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 =) Moving: If raiding has gone even decently you should be at the point where you are able to Train TTs and be building resources tiles at the same time. I begin to think about moving as soon as my resource production in my village is enough to Train TTs constantly. I.e. Lum 1400 Clay 1800 Iron 920 Crop 240) I use my raiding income to begin building the prereqs for a Town Hall. AFTER you have your first party going you need to start building up your Res. Again if you were active enough you will need to be throwing parties to start securing your next village. Selecting a location: Here is where I differ from many of the other “Hardcore” players. You can choose either way go but I highly recommend away from taking a 15c. I am going to post a quote from the guide I started out with, All credit for this portion of my guide goes to Nailzz (http://forum.travian.us/showthread.php?p=492797) I highly recommend everyone read his guide aswell, he has an amazing view at the game and his theories are solid. Esp. For a Gaul on a speed I would choose resources over crops. But the end decision is up to you. Exception to my rule would be if you have a 150% in your 21x21. Risks/Rewards to Consider When You Don’t Choose a Cropper Second: To be fair, it should be noted that waiting until your third of fourth village to settle a 15 or 9 cropper runs the serious risk of someone else settling it. If you assume this risk then you understand that you have a responsibility to stop all production and build your catapult infrastructure if someone does settle it under your nose. This will cause you to lose significant time and create other risk factors. On speed this should take you about a day but on normal about 2 or 3 days. To get the cropper back, you have to raid the cropper incessantly (and the supply village) to hinder the building of a palace, assemble your clearing squad, build the Cata Infrastructure (including prerequisites and a lvl 20 Rally Point), build at least 20 catas and gather the settlers necessary to populate the village once you’ve destroyed everything in it. This could include building the prerequisites for the settlers in another village if you don’t already have them. I’ve been in this position and it’s not fun, but I overcame it. Note too that in the meantime, your farms have been left to their own devices and they could make best use of that time by putting up crannies, joining alliances, forming pacts and assembling an offensive against you. You’re not really able to concentrate on raiding efficiently or building more barrack levels and raid infantry. Then you’ll have to factor in the time it will take for you to continually send your catapults back and forth to this village. How far away is it? Do you lose any troops or catas in the process? How long to replace them? Well with all that risk, what’s the reward? I believe the reward for waiting to settle a cropper until your third of fourth village lies in your immediate ability to fund and build up your cropper once you get it. With 3 or 4 supply villages at your disposal you will be able to quickly and efficiently build up your cropper right away. You won’t have to wait or uses gross amounts of gold. The faster your fields come up the faster you can begin working on your Hammer Infrastructure. Risks/Rewards to Consider When You Do Choose a Cropper Second: Choosing a cropper as your second village (especially a 15) puts a lot more pressure on you to do one of two things – either raid more if that’s even possible and/or consistently “who-re” gold. The fact that your first village is supported entirely by raiding and your second village (the 15 cropper) only has one of each resource that you won’t be upgrading anyway, you have to be able to sustain your existence at least for another week and a half on a normal server by strictly raiding. If raid conditions are ideal then this shouldn’t sting much. But if you’ve all of a sudden got rivals for your farms or farms with 8 crannies you’re in a bit of a pickle. No doubt your first village is running at negative crop already. In addition, your 15 cropper needs resources too if it’s ever going to be the uber offensive village you wish it to be. You could find yourself falling behind in a major way and micromanaging the resources you are bringing in to provide crop for your troops and build wheat fields and Crop Infrastructure (whse, market, granary, flour mill) in your 15 cropper. Once you build the crops up you’ll have to use the market or the NPC merchant to even out your resources to build your Settlement/Party Infrastructure (see below) for your third village... and as you’ll see below, it’s pretty expensive. But if you decide to use your first village to settle your third village (upgrading your Residence to lvl 20 and forgoing the upgrade of your cropper) it will cost you about 4 times the amount you would spend going the Settlement/Party Infrastructure (in your cropper) way. Also, if you don’t upgrade your second village right away then you’ll have to throw “big” parties in your first village to compensate for the Townhall you would have built in your second village. That means upgrading your first Townhall to level 10 and then having to wait twice as long for the parties to finish paying three-four times as much. Well with all that risk, what’s the reward? The security in knowing that you’ll probably have that cropper until the end of the server. It’s an underrated feeling. Having your ability to build your army secured by landing the cropper is just priceless. And if you choose to use a lot of gold, you can start to build the cropper up at a pretty nice clip. As you can see, there are pros and cons to both philosophies. You can choose whichever fits your style. Coming to an end: This is the point where your creativity begins to take over. All new villages should be started and maintained with the same methods that your first village was produced. I will leave you with village priorities and building priorities in those villages. Building Priorities: 1) RESCOURCE TILES 2) TT Rereqs i.e. RP, Barracks lvl 3, Academy lvl 5, BS lvl 3, Stables lvl 3 3) Resources tiles to TT production (Lum 1400 Clay 1800 Iron 920 Crop 240) 4) MB lvl 10 Academy lvl 10 TH lvl 1 Residnece lvl 10 5) All Resources tiles to 10 6) Stable lvl 10 or whatever you can keep up with. 7) This point is whatever you feel is good. I suggest supplying other villages and get your resources up. The absolute most important thing to do is to CONSTANTLY be building TTs! Do this above everything else. Village Priority: 1) First Village 2) 5 clayer 3) 5 lumber 4) Main Supply (Capital 4x4x4x6) (Can be subbed for 15c) 5) 15c 6) Whatever you feel you want to muster. Heros: I was incoorect saying Headuans. TT is the best Gaul hero. Most Important Highlights: Intelligent raiding i.e. Know who you can attack when. This comes with experience and common sence. Avoid Gauls. I consider Teutons as Fort Knox with every guard on vacation. You will come to love larger Teutons that have been spoiled by easy raiding. They are just holding your resources for you. Use scouts more as you attack larger players. CONSTANTLY BUILD TTS, NEVER STOP EVER. Choose your second village intelligently don’t follow the crowd. This can mean the difference between a top 10 account and a top 1000. Do not join an alliance until after 2 months on the server. You are limiting you farm allowance and possible getting yourself into something you do not want to be a part of. A simple message thanking them for their interest but you would rather wait it out and see how the server progresses will be sufficeint. Some of my best farms we're farming hiding under the shield of an alliance tag. Differing Views: Stupiderpug(a top Gaul on comx) http://forum.travian.com/showthread....78#post1087078 : -Sugguests 1) Make 1 lvl 1 field of each type, 2) Barracks build 50 phlx and raid. 3) Research Paths before TTs He feels you should be able to raid yourself to TTs in under two days. I highly doubt his claims but he seems to be substatiated by several others. This could be a path to Try. I would not suggest this in any way but I had to add as an option c69 (author of http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=68131 ) Feels I some how slighted him of his guide. 1) I do not suggest taking your tiles to 666. I think you are wasting resources on tiles that do not need to be built. I'd say lvl 1-2 Crops lvl1-2 Iron lvl 3 Clay lvl 3-4 Lumber. I suggest you don't pick up the 25% bonus just yet unless you use gold. I'd put 2:1 ratio Lumber: Iron on the marketplace and save the gold for NPC during attacks. 2) I don't agree it takes 4 days to get to TTs if you build the bare minimum as stated in the guide. You should be reseraching before day 3.