Offensive Gaul Guide (Speed) Note: I have began trying to start out on new servers with a very reliable dual before I choose where I am going to start. Start here… http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=88959 If you chose to go at this alone if can still be done. This guide should only be followed by a moderately to highly active player (i.e. 8-14 hours to 14-18 hours) I can not stress finding an active dual enough, EDIT: c69 feels I have written the same things. I disagreee but would like to add a link to his guide for people wanting to read both. http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=68131 I have added a differing view portion of the guide at the bottom which stats differences and why we do not agree, Exact numbers will be updated as I go through my next account. Preface: I started off mostly playing very aggressive Teuton. I found them to be brain-deadingly easy to play, so I decided to try and use my techniques as Teuton and implement them into a Gaul account. This has been HIGHLY successful and I wanted to share how I did it. Every account I have ever had has been in the top 10 at some point in the server life, this includes several of my offensive Gaul test accounts, top 2 week 2 in my current one =) Theory: I see the server life as having 3 stages, I know many of the more experienced player will say this is obviously but I felt I had to be said because MANY people I have spoke to do not fully understand this. Within these stages certain things should be done, and certain things should be avoided at all costs. This guide will focus mainly on stage one as I believe it is the one where there should be no swaying away from. Stage 2 and 3 are where your own play style start to kick in and you decided where to steer your account. Stage 1 (Day 1 to ~Day 60) This to me in by far the most important stage, I believe most people make their biggest mistakes in this stage. It is the difference between a Top 10 account and a Top 1000 account. DO NOT BUILD EMBASSIES/ DO NOT CREATE NAPS/ DO NOT BUILD WALLS/ DO NOT BUILD TRAPS/ ONLY CREATE “RAIDING” UNITS. In speed I believe it is best to start day 1, normal server I think it is day 3 but that is a different story I will go into in a “Normal” server guide if this one gets good reviews =) The most difficult and important days in your new life as a Gaul raider are the day leading up to the training of your first TTs. Day 1 (BP) – Build ONLY resources tiles. NOTHING else I can not stress this enough some people read this and will think nothing else means take your MB to lvl 3. NOTHING else but resources squares. Toward the end of Day 1 your BP will be coming to an end. Here I suggest going straight up the quest-master chain through and choose the Marketplace path. SAVE THE FREE GOLD! If you are a gold user you can extend production but if you are not a gold user save it. Continue building resources tiles only. Pic Afer Day 1:  NOTE: The reason we save the gold is for incoming attacks. Using a spread sheet figure out what is cost to buy a couple resources tiles reallocate the funds using the 1:1 NPC trader. Because I can almost guarantee you will get an attack and have to use the NPC trader I usually keep a 2:! Lumber: Iron offer on the market place. Hey, it’s not much but you want to have everything at your disposal working for you at once. NOTE: In normal servers I would chose Military and raid with Phalx but I have found in speed that even inactives log on and at minimum they get there rat. It takes 15 Phalx to kill a rat without losing anything, And that doesn’t even take into account if they have any troops. In my opinion it’s a waste of resources and time unless you are on a normal server. Again if I get good reviews I will be creating a “Normal” server guide. Day 2 – When your resources tiles get to around 5-6 you should start your journey to training TTs. You have already finished MB requirements in the quest-master chain, So time to build the requirements for TTs. RP, Barracks lvl3, Academy lvl 5, BS lvl 3, Stables lvl 3. You can do this in any order you’d like, As nothing else should be trained or built until this is done. You should have nothing in your village at this point besides the prereqs for TT training, and resource tiles. NOTHING, no troops yet, no embassy, no walls, no researching Swords or Paths. Nothing but TTs prereqs and resources. Now that luck part comes in (well not all lucky, most smart early raiders try to stay away from Gauls.) We are now saving for TTs training, IF you are attacked you should still have enough gold to NPC trade for resources tiles. If you start to run out of gold you may finally have to start building up that Gaul cranny, Most often this has not happened to me, but it has once. The raiding quickly stops when the Teuton finds TTs raiding him. Once you’ve trained TTs it’s off to the races. Intelligent Raiding: Here is probably the most important part of the guide. “Intelligent” raiding is not hard but many struggle with staying on task. STAY ON TASK!!! Stage 1 in the game is not for war, or for making enemies. It is for collecting as many resources as possible to prepare for war later. Be very smart with who you raid and when you chose to do so. With your first 2 TTs start raiding inactives. On speed they should be ~pop 20 stick to Teutons and Roman. This was the biggest difference I found when switching from Teuton to Gaul is that Traps are awful for your TTs. I could just overwhelm a Gaul with clubbies before early game to free troops. This will come later so be patient. Just stick to Teutons and Roman. TTs move extremely fast so if your inactive is being raided look outward rather than attacking larger neighbors, Again this will come later. Once you have a raiding force of ~20 TTs you should be able to follow back just about any clubbie raiding group and make an offensive Teuton a very grumpy player. I usually train 1 phlx and only one, He is used for timing Teuton attacks. (becoz math iz hard). My raiding groups usually consists of 2 TTs – Inactives 5-10 TTs to pop under 100(non Gauls) and I will always scout player larger than 100. Path should be build when you have a raiding force of around 75 TTs. KEEP RAIDING EVERYTHING YOU CAN, CONSTANTLY. Priority order for training/building is going to be building TTs and with anything extra you want to be building resources tiles. Again nothing else but this. We are not going to be building an embassy/walls/Traps/ect. until later in Stage 2. Note: I have began trying to start out very server with a reliable dual before I choose where I am going to start. Start here… http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=88959 If you chose to go at this alone if can still be done but will be much harder for you. I have attained Top 20 without a dual but at the expense of many hours of sleep. If you go at it alone, I will suggest you build your cranny up but still no defensive units, they are just going to be wasted if clubbies come a’knockin. You will get to be a high enough pop where players avoid you like that plague. Gaul traps and crannies have bad reputation and this will come in very handy for you, Until then you must be active, very active. If you chose to go at this alone the single biggest mistake I see people making is leaving troops in their village when they sleep. Think of your TTs as your life force. Send them away 8-9 hour (round trip) while you sleep. If you are going to the store or work/school send them away and give yourself time so when you get back you know they are safe. I can not stress the point of not leaving them in your village enough. Just don’t do it. Next moving day! Were moving on out =)
|
Friday, April 10, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Travian combat strategies
In this travian combat strategy guide I will go through a couple of basic combat strategies everyone has to know to play travian well. The strategies and tecniques here will be used from day one and throughout the whole game.
Dodging
I guess this is the most important one to know, and I guess pretty much everyone who’s reading this know what it is. Anyways though, it means sending your army out of your city when another player attacks to avoid a fight and avoid loosing troops. You will be doing this all the time, as you never want to defend your city with offense troops, so you always dodge unless you have defensive troops there with them or you’re certain it’s just a tiny attack that won’t hurt your offense force at all.
Countering
This one is also very important, but many new players don’t know about it. I see all the time players having their clubs killed by my horses and just calling me lucky for hitting them at the exact time they return. It has nothing to do with luck at all, and it’s quite easy using the right tools. I suggest you bookmark this site. It’s webpage where you can put in the starting times and figure out when the army reaches it’s home. First I’ll let you know how to do it when you have troops that have a different speed than the troops the other player attacks you with. Usually you know what kind of troops are coming at you when you see how long time it takes for the attack to reach you. At least in the beginning this is easy, as teutons will have clubs, romans imperians and gauls phalaxes.
Say you have an incoming attack at 2.00.00 pm, just to make it easy. This is from a teauton, so you know how fast his troops move. You have a bunch of imperians yourself, and you wisely decide that it’s better to counter the attack and hit his army at home than it is to defend your own village. Clubs have horrible defense after all. You go to the travel time calculator and type in your own as well as your enemys location and 2.00.00 pm as the starting time, the calculator will then show you when your enemys clubs will be home, say thay are at home at 2.30.00 pm. Now you know you have to send out your imperians so they reach your enemy at exactly 2.30.01 pm, one second after he gets his clubs home, so that he has no chance of sending them away. (Sending them at 2.30.00 might work too, but it’s a gamble and 1 second is good enough) Anyways, now you remember the time 2.30.01 pm, and you type that into the calculator and chose end time instead of starting time, now the calculator will show you when you have to send your imperians to reach there at this time. This will be at some time before 2.00.00 pm as imperians are slower, just look at the exact same time in the calculator and launch your counter attack at this time. If you have say IEs to counter with, you’d launch the attack later as the IEs are much faster than clubs, in fact they are twice as fast.
