10 THINGS GREAT PLAYERS DO

10 THINGS GREAT PLAYERS DO
* What separates a great player from an average player is dedication and goals *

10. Read. Everything. Especially the stickies, the manual, the help, and anything else that seems remotely interesting. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and the Travian help site by your side.

9. Start a test village and play it until a new server starts up. This is the absolute best way to learn how to play without the pressure that comes with actually wanting your account to be successful. Refer to #1.

8. Start fresh within a few days, maybe even a week, on a brand new server. There is nothing better than starting out on a server where everyone is roughly equal.

7. Use proper English. The occasional mistake can be forgiven, but the constant misuse of grammar and spelling indicates that you are not serious about what you are saying. If you do not care about how you present what you want to say, do you really expect people to think you care about what you want to say? Communicating is essential in-game. The players that do it right find that their games are enjoyable.

6 Select the tribe that best suits their play style. There is no best tribe. Not everyone will be a great Gaul, or Teuton, or Roman. Eventually everyone finds a tribe that they can play very well, and their rank on the server reflects this. #9 factors greatly in this.

5. Know where the Rally Point is, and what it's used for. A good player knows when to build an army, how much of it to build, and what to do with it. If you don't know what to do here, refer to #10, #4, and #2.

4. Dodge. An army is a huge investment for anyone, and losing it to carelessness is a gigantic waste of resources. Avoiding attacks that could only destroy your army, especially your offense-oriented troops, will save you many headaches in the future. On older servers people are looking for easy hero-xp, and they will prey on anyone with some units sitting in their village. Gone to bed for the night? Send them out on a four hour trip to the nether regions. The bottom line is to keep your army safe so you can use for something which profits you. An early game army should rarely be used to protect resources. Refer to #3.

3. Cranny up. Resources which aren't protected are prone to be taken by someone who can protect them. This is the way the game is designed. It is the way the game is played. And anyone that understands this does very well, because they can be attacked a million times a night, but will never lose any resources. Also, remember that Teutons have a raiding bonus.

2. Attack, raid, and destroy anyone and everyone around that has no vested interest in their success. The good players ensure that there is no one around them who can hurt them, now, or in the future. Early in the game, this involves keeping everyone around them from growing bigger than them, and thereby controlling their area. Later on, it involves destroying armies, and eventually even villages. A quick attack is the most dangerous one, because you cannot dodge or shift troops to counter it. The best way to prevent one is to make it impossible to happen. This is the reason players "claim" their 7x7s. It is pure strategy, nothing more.

1. Make mistakes, and learn from them. Don't ever whine about them, or insist the game be changed because you can't learn from them. Every single good player has many stories of how they screwed up bad. The reason they are as good as they are is because they made mistakes, and learned from them. This game is for players, and filled with players, who are constantly trying to improve their play style. The players here will do absolutely anything to be the best. If you are not prepared to follow suit, you do not belong in this game.