Travian Villages

First of all, there are 3 types of villages you should have in travian:

Offensive villages

Defensive villages

Supply villages

Offensive is where you base an offensive force, defensive is for making defensive troops and supply villages are there to generate and supply resources to Offensive and Defensive villages.

Offensive villages

This is where you build up an army to go and attack/raid other members. Instead of building troops in every village, specialize your account so you have bigger armies in fewer cities. 1 army of 10k will do more damage then 10 armies of 1k size. It could be usefull to have a seperate village where you have a huge amount of scouts though.

a) Which sort of valley?

Always try to have them built in 9 or 15-croppers. If possible, make sure they have crop oasis' around them in the 7x7 map. This way the crop production will be bigger then in a normal village with only 6 cropfields. Why do you need the bigger crop production? This way you can build more troops in your village without going in negative crop. The bigger your army is, the more damage it will do.

b) What to build?

- Barracks, Stable and Workshop: Should speak for itself I guess.

- Grain mill and Bakery: Again no explanation needed I guess.

- Blacksmith: Here you give your troops extra power. Every upgrade adds 1.5% attack for the unit that is researched. So attacking with 10k imperians with 10 levels developped at the blacksmith will count as 11500 imperians. A huge bonus at a relatively small cost. Research all your offensive troops here and your rams and cata's to lvl 20 and then destroy the building again to make room. The upgrades will not disappear.

- Granaries: 4-5 are not really an overdue. They are needed to store crop in. When you build up your army, you will go into negative crop production and with having a lot of granaries, you will be able to store a lot of crop which makes sure your troops don't starve if you can't be online due to some reasons suddenly.

- Warehouse: 3-4 is a nice amount, needed for upgrading your buildings and usefull for storing the bounty from your attacks. Nothing more frustrating then seeing part of your bounty disappear because you don't have enough space at your warehouses.

- Rally point: With RP lvl 15 you can start on building on your Tournament Square, with lvl 20, you can target 2 buildings with your cata's.

- Hero's mansion: You need this to conquer crop oasis' and this way, you will be able to send your hero along with your army on attacks. This way, he will be able to get some nice and needed experience.

- Tournament Square: Your troops can move 10% faster on every upgrade after they have travelled 30 fields. Very usefull when attacking with rams and cata's and on far away attacks.

- Academy: Used for researching all different kind of troops. After you have researched them, tear them down again to make place for a granary or warehouse as that will be more usefull.

c) What's not really needed

- Trade office: Most resources will go into building troops, upgrades at the blacksmith and buildings. The marketplace is usefull to trade of some crop but a trade office will take in a spot that isn't needed.

- Armoury: Same thing as the blacksmith, but for defensive purpose. Do not build this in an offensive village.

- Trapper: Useless, wouldn't build it in any village at all.

- Cranny: Use your resources to build troops and ship away the rest, it takes up a valueable spot and 1-2k more or less bounty won't make the difference.

- Embassy and Town Hall: see supply villages

- Saw Mill, Brickyard and Iron Foundry: Certainly not needed in a 15-cropper. Could be usefull in a 9-cropper, but takes away valueable spots for other, more needed, buildings.

Defensive villages

This is where you will build troops that will defend yourself, alliance mates and eventually the WW, for which we all play the game in the end.

a) which sort of valley?

Once again, try to make them in a 9 or15-cropper, this way you can hold more troops then on a normal village with only 6 cropfields. It's offcourse possible to build a defensive village in a 6-cropper when you will send most of the produced troops away as reinforcements for your alliance mates. Then the crop production isn't that important anyway.

b) what to build?

- Barracks, Stable and Workshop: Should speak for itself I guess.

- Grain mill and Bakery: Again no explanation needed I guess.

- Armoury: The same as the blacksmith, but for defensive purpose. Research all your defensive troops and when you have reached lvl 20, destroy the armoury again. The upgrades will not go away if the building is destroyed.

- Granaries: 3-4 should be enough to keep your troops from starving and incase you get attacked with catapults, you still have 1-2 left to hold enough crop.

- Warehouses: 3-4 again. As with granaries, you can still hold a decent amount of resources in case you get attacked to rebuild and make extra troops.

- Rally point: With RP lvl 15 you can start on building on your Tournament Square. This way you can send reinforcements even faster.

- Tournament Square: Your troops can move 10% faster on every upgrade after they have travelled 30 fields. Very usefull when attacking with rams and cata's and on far away attacks.

- Academy: Used for researching all different kind of troops. After you have researched them, tear them down again to make room for warehouses/granaries. If you have space left, keep it, it gives a nice amount of culture points though.

c) what's not needed?

- Trapper: Useless, wouldn't build it in any village at all.

- Cranny: Use your resources to build troops and ship away the rest, it takes up a valueable spot and 1-2k more or less bounty won't make the difference.

- Embassy and Town Hall: see supply villages

- Blacksmith: Useless for defensive villages. You won't use your troops to attack normally, you will have your offensive villages for this. Upgrading troops will only costs resources that can be used for training more troops.

Supply Villages

These villages will supply the previous 2 sort of villages with the much needed resources to build your armies, upgrade them in blacksmith/armoury, build RP and TS, etc etc. Try to build them as close to your offensive and defensive villages as possible.

If you will build a new supply villages, also pay attention to the oasis' around it. If there is a clay oasis for example close to your offensive village where you want to build a supply village, look for a valley with 5 clay fields in the 7x7 map of that oasis. When the supply village is set up, conquer the clay oasis. This way you will maximize the use of the oasis. The same goes for wood and iron oasis' offcourse.

a) which sort of valley?

Very easy, a village with 6 cropfields and the rest normal resources. As said before, pay attention to the oasis' around the place where you want to build and try to maximize their effect. The rest of the cropproduction (unused as you won't build troops here and only a small amount of reinforcements) can you then send to your offensive/defensive villages to help manage your negative cropproduction.

b) what to build?

- Grain mill and Bakery: No explanation needed I guess.

- Granaries: 3 should be enough to keep your crop and not letting it overflow so you would loose it. If you have 240k of crop on supply villages, get yourself more troops.

- Warehouses: 3 again would be more then enough. I would even say 2 is enough. Letting over 160 k of resources lying around is asking for trouble sooner or later.

- Marketplace: Easy, this is needed for shifting your resources to the offensive and defensive villages.

- Trade Office: Build the stable to lvl 10 for this and build up your Trade Office. It will enable you to shift resources more effective to your other villages and is easy when you have to do it over bigger distances.

- Sawmill, Brickyard, Iron Foundry: Pretty simple, to get the extra 25% of resources.

c) what's not needed?

- Armoury and blacksmith: As you won't build any troops here, they are not needed.

- Trapper: Useless, wouldn't build it in any village at all.

- Cranny: Shift your resources away to the other villages to make troops.

d) what's usefull?

- Embassy: Very cheap to build and they give a lot of culture points. 1 lvl 20 embassy gives 153 points per day. If you build 4 of them that's more then throwing a little party every day in a townhall. You should have enough free spots in a supply village to build it anyway.

- Townhall: This way you can throw some parties to gain culture points more quickly.

- Academy: Gives a lot of culture points too. But more expensive then the embassy.

Scouts

Make sure every village and oasis you have, has at least 20 scouts. 20 scouts will always be enough to kill at least 1 scout, even when your scouted with a big number of scouts, which is needed to get a report about someone scouting. If no scouts killed, you won't get any report, so you wouldn't notice it when an enemy scouts you.