What if you both have clubs or other type of troops that move at the same speed? Well, then you can’t use this method. What you have to do then is to first dodge and then counter, and the best you can possibly do is to get it like 3 seconds after your enemy returns. That will be good enough against most players though, so I suggest that you still do it. If your enemy arrives at 2.00.00 pm as before, send out your own army say 39 seconds before, at 1.59.21. Then you wait 20 seconds exactly and click the red x to return it home. Now it will return at 2.00.01 pm, one second after your enemys attack has passed by. No you move quick, have another browser window open and send it at your enemy right away. The faster you are with this the harder it will be for your enemy to save his army.
How about if your enemys troops are twice as fast as yours? Well that’s too bad for you, you can’t counter anything that’s twice as fast as you or more, as you’d have to launch your attack at the same time or before your opponent launches his. So unless you can read your enemys mind you have no chance of doing this. All you can do is either research a faster type of troop or build defensive troops to have in your village.
Fake attacks
Fake attacks are attacks that are not real, kinda obvious I guess? They are very real for the one troop that is sent into death though, but who cares. Sometimes you don’t want your enemy to know when your real attack comes so you send out one troop to attack him with now and then, and then suddenly you send your whole force. Alliances also sometimes uses this in wars to attack all their enemy alliances at the same time, so the enemy alliances have no idea what player to defend as they are all under attack. Fakes and real attacks are mixed up this way to confuse your enemys and avoid their defense walls. When sending catapult waves this is also usefull, as you don’t want your target to know which of the hits in the wave is the real clearing attack, so you send a bunch of lone catapults first to confuse him.
Travian starting tutorial
If you want to be successfull and become one of the biggest and most powerfull players in Travian you have to start out farming. I’m sure you already know what that is, but anyways, it means attacking your neighbours for resources. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing teuton, roman or gaul, they all grow fastest with farming their neighbours. I’ve seen in a lot of of guides where the writer claims the best way to play roman or is to start out slowly building your resource fields and then cranny up, but that’s just plain wrong. With farming you’ll get a good portion of resources from tens to hundreds of villages instead of just one, can’t argue with that. Teutons are more suited for farming from the very start, but all tribes can do it and should do so from the start.
Farming your neighbourhood is closely related with dominating and taking control of your neighbourhood. Teutons can do so from the start, trying to kill off the troops of their neighbours with their clubs, while romans and gauls should avoid conflicts untill they get TTs(theutates thunders) and EI(equites imperatoris). That means depending on which tribe you play you’ll have some different goals from the start, but they all lead to the final goal of farming and dominating your neighbourhood. By your neighbourhood I mean your 7×7 from the very start and expanding it gradually till your 21×21 or possibly even further. I don’t think anyone should start building infrastructure and run parties to get a second village untill this goal is reached.
When creating your account the first thing you should do is to check your area for oases and croppers. I wouldn’t want to stay in an area without at least one 25% crop 25% of something else oasis in your 7×7. There should also be at least one 15 cropper with crop oases in your 13×13, preferably more, and also a few more 9 croppers and 15 croppers in your 21×21. I prefer starting the server 4 or 5 days late so I don’t start in the middle where there usually is a lot of active players, and also so that I can start farming when I’m in protection, but that is up to you. My guides will work for you in either case.
One more thing which is really important is to not get your troops killed. In the beginning there is no reason to have your troops in your village when you’re being attacked, in fact you should never have them at home, they should always be busy raiding. Send them away to some village far away when you’re not active, and if someone attack you just spend all your resources and they will get nothing. This is especially important for teutons as the clubs are horrible for defence, so don’t defend with them, attack with them. Another reason not to have your army at home at any time is to not let anyone find out the size of it, especially for romans and gauls this is important. The other players in the area will expect nothing untill you raid them with a huge army and kill all their troops.
About alliances from the start, don’t join any. You’ll just limit the number of villages you can farm. Usually the alliances who offer people to join them from the start who they don’t know have no clue what their are doing and will just slow you down. Just reply that you will think about their offer and get back to them at a later stage. Try to stay out of politics and conflicts from the start, focus on the main goals, killing the armies of other farmers and domiating and farming your neighbourhood efficiently.
When raiding you can start out sending as little as 2 troops as teuton or roman and 4 as a gaul. Increase this by one if you think they have this rat that they get in the reward program. As soon as you get the report you send out another raiding party and repeat untill you don’t get max resources anymore. Start out with villages with less than 15 pop as chances are they don’t have troops, most romans and gauls less than 30 pop won’t have troops either. Also take note of when players come of protection so that you can launch a raid at them at that very moment if it looks like they are inactivce. Some of those may have maxed warehouses and granarys and you want to be the one getting all that loot. If you start loosing troops increase the size of the raiding party a little, but 3-4 troops usually not for not loosing any unless the target has a high level residence and wall.
When killing off your competitors troops try to do it in a way so that you loose as little of your own troops as possible. As gaul and roman you should attack clubs with your horses, and counter any attach made on you, don’t try to defend it with your defence troops as that will cost you a lot more. To counter efficiently you’ll have to hit your enemys troops exactly after the time they return home, use one of those travel time calculation tools you’ll find online. As a teuton you might have to send your clubs out, then call them back after the enemy attack to then send them out countering. This makes it hard to time it closely, but do your best, even if your enemy has a 4-5 seconds to dodge your counterattack he still may not make it. Be carefull so that your enemy can not use the same tactic against you, that means, don’t attack a player you know have a lot of fast cavallery with slow troops like clubs.
Travian tips the crop lock
I haven’t been writing here in a long time, so I thought I should just write a short post about a travian tip here now. I just got the idea since it’s just happened to me on the server I’m playing at. I’m just playing the account there solo, and recently I haven’t had much time to look after it.
Well the travian tips of today is the crop lock. It’s very annoying since you basically have to spend a lot of gold to fix your village again, and if you only have one village left and don’t have any friends to help you, you’re really in trouble.
What you do to crop lock a village is pretty easy, you just catapult away all their crop fields, as well as the mill and bakery. If it’s a large village, they will now be minues several hundre crop per hour. And without either having people send resources to them, or NPC changing resources themselves, they can’t build anything. You should also bomb their warehouse and granary when doing this, as well as the main building, so that rebuilding takes a long time without speed building, and so that they can’t get more than 800 of each resource sent to them at a time.
Troop tool to manage alliance troops
Troop tool is a really usefull tool for managing the troops of your whole alliance. With this tool you can easily check how many troops are available to reinforce a village in x amount of time, you don’t have to send out messages to your whole alliance and ask them.
The tool basically shows you the troops of all the players in your alliance in a list, and you can easily sort this list seeing who has the largest sweep, the most catapults, most defense and so forth. All you have to have your players do, is to log in to the tool and past their rally point page. Then all their troops and where they are at the time will be added.
You can also put the players in your alliance into groups, and give the group leaders access to the info on the troops the player in their group have. It’s a good idea not to give too many players access to the whole alliance information, in case you happen to have spies in your alliance.
The tool can be downloaded here: http://laffers.net/works/trooptool.php
Travian Cropper Guide
In this travian cropper guide I’ll try to explain how to use a cropper most efficiently, and what you should look for when trying to decide which cropper to chose as your capital.
Well just to start, if anyone don’t know what a cropper is, it’s one of these villages that have 9 or 15 crop fields. Most people refer to these as a 9 cropper and a 15 cropper. Anyways, a 15 cropper is what we will focus on here. Almost all successful players chose to make a 15 cropper their capital, and the reason for that is to optimize resource production. Cause of the 50% bonus oases as well as two bonus buildings being available for crop production, you get much more resources total if you chose a 15 cropper as your capital.
