I just got started playing travian on server 10, and silly me forgot to search the dope on whether there was a doper guild. As far as I can tell, a bunch of you started on server 7? Are you guys still around?
I wouldn’t mind starting up on another server to see how things are done!
Don’t know about a doper guild, but my husband is completely addicted to Travian - I’d love to give it a go. What do I do? Are there dopers on S7 or are you sticking to S10?
About a year and a half ago (my how time flies) about 40 dopers had an alliance on Server 7. The game lasted almost an entire year, and I am proud to say that we had a very good chance of winning. We were the corner-stone of our meta alliance, and basically came in 2nd, exceeding all expectations. We were competing with an alliance almost 5x as big and yet had them cowering before our hordes of cavalry 
That being said, we did not restart with the server last August. To my knowledge there is no longer an organized ‘SDMB’ alliance. Sad too, we were damn good at organizing.
Like Captain_C, I’m another us7 vet. I did start some other Travian servers, but never finished for various reasons. One of the reasons is that the SDMB alliance was so well run, other alliances were miserable in comparison.
I’m currently playing Imperion, another game from the company behind Travian. It’s not even version 1.0 yet, and no servers are to the endgame. While the game appears pretty good, the server is a little disappointing. If any us7 vets thing Gemini was dominant, ~Ice is doing the same thing on the US Imperion server. I am in ~Ice, so I’m a little biased.
I’d be sport for another SDMB Travian server. I think our first run was damn good. Our strategy got us second place, which isn’t bad for a bunch of n00bs.
Sometimes I think I’d love to do it again too, and then I remember all those nights that I had to get up at 4AM to send wheat to my hammer village and I involuntarily shiver.
Wellll, you know, server 6 just started a few weeks ago…
I really enjoyed the SDMB alliance but no, never again. Call me when they get some better tools for managing away-from-desk time.
My thoughts exactly. I greatly enjoyed it, but it was micromanagement hell.
The only way I’d consider playing again is with duals. A dual is when multiple people – often 2 but just as often many more – use the same account. Meaning the same login and same password. In other words, not a sitter situation. Duals are perfectly legal. You just can’t have a second account on that server. Your shared account can be your only account.
If I had a dual with three or more people I think I could handle it, but the downside is that our numbers would be greatly reduced so it probably wouldn’t be worth it.
I’m bummed I never got the benefit of the horse drinking pool, but I’ll live.
Heh–I’ve wondered now and then how that game went, and I’m delighted to hear y’all came in second place. And I never for an instant regretted passing my account along to someone else.
Hey, I’m glad that turned out so well. I felt bad leaving, but I wasn’t going to have regular 'net access for the summer, so I had to bail before the endgame. But micromanagement hell doesn’t even begin to describe it. I had only six or so cities, and that was too many.
Are you playing on .com or .us? The SDMB was on .us server 7.
I’ve been playing a game on us2 since it started last July to kill time until SDMB restarted. Unfortunately, s7 never restarted and neither did SDMB, so i kept on with s2. I’m up to 23 villages and have been ranked in the top 200 for a while.
They’ve made a bunch of changes that have made game play easier. For example, on the map, if you mouse over a tile, you can see what type of valley it is. In the village center view, it now shows you the level of all your buildings. Also, pushing rules are automatic now, you can’t get banned for it.
With the Great Granary/Great Warehouse artifact, you don’t have to worry so much about feeding your “hammer”. Mine can store over a million wheat.
Artifacts have added a new aspect to the game, and give a boost to a well-coordinated alliance. There are also new rally point rules so the 24/7 players don’t jump too far ahead in the early game.
Those had been implemented toward the end of when we were still playing.
That’s a huge improvement. I made a big stink about that on the travian boards several times, and even took the main US administrator to task several times via PM for those stupid rules. Those bannings pissed me off way more than was worth it for a game that’s supposed to be fun.
I wasn’t a fan of the idea of artifacts mainly because what appealed to me about the game in the first place was the rigid structure. It really gave a wonderful outlet to the (not actual) OCD tendencies in me, so much so that for a long time I intentionally ignored oases.
I suppose a good alliance could distribute them well for maximum value, though.
Just out of curiosity, what new rally point rules?
Wtf is Travian? I want in on the fad!
I so wish that we had a SD alliance too, but it looks like the experience has scared our dopers off!
Heh. Me too.
It took a business trip half-way around the world to make me realize that after being away from the game for a week I didn’t miss it – at all.
I really liked the early part of the game. I like building stuff. But then it became a giant empire of resource management that took way too much time.
Several months after leaving I checked in on the guild and saw how good they were doing. That was nice to see.
Only 5 Troop Movements are allowed at one time per rally point level. So a village maxes out at 100 attacks/reinforcements. This stops the heavy raiders from sending out hundreds of raids at once and forces them to build up their rally point at the beginning of the game.
That’s a clever fix.
Server 2 on .com is just starting up!
hopeful