TeamLiquid's Travian Experience

NeoIllusions

United States37500 Posts

January 01 2007 19:29 GMT

Travian
10 months ago, FakeSteve introduced TeamLiquid.net to the massively multiplayer online real-time browser game: Travian. A large number of TL.net members showed interested in the game as it was another opportunity for our community to game together. Within a day or two, we all became denizens of the NorthWest quadrant of Server 4. TeamLiquid started out 3 alliances strong with over 80 players from our home forum.

Brief background

Each player starts off as one of the three tribes: Gauls, Romans, or Teutons. The game is very much like Civilization, in which players building up their villages, produce units to attack and defend, and gather resources. Like with other MMOGs, group cooperation and communication is a must.

One of the great things about playing a MMOG with a community like TeamLiquid is the innate sense of trust we have with each other. Other alliances in this game suffer from espionage and corruption within their own ranks. -TL- was able to bypass such issues for a good 4 months into the game.
Over the course of the game, we found two strong allies. First was Youth Climbers (YC) in the NorthWest, a group of rock climbing enthusiasts from Hong Kong. Our mid and late server ally was Player Killers (PKs) from the NorthEast. PKs was formed from the most aggressive players in the NE.

-TL- history
Early on, we were dividied into 3 alliances based on where in the NW we spawned. As it was our first time playing this browser based game together, we were a rather rag-tag bunch. Steve started a thread and listed all the players and their coordinates. But after a while, Steve disappeared and people started asking on the forums about what our goals should be and how we should continue. This is when I took it upon myself to coordinate things for TL.net. I created a new thread and updated it with a new roster and a few maps/guides.

Winning our Server

To win a Travian Server, a player/alliance must build their World Wonder to level 100. At level 1, the WW takes 5 hours to build. Each level there after, there is proportional time increase. All the way up to level 100, this takes over 30 hours to build.

The first 6 months of the game, players and their respective alliances play for territorial dominance. -TL- and our allies, YC, ended up being the strongest in the NorthWest.
About the start of month 7, artifacts are released. Artifacts spawn in NPC villages and possess immense defense. Alliance coordination is required to time all the attacks one after another and ensure that the person who sends the last attack is able to pick up the artifact and secure it in one of their villages.

After all the artifacts are secured, the last portion of the game begins. World Wonder Plans are released. WW plans are just like Artifacts. Only difference is that the player holding the WW plan will be able to construct a World Wonder “building”. Each player with a WW plan can build their Wonder from level 1 to level 50. To build the Wonder to level 51 and beyond, another player in the same alliance must also hold a plan. Another words, 2 players in the same alliance must each have a World Wonder Plan in order to build their respective alliance World Wonder to level 100.

Metas
At the end of the server, it no longer becomes players fighting players or alliances fighting alliances. Like all other Travian servers, two metas (think an alliance of alliances) form and two factions of the server fight in the end. -TL-, YC and PKs ended up belonging to a meta named Vendetta. Our opposing meta was Genesis, a conglomeration of two multi winged alliances, RoB and ABC.

Extending appreciation
There are a few people who made this Travian experience a success for TeamLiquid and to them, I would like to give them my thanks.

Kazansky (TeamLiquid.net handle: Anihc)
Kaz was the other main coordinator for -TL-. He essentially kept things running smoothly when wars arise and when I got rather busy in real life. For the first five months, Kaz was the most aggressive player on Server 4. He single-handedly put our alliance on the map for other to notice.

PaKe_LiKa (b_unnies)
Probably one of our more newbie of players.

But given how he started Travian a good two months after the rest of us, he’s got a good excuse. PaKe was persistent in trying to make himself useful in our alliance. He took over Petachu’s account after Peta went inactive. The last two months of the game, I made him my co-player and he covered tasks while I was busy sleeping or studying.

thedeadhaji (thedeadhaji)
One of our key players who stayed until the very end of the game. haji was responsible for building up the largest single army in Travian. This meant constantly raiding for at least a good three months in advance to build up his army and make sure it didn’t starve. Using his badass army, haji killed Genesis’s World Wonder and essentially seal the victory for our side.

OgreChild (Legionnaire)
TeamLiquid’s resident celebrity... WINKTOSS! I was rather surprised to learn that Leg was playing Travian with us when this all started. He was our strategic commander. What Kaz had in terms of brute force, Leg executed with great finesse. I would say that over 5 enemy players lost a total of about 60 villages in a period of a month, all due to Leg’s planning. Giving me insight on not only who to hit but also when and with how big of a force, Leg filled in the gap left by Kaz after Kaz retired.