Another reason to chose a 15 cropper as your capital, is to have somewhere to store your attacking troops, your sweep that is, without going heavy into minus crop production. On a normal speed server I usually also build the sweep in my 15 cropper capital, so that even when it’s out attacking there is no or at least not a lot minus in crop production. On a speed server I try to build my attacking troops in a village just beside my 15 cropper capital, preferably another 15 or 9 cropper if available, and just store the troops in the capital when I’m not using it.
The reason for building your sweep in another village on a speed server is to double the troop production using the great barracks and the great stable. This is when you have 20 or so villages, until that you probably won’t have enough resources to train troops in the great buildings. On a normal server you got to have a lot more villages to produce in both the regular and the great buildings, since the resource production is three times lower, so usually you can just take the easy route and build the sweep in your capital and don’t worry about great barracks and stables.
I hope these tips were usefull, and feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or comments.
Travian village placement tips
ust a few travian village placement tips here. Seems some players just place their villages completely randomly, often too far away from each other for no appearent reason, so I thought I’d write down some stuff on what to look for when building new villages.
1.Build them as close as possible to each other.
This is usually a good idea, as the closer the villages are to each other the quicker it is to transport both resources and troops between them. Generally you’d like your village number 2 to be the closest 15 cropper though, preferably one with 2 or more crop oases, and then you build your next villages close to this one.
1.Build them as close as possible to each other.This is usually a good idea, as the closer the villages are to each other the quicker it is to transport both resources and troops between them. Generally you’d like your village number 2 to be the closest 15 cropper though, preferably one with 2 or more crop oases, and then you build your next villages close to this one.
2.Place them where you get most out of your oases.
As you probably know there are several types of oases in the game, 25% of every resource, 25% of two types or resources as well as the 50% crop oases. If you have a wood oase close to you, chose to found the village on a tile where there is 5 wood, to get the most out of it. Just click all the tiles till you find one.
3.Take the 15 and 9 croppers in your 14×14 quickly.
These villages are very usefull, and it’s worth having a little longer distance to a village if it’s a good 9 or 15 cropper. If you use gold I’d advice you to take just 15 and 9 croppers in the beginning before you build any other types of villages.
This is all for now, feel free to leave comments or questions.
Travian Farm tip
To farm in travian is to attack other villages for resources, like I’m sure everyone knows. In the beginning farming heavily is pretty much the only way to be able to grow as fast as the other big players. Farming can take a lot of time when you start to get a lot of troops and lots of potential farms around you, and especially if you don’t have any co-players to help you out it’s good to find an efficient way to do it.
One way I’ve found is very efficient is to add links to all your farms in a html document. The way to make such a html document is just to first open up the attack screen of every village you’d like to farm in seperate tabs in your webbrowser. The attack screen is the one where you select the troops, each url should end with a2b.php?z=323184, the number being the ID of the village and different for all the links.
When you got all these tabs open, you just copy these links into say word or some other text editor that can save html files. Usually what I do is to have one paragraph for each 7×7. The first one being my own 7×7, next one the 7×7 north of me and so on. You can also add some notes to your html document if there is something specific to remember about each of the farms, like how many troops to send, how much resources he’s producing, crannies, etc.
I sometimes have as many as 200-300 different farms added in a html document like this, and trust me, sending 300 attacks one at a time takes a very long time. When I do it this way however, I just open my html file, ctrl + click each of the links to open them in a new tab, and then send about 50 of them on their way at the same time. The reason I don’t do all the 300 at the same time is cause of having 300 tabs open in your webbrowser will slow your computer down a lot.
One thing when you have this html document with your farms, don’t forget to update it. If some of the villages delete or are taken over by friends of you, the link will still point to that same place, so make sure you check it now and then to avoid attacking allies.
I’ve found this to be a very efficient way to farm, I’m curious about what you guys think of it though, or if you have some other tips on how to farm efficiently. If so, please leave a comment below.
Travian Building tips
This are just a few building tips for travian that I think might be usefull. At least this is how I go about doing this, and it’s worked well for me. This is just stuff I try to follow whenever I start up a new village, to make it grow as quickly and efficiently as possible.
1. Warehouse and granary first.
I always spend gold whenever I build a new village to get the warehouse and granary up 4-5 levels. It’s so much easier building the other things up quickly when you’ve got good space in your warehouse and granary for resources. This is assuming you send resources from several other villages to your new one.
2. Main building.
If you don’t want to use much gold, it’s nice to get the main building up to a decent level so that the building speed is quicker. Building the main building takes a lot of time though, so do this when you’re waiting for other resources to come in or have to log off for a while.
3. Place buildings in the same spots.
It’s just so much easier to find the right building in your village when you place them in the same spots in every single village you build. I usually put the buildings of similar type close to each other as well, like stable and barracks close,
etc.
4. Put up the culture buildings quickly.
The embassy for one, is real cheap to build to the first level, the academy is fairly cheap too, so I think it’s a good idea to just put them up there as soon as possible and let them stand and gather culture points for you.
5. Gold and resource fields.
If you have the resources and want to get your production in a new village up quickly, I suggest using gold to get one resource of each to level 10. Getting one field of each type to level 10 increases your production a lot, and the gold cost is far less than keeping them at the same level to reach the same production.
This is all for now, will add more later.
Testing out the gauls
I’ve started a couple of servers with gauls now, as it is the tribe I have played the least, and figure it would be a good idea to get some more experience with them before writing the guide. The guide will be fairly close to the one I wrote about romans. The big difference is that phalaxes are real bad at farming, they are defence troops after all. The gauls makes up for it with their TTs though, they are awesome both at farming and at killing clubs, and they are less expensive to get than the EIs. More to come!
Travian Teuton strategy guide
Powerful teuton strategy guide for active raiders. Most successful teutons start out similar to this.
Teuton is my favourite tribe and the one I have played most often. The reason I like teutons is that it’s a very aggressive tribe and it really favours the active player. Like I’ve mentioned before in the introduction guide, you should start out about 3 days after the server has started, so that you can start raiding quicker and so that you’re not put in the middle of everyone else.
Get the rewards
If you play on a server where there is a quest reward system I suggest following that untill you’re at the last part of it. That way is quicker than starting out farming right away cause of all the resources it gives you. It actually gives you close to 6000 resources total and farming can’t beat that, since you in either case would have to wait longer before you can start farming with the new rules, not getting the resources from homeland anymore. The last part of the reward system is where you’re supposed to extend all fields to level two, and I don’t think teutons should do that untill they find themself in desperate need of the NPC merchant. It costs a lot to extend everything to level two and it’s much better to put those resources into clubs. If you buy gold, don’t do it at all untill you’ve got your second village.
Throughout this guide I will state some goals you should try to reach before you move on instead of using like day 2, day 3 and so forth, as it depends a lot on the area you land in how fast you’re able to grow the first days.
3 clubs
From your first three clubs are ready you should be raiding and building clubs non stop. Just farm all the villages around you that are low in population with 2-3 clubs each. When players have used the reward system to get a rat as defence you’ll need 3 clubs to kill it without losses, so send 3 in your first attack. As soon as you get the report you send another raid at them assuming you got max the previous raid, if not let them rest for some time, the bigger the population the shorter time you let them rest as bigger populations usually means more resource fields built, and thus a quicker production of resources. I think you should aim for about 50 clubs before you start worrying about other farming players out there. If anyone attacks you during this time don’t bother attacking them back, just make sure you have all your clubs out and that you’ve spent all your resources so they get nothing. Make sure however that you remember who attacked you and their army size.
When it comes to the barracks you should increase it’s level whenever you have a 2-3 hours building que in it. You’ll need a higher level barracks if you’re playing normal server, since building times are three times as long. Granary and warehouse should be upgraded as needed. Better to have them too large than too small.
50 clubs
Now it is time that you take a look around your 7×7 and figure out who else has an raiding army out there. Don’t mind the romans and gauls, just look at the teutons for now. Hopefully you’ll have the biggest army at this point, but you have to use it wisely. You have to destroy your competitors army by attacking them, don’t use your clubs to defend with even if you have enough to kill off the attacking force. Your raiding army is your bread and butter, you need it to raid and grow with, don’t waste them unless you can kill a competitors clubs with it in one attack. The best way to do this in my opinion is to counter attacks made on you. I’ve written more about that in my combat guide, but a short summary here.
