I thought I would start this thread to provide all the information I know about employing Administrators (Senators, Chiefs, and Chieftains). If done properly, this operation provides a nice slingshot effect for your towns. If mistakes are made, however, a failed conquest can be costly. This is a high risk, high reward endeavor. Everything you do in planning and execution should be geared toward reducing the risk of failure (or conversely increasing the chances of success).
To my way of thinking, there are 5 steps to the process of conquest. I will list them and then discuss in depth.
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management
II. Target selection
III. Conquest preparation
IV. Execution
V. Consolidation
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management:
This is more of a passive measure, and requires careful long range planning. As most of you should grasp by now, there are two prerequisites required before you can found a new village.
-Enough CP
-Available expansion slot in palace/residence
Most people seem to be forward thinking about the CP. We construct buildings that provide us CP and we throw celebrations for nice boosts. Culture Points are a fairly straightforward concept.
Expansion slots are less clear at first. As you know, you can expand from a village with a residence 2 times (L10 and L20) and from a village with a palace 3 times (L10, L15, and L20). Most people, initially, expand in a series of L10 residences, and thus use one of their two expansion slots (for a non-capital / non-palace village). This means there is only one expansion slot available for future Administrators, and the pre-requisite is to go to L20 residence. Something else to keep in mind is that once you use an expansion slot for a village, that village will count against your expansion slot unless it is conquered or destroyed. For instance, if you conquer an enemy's village A, and he expanded from village A prior to conquest, whatever village he founded still counts against the expansion slot of village A.
Now, let me interject an important concept. You do not need the minimum CP to expand in order to produce Settlers or Administrators. All that is required to produce them is an empty expansion slot in your village. You can make as many Settlers or Administrators as there are available expansion slots. The only thing required is for the residence or palace to be a high enough level to unlock that slot.
This entire preamble leads to the real planning piece. You can expand one village to the next, by constructing an endless series of L10 residences. The consequence is that you are burning an expo slot in each village, and only leaving yourself with one slot open. Thus, you can only have one Administrator per village (or two from your capital) if you follow this course.
An alternative route is to break the cycle of one village expanding from the next by expanding a second time from an older village. I recommend this course of action. This means that your most recent village will maintain its 2 expansion slots, or 3 in the case of a capital. As it pertains to conquest, the more Administrators the merrier. If you plan for it, you can have a regular village or a capital provide a permanent 2 or 3 Administrator ‘welcome wagon’ wave. So long as the actual conquering is done by another village’s Administrator, you will never lose the ‘welcome wagon’ Administrators or the expansion slots they occupy.
Finally, an advanced tactic is to conquer your own villages from yourself. For instance, let's say you expanded once from your capital city, but now you want to make three Administrators there. Well, you can have a different city conquer the town that your capital founded. Now your capital has all three of its expansion slots back. Keep in mind though, the town that gets conquered will have all its buildings reduced by one level, all researches will be deleted, and all troops/units will be deleted. So consider the full circumstances before you embark on this tactic.
To my way of thinking, there are 5 steps to the process of conquest. I will list them and then discuss in depth.
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management
II. Target selection
III. Conquest preparation
IV. Execution
V. Consolidation
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management:
This is more of a passive measure, and requires careful long range planning. As most of you should grasp by now, there are two prerequisites required before you can found a new village.
-Enough CP
-Available expansion slot in palace/residence
Most people seem to be forward thinking about the CP. We construct buildings that provide us CP and we throw celebrations for nice boosts. Culture Points are a fairly straightforward concept.
Expansion slots are less clear at first. As you know, you can expand from a village with a residence 2 times (L10 and L20) and from a village with a palace 3 times (L10, L15, and L20). Most people, initially, expand in a series of L10 residences, and thus use one of their two expansion slots (for a non-capital / non-palace village). This means there is only one expansion slot available for future Administrators, and the pre-requisite is to go to L20 residence. Something else to keep in mind is that once you use an expansion slot for a village, that village will count against your expansion slot unless it is conquered or destroyed. For instance, if you conquer an enemy's village A, and he expanded from village A prior to conquest, whatever village he founded still counts against the expansion slot of village A.
