This is a long post, I apologise in advance. There's a TL;DR at the end.
Introduction
There is currently a raging debate over the troop merging idea in Travian, and whether or not it'd add or remove tactical depth. A lot of this has been focused on the idea that somehow offense is relatively underpowered and it needs to be compensated for. I somewhat disagree,and I also disagree with the idea of troop merging for reasons that have been said on this forum a thousand times.
Before I go into my suggestion, let's look at the state of play between offence and defence.
Offence
Requires building a hammer in one village takes a long time and requires a dedicated infrastructure.
Because hammers are centralised, their villages are vulnerable to attacks/chiefing.
Information asymmetry. Because of fakes, the attacker can always start a fight where they want, but the defender doesn't know where the fight will be.
When an attacker wins, they are often rewarded: building destruction with catapults, stealing artefacts, stealing resources.
Defence
Defence can be built in any number of villages and be just as effective defence building is primarily village and resource bound than time bound.
Defender has no idea which of the attacks is real and this often makes putting defence in the right place difficult.
When a defender wins, they don't gain anything other than having not lost the battle/artefact/resources.
The thing I want to focus on is the first point in each section: that hammers require dedicated infrastructure in one village to create an attack force, while defence does not. This is one of the things that makes defence and defenders less valued in the game. With a small number of factors: N defensive troops from one village are verynearly as effective as (N/5) defensive troops from five different villages with the exception of things like TS levels, hero defence bonus, etc.
Because of this, anyone can build and use defence, and there's no big advantage to be a dedicated defensive player running a large anvil. An offence player can invest in a few villages for defensive units and those units are pretty much just as good as anyone else's.
Large army attack bonus
(This is not a particularly good name, imagine a good name for it here.)
What if having a large chunk of units from one village was rewarded? It's obviously a difficult management task to set up the infrastructure, to keep building 24/7, to feed all those troops so why is there very little advantage to doing it?
Say there's a rule:
For every N upkeep worth of units from a village in a battle, those troops gain 1% extra attack/defense. (Optional: up to a maximum of X%)
For the sake of this discussion, let's say that for every 1000 crops worth of units, they gain 1% extra attack/defense, up to a maximum of 30%.
You'll note that I am explicitly powering up large attack forces as well as large defence forces to equal extents.
Let's run some numbers
You can probably skip this bit unless you're particularly into big wall of numbers.
These numbers are rough, for sure. If anyone has any ideas for more/counterexamples, I'd be interested.
Current version of travian:
There's a hammer of:
12000 axes
5000 Tks
Total resources: 13.5 million
Total wheat: 27000
Total time: ~3.5 weeks out of Barracks/Stable 20
Attacking a defence of:
20000 phalanx
10000 druids
Total resources: 17.2 million
Total wheat: 40000
Total time: ~4.5 weeks for the phalanx, ~5.5 weeks for the druids out of Barracks/Stable 20
For the purposes of this, I'll ignore walls, morale bonuses and hero bonuses/weapons and assume everything is level 20 in the forge.
The defender wins with 77%losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2....10000U20,,,,20
Suggested 4 small groups
What if we use our new rule?Let's say that this defence is made up of 4 equal armies of 5000 phalanx and 2500 druids.
Hammer of:
12000 axes
5000 Tks
Total resources: 13.5 million
Total wheat: 27000
Total time: ~3.5 weeks
Defence of:
4*5000 phalanx
4*2500 druids
Total resources: 17.2 million
Total wheat: 4*10000
Total time: ~1 week for the phalanx, ~1.5 weeks for the druids each.
Using our new rule, the attacking hammer gets a 27% (27000/1000)attack bonus,while each of the 4 defending armies get a 10% (10000/1000) defence bonus.
(Note, I'm simulating this by adding 27% and 10% extra troops respectively to a kilroid simulation.)
The defender wins with 93%losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2...._15240_6350U!b#d:r2#r2u22000,,,,11000U20,,,,20
Suggested Two anvils
Hammer: same as before
Defence: 2*10000 phalanx,2*5000 druids
Total resources: 17.2 million
Total wheat: 20000 + 20000
Total time: 2 weeks for the phalanx, 2.5 weeks for the druids
Attacking hammer gets a 27% bonus, the 2 defending armies get a 20% bonus.