When you see an incoming attack on you from another teauton, save up your clubs at home untill 39 seconds before they arrive. Then send your clubs out on an attack somewhere, and 20 seconds later you cancel your attack so they come back just 1 second after your enemy has attacked you. As soon as they arrive home you send them on an attack towards an enemy. If you do this efficiently you can manage to land your attack at your enemy just a couple of seconds after his army returns and maybe catch them all at home if you’re lucky. It is not as easy as attacking your enemy with faster troops, but when both armies have the same speed it’s the only way to do it.
100 clubs
At about 100 clubs I usually build up my academy and get about 5 scouts. With the scouts you can raid more efficiently and I’ll use the first one to find out whether the romans and gauls in my area with high population have troops or not. You can also use them to scout enemy teutons but beware that you most likely won’t see their whole army as it’s usually out raiding. You should also have at least one scout at home all the time so that you notice scout attempts, which you’ll increase as you get more scouts. I tend to build one more scout for every 10 clubs untill I have 200 clubs.
200 clubs
As you work your way towards 200 clubs I suggest starting the infrastructure for your first party if you play on a speed server. You only need one party on a speed server to get your second village, and if things work out well you should be able to have this party around day 3. I’d advice you to keep building clubs at the same time, but don’t increase your barracks level more in this period. After you get the party going start building your residence to level 10 and then settlers. Make sure you never have your settlers at home when you’re not there to watch them, it really hurts having one of them killed in an attack. On a speed server you should be able to have a second city on day four as long as you don’t face too much trouble with your neighbour teutons.
If you play on a normal speed server, don’t mind the party infrastructure untill you reach at least 200 clubs. If you start partying too early you’ll need 3 of them to get your second city, and you probably won’t have enough income to run those 3 right after each other. And there is no use in running one and then having to wait, as you could just as well have waited starting the first one. I usually build the level 10 mainbuilding first, as it’s cheap, then I put up the level 10 academy, then level 1 townhall and then level 10 residence. After I’ve done this I just let it stand there and gather culture points for me untill I have a large enough raid income to run the party and build the settlers without much deadtime in between. I usually have about 400 clubs at the time I build my second village on a normal server.
A few tips on where to put your second village. If you’re using gold and/or are playing on a normal server a 15 cropper is the way to go. A cropper will produce more total resources than any other city cause of the bonus buildings, and it will also be a better base for big armies, so if you use gold you should always chose a 15 cropper. If you’re playing on a normal server you should also always chose a 15 cropper as it’s too hard supporting a big army from a 6444 city with normal resource production. Troops eat as much on a normal server, but you production is only one third of speed. When you get your second city on a normal server you stop producting troops in your first city and build it in your second city, the 15 cropper, instead. That’s why you shouldn’t research anything in your first city apart from scouts, since you’ll have to do it all over again in your second one anyways. A 6444 can easily support a pretty big army on speed, so it’s more up to you there. If you play on speed and don’t use gold, you can chose a 6444 if you wish, but at least city number 4 or 5 has to be a 15 cropper.
Village number 2
When you’ve got village number two it’s time for you to start upgrading your resource fields. Don’t let your army production stop while doing this though, the army will still be by far your largest income of resources, but getting some resource fields built up now is important too. The less active you are the more important the resource fields are as they keep producing even when you sleep. Resource fields are more important on the speed server as the production there are 3 times the one you get on a normal server while travel times are only twice as fast. On a normal server raiding is more important and your own production is less important. If you use gold, start with upgrading crop to 5, then clay and wood to 4, and then iron to 4. After this keeping them at the same level is the way to go, apart from running one of each to 10 when you got them all at 7 to get the bonus building. If you don’t use gold you have to look at what resource you need the most and upgrade in relation to that, don’t let the resource fields of the same type get more than one level apart though.
At the same time as you upgrade resource fields you should go for paladins when you need them. This is something you have to evaluate yourself, but the more treaths you have closer to you the quicker you should go for them. I prefer getting paladins before starting to build axes, and if I’m in a real easy area I’ll wait till I have close to 500 clubs. I usually don’t start building axes untill I have at least 600 clubs and about 100 paladins, but it’s the same rule for this, if you have many threaths close to you, you should get them faster. It’s important that you try to get your 21×21 under control now, and you have to use the means necessary. If you start facing too much enemy cavallery you have to start getting the defensive spears too, but I’ve hardly ever done that this early myself. You can’t keep running parties and getting more cities if you can’t defend them. As a teuton being the dominant player and keeping your neighbourhood under control is very important. You don’t want those romans and gauls getting cavallery, and you don’t want other teutons raiding your farms either.
Onwards
On a speed server what you need to do is to keep building your armies as well as having parties going 24/7 in all of your cities. As soon as you get enough culture you’ll build a new city. You should chose a 15 cropper as your capital and build a lot of support city around that one. In one of the cities beside it you’ll have your main army with barracks and stables producing troops 24/7. When you get 15 cities or so around it, you’ll need great barracks and great stables there as well. At this point you’ll also get chiefs and start conquering cities instead of building them. Eventually you also start building defense in cities you don’t need for offense and work towards end game.
On a normal server you’ll do the same thing, but the parties are less important, as you won’t have enough production to keep them running in all your cities. Here you’ll get most of your culture from buildings. Having a high level embassy in all your cities is real nice for this. The embassy trick is usefull in speed servers too. I like having the capital as my army base in normal servers, as I can’t really support 24/7 production in great barracks and stables on this type of servers unless I have like 40 cities or so. If my army gets destroyed somehow I might put up great barracks and stables in one of the support cities to get it back quick if I have enough production.
I’m gonna end this guide here, as things are too complex now to really take it into this guide. I might write another guide later about end game and managing a huge amount of cities, time will show. Feel free to leave some feedback.
Earn free travian gold writing an article
You can possibly earn some gold by writing a quality article for this website. A lot of travian players don’t want to spend real money buying gold for the game, so I thought this might be a good way for people to earn some gold for their accounts. I don’t think the .com servers offer it at this point, but several other servers give players a referral link they can have other people sign up through so that they earn free gold. What I’ve seen is that it’s 20 gold once the player that signed up through your link reaches 75 population on a normal server, and 250 population on a speed server.
If you would like to write an article for this site, I will give you the chance to put up this referral link at the bottom of the site and give you a chance to earn gold for free this way. The article can be on any subject related to Travian, but preferably something you have decent knowledge about and that differ somewhat from what’s here already. This is no guarantee for gold at all, but if you’d enjoy sharing your travian knowledge with other you’ve got nothing to loose at least. If you’re interested you could email an article or ideas for articles to TravianStrategy@gmail.com
Travian Roman strategy guide
Strategy guide for aggressive raiding roman players. I’ve dominated my area and reached high on the rankings on several servers playing like this.
The Roman tribe is a very interesting one, and for some reason everyone advice new players to go for romans. I really wonder why, I can’t see why it would be the easiest one to play. Usually most new players who chose roman as their tribe just become farms right away. I’m not saying roman is a bad tribe, it’s just played far too passively by many players in my opinion.
Get the rewards
In all my guides I say that you should start following the rewards program first. If you don’t have that on your server, you just build whatever you need to get the homeland bonus, then lvl 3 main building, granary, warehouse, marketplace, rally point and barracks. No need to build up all the fields then, and even if you have the reward bonus on the server, quit after quest number 21 and don’t build all the fields to level two, it’s a waste of resources. You can do that later when you really need the extra gold you get for it, and if you don’t need the gold just wait with it till you have your second village.
Let’s look at the roman basic foot soldier for a bit, the imperian. 40 offense, 35 infantry defense and 50 cavalry defense. The cavalry defense is pretty useless at the start of the server, 35 infantry defense is pretty good though. Having 40 offense it’s definitely a stronger troop when it comes to pure fighting than the famous teuton clubs. It’s much worse in raiding though, only being able to carry 2/3 of the resources and walking slower. It also costs 440 resources compared to a club swinger costing only 250. Cause of all this you can’t compete with a teuton from the start.
