Travian is a brower-based strategy game, which you can play for free, or get a luxury version with added tools for a very modest fee. But unlike other games which hold your attention intensively for a short period of time, Travian belongs to a category of games you could call passive web gaming. It only needs your attention for a minute or two, whether its once or twice per day, for a period of weeks or months.
In Travian, you are the chieftain of a small village in Roman times, with a choice of playing as a Roman, a Gaul, or a Teuton. You control the village and a fixed number of spaces around the village. The spaces are used to gather resources: wood, clay, iron, and crops. With these resources you can either increase your resource production, or you can build buildings in the village. Just like in Age of Empires there is a building tree, containing both peaceful buildings like granaries, and buildings like barracks which allow you to build troops. Once you have troops, you can raid other villages and steal their resources, waging war against the thousands of other players on the same server.
Technically you could call Travian a real-time strategy MMO. Only that the “real time” is very, very slow. When you start any action, like increasing your resource production, it will tell you not only how many resources that action needs, but also how many minutes it will take. And during that time you can’t build anything else, although you can do other game actions like sending messages to your neighbors and what not. Then you build the next thing, and the next, and soon you will run out of resources. Looking on your map you will get an information of how many resources you gather *per hour*, and then you quickly realize that it will take a couple of hours before you have enough resources to continue.
That is where the “passive gaming” part comes into play. Most of the time Travian plays by itself. Once or several times per day you just log on, check what has happened, and use the accumulated resources to build the next thing. Playing Travian is a bit like checking your e-mail, you do it regularly, and it only takes short bursts of activity.
However, a game like Travian takes a very long time. Your goal is to become big and powerful, maybe form an alliance with other players, and control a huge empire of many villages. The game ends when one alliance builds a level 100 Wonder of the World, but the average player will not “win” the game, just like you can’t win WoW. Neither can you lose, your last village can’t be taken away from you, and you will always have some minimal production. In your first 7 days in the game you can’t be attacked at all, and during that time you can build a cranny, a place where you can store resources that other players can’t steal from you, no matter how big the army is they raid you with.
When I first started playing Travian, I was addicted. Every morning I would wake up and couldnt wait to check my village to see what new buildings i can build, or if anything happened since i last logged in. However, Travian Admin’s started adding new features to the game which wasnt necessarily a good thing. I soon realized I was starting to lose interest in the game, and actually went elsewhere to look for other browser games to play. All in all, Travian is a really fun game to play and i recommend that you at least try it out.
Rating 15/20
[ Graphics | 3 ]
[ Gameplay | 4 ]
[ Through | 4 ]
[ Fun Factor | 4 ]
Second Opinion - By Codanon
Travian is a very casual and entertaining game to play for people of all ages, especially among friends. It however gets more demanding as the game goes on. Once you expand and get more villages, things get a bit messy. It stops being casual and starts being more time consuming to the point when there is always something to do. Nevertheless, it’s a great game and its entertainment value should keep you more than satisfied.
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Level: 5
August 22, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Hmm, I’ve heard alot about it.