(See note re: how I'm simulating this)
The defender wins with 83%losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2...._15240_6350U!b#d:r2#r2u24000,,,,12000U20,,,,20
Suggested One massive anvil
Hammer: as before
Defence: as in currently example
Attacking hammer gets 27% bonus, defending army gets 30% bonus.
Defender wins with 74% losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2...._15240_6350U!b#d:r2#r2u26000,,,,13000U20,,,,20
Suggested 10 small anvils
Hammer: as before
Defence: 10*2000 phalanx,10*1000 druids
Total time: under a week for both druids and phalanx.
Attacking hammer gets 27% bonus, each defending army gets a 4% bonus.
Attacker wins with 99% losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2....10400U20,,,,20
Analysis
The idea of this suggestion is to reward large anvils and the skill required to build them,by making hammers better against defence that comes from a variety of sources.
Let's look at the cases:
*Current travian is markedany because the amount of time it takes is dependant on the number of villages being used could be anywhere from a day to the whole 4.5/5.5 weeks to build the full anvil.
What is clear is that this makes hammers more effective against defense that's cobbled together from different armies while still keeping the effectiveness of large anvils at the same level or perhaps even improving it, for mid game armies.
Other considerations
If you were going to implement something like this, there are a few things you need to consider:
The promised TL;DR
The TL;DR version of this is:
Summary
This is an idea I thought up in a Skype chat, and isn't fully formed and there are lots of considerations to take into account. But I believe if you want to change the landscape of travian, particularly the balance between offence and defence, this is a better place to start looking than troop merging.
So, thoughts?
Introduction
There is currently a raging debate over the troop merging idea in Travian, and whether or not it'd add or remove tactical depth. A lot of this has been focused on the idea that somehow offense is relatively underpowered and it needs to be compensated for. I somewhat disagree,and I also disagree with the idea of troop merging for reasons that have been said on this forum a thousand times.
Before I go into my suggestion, let's look at the state of play between offence and defence.
Offence
Requires building a hammer in one village takes a long time and requires a dedicated infrastructure.
Because hammers are centralised, their villages are vulnerable to attacks/chiefing.
Information asymmetry. Because of fakes, the attacker can always start a fight where they want, but the defender doesn't know where the fight will be.
When an attacker wins, they are often rewarded: building destruction with catapults, stealing artefacts, stealing resources.
Defence
Defence can be built in any number of villages and be just as effective defence building is primarily village and resource bound than time bound.
Defender has no idea which of the attacks is real and this often makes putting defence in the right place difficult.
When a defender wins, they don't gain anything other than having not lost the battle/artefact/resources.
The thing I want to focus on is the first point in each section: that hammers require dedicated infrastructure in one village to create an attack force, while defence does not. This is one of the things that makes defence and defenders less valued in the game. With a small number of factors: N defensive troops from one village are verynearly as effective as (N/5) defensive troops from five different villages with the exception of things like TS levels, hero defence bonus, etc.
Because of this, anyone can build and use defence, and there's no big advantage to be a dedicated defensive player running a large anvil. An offence player can invest in a few villages for defensive units and those units are pretty much just as good as anyone else's.
Large army attack bonus
(This is not a particularly good name, imagine a good name for it here.)
What if having a large chunk of units from one village was rewarded? It's obviously a difficult management task to set up the infrastructure, to keep building 24/7, to feed all those troops so why is there very little advantage to doing it?
Say there's a rule:
For every N upkeep worth of units from a village in a battle, those troops gain 1% extra attack/defense. (Optional: up to a maximum of X%)
For the sake of this discussion, let's say that for every 1000 crops worth of units, they gain 1% extra attack/defense, up to a maximum of 30%.
You'll note that I am explicitly powering up large attack forces as well as large defence forces to equal extents.
Let's run some numbers
You can probably skip this bit unless you're particularly into big wall of numbers.
These numbers are rough, for sure. If anyone has any ideas for more/counterexamples, I'd be interested.
Current version of travian:
There's a hammer of:
12000 axes
5000 Tks
Total resources: 13.5 million
Total wheat: 27000
Total time: ~3.5 weeks out of Barracks/Stable 20
Attacking a defence of:
20000 phalanx
10000 druids
Total resources: 17.2 million
Total wheat: 40000
Total time: ~4.5 weeks for the phalanx, ~5.5 weeks for the druids out of Barracks/Stable 20
For the purposes of this, I'll ignore walls, morale bonuses and hero bonuses/weapons and assume everything is level 20 in the forge.