So what do you do? I suggest laying low and avoiding strong teutons from the start. They will attack you, but just be active enough so that they never catch your troops or get any resources from you. They will be busy farming and probably not notice you as you’ll be building troops and your population won’t grow very much at all from the start. Your legionnaires are too expensive to lose in fights with teutons at this point, so here is your first goal as a roman.
2 legionnaires
From the time you have 2 legionnaires you start farming 24/7 with them, but be careful, you don’t wanna loose even a single one of them. If you’re playing on quest reward server make sure you attack players with 15 or more population with 3 or more troops the first time to avoid losses. As soon as you get the battle report you’ll attack again assuming you got max.
Keep building more legionnaires 24/7 and keep them out raiding all the time, never have them at home when you’re not online. Even if they defend fairly well you don’t want to loose them, this is not the time to kill other peoples armies, you’ll wait with that till later. You also don’t want any large teuton in the neighborhood noticing you and attack you more frequently cause of that. Stay under the radar and pretend you’re just an inactive farm.
I usually don’t build anything but troops in this period, but it’s ok to build up some more crop fields if it makes you feel safer. As a roman you also need a cranny as teutons will be raiding you, and you don’t want to loose all your crops when your crop production is negative, as you’ll then loose some of your precious troops. You will be negative in crop production if you play my style, but it’s no problem as long as your active.
100 legionnaires
Yes, I know it sounds like a lot, but I believe it is necessary. Legionnaires farm much slower than clubs and to support the building of infrastructure for your EIs(equites imperatoris) you’ll need a large farming income. If your area is an exceptionally good one, and you get close to max in each of your raids I guess you can do with 60-70 or so, but then you have to be very active. You don’t want to spend too much time building up the academy and stables, as you’ll then be too far behind in troops.
What about imperians you might say? Most romans seem to go for imperians first after all. I believe this is a big mistake. What do you need these imperians for now? They are better raiders than the legionnaires that’s true, and it costs less resources to build buildings and research them, but compared to EIs they are crap at this point. Who will you be facing in your battles now? Teautons with clubs, and the EIs are way way better than imperians fighting clubs. They can counter atttack clubs easily, they can kill them almost without losses and they can’t be countered by club armies themselves as they are twice as fast as clubs. They are also better raiders than imperians in general even if there are no teutons at all close to you.
When you’ve got those EIs you can start having fun, now you’re gonna start hitting those teutons around you over and over, counter any attacks they make with their clubs, just look at the combat guide on how to do that well, and kill all of their troops. It feels really good to retaliate on someone who’s been attacking you before, doesn’t it? They may start building spears and hinder you, but this will take them a long time, and spears are defensive units that they can’t really raid efficiently with. While you’re farming and attacking teutons with your EIs you’ll keep farming the other villages in the area with your legionnaires.
20 equites imperatoris
As soon as you have 15-20 EIs you should go build a hero mansion and get a hero EI. You’ll boost his offense points and he’ll hopefully be levelling fast killing all those clubs. If you happen to run out of teutons to kill off in your 21×21 just use your EIs to farm the other villages in the area. If you don’t have scouts already now you better research them now, usually I reasearch scouts as soon as I’ve got the prerequisites for it, at the 100 legionnaires point that is.
Just keep raiding and farming building EIs non stop, any extra resources will be put into crop fields as you’ll have a massive negative crop production by now. The other fields are not that important but let them follow 2-3 levesls behind. When your crop fields reach level 5 or so, start putting extra resources into party and second village infrastructure, take a look at other guides if you don’t know how.
100 equites imperatoris
I am usually at around 100 EIs at the time I found my second city, and I’ll probably have enough culture points without holding a party on speed, on a normal server maybe one party is needed.
The same ideas of where to put your second village goes for any tribe really. If you’re using gold and/or are playing on a normal server a 15 cropper is the way to go. A cropper will produce more total resources than any other city cause of the bonus buildings, and it will also be a better base for big armies, so if you use gold you should always chose a 15 cropper. If you’re playing on a normal server you should also always chose a 15 cropper as it’s too hard supporting a big army from a 6444 city with normal resource production. Troops eat as much on a normal server, but you production is only one third of speed. When you get your second city on a normal server you stop producting troops in your first city and build it in your second city, the 15 cropper, instead. That’s why you shouldn’t research anything in your first city apart from scouts, since you’ll have to do it all over again in your second one anyways.
A 6444 can easily support a pretty big army on speed, so it’s more up to you there. If you play on speed and don’t use gold, you can chose a 6444 if you wish, but at least city number 4 or 5 has to be a 15 cropper.
Village number 2
Now when you’ve got your second village it’s time to upgrade more of those resource fields. You should also take the time to research imperians. No reason to stop raiding with your legionnaires, but imperians are much better raiders and you should start building those in your barracks now. How you balance the production of imperians versus EIs depends a lot on what your neighbourhood looks like. If there are a lot of teutons with clubs and axes left to be killed go for more EIs, if there are more romans, gauls and teutons with spear defenses go for more imperians.
Onwards now you just keep up raiding and dominating your neighbourhood, build up a bigger army and upgrade your resource fields. On a speed server you have to be partying all the time, while on a normal server it’s better to go for culture buildings like the embassy. Don’t rush researching EC (equites caesaris), they are not that good raiders, they are expensive and they are to be used for your main offense army later in the game. I’ll just end this guide here as it is a starting guide, I’ll write more about endgame on this page later.
Travian gaul guide
This gaul strategy guide is for active players who enjoy raiding, farming, dominating their area and reaching to the top of the rankings. Many successful players I’ve talked with are playing gauls like this.
After playing gauls quite a bit lately on many different servers I’ve started enjoying them more and more. Especially on a speed servers it’s a lot of fun raiding with their extremely fast raiding troops, the theutates thunders, TTs for short. Being able to reach anyone in your whole 21×21 in 20 minutes is simply quite awesome. I’ve also found it very easy to catch people with armies at home using the gaul’s fast TTs as your enemy don’t see you coming before it’s too late. On one of the servers I played I was overdoing it though, and killed like 2000 troops around me before even starting with infrastructure for city number 2. Not the best way to play, but a whole lot of fun. And sorry to all my victims, it was nothing personal.
This guide is meant for players who can be very active the first week or so of the server, and the number of troops as well as time lines reflect that.
Start at server day 1
With gauls I think you should start out when the server starts, or a few hours after it starts, as you don’t want the teutons to have too many paladins or spears when you start hitting them with your TTs. Last time I started one day late on a speed server, and I lost many more troops than I had to cause of paladins and spears.
Build phalanxes to raid with
Anyways, how do you get to these amazing TTs fast? Phalanxes are horrible raiders after all and you don’t want to be stuck with those for too long. I’ve been discussing this with many people on several forums and the general consensus is that you should start out with a number of phalanxes to raid with. That is as soon as you are done with the reward program, if you have that in your server. Take the market place route, as you’ll need that to convert resources with the NPC merchant. After you get the market place, build rally and barracks and start building troops.
As soon as you have 4 phalanxes you should start raiding inactives, if you’re on a server with the reward program, only raid players with less than 9 population, so you’re sure you won’t run into that rat. You need to make 11 raids or more with the phalanxes to make them profitable so you don’t want to kill them on rats. Half a day or so out of beginner protection, if you have some teutons around you, you could try raiding players with less than 20 pop, as the teutons probably already took care of the rat.
Train as many phalanx raiders as needed
How many phalanxes you train to raid with before you start going for resource fields is hard to say, it depends on what your neighbourhood looks like. You want as many phalanxes as needed to empty all the small inactives in your 13×13, but not more than that. Small inactives being anyone under 20 in population, or under 9 population if you wanna be on the safe side. Last speed server I just went for 20 phalanxes before I started with resources, as that was all I needed.
Build resource fields and cranny if needed
Those phalanxes won’t give you the income you need to get the TTs fast on a speed server, so you’ll want to build some resource fields now. How far you extend your resource fields before you start with TT infrastructure depends on how good your neighbourhood is for farming. With 20 phalanxes raiding, get half your fields to lvl 4 and half to lvl 3. With 40 phalanxes raiding all of them to lvl 3 should be enough. If you’re being raided frequently by teutons you also need to build up your cranny so they don’t get anything, and make sure you don’t have your army at home at any time. You’re not gonna fight teutons with phalanxes, wait till you get TTs to do that.
