It’s finally over. LMFAOD have won Server 6, and they will go down in history as the last alliance to win Travian playing version 3.0! Congratulations to them on their very special victory and I look forward to adding them to the Travian Hall of Champions. 

Also, congratulations to their opponents, Space Lizards, for the amazing fight they put up. The skill level on this server was very high and it was truly a battle for the ages.

S6.com is about to come to an end, with Lethal’s World Wonder very close to clinching the victory for LMFAOD:

But right now, it’s time to appreciate the second-place World Wonder held by Codename, for how well it was played, how much defense it was able to have, and how it was able to take hits from the enemy’s biggest armies and still keep going.

Codename held the lead for a good portion of the endgame, and many of the attacks launched on it by Space Lizards did a lot less damage than expected, due to the huge number of defenses contained there. Space Lizards would have to come back to Codename’s World Wonder several times with massive armies that would easily flatten other Wonders. I don’t think there’s ever been a World Wonder that took on this many huge attacks and still managed to finish a close second.

The total defense at Codename’s was comparable to Cassini’s World Wonder from the alliance SBD on the last Server 8 – but keep in mind that SBD only had one World Wonder to defend! (and I think Codename still comes out ahead by a fair margin for total defenders)

So without any further ado, here are some of Codename’s Greatest Hits:

This Ram army couldn’t bring the wall all the way down, despite its impressive size:

From earlier in ther server:

And I’ve already posted this one, but it deserves to be posted again:

Here is what some of the Server 6 players are saying about Codename and how well defended his Wonder was (click here to read the whole thread):

Alha: Even if Lethal’s WW is very likely to be the first to level 100, I think yours was the one who won the game for you by taking all the hits.

Odinstaff: It’s been an honour playing with you Code.
Your dedication, sleep less nights and the pounding you took proved an inspiration and we rallied behind you.

I will say every WW holder except Adelwar deserves to win.
But I feel Codename earned it.
Reddadude and BrushMonkey gave up the defense they had to ensure Code had enough to close out and I admire and salute their sacrifice.

Splatter: I’d like to give the entire Code team props for holding the huge def over the extended period of time they did. I’d also like to recognise the large group of people behind the Code plan management. Even though the account suffered a huge amount of attacks, those plans were always kept safe and only a minute amount of build time was lost, if any.

Author: CODENAME took down so many hammers that CWL had almost nothing left to go after lethal. Great job and I am proud to have you with us for the win. We could not have done it without you and this win is shared by all.

with this server nearing its end, there’s a lot to look back upon, but I think the amazing defense mounted at Codename’s World Wonder will be one of the things from this Server 6 that is remembered the most. Not surprisingly, Codename is certain to finish as the #1 defender.

I posted Imram’s piece on why he’s in favour of the Travian 3.6 changes earlier, but I thought this part is worth repeating, with emphasis:

It now promotes simming and focuses less on aggressive farming. But then again, how aggressive you are depends on you as a player and not the game mechanics.

This is possibly the best Endgame Analysis Thread I’ve ever seen. This guy puts me to shame:

http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=130199

I’m going to do a big quote from Globetrotter, and it will pretty much summarize what’s happened in the game since my coverage broke off. (If you’ve already read this, scroll down to the bottom to see an awesome battle report and hear what’s coming up in the future)

As I mentioned previously through the hammers stats, this last week has been one of the bloodiest ever. Huge hammers were unleashed from all sides and sent out on their final journey, carrying all the hopes of ensuring the success of their own people – even the last player in the current top #10 attackers of the week has scored more than many previous #1 top attackers …
WWs were zeroed, others simply changed hands… Leading WWs standings were shuffled over and over again, with one of the leading WW almost reaching its target, only to get delayed after its adversaries put up a desperate final effort to bring it down… Competing alliances finally made their merge official, and even started coordinated attacks against enemy strongholds… In short, an eventful week…

The first major news to be mentioned is of course the loss of 2 WWs for SL / OZ, with Lubricious losing his WW to the enemy after Phoca’s loss the previous week. This therefore gives SL / OZ’s rivals the advantage of 9 WWs v/s 4. However, needless to remind the public that the WWs of Adelwar, Hamper and Zorlin will not be contending for the race (especially that Zorlin has followed Adelwar’s steps in keeping only one village, the one with the WW). Therefore, this effectively gives an advantage of 7 to 3 WWs in favor of MFD+LOD+ONE+SE.

The second major news was the long awaited confirmation about the merger of the northern alliances. For some time, MFD and LOD had declared having a NAP only, and that they would not target one another until late into the game, depending on how the game went. But now, their official alliance was sealed as most of their WW holders rallied under the same tag: LMFAOD. They were also rejoined by their southeastern fighters and allies.

As for the week’s events and WW standings, well, lots of happenings there:

November 30th: The opening of the week saw Codename still in the lead @98, but still licking his wounds from previous strikes that managed to take the WW down a couple of levels as he had the level 100 very likely queued. Nevertheless, he was still 7 levels ahead from the nearest contenders, i.e. Sparticus (91), Fire&Ice (91), Shakal (90) and Bandrit (90).

But, with Sparticus also severely hit on November 25th, and practically stuck on level 91, the only real contenders were actually the 3 SL / OZ WW holders and of course, Codename. Or so it appeared to be the case at first sight… (but we’ll get to that later)

In order to secure Codename’s lead and give him enough time to rebuild, the LMFAOD command HQ had mainly one choice: strike at each and every SL / OZ WW hard enough to put it completely out of the race. Should the triple strike be successful, Codename would get a safe home run and give victory to all.

December 1st: And so, hostilities against WWs were resumed on the 1st of December; surely, hammers were already on their way a few days before.

Bandrit’s WW was the first to get a taste of what MFD was capable of… 92 was the level of the WW… 0 was its state at the end of the strike, with 6 hammers used. Lubricious’ WW was to follow. In Lub’s case, not only was the WW zeroed, but the village itself was captured by the SE coalition hostile to SL / OZ dominance, with the help of its northern allies.

December 2nd: That day wasn’t any quieter, as it was Fire&Ice’s turn to be at the receiving end of enemy hammers. After a lone hitter managed to damage its WW from 92 to 91 the previous day, the WW was finally damaged by a couple of levels more, and infrastructure suffered quite a bit. And this time, MFD had sent some of its own hammers to assist those of LOD, in one of the first joint operations against an SL / OZ WW.