Now, let me interject an important concept. You do not need the minimum CP to expand in order to produce Settlers or Administrators. All that is required to produce them is an empty expansion slot in your village. You can make as many Settlers or Administrators as there are available expansion slots. The only thing required is for the residence or palace to be a high enough level to unlock that slot.
This entire preamble leads to the real planning piece. You can expand one village to the next, by constructing an endless series of L10 residences. The consequence is that you are burning an expo slot in each village, and only leaving yourself with one slot open. Thus, you can only have one Administrator per village (or two from your capital) if you follow this course.
An alternative route is to break the cycle of one village expanding from the next by expanding a second time from an older village. I recommend this course of action. This means that your most recent village will maintain its 2 expansion slots, or 3 in the case of a capital. As it pertains to conquest, the more Administrators the merrier. If you plan for it, you can have a regular village or a capital provide a permanent 2 or 3 Administrator ‘welcome wagon’ wave. So long as the actual conquering is done by another village’s Administrator, you will never lose the ‘welcome wagon’ Administrators or the expansion slots they occupy.
Finally, an advanced tactic is to conquer your own villages from yourself. For instance, let's say you expanded once from your capital city, but now you want to make three Administrators there. Well, you can have a different city conquer the town that your capital founded. Now your capital has all three of its expansion slots back. Keep in mind though, the town that gets conquered will have all its buildings reduced by one level, all researches will be deleted, and all troops/units will be deleted. So consider the full circumstances before you embark on this tactic.
I thought I would start this thread to provide all the information I know about employing Administrators (Senators, Chiefs, and Chieftains). If done properly, this operation provides a nice slingshot effect for your towns. If mistakes are made, however, a failed conquest can be costly. This is a high risk, high reward endeavor. Everything you do in planning and execution should be geared toward reducing the risk of failure (or conversely increasing the chances of success).
To my way of thinking, there are 5 steps to the process of conquest. I will list them and then discuss in depth.
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management
II. Target selection
III. Conquest preparation
IV. Execution
V. Consolidation
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management:
This is more of a passive measure, and requires careful long range planning. As most of you should grasp by now, there are two prerequisites required before you can found a new village.
-Enough CP
-Available expansion slot in palace/residence
Most people seem to be forward thinking about the CP. We construct buildings that provide us CP and we throw celebrations for nice boosts. Culture Points are a fairly straightforward concept.
Expansion slots are less clear at first. As you know, you can expand from a village with a residence 2 times (L10 and L20) and from a village with a palace 3 times (L10, L15, and L20). Most people, initially, expand in a series of L10 residences, and thus use one of their two expansion slots (for a non-capital / non-palace village). This means there is only one expansion slot available for future Administrators, and the pre-requisite is to go to L20 residence. Something else to keep in mind is that once you use an expansion slot for a village, that village will count against your expansion slot unless it is conquered or destroyed. For instance, if you conquer an enemy's village A, and he expanded from village A prior to conquest, whatever village he founded still counts against the expansion slot of village A.
Now, let me interject an important concept. You do not need the minimum CP to expand in order to produce Settlers or Administrators. All that is required to produce them is an empty expansion slot in your village. You can make as many Settlers or Administrators as there are available expansion slots. The only thing required is for the residence or palace to be a high enough level to unlock that slot.
This entire preamble leads to the real planning piece. You can expand one village to the next, by constructing an endless series of L10 residences. The consequence is that you are burning an expo slot in each village, and only leaving yourself with one slot open. Thus, you can only have one Administrator per village (or two from your capital) if you follow this course.
An alternative route is to break the cycle of one village expanding from the next by expanding a second time from an older village. I recommend this course of action. This means that your most recent village will maintain its 2 expansion slots, or 3 in the case of a capital. As it pertains to conquest, the more Administrators the merrier. If you plan for it, you can have a regular village or a capital provide a permanent 2 or 3 Administrator ‘welcome wagon’ wave. So long as the actual conquering is done by another village’s Administrator, you will never lose the ‘welcome wagon’ Administrators or the expansion slots they occupy.
Finally, an advanced tactic is to conquer your own villages from yourself. For instance, let's say you expanded once from your capital city, but now you want to make three Administrators there. Well, you can have a different city conquer the town that your capital founded. Now your capital has all three of its expansion slots back. Keep in mind though, the town that gets conquered will have all its buildings reduced by one level, all researches will be deleted, and all troops/units will be deleted. So consider the full circumstances before you embark on this tactic.