Infrastructure and researching theutates thunders
This is the hardest part of the guide, as it takes quite a few resource to build buildings and research the TTs, about 17000 total actually. You need stable level 3, blacksmith level 3 and academy level 5 before you can research them. Holding 2200 lumber at one time to do the research might be tricky, if you’re getting raided a lot you need to build a pretty big cranny. Hopefully you’ve done well keeping no rescourses at home for raiders before so that the number of raids you get on you will be limited. With this guide I belive you can get TTs in about 50-55 hours if everything goes real smooth. I had to spend 65 hours last time loosing too many phalanxes in my raids, but even if you have to spend 3 whole days (72 hours), it’s still very good.
After you get the TTs things are starting to get more fun. Now you can take revenge on those annoying teutons who might have been raiding you over and over. If any of them attack you now, make sure you dodge the attack and counter it. Don’t go to crazy with attacking the teutons around you though, don’t attack if it’ll cost you more than 1/3 of your total troops, and make sure you have a steady increase in TTs even when fighting the teutons. Trying to get control of your neighbourhood is important, but you have to keep your raiding income up while doing so. Just lay off the teutons who have a lot of spears, it’s not worth killing those at this point.
Second village
As a gaul you’ll take quite a bit longer time before founding your second village compared to teutons. That’s ok though, there’s no reason to rush it too much. It’s hard to set an exact point when it should be done, as there are so many factors to consider, but as a general guideline I’d say it is when you have about 100-150 TTs and a pretty good control of your close neighbourhood, the 13×13. If things go well this should be about day 6 on the server. I usually go for a 15 cropper as my second village but then you should be willing to use some gold at the NPC from the start. There is more about this in my other strategy articles.
From here on I start building myself a nice army of swordsmen as well as keeping up the TT production in my stable. Since this is just a start guide I will end this here and write more about later stages with gauls in other articles. I hope you found this guide usefull and feel free to leave some comments.
The PC Strategy Game Experience by Harry Rackers
There are dozens of strategy games you should know about, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Civilization, Resident Evil, Galactic Civilizations, Master of Orion and many more.
You plot world conquest. You do what you want. Wouldn't it be nice to be king for just a day? How about a few weeks? A lifetime? That is what the PC strategy game does: you can be king (or queen) for as long as you want, building an empire which can be like the fantasy world "Lord of the Rings," or you can create a real, historical adventure into what could have happened. Maybe the Mongolians conquered the whole world. Maybe orcs-part of a world called "Warcraft"-conquered everything in their path. Maybe the bad guys won. The point is PC strategy gaming is the answer for boredom because you can do all these things. This guide shows you how to be king for as long as you want, by playing the best PC strategy games ever.
Starting With … "Civilization 2" is the best strategy game of all time; it lacks high end graphics, but he the playability has won it millions of fans across the world. Perhaps the original classic "Civilization 1" had more vision, was more groundbreaking, but "Civilization 2" allows you to be king of the world, if you're good enough to last a few millennia. You build an empire in this turn based world-simple as that. The Runners Up Are … Actually, "Civilization 2" might not be up your gaming alley. For a true strategy gaming experience, you may want to go for what's called-and many of you already know about-the real time strategy game. These games aren't turn based. Instead you are working against the clock. The most popular of these games are "Age of Empires," "Warcraft," and "Command & Conquer." These are the old classics which keep getting sequels. You get a different strategy gaming experience from each one.
Enjoying the Gaming Experience: To enjoy the PC strategy game experience you need to see what kind of games, console or PC, you truly like. If you go for the "Resident Evil" shoot-em-ups you may not go for the methodical pace of "Civilization." However, if you like hands on control, maybe even like history, "Civilization" is a good start. Other games provide faster action and far more bodies. Some, like "Warcraft," even incorporate elements of the greatest fantasy worlds.
Following the PC strategy game world: There are dozens of other strategy games you should know about, ones not listed here. Foe example, "Galactic Civilizations" and "Master of Orion" are both similar to "Civilization," but they're in space. And "Empire Earth" would appeal to gamers who like "Age of Empires" and "Warcraft." You're in luck, because there are dozens of places online to find the right games for your strategy gaming experience. Watch for top reviews from major online/print magazines like PC Gamer and IGN.
Eating For A Healthy Heart by Beck
Bad cholesterol or a bad diet is something we all experience at some point in time. It's impossible to eat healthy our whole lives, even though we may try hard to do it. Eating healthy for your heart is something everyone should try to do, especially when it comes to restoring health and reducing heart attacks.
Your heart and food We know these things for sure - a diet high in saturated fats will help raise your cholesterol, which is a risk factor for heart disease. People that are obese are more prone to heart disease. A diet high in sodium may elevate your blood pressure, leading to inflammation and even heart disease.
To help prevent heart disease and improve your health, put the tips below to good use.
Eat plenty of fish Herring, sardines, and salmon are all excellent sources of Omega 3 essential fatty acids. Other fish are great to, although Omega 3 may help to get your cholesterol down to a healthier level.
Choosing healthy fats and oils Saturated fat will increase the risk of heart disease. It's found in meat, butter, and even coconut oil. You should avoid them until your cholesterol levels are down and you are at a healthy weight. Even those that love red meats can enjoy seafood and nuts for their main sources of protein.
Monounsaturated fats such as olive oils will help you to protect your heart. Olive oil is an ideal choice for cooking, dressing, or even as a dipping sauce.
Plenty of fiber Fiber can help you control your cholesterol. You can find fiber in whole grain products to help control sugar absorption as well, which will help you keep your digestive system healthy.
Choosing carbohydrates Eating for your heart involves staying away from sugary foods such as candy, cookies, cakes, and pastries. Eating a lot of sugar isn't good for your heart disease at all. Healthy carbohydrates involve whole grain breads, whole grain pasta, brown rice, and a lot of vegetables. You should make fruits and vegetables the main aspect of your diet.
Healthy cooking methods Stir frying and sauteing with olive oil or canola oil are both great methods, as you shouldn't dip your food in batter and fry it anymore. If you cook chicken, remove the skin and bake it in the oven in foil.
Instead of frying your fish you should always bake it. Steaming your vegetables can help maintain the most nutrients. You should use cream sauces or lots of butter anymore either. When you eat vegetables, try squeezing lemon juice on them or using your favorite seasonings.
As you make the proper changes to your diet, keep in mind that it takes time for them to become habits. Eating healthy is always great for your body and your lifestyle, especially when it comes to your heart and the prevention of heart disease.
Find more free tips here-
www.theadsensemasters.com
Enjoy English Tea - A British Tradition? by Eddie Lamb
Whether savoring a serving of tea at high tea or afternoon tea, English tea can be an incredibly delightful addition to the party or on some occasions even the party itself. Some people may believe that these two occasions are one and the same, but in fact, high tea and afternoon tea ceremonies are most definitely not the same thing and stem from completely different origins.
In this article the differences between each type of traditional English tea ceremony are thoroughly outlined and discussed in regards to their origin, traditions, typical time of occasion and original purposes.
Afternoon Tea
The whole tradition of the English tea ceremony stems back to nineteenth century England and was started by the Duchess of Bedford. These occasions were the first types of traditional afternoon English tea ceremonies that actually began as an in-between occasion when lunch had passed but dinner still seemed a long way off, and there was a need for something in between.
The array of tea was usually served with a miniature meal of breads and butter, and if not for this afternoon meal, the Duchess and her high society lady friends would have had to wait until well after dark for their next meal and this little feast filled that hungry space in between. Since then and now to this day, the afternoon English tea ceremony has truly progressed to include many more foods such as scones and other pastries, but the timing of the occasion has steadfastly remained much the same.
High Tea
The occasion of high tea is often referred to as the same event as the afternoon English tea ceremony, however they are quite different indeed. Perhaps high tea sounds more proper, but this traditional English tea ceremony is actually the one that was practiced and was originated by the common folk in nineteenth century England.