Now, with 2 WW practically severed, and only one more to take down, the LMFAOD group felt that victory was finally within its grasp again, especially that armies were already en route to hit the 3rd SL WW under Shakal…

But this was again without counting on SL / OZ tenacity and will to fight… The same day Fire&Ice was struck, their leading WW under Codename came under huge fire from the biggest hammers seen so far on the server. The WW took a 3 level hit from 98 to 95, and infrastructure was damaged. Surprised? Well, knowing SL / OZ, one should expect anything and everything…

December 3rd: the northern armies finally landed on Shakal, knocking his WW from 92 to 84, and inflicting infrastructure damage as well, putting him behind Simethered’s WW.

BUT, as all of these leading WWs were taking hits, one of them was silently and continuously presenting itself as the real contender to the win. With a very steady growth after he got hit very early in the race, Lethal was catching up slowly but surely, and as WWs were knocked down or slowed down in front of him, he finally stole the leadership from Codename late on December 3rd… By the looks of it, he even has the infrastructure to go all the way…

But has he really gone unnoticed all that time? Surely LMFAOD hoped so and had in any case enough time to stuff him with defense, while on SL / OZ side, everyone hoped for yet another surprise.

December 4th: LMFAOD kept striking hard at Fire&Ice. With defense being shifted around between her WW and Shakal’s, LMFAOD seized the opportunity of striking at her non-stop, in an attempt to prevent her from rejoining the WW race. As a matter of fact, most of her villages came under fire, and it was recorded that she had lost a lot of pop overall. Shakal was already badly hurt, so it was very likely that LMFAOD would keep an eye on his recovery before striking again. Besides, he had the Natars heading his way…

As for Lethal, as expected, SL / OZ’s reaction wasn’t going to be long to come. By mid-day, 6 hammers tried the impossible to hurt his progression. As his name states, he was indeed lethal, for the sacrifice of those 6 brave armies was almost in vain. 2 Great Warehouses were hardly scratched, nothing that Lethal can’t recover from.

The WW standings shortly after the hits on Lethal are as follows (December 4th @ 13:00)

With those results on Lethal, one could state that SL / OZ have launched whatever they had left… “the dregs at the bottom of the barrel” if I am to quote one of the leaders… Having said that, Lethal now is in fact the favorite for the final sprint, and the road to the finish line seems clear for him (unless something unexpected occurs…)

I will probably show some more graphs once the WW level 100 is reached in order to show the progression of each WW holder. For now, I will stick to the following graph:

The graph includes the top 7 WWs of this week, and their progression over the past 2 weeks; you can clearly see Codename’s frustration, Bandrit’s WW collapse, Sparticus’ neutralization, the ups and downs of Shakal and Fire&Ice, and especially, Lethal’s steady progression, the current new WW race leader.

Codename:

Dec 2nd @ 19:30 (opening salvo, the others being spaced by a couple of hours)
The Rammer:
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1067779be70

The Cats:
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=106647840b8
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=106792af78f
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1069756cb99

Note, I separated the Rammers from the rest, as its owner deserves recognition for the amount of rams (and catas) amassed in this single strike.

Despite the huge ram-hammer, the wall wasn’t completely knocked down. This gives an idea once again regarding the defense behind Codename’s walls, as seen in the BR below:

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=106275bc0c9

Lethal:

Dec 4th @ 12:00
http://4travian.org/log/44d319456130…fe77af9375b9bf
http://4travian.org/log/85d565893caa…d1dcd711c68771
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=11026144001
http://www.travian-reports.net/us/ra…id=1102647d27d
http://www.travian-reports.net/us/ra…id=110268332fd
http://4travian.org/log/9a9d4ce5d11e…14dc9b5904a640

Thanks to the amazing defense there, the impact of the hammers was minimal. It was clear that SL/OZ lacked an additional ram hammer to secure the way.

On the SL / OZ front – 3 out of 3 WWs
________________________________________

Bandrit:

Dec 1st @ 07:10
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10352196e5c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=103523bc0f9
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10352410975
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1035250dd1f
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=103528e9906
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1035276f25f

Decoy or no decoy, overkill or no overkill, the hammers here were impressive and did their job. Bandrit’s WW went from 92 to 0 in no time, with only the 3 last hammers aiming at the WW.

Fire&Ice:

Dec 1st @ 08:43
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10332878cdd

Despite being a lone hitter, this hammer still managed to take out one WW level.

Dec 2nd @ 07:47
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10557001bfc
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=105571e2bef
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1055691cfaa
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10557744938
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1055914e990
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=105609b344c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1056406fe3e
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10565939804
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1056681a395
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=1056787ce5c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10570491884
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=105867f1cba

The defense put up at Fire&Ice seemed also pretty huge, as many of the hammers that had targeted the WW did less damage than what they could have done on other WWs. Fire&Ice seemed to be at that time SL / OZ’s bet for the win.

Shakal:

Dec 3rd @ 19:09 (opening salvo – the other strikes landed a few hours later)
http://logmyteuton.com/show.php?q=1920509275821402362
http://logmyteuton.com/show.php?q=1221559377891595096
http://logmyroman.com/show.php?q=1423519780173562320
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10719332da4
http://travian-reports.net/uk/raport.php?id=334917f316c
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=107196fd6da
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=10720025d50
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=107194b5abf
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=107186b8a9d
http://logmyroman.com/show.php?q=1620509388184250201

Shakal wasn’t spared, and before defense could be moved from Fire&Ice to him, LMFAOD were already on their way to him. There was no need for major hammers out here to do the job.

================================================== =============
Voilà for the latest with the info at hand. I hope to have delivered so far a very fair analysis of the events, staying as objective as possible. For those who are wondering who’s side I played on, well… let’s say that it is a small alliance in the SW who’s leader has held a WW and unleashed quite a number of decent hammers throughout the end game

(Seriously, I cannot get over the dedication and thoroughness that Globetrotter is showing in his analysis threads on S6.com. And the battlereports that other people are sharing too are very impressive and comprehensive. Follow this thread and you won’t miss a thing.)

Here’s a real gem of a report from that thread, showing the huge defense at Codename’s World Wonder:

I’ll try to post more on S6 later. I’ve got a lot to write about between this and S1.com, S7.com, other servers, and more on Travian 3.6. Not sure if I’ll be able to get to it all. But I promise a big wrap-up on S6 when it all ends. I have some colour commentary to add to Globetrotter’s play by play.

I apologize again for not being able to stay up to date with everything that’s happening on Server 6 at Travian.com (not to mention Sever 1 and Server 7). I’ve been very busy, and keeping up to date with a Travian endgame can be very time-consuming. For a good wrap-up of what’s been going on, I suppose this thread is the right place to start (I’ll try to read through it all when I have the time).

