All About Hero

This small guide can help you getting a good hero (level 60+) relatively fast... or at least to make you save time and reviving -resourse. I wrote the first hald, Caius Cassius the second one. Enjoy the reading.


--> Description (from travian FAQs)

Prerequisites: Hero's mansion level 1
The moment you have a hero's mansion level one you can make a normal unit a hero. This means that you need a stable or barracks before you actually can create a hero.

The hero can be send as a reinforcement to other villages like every other unit. However if the village is yours and you have built a hero's mansion there prior to sending the hero, you can use the hero from this village as if it had been created there.

When a hero is trained he has has 5 skill points that can be used to increase his 5 abilities. Ability levels can be increased up to level 100. Each time a hero gains a level he earns 5 additional ability points that can be used to increase his 5 ability levels.

• Offense: Points put into this ability increase the attack value of the hero.
• Defense: Points put into this ability increase the defense value of the hero. (The ratio of defense against infantry/calvary stays the same.)
• Off-Bonus: Points put into this ability increase the attack value of the whole army by 0.2% per level (maximum of 20%). This bonus only applies if the hero is attacking with the army.
• Def-Bonus: Points put into this ability increase the defense value of the whole army by 0.2% per level (maximum of 20%) This bonus only applies if the hero is defending with the army. Other defending troops not under your control will remain unaffected by this bonus.
• Regeneration: Points put into this ability increase the regeneration rate of the hero.

After upgrading a Hero's mansion to level 10, you can use your hero to annex oases in your surroundings. At building level 10 one oasis can be annexed, at level 15 two and with a Hero's mansion level 20 three. The oases you want to annex have to be within the 7x7 square around your village.



--> Which unit should be my hero?

There are 3 things you should take into account while making this choice:
- 3 out of 5 attributes of your hero do not depend on what type of unit your hero is (Regen, Off & Def bonus). Only Attack and Defense do vary depending on the type of unit you pick.
- Each unit has its cost. Clubs are cheap, Teuton Knights are expensive. This doesn't change at hero level: reviving a level 50 TK is way more expensive than reviving a level 50 club.
- Speed. Your hero is often send alone on mission (against oases or poorly defended farms) or with cavalry-only armies for raids. The price of this slow-down could be high: with a TT hero you can make way more attack (get way more bounties) than with a swordman.

Said that, here you go with an overview of the most popular school-of-thought:

• Standard Choice:
Normally, you should chose the strongest unit at your disposal: Teuton Knight, Equites Caesaris or Haeduan. That will grant you the highest values in Attack, which is what most people are looking for and, in general, what helps you the most at the beginning in getting more experience points for your hero.

• Farmer's Choice:
A good farmer should use the fastest troops at his disposal: Teuton Knights, Equites Imperatoris or Theutates Thunder. If you have such raiding forces you surely need a hero that doesn't slow you down. What you lose in terms of Attack and Defense (for example, a TT won't get as high as a Haeduan in neither values), is more than compensated by the speed at which your hero will grow and get levels (a TT hero allows you to raid more farms in one day than a with Haeduan).

• Defender's Choice:
Paladins/Spears, Druidriders/Phalanx, Praetorians(Legios) can be used as well. They'll grant you a higher def/cost ratio.

• Units I suggest not to use:
Clubs, Swordsman, Imperians... I'd say don't use them as heros. Infantry heros should be def units only.



--> How to get experience points and where to spend them

To get experience points you must kill troops, no matter if you do it in attack or in defense. However, it wouldn't be that wise to get heavily and often under attack just to improve your hero's skills... that's why you'd prefer to attack . Farms a part (your hero will soon learn to love small bunches of defenders), Oases are the the place where to gain points, especially at the beginning.

Your first mission against animals will be most likely suicidal ones. Don't worry though: reviving costs are low at the beginning. Spend you first points on attack: that will make your hero stronger (and therefore more resistant), but don't forget regeneration... Suiciding missions aren't such a big deal, yet it's better if you can survive

Each time your hero moves up one level he gets 5 points. My advice is to spread them like this: 4 points in attack, 1 in regeneration. This way you should be able to grow him at a good pace without having him dead to many times.