Afternoon tea was already in full swing, but the poorer people also needed a tradition to surround their tea time. Instead of an earlier scheduled tea time, however, their tea time was scheduled to occur closer to dinner or even in place of dinner. Such was the actual origin of the ceremony, in fact.
This English tea tradition was partially established in order to take the place of the boring and usual meal with an occasion of celebration and enjoyment of tea, and unlike the afternoon tea of the rich, this occasion took place around dusk and included much more filling foods like meat, eggs, cheese and the like. Also, both sexes were included in this meal, unlike the afternoon tea ceremony.
Chocolate Fountains - the great alternative to cake by R. Hookings
Over the past few years Chocolate Fountains have obtained enormous popularity. Undoubtedly nowadays Chocolate Fountains are considered as a gorgeous addition to all types of events especially bridal showers and wedding receptions. Hiring a Chocolate Fountain from a specialized Chocolate Fountain Hire company will definitely ensure you that you will receive well dressed staff in order to care for the fountain and provide a wide range of best dipping options like fresh strawberries and other fruits in addition to chocolate fudge brownies and a diversity of other scrumptious ideas. Give a little wow element to your precious occasions like wedding receptions by hiring a Chocolate Fountain to take best care of your wedding guests. Before hiring a Chocolate Fountain Hire company someone has to ensure some basic things. The most significant feature is to see that particular Chocolate Fountain which you are going to hire. Most well reputed Chocolate Fountain Hire companies provide Chocolate Fountain pictures on their websites. The next thing to consider is the Chocolate Fountain operators that come with the fountain. Make sure that they are well-dressed and sensible as this is very important to entertain your valuable guests. Chocolate Fountain Hire is an ideal addition to any wedding ceremony. Scrumptious Chocolate Fountains can be utilized especially at the evening receptions as they look extraordinary with their illuminated display in the evening. Hiring a Chocolate Fountain is fast becoming popular with many grooms and brides instead of wedding cakes. An attractive Chocolate Fountain offers a great photo opportunity to all guests present at the wedding. http://www.bestchocolatefountainhirelondon.co.uk
Easy Summer Desserts by Karen Ciancio
It's summer and the berries are plentiful!
Berries are available all year round in most areas, but there is nothing quite like easy dessert recipes made from summer fresh berries.
You can certainly make any of these recipes any time of the year, but they will be especially appreciated as cool summer treats.
Summer Fruit Bowl
Feel free to mix the berries you use in this recipe to suit your taste. Raspberries would be wonderful too.
16 lady finger halves
1 tablespoon sherry or orange juice
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup seedless green grapes
1 cup flaked coconut
1 - 14 ounce can pineapple chunks, well drained
1 cup dairy sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Sprinkle the lady fingers with sherry or orange juice and line 1½ quart severing bowl with the cookies. Combine strawberries, blueberries and grapes. Mix coconut, pineapple, sour cream and extract. Stir this mixture lightly into the fruit. Spoon it all into the lined bowl. Chill before serving.
Makes 8 - 10 servings
Strawberry Peach Sherbet
The perfect summer dessert when these fruits are at their freshest.
4 large peaches
1 pound fresh strawberries, chopped
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup superfine sugar
Add the peaches to boiling water and cook for 2 minutes. Remove the peaches from the pot and immerse in cold water. When the peaches are cool enough to handle, remove the skins and stones.
Mash the peaches into a pulp in a large mixing bowl. Pureé the peach pulp, strawberries and lemon juice in a food processor. Stir the sugar into the fruit mixture and pureé for another 10-15 seconds. Pour the mixture into a large, shallow dish and freeze until hard.
To serve:
Remove the dish from the freezer 1 hour before serving and let the sherbet soften in the refrigerator.
Mixed Berry Brown Betty
The surprise addition of a bit of white wine definitely makes this one ready for company. Use any mix of berries you prefer.
2 1/2 cups blueberries
1 cup strawberries, quartered
2 1/2 cups raspberries
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
2/3 cup white wine (or substitute apple juice)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
dash salt
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups dry bread crumbs
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
Preheat oven to 350ºF.
Toss the berries with 3/4 cup brown sugar, the wine and the lemon juice. Set aside.
Melt the butter with the cinnamon, salt and 2 tablespoons brown sugar in a pot. In a separate bowl, blend bread crumbs and graham cracker crumbs. Pour the butter mixture over the crumbs and blend them together well.
Spoon 1/3 of the crumb mixture evenly into the bottom of 6 or 8 ramekins or the bottom of a square baking dish. Add half the berry mixture, then spoon over another 1/3 of the crumbs. Add the remaining berry mixture and finish with the remaining crumb mixture. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until fruit is bubbly and crumbs are browned.
This berry treasure tastes great eaten while it is still warm topped with whipped cream or ice cream.
Enjoy your summer and all the delicious bounty that fresh summer fruits have to offer.
Safety measures for people who use Private Wells by Peter Duivenvoorden
There are so many factors that could contaminate our drinking water, regardless of the source or where we get our drinking water, from rivers, lakes, underground aquifer, public water utility, and a well. Exposure to drinking water that is polluted can cause us different health problems. Here are some safety tips for family who uses private wells as their sources of drinking water. Check out how old your well, know the depth and the length of the pipe inside the drilled hole and also check out the water supply problems in your area. You can protect your water supply by yearly testing it for bacteria. Find out when is the last time it was tested for contaminants. Know what test was conducted and write down the results for record purposes. Any water testing, maintenance, repairs and service should be recorded. Keeping records of your water system will help you for future reference. Make sure that you check your well casing and the strength of your well cap. You can also consider replacing your well cap with a new style cap made to protect against rodents and bugs. Also keep weeds away around the well case to minimize insects. Test your water right away once you notice changes in its color, odor and taste. Ask help from your local health department. If your water is contaminated find out the source, fix the problem and do water testing again to make sure its safe. Keep all chemicals, septic tank and pets away from your well. Always make sure that the area around your well is clean.
Common Water Problems by Peter Duivenvoorden
Water is a clear, colorless, odorless and tasteless liquid. Water has been called "The Universal Solvent". It dissolves some of almost everything it contacts. The purity and safety of our water supply is very important. But knowing the water problems help us identify more how we can avoid and fix this matter. Here are list of common water problems that we encounter. Hard water contains too much level of calcium, minerals and magnesium. Hard water may shorten the life of household plumbing, and appliances that use water that makes are laundering and cleaning task more difficult and also the efficiency of our water heaters decreases gradually. Bacteria. If you have smelly water the most common cause of this is a bacterium which is called the Divibrio Sulfuricans. This bacterium causes the break down of the sulfates that are found in water to sulfides and it combine with hydrogen in the water to form a hydrogen sulfide gas that gives a rotten smell. Lead. Lead is type of heavy metal that dissolves in drinking water. It is odorless, tasteless and it has no color. The source of lead is from plumbing system itself. A home that is old with copper pipe may contain lead. If lead is present in drinking water it can cause long term health effects, especially in children. Does your water stain your fixtures? If it does the color of the stain gives you hint to find out what the problem is. If there is color blue and blue-green stains it means presence of copper in your water supply. Most common source of this problem is corrosion in copper plumbing. Copper affects the taste of drinking water and is poison to aquarium fish. If there is presence of iron in the water it could give reddish stain. Water experts may recommend treatments like water softener and filtration.
Conservation of Water in the Home by Peter Duivenvoorden
Can you imagine not having enough water? Do you think we can survive without it? How disastrous it would be without water in this world. Water conservation is a very essential practice and let us not takes water for granted. Save water and use it more wisely. Here are some simple ways on how to conserve water in our home.
1. Check for leaks. You can check leaks by checking out your water meter where there is no water being used. If there's a leak replace and fix it right away. Don't waste time.
2. Recycle your water. Try re-using your water, you can find out that you can still use that water to other purposes like watering the plants and your garden. This way you could reduce the amount of water you're using.
3. Car washing. Washing your car at home will waste buckets of water and you cannot recycle it.
4. When watering your plants and garden it is better that you do it in the evening or early in the morning. This will cut down water loss due to evaporation.
5. Consider washing your dishes by hand and use bowl for washing and rinsing. You can lessen the use of water by doing this.