It’s obvious that a lot of destruction has swept across the server, and here are some highlights of it. First let’s look at the current standings:

Geez, where do I even start? In the space of a week, several World Wonders have changes hands and the map has been re-drawn.

I didn’t spend much time talking about it earlier, but LoD and MFD merged their sides together, in order to fight against Space Lizards/CWL/Oz and their allies. Back when this was a three horse race, CWL and Co. were the biggest alliance of the three, but as you can see now, Space Lizards have lost their world wonders. I wouldn’t have expected to see such big losses like that, from a well-organized and effective Meta-alliance. This is the first time I’ve seen something of the sort.

Space Lizards have lost both Phoca and Lubricious’ World Wonders, and Bandrit’s is surely out of the game at this point. It must be a bitter pill for them to swallow, but LoD and MFD combined must have just been too big for them.

LMFAOD stands for LoD, Myth, Fun, One, and Dino. I assume the “A” is for “and”.

Convienently, the acronym can also stand for “Laughing My Fucking Ass Off Dieing.”

 Now that they hold 7 of the 9 World Wonders that are still in contention, the LoD and MFD Merged alliance looks like they will almost certainly win, once they can recover from whatever damage the other side has inflicted on them.

After the alliance merged, but before Space Lizards lost their World Wonders, Codename looking to be on the verge of victory, but the other side manged to take it away from him. But the defense at Codename’s World Wonder was huge, and this big hammer didn’t do nearly the amount of damage it normally would:

The defense at Codename’s World Wonder must have been huge in order to turn that monster away. Congratulations to Brezzok&Anarchy and the defenders of Codename for both doing a great job.

But Codename’s World Wonder looks to be in trouble now, as Codename has been reduced to just 5 cities. And besides his World Wonder city, only one of them has a population over 300 (He actually had only 4 left but then he managed to conquer another recently). So it looks like he’ll have a hard time protecting a World Wonder construction plan from this point on.

Still, even with Codename in trouble, LMFAOD seems to have an overwhelming advantage. I’ll try to stay up to date with this server and do a final report on it when it ends.

A little while ago I put my first poll on this site, asking how many Travian servers they play on. Here are the results:

I only play one server myself. Between that and running this site, that’s all the Travian I can handle! Almost half the respondents see things the same way. Playing one server allows you have a life outside of Travian, and once your account has become big enough, there’s enough action on one server to keep you busy if you’re a player that likes to keep raiding, attacking, and building.

Playing two servers seems doable, but I don’t know how people play 3 or more, but apparently some of you do. I guess with dual accounts it becomes easier, but even though I love playing Travian, I wouldn’t want to play it that much. But I tip my hat to those of you who do. You’re hardcore.

I think by nature I tend to like to finish a strategy game before I start a new one. Back when I used to play a lot of Civilization, or other Strategy games (Any Birth of the Federation fans out there?) I would only have one game going at a time, and I think that just naturally carries over into Travian. I don’t like having to split my focus – or split my Gold, for that matter.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll! I’ll have a new poll on the site in a few days. I plan on making this a regular feature.

 

Imram:

Why I support T3.6

1. It limits/eliminates Micro-farming
- With RP limitations, the farmers are actually forced to actually think instead of mindlessly sending out wave after wave every time they return even though they bring minimal bounty. It actually gives small nub players a fighting chance to actually LEARN to LOVE the game instead of being farmed to deletion/inactivity. I can relate to the feeling of desperation when some big army dude keeps sending troops around even though he gets nothing from when I first started the game.

2. It injects new strategy and tactics into the game.
- I’ve lost track of how many times alliances send out MMs to mass-fake enemies with literally thousands of fakes per wing and how with enough fakes it’s nearly impossible to detect reals with the endless onslaught of incomings. Alliances now have to make sure each and every player takes part in ops instead of just simming behind the alliance meatshields. Offensive operations now require better planning and coordination but they’re still possible.

3. Botters will lose out
- I’ve heard from a “friend” of mine that the most of the free scripts around no longer work with T3.6. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it’s a hell of a good thing for legitimate average Joe travian players like me. Heck most top raiders are just scripters/no lifers anyway. I know from personal contacts and experience that a LOT of the old top raiders just used scripts to farm and usually deleted when they got pounded/lost army.

4. Cheaper PLUS and more free options for non-Gold players + more expensive additional shizz for gold players
-Hell yeah I’m in heaven

5. Auto-avoid
-It’s a bit like GoD-modding for paying noobs/lazy players but then again most players can avoid attacks (some even claim to be able to avoid 1 sec counters ) anyway so I don’t really see a problem with this regardless of what most people claim. You need Gold Club to use auto-avoid so more paying noobs = more revenue for travian = more fun features for us non-paying players

6. Trade Routes
-It reduces micro-managing and lets us focus more on the bigger picture instead of shifting resources every few hours from all villages to army village/capital. Micro-managing = suckage imho.

Edited Additions

Some bad points:

1. Faking will suck since you’re only limited to a set amount of outgoing attacks at any one point. This will affect midgame and endgame immensely. If the limit could be avoided for fake attacks that would be awesome but if not then a compromise for a higher Rally Point limit would be appropriate.

2. It now promotes simming and focuses less on aggressive farming. But then again, how aggressive you are depends on you as a player and not the game mechanics.

3. Sniping armies with the movement speed artifact and ghost armies will be impossible if the target player sets the auto-avoid on.

Disclaimer:  This is my personal view and you can flame me all you want. It won’t change anything. However I believe that the auto-return is waaaay too overpowered and seriously imbalances the playing field between the conservative gold user and the gold extremists.

One player has made a handy guide for how to get your raiding set up fast with the new Travian 3.6 features. Read it here:

http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=130402

Quote from the guide’s intro:

This guide is not for those of you that dont mind spending hours sending out raids each day… This is more a guide for lazy people like myself or people that genuinely dont have much time for raiding

Ever since Travian version 3.6 was announced, there’s been a big reaction from players on the various Travian forums around the world. I’ve posted several stories about Travian 3.6 on this site, but I haven’t really gone through how I feel about the new version of the game in-depth. Now that it looks like it’s here to stay, and that most, if not all, new future servers will be using this version, I thought I’d take the time to put all of my thoughts on Travian 3.6 together, so that my readers can know where I stand on things. 

