Leadership, Politics & Propoganda 101

[Evil-Jake]

Introduction

If one takes the time to look around these forums, you’ll find any number of threads with guides, strategies, and advice which cover the mechanics of running a village, sending attacks, avoiding becoming a farm, ect, ect, ad absurdum. There are Gaul guides, Roman guides, Teut guides, and even guides on how to become an entertaining farm.

However, there are precious few guides which cover what is arguably the most important of all subjects in playing Travian. A subject which when used clumsily or unintelligently can spell the ultimate demise of not simply you, the player unfortunate enough to be in a position of leadership, but your entire alliance as well.

It is a subject which when used properly and with skill can turn a prosperous and peaceful quadrant with good prospects for end game success into a bloodied and desolate wasteland filled with fallen hammers and wheat dead villages, bereft of all hope of building a World Wonder. So long as that quadrant / geographic area isn’t yours, this is a good thing.

Ignorance of this subject has caused the downfall and destruction of more alliances than all other factors combined, for those who know how to use the subject well prey on those who don’t.

That subject is Politics and Propaganda.

This is a collection of my own thoughts and opinions on the subject and they are offered as such.

I make no claims to be the best, nor the most experience political manipulator and propagandist whoever played the great game, nor do I make any claims that by following my advice you’ll be able to accomplish the kinds of political machinations I have accomplished.

This advice is offered in an attempt to increase the general awareness of these subjects as being an important part of playing Travian in the futile hope that it will assist new and existing alliance leaders to put more thought into this subject. For this is a very important subject to know if you have anything to do with inter-alliance relations and wish to survive.

Chapter 1

The basics of leading an up and coming alliance:

First and foremost, you need to understand the basics of playing the game. As mentioned earlier, there is no shortage of guides on this subject, so I’m only going to touch on a few of the requisite high points.

1. Be at least a semi competent player, and be aggressive.

2. Be active. Very active. Never let an igm go unanswered once you read it. Unless it’s from a farm. Then ignore it and send another raid. When they ask you to join, tell them that when they stop being a farm, you might consider it, until then, you’re going to ride them like a $2 circus pony.

3. If you aren’t starting an alliance founded upon an earlier group of people you already lead, never, never, never recruit too far from home unless said recruits are willing to relocate immediately into a specified geographic zone.

Nothing is more deadly to an alliance than being spread out to the wind and going to war. Never recruit more than 10-15 squares cross quad and expect to keep villages located too far away from the rest of your powerbase.

4. If you are founding an alliance with known players, make sure they all your players join the same quad, and register at different intervals. I.E. 10 players a day over the course of 6 days when starting on a new server will give you a reasonable spread to ensure decent farming for your players. Once everyone hits the map, then start looking to consolidate and work towards grabbing areas of geographic importance. But don’t just let everyone spread out however they want to.

Random dispersion of member’s settlements will ultimately lead to military difficulties later on. Have a plan, know what you want, and get your people working towards it.

5. Gain top 20 by whatever means necessary, while keeping in mind to not recruit cross quad. Top 20 alliances generally get the first choice of the better free agent players. You can (and should) trim down the fat later.

6. If you can’t gain top 20, then earn a reputation for being an alliance of ruthless raiders. One does not get that kind of rep by posting it on your profile; you get it by taking as many of the top 40 offensive slots as you can.

7. If another alliance which you are farming asks you for a NAP or Ally, turn them down. The last thing you want is to be associated with farms. Screw peace and friendship, this is a war game; if they aren’t strong enough to stop you then they probably aren’t strong enough to help you against someone else.

Allies and NAP’s:

For heavens sake, don’t NAP or ally every Johnny-come-lately that sends a request so that you will stop farming their alliance or who plans to ‘be the biggest alliance on the server if you help us’, blah, blah, blah. Top alliances and top players don’t spam ally requests to everyone and their mother, they are selective about who they choose to create relationships with.

Where those relationships are forged is via igm’s, external forums, vent, RL, or any number of avenues of communication available. If you haven’t spent some time in serious diplomatic discussions with another alliance and gone over what you need, want and expect from each other as allies, establish points of contact for handling disputes, 7x7 settling agreements, tossed around a few what if scenarios, then chances are that when you need help, it’s going to fall on deaf and/or impotent ears.

Yet, when that ally needs help, you’re going to be the first to hear about it.

One way relationships do not work in this game and you need to establish and ascertain weather or not any ally you take on likely to stick around and be there with you when the fecal matter hits the fan, or if they are going to cut and run the moment you find yourself in trouble.

Usually, you only find this out when it happens, however, it’s still important to screen your allies before signing any agreements with them and establish ground rules for the relationship, and make no mistake, it is a relationship, for this is a very long game.