To my way of thinking, there are 5 steps to the process of conquest. I will list them and then discuss in depth.
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management
II. Target selection
III. Conquest preparation
IV. Execution
V. Consolidation
I. CP generation and village expansion slot management:
This is more of a passive measure, and requires careful long range planning. As most of you should grasp by now, there are two prerequisites required before you can found a new village.
-Enough CP
-Available expansion slot in palace/residence
Most people seem to be forward thinking about the CP. We construct buildings that provide us CP and we throw celebrations for nice boosts. Culture Points are a fairly straightforward concept.
Expansion slots are less clear at first. As you know, you can expand from a village with a residence 2 times (L10 and L20) and from a village with a palace 3 times (L10, L15, and L20). Most people, initially, expand in a series of L10 residences, and thus use one of their two expansion slots (for a non-capital / non-palace village). This means there is only one expansion slot available for future Administrators, and the pre-requisite is to go to L20 residence. Something else to keep in mind is that once you use an expansion slot for a village, that village will count against your expansion slot unless it is conquered or destroyed. For instance, if you conquer an enemy's village A, and he expanded from village A prior to conquest, whatever village he founded still counts against the expansion slot of village A.
Now, let me interject an important concept. You do not need the minimum CP to expand in order to produce Settlers or Administrators. All that is required to produce them is an empty expansion slot in your village. You can make as many Settlers or Administrators as there are available expansion slots. The only thing required is for the residence or palace to be a high enough level to unlock that slot.
This entire preamble leads to the real planning piece. You can expand one village to the next, by constructing an endless series of L10 residences. The consequence is that you are burning an expo slot in each village, and only leaving yourself with one slot open. Thus, you can only have one Administrator per village (or two from your capital) if you follow this course.
An alternative route is to break the cycle of one village expanding from the next by expanding a second time from an older village. I recommend this course of action. This means that your most recent village will maintain its 2 expansion slots, or 3 in the case of a capital. As it pertains to conquest, the more Administrators the merrier. If you plan for it, you can have a regular village or a capital provide a permanent 2 or 3 Administrator ‘welcome wagon’ wave. So long as the actual conquering is done by another village’s Administrator, you will never lose the ‘welcome wagon’ Administrators or the expansion slots they occupy.
Finally, an advanced tactic is to conquer your own villages from yourself. For instance, let's say you expanded once from your capital city, but now you want to make three Administrators there. Well, you can have a different city conquer the town that your capital founded. Now your capital has all three of its expansion slots back. Keep in mind though, the town that gets conquered will have all its buildings reduced by one level, all researches will be deleted, and all troops/units will be deleted. So consider the full circumstances before you embark on this tactic.
IV. Execution
I may expand this section at some point in the future. Each plan is going to be unique dependent on the local circumstances, and I am not going to cover them all. There are, however, several considerations that are common to every conquest operation.
-Loyalty. The end goal of each conquest is to reduce your enemy’s village to 0 loyalty. At that juncture, you conquer the town. There are several factors to keep in mind when reducing loyalty (this is a copy / paste from the Travian forums):
The factors for loyalty are:
1. tribe of the attacker
2. a random factor
3. big party/parties of the attacker
4. big party of the defender
5. the difference of the total population between attacker and defender
at 1: It is said, that the normal percentage a senator/chief/chieftain takes is:
a) between 20-30% for romans (senator)
between 20-25% for gauls and teutons (chief, chieftain)
at 2: As you can see before, there is a random factor. This factor seems to be +/- 2.5% for gauls/teutons and +/- 5% for romans.
at 3: If the attacker has a big party in a village, you will get +5% for each senator from this village. This only works for senators from this village!
at 4: If the defender is having a big party in the attacked village, the senator(s) work -5% for each senator. Note, the big party must be in the attacked village!
at 5: This is the most unknown part. The values i said in point 1 (should) only work, when attacker and defender have the same total population (not only population of the attacking/defending villages!) or the defender has a bigger total population. If the defender is smaller, he gets something called "moral bonus". As bigger the difference is, as more bonus the defender gets (e.g., as less the senators will take down loyalty). I can't give you a exact value, but i had for example some chieftains (gaul), that took only 13% each without big parties of attacker or defender. When i remember correctly the defender had around 20% of the attackers population. As you can see, this moral bonus can influence the amount of loyalty pretty much.-Destroying the residence / palace: Plan to do so with each wave. Think of your opponent’s main building level, and how long it takes to get a residence. If he gets a residence in place, your Administrator will not have any effect on the town's Loyalty. Thus, it's a wasted trip.