Besides affecting me as a player, the changes to Travian 3.6 will also be affecting this site, in ways that no one besides myself has probably even thought about. But I’m sure that people who regularly visit this site will want to know how this site will be changed by Travian 3.6.

Let me start by saying that I’m a big fan of Travian. That’s probably pretty obvious because otherwise I wouldn’t have started this site, but I think it’s important that I preface what I’m about to say with this. Travian is, without a doubt, one of the best games I have ever played. Maybe my favourite game ever. It’s definitely right up there with Starcraft, Civilization, etc. When you like a game that much, it’s understandable that when a change is announced that you think will make the game worse, you have a strong reaction to it. Many other Travian players felt the same way.

Some of the changes introduced in Travian 3.6 were understandable, even if I didn’t like them. But some of the other changes could really alter the way the game is played, and I don’t think that I will like the new version Travian as much as I like the old version. And when I’ve already sunk a lot of time into this site, the prospect of that happening is depressing, to say the least.

With that being said, I also feel as though we should give the game designers at Travian Games the benefit of the doubt. Surely they wouldn’t screw up their own game. There’s too much money on the line for that to happen, right? It would never be allowed. They must have some reasons for making these changes. And no, I’m not just talking about making more money. Because if the changes are unpopular and make the game worse, then they’ll end up making less money. I believe that the designers think these changes are good, and I’m going to try to see their side, even if I don’t agree with it. So I’m going to try to do posts that explore what the reasons behind these changes are.

But what really peeves me off, and I realise that I’m in a unique situation here, is that Travian 3.6 messes with why I started this website in the first place. I started this site to record the winning alliances of, what I considered at the time, the grandest, most competitive, and hardest to win strategy game in existence. I was massively in favour of all of the major changes made when they introduced version 3.5, which gave the game even more depth and helped balance the three tribes. I thought that a near-perfect game was going to get even better.  And I was excited to see what they would eventually do with Travian 4.0, which I was sure would bring even more improvement to the game.

With the introduction of Travian 3.6, now I’m instead worried about the future holds for Travian, and whether or not the game will get better or worse. And in the meantime, I’m stuck covering (and playing) a game that I’m a less enthusiastic about than I once was.

Travian 3.6 sucks all of the life out the metaphorical room when it comes to blogging about Travian. It’s hard to write about how great the endgame of Server 6 or Server 7 is when you know that version 3.6 is on the horizon, and it’s probably not going to be as much fun to cover as previous rounds were. It’s like trying to have fun when you know that in a few days something bad is going to happen.

We’ve just about reached the ending of the first server on Travian.com to be played under Travian 3.5 rules. I was all ready to write a post that got reactions from players on that server regarding the changes introduced with Travian 3.5, and how they affect the game. Now writing all about that seems almost pointless. The game will be so different in Travian 3.6, what’s the point of even talking about how Travian 3.5 changed the game?

I really liked Travian 3.5. A lot of players did. And we barely even got a chance to enjoy it before it got changed to Travian 3.6. The introduction of the artifacts brought about countless new strategies to the game, and other Travian 3.5 changes were sure to have interesting ramifications on the game as well. But now we won’t get to see what they would have been. Instead the game takes a wild turn in a direction that none of us saw coming and none of us asked for.

Also, when I hear that several of the best players really hate these changes and don’t want to play Travian anymore because of them, well that just disappoints me to no end. I created this site to be the Travian Hall of Champions, but now a lot of those players who would have made it into the Hall of Champions are just going to leave the game. It remains to be seems how widespread this is, but so far this is a significant and disappointing development.

My plan for this site was to really roll it out to all English-speaking servers once Travian 3.5 games reached their endgame. By doing it this way, my plan was to give myself enough time to get the site set up, build a following, and develop routine that would let me have the site perfect just in time for the new version of the game to run its course. It also gave me a clear way to draw the line as to when the Hall of Champions started, which is something that I really wanted to have.

Now we have this odd situation when some servers will be recorded as being Travian 3.5 and some will be Travian 3.6 and the two versions are wildly different and most skilled players favour the old version. It puts me in a bad situation but I’ll try to make the most of it.

There’s a lot more I’ll say about Travian 3.6 in the near future, and I’ll be taking an in-depth look at the changes, what people’s reactions to them are, and why they were made. I just wanted to start by getting this off my chest, and I actually feel a bit better now that I’ve finally gotten this out of my system. I’d love to hear people’s comments and if you like Travian 3.6 feel free to respond and say why. I’d actually like to hear it and I think it would help cheer me up a little to hear from SOMEONE who likes these changes.

Tangent: How this affected me as a player: I haven’t spent any gold since the Travian 3.6 upgrade was announced. I log in less time per day, do less raiding, and check my sitters accounts less often. My enthusiasm isn’t there right now. Hopefully it will come back soon.

Two new quests have now been added to the Taskmaster, it seems. The 23rd quest will be to build an embassy, and the 24th quest will be to join an alliance.

This will push first time players into joining alliances earlier.

On one hand, being a part of an alliance in Travian is a very important part of the game, so getting players to find this out is may be a good thing.

On the other hand, this will lead to new players joining alliance long before they’ve really gotten the hang of things. And it will encourage more new players to start alliances of their own, which generally is a mistake.

In any event, you definitely expect to see less small players who are unaligned in the future.

The rewards for completing these quests will be pretty small.

For building an Embassy, a player will receive 100 wood, 60 clay, 90 iron and 40 crop.

For joining an Alliance, a player will receive 120 wood, 140 clay, 90 iron and 50 crop.

They’ve announced that S8.com will be restarting on Friday, December 18th. Pre-registration will open on December 16th. Read the official announcement thread here.

S8.com will be Travian version 3.6, but it won’t have the auto-recall feature that lets you instantly return your troops.

My first reaction is that it’s a little too early to announce the top 10 search terms of the year (December just started dudes!), but this report is legit, so I thought I’d share it here anyway. Travian was the #5 search term of the year according to Yahoo France. Some readers might be surprised to find out that Travian is very popular in France. In fact, there are more players on the France servers than there are on the USA ones!

Anyway, here’s the story. I used Google Translate to change it from French to English, so that’s why the English is a little funny. The original story appears here.