Questions to consider before establishing an ally or NAP with another alliance:

1. Where is the other alliance located relative to your alliance on the map?

2. Where are they located relative to themselves? Are they spread out over every quad, or are they more or less in one geographic area?

3. If they are spread out, do they have the numbers* to support that?

*50-60 players per quad is a good meter stick for early to mid game. 120+ is mid to late mid (2 wings), and 150-200+ (3-5 wings) is decent for end game.

4. Do they have other allies?

5. Are any in the top 20?

6. Where are their allies located relative to them? Are they on the far side of nowhere, or are they neighbors?

6. Contact the heads of their current allies and ask questions about the alliance. Are they good allies? Are they easy to get a hold of? Do they respond to IGM’s in a reasonable time frame? Are they jerks? Do they keep their word? Ect. Do as good of a background check as you can.

7. Are they currently at war with anyone? Do they have any enemies? Are some of their players loosing population (sure sign that they are being targeted by cats)

The last thing you want to do is inherit a brand new ally’s enemies if they are getting their heads handed to them. If they are the ones doing the head handing, then sign up and help them out they might be worth knowing.

**8. Are they currently your farms, or the farms of your members? Check attack logs, and look at their some of their members villages, have your or your players been robbing them blind?

** Farming is an important part of travian growth, not only on an individual basis, but alliance wide and the decisions you make as a leader in choosing your friends can either improve your alliances situation, or harm it. Allying with your farms, or potential farms greatly reduces your alliances ability to grow aggressively.

** If you do choose to make an alliance which turns out to be filled with incapable players and is lacking in the military strength needed to keep other alliances in check well enough to prevent themselves from being farmed, it's best to cut your losses and drop them.

** If they can't even defend themselves from being farms, then their chances of staying alive during a real war are pretty slim. Which, by association, makes your chances of becoming the next target very high.

** I will go into more depth about the various types of alliances you are likely to encounter, and some things to keep in mind when dealing with them in a later chapter. For now, just keep in mind that choosing your friends with care and being selective is better than trying to ally the entire map. This is a war game after all, not a popularity contest.

** If your goal as an alliance leader and political mover and shaker is to be loved and adored by everyone, you will fail, and fail hard. The trusting, lets all sit around the campfire and sing koombia, Lovey-dovey types are generally the first to get stabbed in the back and the last ones to see it coming.

** If you want to win, then don't be that person.

** Another thing to keep in mind is that the ally's of your ally's aren't necessarily your ally's. In fact, they can often be your enemies.

Check back tomorrow for chapter # 2:

General Politics and setting achievable goals.

[xtoxicityx]

excellent start, hopefully the nooby alliance leaders find this, it'd would greatly help them out.

[Teuton ruler]

ITs sooo long you gonna publish it?

[BLAH]

I'm BLAH and I approve that message.

[BLAH]

[Evil-Jake]

Originally Posted by Theo Yeah, I'm definitely going to sticky this when Evil-Jake tells me he's done writing it.

Just as an FYI, I'm starting with the foundation of basics which I consider to be important. As I add to this, I'm going to be building on those basics and diving into the fun stuff...

*goes back to writing the next chapter in between sending raids*

[world_warrior]

Originally Posted by Evil-Jake *goes back to writing the next chapter in between sending raids*

You have time between raids?

I wasn't aware you were already going 3+ hours out.

-w_w

[Evil-Jake]

Originally Posted by world_warrior You have time between raids? I wasn't aware you were already going 3+ hours out. -w_w

I have my ways... and I'm only going bout an hour out each way. I'm just fast at punching in troop numbers.

[Evil-Jake]

Chapter 2:

General Politics

Some general observations I've noticed about server politics.

Observation # 1:

No two servers are exactly the same, just because something happened on one server, does not directly correlate to it’s occurrence on another server.

A prime example of this is Sever 2. While I wont try to go into all of the details, the basic gist is that a single alliance composed of multiple wings managed to claim an early dominance of the server through ruthless tactics and effective team work. They managed to hold that dominance for the entire server by maintaining sufficient internal cohesion and cooperation to prevent them from falling apart. This, in conjunction with the ruthless removal of all threats and potential threats is what allowed them to ultimately claim every single Natar point on S2, ensuring victory for their alliance.

This, is NOT common, and is, to my knowledge, the only .us server which has been so thoroughly dominated by a single entity for virtually an entire round.

That stated, just because it happened on S2, or S3, or .COM, etc, does not mean it’s going to happen on the server you are currently playing on, despite any early appearances to the contrary.

In the example of a ‘super meta’ which attempts to claim early dominance, they usually succumb to and are ultimately destroyed by one or more of the following factors.

