Travian

Travian Legends (originally Travian) takes players back in time to an era of war where you’ll build up your settlement and take it to war as one of the game tribes. With the Romans, Gauls and Teutons at your disposal players have a historically accurate strategy MMO title to lay claim to their own virtual plot of land. Travian launched in 2004 and continues to receive regular game updates and like its spin off cousin (Travian Kingdoms) is free to play. Despite this age Travian still commands an active and dedicated community across both of these titles with various tweaks to core mechanics between them.

Set in the classical age you’ll find a basic undeveloped village as your starting point which players will quickly develop to expand production and their ability to defend themselves. Alongside this upgrade to your settlement you’ll need to balance aggression with military units and all sorts of other economic tweaks that give you small efficiency gains to ultimately prove victor on your server. This familiar MMO strategy formula is one that Travian pioneered as an early entrant into the genre but has by no means been overtaken by newer entrants.

After registration on the Travian website to join the fight players select their game server and choose their tribe for the adventure ahead as either the Romans, Gauls or Teutons. Each of these options has their own underlying strategic strength that needs to be factored into your broader strategy and progression. Romans are masters of building upgrades with sturdy expensive troops, Gauls are merchant specialists that can also move their armies quickly and Teutons are an aggressive tribe that aim to overcome opponents with cheap troop production.

Players aren’t alone in this world though with the game world also throwing in NPC factions of Natars and Nature to provide some PvE content alongside PvP raids against other players. Regardless of AI or real person at the end of your raiding party the focus of acquiring resources from these nodes on the map is the same. These are often a vital supplement to the production of your home base in the resources of crop, clay, iron and wood.

While each is used across your settlement progression they have their own specific uses such as crop to feed your people, clay and wood for construction with iron for your military. Your selected tribe also has an impact on resource usage for military units with Romans expensive troops being driven by higher iron need than other factions while Teutonic utilise the relatively easy to acquire wood resource. Upgrading your production areas directly requires significant investment but does return that investment many times over with increased productivity and can be further enhanced with rare nearby oases.

Production of resources is just one archetype of building with nearly two dozen building slots within your settlement to construct military buildings and research structures. Players can also set a rally point for their troops and develop their outer wall to give some defence against attacks to limit resources lost. Travian goes beyond this single village though and encourages players to take command of multiple to support ever growing army numbers although doing so requires some setup and must be defended otherwise you’ll lose control of it.

This defence (or offence for the aggressor) utilises over 30 troop types making Travian one of the most diverse in the genre for tactics as each tribe has their own unique pool to recruit with their own statistics. While the makeup of your army is an important consideration from these options they also serve secondary purposes such as the scout that can spy on the enemy or counter spying attempts. Units are also upgradeable with investment which requires players to make decisions regarding increasing their numbers or boosting their current army power at an individual unit level.

Summary:

• Three different tribes with their own personality that impacts your broader strategy.
• Artefacts, oases and equipment add another level of gameplay to consider.
• A long running strategic MMO with a stable community of regular players.
• Develop individual towns as you expand your reach to multiple settlements and try to defend them.
• Free to play browser based gameplay.

Links:

• Official Website

Videos:

Review Platform: Browser