If you want to know the main concerns of French Internet users in 2009, nothing like a little overview of the ranking of search engine Yahoo. Beware, if it flies high, burnout is not far.
1. Secret Story (A Reality TV Show in France)
2. Olympique de Marseille (A Professional Soccer team)
3. Michael Jackson
4. Paris Saint Germain (Another Soccer team)
5. Travian
6. Rihanna
7. Influenza A
8. Everyone wants to take his place
9. New Star
10. AS St Etienne

Obviously, these results are the biggest buzz of the year, between soliciting mass emissions of reality TV like “Secret Story” and the death of the most famous extraterrestrial life on Earth, Michael Jackson. There are also some clubs in League 1 Football (by far the best league in Europe for those who love the goals of the knee). Influenza A is, in turn, that the 7th rank, despite the hype about the traditional media.

Imagine if Yahoo had let his statistics appear in the search of pornography …

Only small consolation, the presence of Travian, a massively multiplayer web game rather well done and quite addictive.

A few months ago there was a poll up on the travian au/nz forums about a classic server coming to Travian Australia and New Zealand. The result was 135 people voted yes (75%) so it looked like the may be a new classic server. Things went quite for a while but now after nearly 5 months of waiting AU/NZ have got a classic server

Below is Loki’s forum post which explains the details:

This brand new server will be a classic server as per the results of the poll that I ran some time ago.

To view that poll and to refresh your memory about what differences are on a classic server, please click here.

The server will be open for pre-registration at some point (usually in the evening) of Monday 14th December.

The server start time is 6am (GMT+11), on Wednesday 16th December.

Good luck to all and have fun.

Regards

Loki

Pre-reg : Monday 14th December
Server start : Wednesday 16th December 6:00am (GMT+11)

If you have an account in Facebook, then it is imperative that you must try out the Mafia Wars game. An effective way to kill your time, while competing with other millions of players! I play this game regularly in between the marathon writing sessions.

Finding the game is easy – just search for Mafia Wars and add it to your application list.

It might take some time to learn the game concepts, mistakes are quite common if you are a novice. Check out the Official Mafia Wars forum, and post your doubts over there.

By the way, I am always looking for more friends to be included in my mafia. Please add my profile as your friend and finally invite me to your mafia. That’s all folks, see you over there!

Here is the invitation link to join my mafia

I have loads of Truck Drivers to give away. Truck Drivers are unique boosts (produced by Rackets) that will reduce your energy requirement by -6. In simpler terms, if a job requires you to spend 10 energy, you will have to spend just 4. The rest will be compensated by the truck driver. One will be able to level-up fast with these truck drivers. If you are interested in trading, hit me up, and we will discuss the terms of the trade!

Here’s a further explanation of the Rally Point changes in Travian 3.6. I must say, when you put it this way, it makes a lot of sense:

Dear players,

as the changes to the rally point brought up a lot discussion we want to tell you the reasons why we decided to make those.

We are able to detect a huge variety of different bots. We monitor this data now for several weeks. Those data is collected by Travian Games, no Admin nor Multihunter has access to those yet.

Our analyses have shown that nearly all players with having constantly more then 100 troop movements are using bots. We know that there are professionals who manage to do so without a bot.
Some details we discovered while checking different data from com5:

• Only 31 of all players would have been limited by the new Rally Point restriction
• exactly 12 of them are not using bots to maintain those troop movements
• this means out of 25000 Players, only 12 none cheating players are affected by the Rally Point restriction

Worldwide analyses show that com5 is a pretty good example for the average Travian server. We found one server where 17 none cheating players would have been affected, on the other side one where only 2 would have been affected.

Now we are finished with monitoring and analyzing the data of bot usage. We will set up a new bot detection and punishing system after finishing the T3.6 test period.
So please do not discuss about bot punishments anymore because we are taking care of that issue.
The bot issue combined with the possibility to be successful without bots and playing 24/7 with 5 persons in the account was one of the main reasons why we created T3.6 as it is.

The reason why we chose com10 as one of our test servers (along with tr9 and asia5) is that lots of players from all over the world are playing on .com. Your opinion during the test period is important to us. But please argue and tell us reasons for why things are good or not. The best thing for you and us, would be you playing the new server and giving us feedback of your experiences with the new features.

Thank you in advance for your effort on helping us making Travian even better.

Best Regards
Agge (Community Manager)

(This was originally posted on the Travian.com forums here)

I say that the main problem with Travian 3.6 is the ability to instantly recall troops in exchange for gold. The Rally Point change seems to be getting the most attention from players though. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I don’t see it as a huge deal. And if it inhibits bots usage that’s a major positive.

One of the leaders of ArES, an elite alliance from S8.com 08-09, posted his thoughts about Travian 3.6 on the .com fourms:

Vercingetorix: The biggest problem I have with 3.6 is the rally point restrictions. As pointed out, s10 has only been in testing for what, 3 weeks? The rally point restriction will hurt the most active raiders early in the game, but that is about it. The biggest problem will come in mid-game and end-game. The reason for this is the restriction placed on the number attacks able to be sent.

On s8 I led ArEs the last several months of the server. We fought against several Apeiron wings near the NE/NW border. My battle-group players would often get a list of at least 6 players to fake and they would often fake at least 5 villages of each player. Our strong players would often times send a minimum of 10 waves per attack/fake. That equals out to 6 players X 5 villages = 30 villages attacked X 10 attacks per wave = 300 attacks being launched from one hammer village.

I know of battle-groups in other alliances that sent many more attacks at a time than that. This rally point restriction is going to drastically alter the mid/late game attack structure of the game.

It is issues like this that have not been tested out due to the extrememly short testing time period. It would be far better to run a new test version through at least one full server cycle and giving a chance to view the benefits and deficits of any changes as viewed through the critical lense of an entire fully-played server… rather than what has been done.

I think Vercingetorix makes some good points. At high-level play, this Rally Point change will have a huge effect. The whole nature of how fake attacks work will undergo a massive change.

But one question to ask it whether or not this change might actually make the game better? If fake attacks no longer are effective as they once were, does that make the game worse? Or could it make the game better?

I know players are used to sending massive fake attacks to help protect their hammer, but is making it harder for them to send a massive amount of fakes really detrimental to the game? It makes it easier to defend and harder for players to be wiped out because they weren’t able to spot the fake. There are two sides to this and I’m kind of torn myself, but I think it’s something that bears consideration.

A big announcement was made on the Travian.com forums earlier today by the .com admin, Tschena. All Travian.com servers will be making changes to Travian 3.6. Not all of the 3.6 features will be going into effect, but players can expect to see new graphics and get new free features. but the biggest controversy is that all servers will now have the Travian 3.6 “Gold Club” implemented on them, even ones that are almost over, like S6.com and S1.com.  Read the announcement thread here. The full text of the announcement is below:

Here is the full text of her announcement:

Dear players,

all servers will get an upgrade either to T3.6 directly or to T3.6 code with some restrictions on December 2, 2009.

