, you can at least order troops to be built in any kind of numbers as soon as you have the resources.

Conclusion

It takes too much time, and if you don't have anyone to share it with, the speed campaigns are too much, and the others are annoyingly slow. It's also bad that the pretty interesting game becomes somewhat destroyed by people being inactive and leaves loads of resources for anyone who wants to grab them. The problem goes away as the really big players simply are to big for the small villages to matter.

I, [Hedda], would give it 6. There are room for improvements and the game will come in new versions.


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