1. Poor leadership,
- Leadership not knowing how to delegate responsibility to competent members
- Leadership not able to maintain solid relations with other wing/alliances

2. Internal strife among players and wings, unhandled dispute

3. External threats not adequately dealt with, either diplomatically, or through military action.

4. General lack of military competence among the members resulting in significant war losses and a subsequent drop in player morale.

5. Lack of adequate political / diplomatic ability to prevent large scale resistance prior to the establishment of adequate military infrastructure, both in terms of absolute troop strengths, and delegated war responsibilities to competent and active offensive / defensive coordinators.

6. Alliance attempts to dominate too much geography and spreads too far to quickly. Members not close enough to each other to offer adequate military support resulting in defeat in detail.

There are likely other factors which come into play, but these tend to be the biggest stumbling blocks of most budding ‘meta’ alliances. These are also factors which come into play for smaller and/or single quad alliances and should be taken into consideration during the formation of any multi-wing alliance.

Observation # 2:

Travian politics =/= to RL politics, or RL wars, or RL in most respects. Attempting to compare in game politics to RL is a foolish venture which is usually only attempted by newbs and spin doctors.

The spin doctors know this fact and selectively choose their historical references with care and attempt to gain some form of political advantage.

That advantage is usually used in one of two ways.

One use is as a moral justification for screwing over a smaller alliance. This is done so as to prevent the intervention of potentially dangerous opponents which are (or might become) sympathetic to the cause of the small fry.

The other is used by the savvy small fry when trying to gain assistance against a larger opponent.

There are other instances which using RL or historical precedence can be used by a spin doctor, these are simply the most common 2.

Observation # 3

The majority of the ‘reasons’ and moral justifications which get stated as being the cause of a war between alliances are at best exaggerated, and at worst, outright fabrications.
As stated in observation # 2, Travian =/= RL.

If you absolutely must have a justifiable reason to start a war while playing a war game, then you need to do one of the following.

1. Actively and covertly engineer a situation which justifies going to war, preferably alongside multiple allies and with overwhelming force.

2. Fabricate a plausible justification which is both easy to defend and difficult to effectively counter.

3. If the first 2 options aren’t appealing to you, go play a different game because Travian politics are not for you.

The honest truth behind most wars is that they are the product of one or more sets of circumstances. The Principal and underlying reason for all wars however is so obvious that it tends to be overlooked.

The lowest common denominator and Principal reason for all wars which are fought while playing a war game are quite simply the fact that we are playing a war game.

All other 'reasons' stem from that sweeping fact.

For a select number of ultra aggressive alliances, that is more than enough reason to start any war, with anyone.

However, for most alliances, the fact that this is a war game makes up about 75-90% of the reason for going to war, the other 10-25% is generally supplied by geographic, military or political circumstances, and quite often a combination of all 3.

More aggressive alliances which lack in strategic planning tend to run between 90-95% on the brink of war at all times.

Conversely, alliances which only want peace and to be friends with everyone are also 90-95% on the brink of war at all times (when not actively being dismantled), but for very different reasons.

Smart, strategically oriented alliances fluctuate between 60-90% with any non allied alliance, depending upon their strategic circumstances, geographic proximity and long range objectives.

In RL one isn’t generally in a social or political situation which is constantly that close to the brink of violence with someone. Fortunately, this isn’t RL and for the savvy Travian politician, the majority of the work in starting a war has already been done for you. All you need to do is supply that last 10-25% and you have yourself a conflict.

When seeking to engineer a war between two or more rival alliances, one should remember that provided sufficient ‘reason’, virtually any alliance (single or multi wing) can be manipulated into going to war with another alliance given the right set of circumstances and a reasonable proximity of respective player bases.

The trick is figuring out which circumstances are most likely to provide each side with the justifications they need to do what they want to do anyway, and doing it in such a way that you aren’t hit with the backlash. I’ll be diving into this more in later chapters.

I’m going to divide up and list out some of the more common “final straws” which break the peace by providing sufficient ‘reason’ to prosecute a war by category.


Territory:

Reason # 1:

Alliance A covets Alliance B’s real estate / territory disputes. This has several different flavors.

- One or more respectable croppers within the geographic area that alliance A considers to be their territory.
- Alliance B has Villages close enough to alliance A to pose a potential threat, but lacks sufficient military strength (real or perceived) and/or diplomatic ability to be considered an ally.
- Alliance B has settled near a Natar spawn point which Alliance A has designs for.


Military:

Reason # 1:

A member of alliance A attacks a member of alliance B. In ascending order of the likelihood of causing a war between alliances of comparable size,

- farming raid
- oasis attack
- normal attack
- normal attack with rams
- Normal attack with catapults
- stealing an oasis
- chiefing a village
- Multi player / Coordinated catapult attack

When alliance A is significantly larger than alliance B, none of these kinds of attacks are likely to cause a serious war for alliance A. If however, alliance B is comparable, or larger than alliance A, anything more serious than a single isolated farming incident is likely to either escalate to a war, or result in a demand that the offending player be booted or that damages be paid.