New servers (com10)

• Rally point: only 5 troop movements (attacks, raids and reinforcement orders) per building level
• Status icons for reports, to identify easy attacks without losses, trades etc
• Research loop for armoury and blacksmith
• Enough resources at…. and “capacity” after raids shown without PLUS (and for academy, armoury and blacksmith)
• Direct link to the NPC trade
• Direct link to “instant build”
• 10% off and def bonus removed (only NEW Servers)
• PLUS cost down from 15 to 10 (only NEW Servers)
• Graphics for artefact’s and resource fields
• Village and link panel can be collapsed

Gold club:

• Gold club costs 100 Gold for whole server time
• Returning troops immediate callback (and they return immediately to your village) cost 5 gold. This only affects returning troops. And only those without catapults and chiefs of any tribe. Those can not be called back immediately.
  Additional, the callback is not possible if the village is being under attack/raid hitting within the next 3 hours.
• Master builder: prepare three more buildings in loop even without enough resources, cost 1 gold for each
• Send away all troops before an attack comes in (they leave at the moment of the attack and return 180 seconds afterwards) 2 gold each time troops dodge. The total amount of dodges can be set by the player for each village separately (troops have to be at home for at least 10 seconds except they are returning from the usage of this option)
• Trade route for 7 days, 2 gold per route for 7 days (only for own villages)

then there are free features in the Gold club:

• Merchants run three times (if selected)
• Farm list – you can setup to easy find and attack your farms
• 15 and 9 cropper finder with oasis bonuses filter
• Farm statistics easy overview how effective your raids to a specific village have been

Features formerly in the PLUS Account, now free for all players:

• Enough resources at…. shown without PLUS (also for academy, armory and blacksmith)
• “Capacity” after raids shown without PLUS
• WarSim with all features
• Walls etc and Rally Point can be built anywhere and be moved on their specific building site

Changes for the PLUS Account:

• Lowered price for PLUS Account from 15 to 10
• Research loop for armoury and blacksmith
• 10% off and def bonus removed (to remove the possibility to buy a combat bonus for Gold)

Upgraded Travian 3.5 Servers (com1, com2, com4, com5, com6, com7, com9, comx)

• Status icons for reports, to identify easy attacks without losses, trades etc
• Research loop for armoury and blacksmith
• Enough resources at…. and “capacity” after raids shown without PLUS (and for academy, armoury and blacksmith)
• Direct link to the NPC trade
• Direct link to “instant build”
• Graphics for artefact’s and resource fields
• Village and link panel can be collapsed

Gold club:

• Gold club costs 100 Gold for whole server time
• Master builder: prepare three more buildings in loop even without enough resources, cost 1 gold for each
• Trade route for 7 days, 2 gold per route for 7 days (only for own villages)

then there are free features in the Gold club:

• Merchants run three times (if selected)
• Farm list – you can setup to easy find and attack your farms
• 15 and 9 cropper finder with oasis bonuses filter
• Farm statistics easy overview how effective your raids to a specific village have been

Features formerly in the PLUS Account, now free for all players:

• Enough resources at…. shown without PLUS (also for academy, armoury and blacksmith)
• “Capacity” after raids shown without PLUS
• WarSim with all features
• Walls etc and Rally Point can be built anywhere and be moved on their specific building site

Changes for the PLUS Account:

• Research loop for armory and blacksmith

Classic servers (com3)

• Status icons for reports, to identify easy attacks without losses, trades etc
• Research loop for armoury and blacksmith
• Enough resources at…. and “capacity” after raids shown without PLUS (and for academy, armoury and blacksmith)
• Direct link to the NPC trade
• Direct link to “instant build”
• Graphics for artefact’s and resource fields
• Village and link panel can be collapsed

Gold club:

• Gold club costs 100 Gold for whole server time

then there are free features in the Gold club:

• Merchants run three times (if selected)
• Farm list – you can setup to easy find and attack your farms
• 15 and 9 cropper finder
• Farm statistics easy overview how effective your raids to a specific village have been

Features formerly in the PLUS Account, now free for all players:

• Enough resources at…. shown without PLUS (also for academy, armoury and blacksmith)
• “Capacity” after raids shown without PLUS
• WarSim with all features
• Walls etc and Rally Point can be built anywhere and be moved on their specific building site

Changes for the PLUS Account:

• Research loop for armory and blacksmith

Stay tuned to Travian Champions for more news and clarifications about Travian 3.6 and how these changes will affect the game!

I’ve been unfortunately very busy lately, and it’ll probably be like that for the next few days. So no time to do an update about S6.com or the other .com servers right now (but thanks to Oggles for his great posts about the Aus servers!)

Here are the current standings, in any event:

If I have the time, I’ll take a closer look at S6, and also delve into S1.com and S7.com. Plus I’m also working on putting up a strategy guide and a very cool post about what the players on S1 thought of the Travian 3.5 changes. I just hope I can find the time to write about it all!

Hey, I’m Ogg or Oggles and I’m taking up the role of the Australian/New Zealand correspondent for Travian Champions. Randomgeek said a bit about me earlier in the week and I’ll say a bit more now. I’m a New Zealander and I’ve been playing travian for quite a number of years now. As Randomgeek said earlier I’m a big poster on the AU/NZ forums and I’m the no1 attacker on au2. Some of you will probably already know me especially if you’ve given the au servers visit or were around on com a few years back. If you want to know a bit more about me just add me on skype (oggothus). I’m currently following the au3 endgame and I will be posting some info on last Aux which I played an active role in.

Well a few days ago the Natar’s spawned on the 3rd Australian/New Zealand server au3 after just over 300 days of game time. Note that au3 started as T3 and was upgraded to T3.5 shortly before mid game. FnP were quick off the mark taking 6 WWs in the first day (Cenacad taking 2 of them). Live and °I° also managed to take one in the first few hours.