2BoNg! (2BoNg)
darkmage (Frenchguy)
ROM (NoName)
psylo (psylo)
BG1 (BG1)
HappyCat (MightyAtom)
To our core players who stayed the entire 10 months with me, you all ensure the win for TeamLiquid.net

KingFalladir (KingFalladir)
Ceril (Ceril/Arkmee)
thedeadhaji
To our script writers, you guys saved us time galore.

JohnJuanda (tenbagger)
fatlittlepig (AK-Nemesis)
Empyrean (Empyrean)
Aether. (requiem)
Bawheed (FBS1)
SoMuchBetter (dcmsm)
Cloud_Strife (Enrique)
Omgbnetsux (omgbnetsux)
rpf289 (rpf289)
Shaolin Bongo (Sfydjklm)
-LiNk- (Death-Link)
OverTheUnder (OverTheUnder)
intrigue (intrigue)
Locked (Locked)
decafchicken (decafchicken)
MuShu-Pork (MuShu)
JackBoy-POSER (POSER)
Dreamtime (oneiro)
Eti307 (Eti307)
Meta (Meta)
TheNug (Spike)
Kyubi (Telemako]JLS[)
petachu (petachu)
IntoTheW0w (IntoTheWow)
StealthBlue ({CC}StealthBlue)
nitram (nitram)
chunwon (pgshock)
lil.sis (lil.sis)
A3i (A3iL3r0n)
trance04 (z7-TranCe)
UNGG (mahnini)
uiCk (uiCk)
EAGER-beaver (EAGER-beaver)
uhjoo (uhjoo)
Pink Ferrari (Mascherano)
Psyren (Psyren)
XDawn (XDawn)
Unforgiven_ve (unforgiven_ve)
To all our TeamLiquid.net members who played with us. I hope Travian was a fun experience for you while we all gamed together.

Ascelon (oneofthem)
garandou (garandou)
Ascelon and garandou, I acknowledge you two as probably the better players on our forum. If only you guys actually stayed on Server 4 with the rest of us.

veronicamars
brunomgs
Though you two are not from TL.net, you two probably provided the most direct support for me late game. And veronica, an added thanks for being for forum maker the first time around. <3

To Monsen:
While you did not game with the rest of us, you gave us helpful advice that some of us did not entirely heed. I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. 10 months ago when you posted tips for the rest of us to follow, I went “wtf”. Now I realize what you said made complete sense. ^^;

Last but not least...

To FakeSteve, the person who introduced all of us to Travian, only to quit 2 weeks later.

Screenshots

Top 20 players at the end of Server 4

Top 20 alliances

Top 20 most aggressive players

Top 20 most defensive players

-TL- roster

Vendetta roster

Highest built World Wonders

List of Artifacts and their owners
Set 1: makes buildings 5 times more durable = harder for catapults to take down buildings
Set 2: makes merchants move 2 times faster
Set 3: makes offensive/defensive units move 2 times faster
Set 4: makes scouting units 5 times more effective
Set 5: artifact owner's crop upkeep is reduced by 1/2.
Set 6: prerequisite to building a World Wonder

TeamLiquid’s shared victory

It was a good run.
For the Glory that is TeamLiquid.
TL Neo // NeoIllusions

Final thanks to our beloved forum administrators: Liquid`Nazgul, Liquid`Meat, Saro, Manifesto7.
Our community is here today because of you guys. Tyvm~~

Disclaimer: This entire thing took me about 2 hours to write, including print screening, image cropping, and uploading. If there are specific people/events that I fail to mention, please let me know. ^_^

Manifesto7

Osaka27139 Posts

January 01 2007 19:33 GMT

TEAM LIQUID OWNS THE INTERNET AGAIN!

You guys fucking rule.