Another good reason to manage your hero like this is that at the beginning you don't have a big army, so spending points in Off or Def bonus would do you less good than spending them in Attack or Defense. However, it shouldn't take long before the situation changes... as I assume you'll be training an army as soon as you can.

From this point onwards it's impossible to draw a universal strategy appliable to everyone... but I surely can give you some general tips:

• Regeneration: do not spend more than 20-25 points there as it'll do you no good at all.
• Attack: once you've spent 50 points there, your hero is able to face alone any amount of animals in an oase (then obviously a phalanx hero might need more than 50 points while a Equites Caesaris less). If you wonder when to switch from Attack to Off bonus, this could be the turning point.
• Defense: this skill is often (and rightly) left behind. First of all 'cause Def bonus starts to be more convenient that Defense early in the game: it's not that difficult to gather a nice def army since you can group together troops from different villages. Second reason is that many players prefer to have a second hero, purely defensive. An hero you can cheaply revive when your off hero is in purgatory (or more likely in hell ) and serve you well in delicate situations.



--> Experience point formula

Knowing how many kills you need to get your hero up of one level is simple. You just have to multiply the current level of you hero per 100. So, to go from level 3 to level 4 you need to kill 300. Please note that this number is a crop value. So you can either kill 300 infantry units, say spearfighters, or 100 Teuton Knights.

The most obvious and most important consequence of this fact is that the stronger your hero is, the more difficult it is to improve him. There are a number of practical implications, so let me just give one clear example.

You just used your big fat army against a World Wonder of an enemy clan. Your strong offensive hero, say level 55, died with honour during the mission. Now you just have def troops and want to help defending our own Wonder. The question is, do you revive your hero (who had no def bonus points) or do you make a brand new one?
Easy answer: you make a brand new one. This way, a part from saving a lot of time and resourses (your dead hero costs you little less than 1 million resourses and takes more than 3-4 days to come back to life), you make it easier for him to get def bonus points (which is what you need now that you're only reinforcing the WW):

- Level 55 hero: needs 5500 kills to go up one level and get 5 points in def bonus.
- New hero: with 5500 kills this hero goes up of 10 levels, getting 50 points.



--> Combat simulator to find out how many animals my hero can cope with on his own?
There are several ways to calculate such attack damage but I will describe you what I believe as the easiest one: using normal simulator.
According to the attack value your hero has you should try to estimate an amount of units of the same type which have equal or less attacking value than your hero. You should then simulate the raid attack against the oasis using any normal simulator but entering your hero as a # of units of the same type. Example: if your hero is a TT with 900 attack points, then he's like 10 TTs.
Once the result is visible, you can estimate which % of health of the hero will be lost according to the number of units which have died from your side. If all the units you died, then your hero would as well.



--> What´s the maximum percentage of HPs the hero can lose before he dies?

90% in one battle. More than that and he dies.



--> How to recover faster?

Hero Oasis Small Attack Value Tip:

Since attacks are calculated dividing each type of unit in a same amount of % damage ( acording to their attack / defense value ), it is adviced to send some single units along with your Hero. As long as your hero does not recieve more than 90% of damage no unit should die.

Explanation:

Unit A 50 attack value > 10% Damage
Unit B 100 attack value > 20% Damage
Unit H 350 attack value > 70% Damage ( to be healed )

Total 500 attack value > 100%

With this method you can save "healing" time. The lower the Hero attacking value the more time is saved. Moreover stronger targets can be faced: The Hero on it's own could not have faced an opponent defending for a value higher than 315 (350*0.9) and now with the escort can face up to 450 (500*0.9).


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→ Example ←

Hero Equites Caesaris escorted by one single normal caesaris and imperatoris would increase the "Hero" damage by 180 and 120 respectively, = +300 "free" attack value. Although such technique is unnessesary once your Hero has a high attack, it is adviced to use it as long as your hero is not strong enough to sustain high % damages having no losses.
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I am not completely sure if this is exactly correct in theory, but it works in practice.