World Wonder Standings after 24hrs

4 Days later Clarus and Al-caholic both from FnP take a WW as well as Learch and mirson from Insomnia. Although Al-caholic’s WW is 0 popped soon afterwards taking it out of the race for the next wee while. We also see Cenacad leave FnP after a brief 2 day stay and return to his original alliance ~E~. The only WW still unclaimed at -145|200 will probably stay that way as it is isolated from the rest of the server. The current totals are FnP with 6 WWs, Insomnia(°I°) with 3 WWs, ~E~ with 2 WWs and Live with 1. Although I wouldn’t be surprised of more WWs change hands before building plans are released. (This info may be a wee bit out of date as I have not gained access to an au3 account yet )

Current World Wonder Standings

(39	|	-54)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Cenacad)	Fri 20/11/09
(6	|	-8)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Cenacad)	Fri 20/11/09
(-160	|	33)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Raven Master)	Fri 20/11/09
(52	|	42)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Ceres)	Fri 20/11/09
(124	|	-206)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Pandora)	Sat 21/11/09
(-55	|	-151)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Flash)	Sat 21/11/09
(-53	|	-40)	WW Village	208		(c.t. sloth2)	Sat 21/11/09
(-37	|	57)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Kapow)	Sat 21/11/09
(199	|	134)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Learch)	Sat 21/11/09
(50	|	153)	WW Village	208		(c.t. theanhphan)	Sat 21/11/09
(164	|	-20)	WW Village	0		(c.t. Al-caholic)	Sun 22/11/09
(-210	|	-122)	WW Village	208		(c.t. Clarus)	Sun 22/11/09

// //

Player statistics

In an earlier post I linked to a guide for the new features of Travian 3.6 that was posted on the Travian.com forums. Now the same person has written a handy explanation of how the new Trade Routes Features work. Read it here:

http://forum.travian.com/showpost.php?p=1500831&postcount=2

This is sure to be a big time-saver during the Endgame phase when players are regularly sending crop to the World Wonder! Gaul players will get the most benefit out of this new feature because they have the fastest merchants.

In my last S6.com update I said that MFD was Brush Monkey looked to be in the lead, but like the other World Wonder that took the lead, it too went crashing down hard, this time by an attack by SL. Here’s the current standings:

The way the standings change so fast on S6.com, sometimes it feels like I’m watching the Speed Server. These guys don’t screw around. Say what you want about SL, but they sure don’t screw around!

This impressive attack above, with a high number of Rams of Teutonic Knights, comes from the biggest player in CWL, and the #5 biggest player overall on the server.

It was followed by two Gaul Hammers that and a Roman Hammer that really messed up the infrastructure in the village…

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=86521e651d4
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8655066d464
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=866420e8d37

But it was this massive Teutonic Hammer by the #36 attacker on the Server that took the World Wonder down hard:

And one more army worth mentioning was  little bit late but also scored a hit:

http://www.travian-reports.net/uk/ra…id=2714833dda6

Overall it showed that the defense at Brush Monkey’s World Wonder is a little light, but it looks that’s because the defense is being concentrated at Codename’s World Wonder. Several players on S6 have talked about how a lot of defense seems to be focused there, so look for another hard battle there in the future.

I posted some World Wonder graphs earlier, and the player who made them has posted some updated ones. These are awesome, and I want to thank Globetrotter for making them. If you want to read Globetrotter’s analysis of the S6.com Endgame (which is also really good), it’s on this page: http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=129440&page=19

(Note: These were made before Brush Monkey’s World Wonder got hit) 

Here’s MFD’s and ONE’s World Wonder villages over the course of the Endgame:

You can see that Codename’s World Wonder seems to be the one in the lead, so one can expect a huge battle there soon with the fate ofthr game in the balance. Trinity’s World Wonder is in an alliance all by itself and they must be using 2 sets of plans in order to get its levels so high.

Here’s the history of LoD’s World Wonders:

And finally, SL and OZ. One interesting quirk is that some World Wonder that were orginally tagged as SL are now with OZ, but in eneral those alliance are regarded as being part of the same side.

Once again, thanks to Globetrotter for his awesome work in making these graphs. It takes a lot of dedication to do so because you have to record the changes in WW levels and population every day, and he’s been doing them since October 13th. Give this man a round of applause!

Time for a big wrap-up of what’s been happening recently on S6.com. If you’ve need help telling which alliance is which, refer to this post. These events are presented in the chronological order of which they happened, and all of this happened over the past few days.

After you see all of these attacks, don’t be surprised if you find yourself saying “wow”. The sheer number of armies used over the span of the last few days is something you hardly ever see.

Attacks at Codename’s World Wonder:

Recently, the leading World Wonder was held by MFD, and it had reached level 94. The SL Meta-alliance, which is MFD’s biggest rival, launched a few of their massive armies at it to slow it down. I have reports of four big armies that fought a bloody battle there, here are the battle reports followed by a quick analysis:

Other reports:

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=74943a0f81f

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=74972587830

Those are definitely some gigantic armies, and Lara Croft’s is especially fierce. But MFD must did a very good job defending their World Wonder, and the damage taken by these attacks won’t keep it out of the race. They way they were able to hold off that first army from zeroing their wall is especially impressive, that many rams would normally have no trouble taking out the wall at an average World Wonder. Not being able to bring down the wall definitely cost them, and it limited the damage their other armies could do. Still, it will take some time for Codename to recover. Here’s one player’s estimate: http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=74943a0f81f

Attacks on Trinity:

SL also did major damage to Trinity’s World Wonder (Trinity is in the alliance ONE*JPF, but seems to be received some assistance from MFD). This one was rocked to its core, here are the battle reports from there. As you’ll be able to see, the defense was much lighter.:

 Here’s a full listening of all the battlereports from there, these were #2 and #6 respectively:

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=7671132205d
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=7664828d2e2
http://travian-reports.net/uk/raport.php?id=2269993e351
http://travian-reports.net/uk/raport.php?id=227794f3d09
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=7664930bb6a
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=7665133f033
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=768445fe69a

Be sure to check out the last attack, which knocks the World Wonder down to level zero.

Attacks on Bandrit:

 Taking out Codename’s World Wonder left SL in the lead with Bandrit’s World Wonder in the lead, but it wasn’t there for very long. It managed to get to level 96 before MFD sent a legion of attacks on it. Here’s a complete listing of all of them, including the Lv.96 Natar attack that happened during the middle of MFD’s attack wave:

Click here to see MFD’s attacks on Bandrit.

These attacks set Bandrit down to Lv.82 from Lv.96, and also took out his Earth Wall and damaged some of his other infrastructure.