IntoTheWow

is awesome32274 Posts

January 01 2007 19:47 GMT

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

I had to quit when this started ruining my sleep habits hahahah

But it was good fun, it was nice hanging in irc to waste time with other stuff (like "singing" songs on irc real time, playing any flash game that we came across, making TL threads) while we did our travian work

Good job

ps: monkeynurse is a guy who told everyone "she" was a 40/50ish year old girl and sent shirtless pics of "her". hahahah

africanboy

Korea (South)453 Posts

January 01 2007 19:47 GMT

thats fucking cool, i need to try this

NeoIllusions

United States37500 Posts

January 01 2007 19:49 GMT

Wowwwww... We missed you! T_T

IntoTheWow

is awesome32274 Posts

January 01 2007 19:50 GMT

hahaha <3

alffla

Hong Kong20321 Posts

January 01 2007 19:57 GMT

wow tf sounds liek a cool game. are all the TL.netters gonna continue this shit, and how can i join in the fun? :O

NeoIllusions

United States37500 Posts

January 01 2007 20:01 GMT

On January 02 2007 04:57 alffla wrote:
wow tf sounds liek a cool game. are all the TL.netters gonna continue this shit, and how can i join in the fun? :O

Most likely not...

Each server takes 10-11 months to finish. Early on, it's not that hard to manage. But as the game progresses, you have more and more villages/units to control. At the end, I had 57 villages to look after.

And like Wow said before, this game really puts a damper on each individual person's schedule. I know I ended up sleeping a lot less and had to wake up in the middle of the night a number of times for this game. -_-;;

In all the sense of the word, Travian is truly a committment if you want to play successfully.

Carnac

Germany / USA16648 Posts

January 01 2007 20:02 GMT

i don'T know this game, but enjoyed the read.

OWNED

gw guys

Nyovne

Netherlands19133 Posts

January 01 2007 20:13 GMT

#10

On January 02 2007 05:02 Carnac wrote:
i don'T know this game, but enjoyed the read.

OWNED

gw guys

Indd! You beat the internet! TL Fighting!

You made us all proud <3.

SoMuchBetter

Australia10606 Posts

January 01 2007 20:33 GMT

#11

very nice guys =]

On January 02 2007 05:01 NeoIllusions wrote:

Show nested quote +

one thing i came to realize during the 2 months or so that i played travian is that every minute of every day is valuable. if you cant devote a good chunk of your time to it then you just wont last

oh and btw guys, thanks for letting that guy farm me, leading to me deleting my village. you guys saved me a lot of time by doing that haha

NeoIllusions

United States37500 Posts

January 01 2007 20:36 GMT

#12

On January 02 2007 05:33 SoMuchBetter wrote:
very nice guys =]

Show nested quote +

You were the one guy that ended up not starting in the NorthWest like the rest of us. It's not like we purposely let you get farmed. >_<

SoMuchBetter

Australia10606 Posts

January 01 2007 20:43 GMT

#13

hey i wasnt that far NW. i was practically NE

Cpt Obvious

Germany3073 Posts

January 01 2007 21:19 GMT

#14

maybe TL should start playing in the lottery.

if we own there half as much as we did in Travian, we could be millionaires by next month~

thanks, good read, i totally missed that.

thedeadhaji

39489 Posts

January 01 2007 21:24 GMT

#15

You should have restarted when we told you to! :O

but yea, life was hell while this game went on, but honestly, this game is the sole reason I got closer to many people on TL.net like Neo, intrigue, locked, geometryb, anihc, Leg, decaf, Wow, etcetc. That alone makes the 10 month commitment worthwhile for me.

Thank you for "making" TL for me Travian. (but otherwise you succckkkk)

alffla

Hong Kong20321 Posts

January 01 2007 22:25 GMT

#16

wow that's crazy. damn i dont think i'd have too much commitment to text based online games o_O
it's sorta like utopia then right? :o

anyhow... more power to TL. good job guys.

rsvp

United States2266 Posts

January 01 2007 23:02 GMT

#17

Wow, nice writeup, and congrats for winning the server and actually staying for the whole 11 months. I can still remember in september when you were like... ah I'm going to quit now, and everyone else (me haji leg etc.) were like ok we're all quitting too now. But I turned out to be the only one serious -_-

The game was fun for the first few months, and then it became all work and no fun. Your schedule revolved around this game, and if you are unable to access your account every few hours, you get screwed over. So yea it might sound like a nice game, but I doubt any of us will play it again. Again, congrats to all of you who stayed and made TL proud

Physician

United States4146 Posts

January 01 2007 23:19 GMT

#18

Entropy smells trouble, he realizes a foreign game (i.e. not StarCraft) stole StrarCraft players and shouts, Strategy game or not this is almost sacrilegious!, while he muses about our demise.
"Oh quiet down man, remember how you end all your posts with "Enjoy ~" , replies Physician as he wonders about the fickle interest of gamers, while at the same time he wishes he were younger and had even more time for more games, than just the one.