6. Do not leave your water running while you clean fruits and vegetables. Just rinse them in a pan of clean water.
7. Refrigerate your drinking water. Letting your tap water to run to cool it off for drinking water is wasteful.
8. Put a low flow shower heads to maximize water coverage and minimize water volume.
Water conservation is very important. These simple methods of saving water can make a big difference.
Health Tips for Kids!
A Healthy Life Should Start From A Young Age!
Healthy children are more likely to develop into healthy teenagers and healthy adults. If they are healthy, they can do a lot of things they want to do!
1. Start the day with a healthy breakfast
Healthy breakfast gives them energy for the day. Whole-grain breads, cereals, whole fruits, skim or low-fat milk and yogurt are good breakfast foods.
2. Snack smart
Healthy snacks provide an additional source of calories needed by kids throughout their active day. Yogurt, fresh or dried fruits, cereal bars and raw vegetables with dip are good choices.
3. Eat lots of different foods
Children need to eat lots of different foods including large amounts of vegetables, legumes, fruits & whole grains; and small amounts of dairy & meats to get all the nutrients needed for growth & good health. Macronutrients (Carbohydrates, Fats and Protein) are the body's main source of fuel. Micronutrients (Vitamins and Minerals) are needed for many body functions.
4. Drink plenty of liquid
Children should drink plenty of liquid for hydration while providing nutrients for good health and growth.
5. Be active everyday
Being active promotes healthy growth and development. Children need at least 1 hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. Playing hide and seek, tag games and sports are great ways to get kids moving while also having fun.
Healthy children are more likely to develop into healthy teenagers and healthy adults. If they are healthy, they can do a lot of things they want to do!
1. Start the day with a healthy breakfast
Healthy breakfast gives them energy for the day. Whole-grain breads, cereals, whole fruits, skim or low-fat milk and yogurt are good breakfast foods.
2. Snack smart
Healthy snacks provide an additional source of calories needed by kids throughout their active day. Yogurt, fresh or dried fruits, cereal bars and raw vegetables with dip are good choices.
3. Eat lots of different foods
Children need to eat lots of different foods including large amounts of vegetables, legumes, fruits & whole grains; and small amounts of dairy & meats to get all the nutrients needed for growth & good health. Macronutrients (Carbohydrates, Fats and Protein) are the body's main source of fuel. Micronutrients (Vitamins and Minerals) are needed for many body functions.
4. Drink plenty of liquid
Children should drink plenty of liquid for hydration while providing nutrients for good health and growth.
5. Be active everyday
Being active promotes healthy growth and development. Children need at least 1 hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. Playing hide and seek, tag games and sports are great ways to get kids moving while also having fun.
Web Video Players As Powerful Marketing Tools by Anthony Chua
Today more webmasters than ever before are using an Advanced Video Web player as an advanced marketing tool. The reason is simple and that is Web video marketing is fast becoming one of the most popular and most successful methods to promote and augment online products and service providers sites.
The Basic Function Of a Web Video Player
The basic function of a Video Web Player is to transform videos from a basic raw format into what is known as Flash Video or (FLV), which is a web format. The last stage of this process is to add a short and simple code to your html and deliver the video files onto your web host server.
The Basic Advantages Of a Web Video Player
So what are just some of the many advantages to using a web video player to add streaming videos to your website? To begin with it, it adds a new and far more interesting element to your site that will inevitably keep your visitors attention so much better than just basic text. But thats not all, because Web Video Players can also
* Allow you to automatically direct your visitors to your newsletter registration page.
*Allow you to automatically and seamlessly connect any viewers to an affiliate link if you are an affiliate marketer.
* Expedient Upload of any and all of your favorite video files.
Now More Than Ever
Now more than ever as the Internet is seeing a higher level of competitiveness with regards to online marketing it is important to do all that is necessary to stay abreast of the competition. Web Video Players allow you tom do just that by making your websites moire interesting to visit and more effective as overall marketing tools.
Humour And Jokes For Healthy Life by Amit Kishore Verma
Humour and jokes is not only relieving stress, but also enrich your life and keeps you in touch with friends and family. The fluctuation of emotional state, low blood sugar, heart disease, overactive thyroid and is also considered by science to some effects of stress. What makes a thing of such complexity that stress is actually different from person to person. There are people who might not be comfortable sharing their emotions with others, regardless of how they are close to the person. Writing about what happened during the day is a self-cleaning of all the worries over a hard day's work.
The fast pace of the world clouded by the pressures of work and they demands the humour and jokes compounds in life. Therefore, such websites have been a booming sector in recent years because people are made to believe that their use of services is the only effective way to increase humour and jokes in life. However, it is not necessary to participate in an activity splurging money to get humour and jokes. Take every opportunity to the millions of dollars flash smile. However, too much, it could yield negative emotional, physical and mental effects of a person.
A very inspiring book can create a sense of lightness and motivation of a person. Studies show that 40% of people who have heart disease are less likely to be inclined to laugh. As funny as it appears in, humour and jokes is the cheapest and easiest way to relieve stress. Joking with friends, watching funny movies or TV shows and reading funny cartoons are cheap and fun solutions to stress. Stress may be part of daily life, but this is not necessarily synonymous with grace and let it take over. Accentuating the positive is one way to cope. After all, stress is not what happens is how we react to it.
Recent studies at the University of Baltimore have shown that people who have humour and jokes are less likely to have heart disease. In addition, people with heart disease are 40% less likely to humour and jokes compared to the fate of these people without heart problems. If this is true, the very elixir which could solve a serious health condition related to heart is the prime condition of the act of laughing at jokes really funny. This is particularly important for those who do not have time to exercise or do physical activities. Laughing also prevents hypertension because it reduces the likelihood of stress. It relaxes muscles and reduces the supply of dopamine in the blood.
Knowing all this, how can you practice the habit of humour and jokes to keep from heart attack? The maintenance of a light-hearted provision is essential in preventing heart attacks. Whenever the stress began keeping in the think of these situations can reduce your stress and anxiety. humour and jokes not only produce natural laughter, but also help maintain good mental health. Therefore in every day hard working life humour and jokes is not only necessary to make laughter in your life, it also keeps you fit in the life.
How to Develop the Right Weight Loss Diet Plan by Gen Wright
Choosing the right weight loss diet plan can be a difficult task for some. That is because they lack knowledge in 2 areas - food and nutrition and their own weight loss goals. To overcome this problem, focus on acquiring knowledge in these 2 areas, and you will know how to work out the ideal weight loss diet plan for yourself. Here is an example of how the process works.
1) Understanding your own weight loss goals.
You can't come up with a diet plan if you don't know what your goals are. You need to have specific goals. In other words, instead of telling yourself that you need to lose weight, you need to tell yourself that you need to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks. Now you have some numbers to work with. Don't be too overambitious if this is the first time you are coming up with a plan. Your plan has to be realistic.
2) Understanding your own lifestyle and exercise program.
The next thing you need to do is a quick calculation of the amount of calories that you are burning each day. Make a list of the activities that you go through on a daily basis. Place the most emphasis on your exercise program because that is when you burn the most calories. There are calorie guides available on the Internet that you can download and use. Tag each activity with the amount of calories burned, and then come up with the total.
3) Understanding what you eat.
Each type of food that you consume contains a certain amount of calories. For example, a serving of 50 grams of eggs may contain about 70 calories. Again, you need to make a list of the calories that you consume each day. The concept here is simple. If you consume less calories than what you burn, you will lose weight. Therefore, it makes sense to take on a lean diet and exercise more if you want to lose pounds quickly.
4) Learn more about cooking.
Many people give up following a strict diet because they just cannot develop a liking for a low calorie diet. Fortunately, this problem can be easily solved by improving on the cooking. A good cook can turn the simplest ingredients into the most delicious gourmet food. However, the drawback is that not everyone knows how to cook well. If you can't afford the time to pick up the skills yourself, you can always hire someone else to cook for you. A cheaper alternative would be to go for low fat pre-made meals. They may be a little more costly compared to ordinary meals but they taste good and allow you to consume less calories.
Finally, know that you don't have to give up your diet plan just because you don't like the food. You can always improvise and change the plan. Persevere and you will eventually come out the other end a much healthier person.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)