Attacks on Fire&Ice:

Fire&Ice was the next World Wonder to take the lead. And yes, the “Ice” in Fire&Ice is the same Ice that won S8.com and who I interviewed recently. Man, she has to be one of the most hardcore players I’ve ever seen:

Fire&Ice’s World Wonder got to be in the lead for about a day or two before LoD put a stop to that with 9 huge attack waves:

View all 9 attacks by following these links:
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=833107aa1e9
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=83328628411
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8334144ab07
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8334760b0b9
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8338399fa2d
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8338995a897
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=83392673fd1
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=834109d1e62
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=834496d21c9

These attacks took out the wall, a great warehouse, and set the World Wonder back 6 levels. Which probably isn’t enough damage to put it down for the count

 Attacks on Simethered’s Wonder:

The next World Wonder in line after Fire&Ice’s was in the hands of LoD, but SL quickly totaled it. I’ve probably posted enough battlereports for one day, so I’ll just put the links up:

http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8384902bf72
http://www.travian-reports.net/us/ra…id=841466ee812
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=8443106d03c
http://www.travian-reports.net/us/ra…id=83933c54fee
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=84108c5eecf
http://travilog.org.ua/en/8592956/42…cbda743b75/1/1
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=84041fc7015
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=84105c7a808
http://travian-reports.net/us/raport.php?id=843395fa88e

Plan taken from SL:

But it’s not just the World Wonder cities where the action is taking place. While all this was going on, an alliance in the Southeast called ONE*OD managed to steal the World Wonder construction plans from one of SL’s players, leaving them unable to build levels on their World Wonder until they can get a set of plans back. As you can see from this report, they clearly weren’t expecting an attack on their plans:

Current World Wonder Standings:

I’m not sure which World Wonder is in the lead right now, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s MFD with Brush Monkey’s World Wonder. Fire&Ice seems to have restarted building though. I’m sure there are still some big armies out there, so this game is still up in the air.

Next, Travian Champions will be taking a look at how the endgame is going on S1.com, but expect to hear more about S6.com soon.

One of the moderators at Travian.com has posted a look at what some of the new Travian 3.6 features look like, so that players who aren’t playing on one of the test servers for Travian 3.6 can see what it’s like. Here’s the link to it:

http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?p=1499477#post1499477

(If you’re not playing S6, you might want to read this post to familiarize yourself with who the S6 alliances are)

I have bad timing. Server 6 looks like it’s been an entertaining server and a pretty balanced endgame, with several different sides in the running and many possible outcomes. And there’s lots of great info on the forums too. I’ve finally got an account on the server from a player who’s no longer player on it so I can observe (The name of the account is Bounty Hunter – ranked 3772 – feel free to message me in-game and say hi if you’re playing on the server). So I’m excited about finally being able to write about S6.com for this site. Unfortunately, just as I’m about to do a big recap about what’s going on, this happens:

Trio (CWL): CWL-Insane’s account got hacked. We don’t know how long its password has been compromised but that would explain all Perfectly coordinated hits on our WW hammer villages (yes, in the account were google doc links to spreadsheets with all our army sizes and coordinates). Attacks were arriving ONLY against the army villages – no other villages – and were starting to arrive minutes/hours before those hammers were sent out towards a WW.

Yikes. That’s quite an unfortunate development. Now before anyone panics, we should let the Travian Multihunters and Admins do their work and see if they can determine if the account was actually hacked, or if this is all a big misunderstanding. The leaders of the opposing alliances (mainly LoD (Liberty or Death) and MFD (Myth Fun Dino)) have some doubts about whether or not there was actually a hacking taking place. More on that below. All of the attacks are on CWL players, and CWL is part of the SL (Space Lizards) Meta. CWL-Insane is ranked #10 overall on the server.

They say that they were able to discover the account hacking because the password was changed on the account, and the co-player on the account had to contact the original player to get it reset in order to log in.

Six CWL villages that hold endgame armies and that were allegedly just about to launch them are now receiving attacks, which presumably have the goal of destroying the village, and thus the army, before they reach their intended target (NOTE: I’m extrapolating here, it hasn’t been outright said what the total effect of the attacks will be). 

All of the incoming attacks on these CWL villages are coming from the alliance LoD. And only the six villages with the big endgame armies that were allegedly about to launch are being attacked. CWL players have also said that these 6 villages were never attacked before or scouted. Here’s the best recap of the events from a CWL perspective that I could find on the forum: http://forum.travian.com/showpost.php?p=1498091&postcount=158 The initial poster started the thread even before they had realised that all the attacks were coming from LoD.

Hopefully the truth about this will come out. LoD says they did nothing wrong but their leaders are doing an investigation of where they got the information from to see if a player from their alliance acted improperly. Here’s a quote from one of their leaders:

Simetheslime: ok we are investigating

the overall response from LoD leaders was they did not do this, they do not condone this, they would never ask nor authorise this.

attacks launched today come from a list sent to the BG leader on Nov 8th.

… when you get intel you do not always track where it came from, we are now trying to discover how this was obtained.

Edit: apparently the player’s whose attack was allegedly hacked has decided not to report this to the multihunters: http://forum.travian.com/showpost.php?p=1498091&postcount=158

I’m stunned with disbelief. Hopefully someone else from his alliance has decided to do so. Not giving the multihunters a chance to get to the bottom of this is takes a away the best chance to clear this up.

Here are the current WW Standings:

Quick update from Server 9 – and then I’ll head back to Server 6.

I posted earlier about how S9.com was shaping up to be a battle between North and South, and now that’s pretty much official as the northern alliances have merged under one name (all the alliance previously known as Lethal are now called Thunder). They’ve now declared war on the Meta-alliance that dominates the south, ONE.

With those two alliances merged together, here’s what the top-50 alliances on S9 look like today. ONE is red , Thunder is blue, and other alliances in the top 50, like JD, RT, RA, X.Y.Z, W.R.X., KISS, TRA, and G.O.I. are green (NOTE: I want to be clear, The green alliances are not all on the same team)

Here are the current Artifact Standings on Server 9 by alliances, after the Thunder/Lethal merge:

Thunder: 5 unique (Rivals Confusion, Titan Boots, Artifact of the Fool, Architects’ Secret, and Eagle Eyes), 11 large, 19 small

ONE: 2 unique (Trainers Talent and Diet Control), 13 large, 19 small

X.Y.Z: 2 Large (Titan Boots and Eagle Eyes), 4 small

JD: 1 Large (Arcitects’ Secret), 3 small

RT: 1 Small (Rivals Confusion)

W.P.X: 1 small (Eagle Eyes)

TRA: 1 Small (Artifact of the Fool)

Four artifacts are still unclaimed: a great Eagle Eyes, a small Architects’ Secret, and two small Rivals Confusion.

I’m looking forward to a long war between ONE and Thunder, but the other alliances that are out there can definitely make an impact on the game as well.