The defender wins with 77%losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2....10000U20,,,,20
Suggested 4 small groups
What if we use our new rule?Let's say that this defence is made up of 4 equal armies of 5000 phalanx and 2500 druids.
Hammer of:
12000 axes
5000 Tks
Total resources: 13.5 million
Total wheat: 27000
Total time: ~3.5 weeks
Defence of:
4*5000 phalanx
4*2500 druids
Total resources: 17.2 million
Total wheat: 4*10000
Total time: ~1 week for the phalanx, ~1.5 weeks for the druids each.
Using our new rule, the attacking hammer gets a 27% (27000/1000)attack bonus,while each of the 4 defending armies get a 10% (10000/1000) defence bonus.
(Note, I'm simulating this by adding 27% and 10% extra troops respectively to a kilroid simulation.)
The defender wins with 93%losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2...._15240_6350U!b#d:r2#r2u22000,,,,11000U20,,,,20
Suggested Two anvils
Hammer: same as before
Defence: 2*10000 phalanx,2*5000 druids
Total resources: 17.2 million
Total wheat: 20000 + 20000
Total time: 2 weeks for the phalanx, 2.5 weeks for the druids
Attacking hammer gets a 27% bonus, the 2 defending armies get a 20% bonus.
(See note re: how I'm simulating this)
The defender wins with 83%losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2...._15240_6350U!b#d:r2#r2u24000,,,,12000U20,,,,20
Suggested One massive anvil
Hammer: as before
Defence: as in currently example
Attacking hammer gets 27% bonus, defending army gets 30% bonus.
Defender wins with 74% losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2...._15240_6350U!b#d:r2#r2u26000,,,,13000U20,,,,20
Suggested 10 small anvils
Hammer: as before
Defence: 10*2000 phalanx,10*1000 druids
Total time: under a week for both druids and phalanx.
Attacking hammer gets 27% bonus, each defending army gets a 4% bonus.
Attacker wins with 99% losses:
http://travian.kirilloid.ru/warsim2....10400U20,,,,20
Analysis
The idea of this suggestion is to reward large anvils and the skill required to build them,by making hammers better against defence that comes from a variety of sources.
Let's look at the cases:
| Test | Def Build Time | % loss against hammer |
| Current travian | Any* | 77% |
| Suggestion: 4 small anvils | 1/1.5 weeks | 93% |
| Suggestion: 2 anvils | 2/2.5 weeks | 83% |
| Suggestion: 1 anvil | 4.5/5.5 weeks | 74% |
| Suggestion: 10 anvils | <1 week | 100% |
*Current travian is markedany because the amount of time it takes is dependant on the number of villages being used could be anywhere from a day to the whole 4.5/5.5 weeks to build the full anvil.
What is clear is that this makes hammers more effective against defense that's cobbled together from different armies while still keeping the effectiveness of large anvils at the same level or perhaps even improving it, for mid game armies.
Other considerations
If you were going to implement something like this, there are a few things you need to consider:
- What numbers of N and X work best? i.e. how well should this bonus scale, and where should the cap be? Should there be a cap at all? (Probably?)
- What does this do to small alliances fighting large alliances? Does it tip the balance in the favour of the large alliances even more? If so, how could this be compensated for morale bonus change maybe?
- What does this do to WW defence and WWKs?
- What's the impact if you take into account walls and heroes?
- Does this actually make hammers too good, given the information asymmetry aspect? If so, what could be done to compensate? (I can see this being a bigger problem in the midgame)
- Does this penalise people who want to make small villages for defence too much?
The promised TL;DR
The TL;DR version of this is:
- There's no real encouragement to build massive great big anvils right now as opposed to splitting it up into smaller villages.
- Let's reward defence players who are good at their jobs and make them more valued.
- What if we made any army from the same village have extra attack/defence based on the number of troops.
- For example: a 30k crop hammer/anvil would have a 30% attack/defence bonus.
- This means hammers would hit harder
- And anvils of the same size would also hit harder
- But defence scraped together from a tonne of different villages would be relatively less effective.
- [Random numbers and simulations]
- This could work, but there are also a lot of other considerations.
Summary
This is an idea I thought up in a Skype chat, and isn't fully formed and there are lots of considerations to take into account. But I believe if you want to change the landscape of travian, particularly the balance between offence and defence, this is a better place to start looking than troop merging.
So, thoughts?