There is another factor which comes into play with regard to wars and attacks made upon an alliance. That factor is boredom. Never underestimate the willingness and speed with which bored alliances escalate minor incidents into full blown wars. Especially when they feel that they have a strategic or military advantage which will bring them victory.

Reason # 2

Alliance A feels that Alliance B is becoming a potential military threat or is expanding too rapidly. They then seek to mitigate the threat of competition before it becomes too entrenched in an area.


Political:

Reason # 1:

Alliance A’s leadership doesn’t like Alliance B’s leadership / member(s). Pretty self explanatory.

Reason # 2:
Alliance A seeks to gain favor with or repay a debt to alliance B by attacking alliance C.

Reason # 3:

Alliance A has manipulated Alliance B and alliance C into a situation where alliance B & C are inclined to go to war with each other. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, the easiest is supplying information to both B & C which shows that each is planning / desiring to attack the other, or has some personal axe to grind.

Remember, 75-90% of the inclination towards war is already there, which makes supplying that last little bit rather easy. This isn’t to say that you can always create a war overnight. Sometimes it takes weeks or even months of careful planning, plotting and back door political dirty work to create the right combination of circumstances for the seeds of war you plant to bear the fruit of a major conflict.

[Evil-Jake]

Chapter 3:

Setting achievable goals:

Congratulations, it’s your first time playing Travian, you’ve built an embassy and started your own alliance. You’ve even recruited some other players, sure some of them are 100+ squares away, but that’s cool, they’re your members and they follow your orders.

Now you are well on your way to dominating the entire server, kicking ***, taking names and pwning everyone by virtue of your sheer awesomeness... That’s how it works… right?

Wrong.

Before you dive off the deep end and try to run a scratch built alliance, you better know and understand how this game works. Don’t try to start your own alliance first time you play this game, read up on the various manuals of how to play, practice and get yourself into a position where you are a desirable candidate to join a top 20-30 alliance.

Setting out to conquer a world you do not understand is setting yourself up for hardship and ultimately for failure.

1st round you play in Travian, the best thing you can do during your first round of Travian is bone up on how to play the game, apply that knowledge, get yourself into a decent alliance and above all, pay attention to what goes on, especially in the political arena. Also, be an active member and seek positions of responsibility inside your alliance. Alliance leaders are usually looking for sharp and active people to help carry the administrative load.

Be very willing to make yourself useful and provided they are good leaders, they will be more than happy to help teach you the ropes and give you advice.

2nd round of travian, IF you’ve got the basics down, and have had experience doing all of the following:

1. Coordinating catapult attacks on multiple enemy targets during a war.
2. Built (at a minimum) an offensive hammer in excess of 20k offensive troops including siege weapons and used it in anger.
3. Ran a village with negative 60k/hr or more in wheat consumption for a time period of at least 48 hours, either offensively or defensively.
4. Coordinated stacking large quantities of defensive troops on another player’s village, preferably resulting in the destruction of a significant enemy offensive force.
5. Had discussions with people in other alliances which didn’t result in a war. This needn’t be official diplomacy, merely the having of intelligent conversations with other alliances.

Then you might consider starting your own alliance. However, one should not expect to be the biggest and best alliance of all time at this stage of your Travian experience.

If you can manage to recruit enough talent, and hold things together, then great, but don’t get discouraged if the first alliance you lead ends in disaster. It happens to the best of us, even to me. Best thing to do while leading your first alliance is set yourself the goal of learning everything you can about leading an alliance in Travian so that you can be even better prepared for the next time.

As far as alliance goals, if you are fairly decent and, you can get your alliance into the top 35, then your chances of being relevant in this game are decent. Not great, but decent.

If you are either very lucky, or very good about recruiting and you can manage to get into the top 20, you’re in for a wild ride in which your survival is far from guaranteed.

Your goal should be to make it into the higher ranks of the game, NOT by stacking pop only, but by organic and intelligent growth of both villages and military might.

If your alliance is too small, or incapable of mounting a decent defense, no one will take it seriously and you will be a doormat until you can manage to prove yourself to be anything other than a mildly entertaining list of farms.

The main point I’m trying to make is that you should set goals, but be reasonable about your expectations to meet those goals. If you want to be a top player leading a top alliance, then you got to work at it step by step. Set a goal you think you can reach, and once you do, push the goal higher. If you fail to reach your goals, and you will from time to time, try again. Persistence pays.


Check back tomorrow for Chapter 4: Alliance archetypes commonly found in Travian