-The Administrator that conquers the village will disappear and merge with the village. The expansion slot from the village that sent him will be consumed as well. Also, his escorting forces will stay in the town as reinforcements. This is tricky if you have extra attack waves still incoming after the conquest. You will be attacking yourself.
-You can have several players send Administrators at a target to lower its Loyalty. The one who’s Administrator gets the Loyalty to 0 is the player who will conquer the village.
-If you are planning on making multiple roundtrips to conquer a village, consider destroying the Main Building as well as the Residence / Palace. That way, the enemy has a harder time rebuilding his Residence / Palace.
V. Consolidation:
Like Step IV, this step varies greatly depending on the plan. Just keep in mind that you need to have a sense of urgency after you conquer a town. You should have defensive reinforcements available to be sent to the town as soon as you conquer it. You need to rebuild buildings in a logical order, and quickly. Bottom-line: plan that you will be successful in your conquest, and you will be more likely to hold onto your gain.
I may expand this section at some point in the future. Each plan is going to be unique dependent on the local circumstances, and I am not going to cover them all. There are, however, several considerations that are common to every conquest operation.
-Loyalty. The end goal of each conquest is to reduce your enemy’s village to 0 loyalty. At that juncture, you conquer the town. There are several factors to keep in mind when reducing loyalty (this is a copy / paste from the Travian forums):
The factors for loyalty are:
1. tribe of the attacker
2. a random factor
3. big party/parties of the attacker
4. big party of the defender
5. the difference of the total population between attacker and defender
at 1: It is said, that the normal percentage a senator/chief/chieftain takes is:
a) between 20-30% for romans (senator)
between 20-25% for gauls and teutons (chief, chieftain)at 2: As you can see before, there is a random factor. This factor seems to be +/- 2.5% for gauls/teutons and +/- 5% for romans.
at 3: If the attacker has a big party in a village, you will get +5% for each senator from this village. This only works for senators from this village!
at 4: If the defender is having a big party in the attacked village, the senator(s) work -5% for each senator. Note, the big party must be in the attacked village!
at 5: This is the most unknown part. The values i said in point 1 (should) only work, when attacker and defender have the same total population (not only population of the attacking/defending villages!) or the defender has a bigger total population. If the defender is smaller, he gets something called "moral bonus". As bigger the difference is, as more bonus the defender gets (e.g., as less the senators will take down loyalty). I can't give you a exact value, but i had for example some chieftains (gaul), that took only 13% each without big parties of attacker or defender. When i remember correctly the defender had around 20% of the attackers population. As you can see, this moral bonus can influence the amount of loyalty pretty much.-Destroying the residence / palace: Plan to do so with each wave. Think of your opponent’s main building level, and how long it takes to get a residence. If he gets a residence in place, your Administrator will not have any effect on the town's Loyalty. Thus, it's a wasted trip.
-The Administrator that conquers the village will disappear and merge with the village. The expansion slot from the village that sent him will be consumed as well. Also, his escorting forces will stay in the town as reinforcements. This is tricky if you have extra attack waves still incoming after the conquest. You will be attacking yourself.
-You can have several players send Administrators at a target to lower its Loyalty. The one who’s Administrator gets the Loyalty to 0 is the player who will conquer the village.
-If you are planning on making multiple roundtrips to conquer a village, consider destroying the Main Building as well as the Residence / Palace. That way, the enemy has a harder time rebuilding his Residence / Palace.
V. Consolidation:
Like Step IV, this step varies greatly depending on the plan. Just keep in mind that you need to have a sense of urgency after you conquer a town. You should have defensive reinforcements available to be sent to the town as soon as you conquer it. You need to rebuild buildings in a logical order, and quickly. Bottom-line: plan that you will be successful in your conquest, and you will be more likely to hold onto your gain.
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