Farming why and How??

Farming means getting an income by regularly attacking a (set of) target(s). This income must logically be higher than its cost (like troops lost).

Playing Travian on sim-city mode grants you a steady growth, but surely leaves little to no space for tunning results and rapid growth. That's why you start farming: 'cuase there's no other way to exponentially increase your income, and therefore no other way to get bigger or stronger (or both).

Said that, and before moving over to "how" farming should be done, let me underline a number of key points related to this topic:

• Professional farming surely requires a high degree of activity ingame. However, it is mostly a matter of method rather than time: if you have one, you can profitably farm, no matter what proficiency level you're playing at.
• Although the main principles of farming are good for everyone, a different implementation can and should be done depending on which tribe you're using.


The following guide was written by an experinced player on another server.. The player that ended server in top off-rank positons. Enjoy the reading.




--> The economics of farming

Resource fields pay themselves off more quickly at lower levels than at higher levels, but even at relatively low level fields, raiding military can give you a much faster return on your investment. Consider a level 5 iron field improvement vs. a TT or two:

Current production: 22 per hour
Production at level 5: 33 per hour

Costs for upgrading to level 5:
780 | 620 | 235 | 465 |

Total resources to upgrade to level 5 would be 2100. At 11 an hour, you'll get 2100 iron from that field in 191 hours, just under 8 days.
In contrast, if you invested in TT (admittedly one of the best raiding units in the game), it would pay itself off in 14.53 full capacity raids.
Of course, that assumes full capacity raids ... no losses ... but with very active raiding, losses matter much less.



--> Finding and controlling farms

The least active players are the most attractive farms. Since they don't put a whole lot of effort into the game, you can assume that they are generally lazy and/or disinterested, and will often have resources well beyond whatever cranny size they have.

You can make yourself a map of your surrounding area and keep track of population increases to give yourself an impression of this. No population growth is generally inactive, and low is generally semi-inactive. Be careful though, crop field improvements and military growth don't show up as population increases.

(Use gettertools to find inactives and check groth of ppl)

Inactives should of course be scouted and likely hit (if nobody from the alliance is already doing so).
The best farms, however, are often slightly active ones. If you pay close attention (check daily), you can even see if they have grown or not in the last day. If they haven't, it probably means their warehouses and granaries are overflowing, and you may be able to recoup any military losses simply with the bounty you get on the first hit (if your military is large enough). These are often the best farms because other people are not already raiding them -- so you have no farming competition -- and even more so because they often don't give up completely for quite some time (logging in from time to time to build something), and so don't appear as grey on the tool, or otherwise make themselves more obvious farming targets for other players.

For these farms, however, you must control them. The key here is brutality and merciless persistence. The player already showed you a tendency to be lazy by their slow growth. Hit them again and again. Kill whatever military they build. Raid several times a day.



--> Scouting and checking allies

You need to know more than inactivity for your target though. You need to know what's waiting for you in their village, and you need to assess the likelihood that farming them could cause you problems.

Always scout before raiding. Even if you have attacked a target a dozen times, it is a good idea to scout before every raid. Players may surprise you with reinforcements, or may have built significant military and hidden it from you.

(Do not underestimate this part of the process: sending 1 scout out costs you nothing but might eventually save you thousands of raiding units, which are not just expensive to rebuild, but also, and above all, represent and income for you in terms of bounties. Having them killed could mean you lose tons of res per day.)

Look at the map. Center the map on your target, and look around to see if they have allies nearby. If you have plus, expand the map to 13x13 and do the same. Depending on how far your target is from you, and the speed of your raiding troops, you can figure out whether it is possible or not (or how likely it is), that a player will be reinforced by an ally. If they can't be reinforced, and the losses look acceptable, hit them.

Also check the map of their entire alliance:
(Agian gettertools)


Do they have members near you or our other members that might retaliate? Are they a strong alliance? Do their members seem to occupy an area of the map in force, or do they have members scattered randomly all over the map? In the latter case, you can guess that the alliance is disorganized, and reinforcements or retaliation is unlikely.



--> Dealing with reinforcements

Usually adopt an approach of "kill everything" ... kill all the reins that showed up, look around the area on the map to see who might be most likely to have reinforced (allies, personal allies, members of the same nationality) and hit them too. Think of yourself as a kind of mob boss: "U want them DEAD, U want their family DEAD, U want their house BURNED TO THE GROUND"

Of course you need to have made large investments in military to allow this, but a truly active farmer will have other farms that are constantly feeding an ever-growing military, so even temporary losses can be worthwhile.



-->Dealing with farming competition

One of your farms being hit? Depriving you of resources? Look around the map, check the players, guess who might be hitting the farm ... if you take them out, you might create yourself a new farm, and you'll also get more resources from the farms of yours they were hitting.

Teutons are especially worth keeping an eye on ... they tend to be raiders, and the cranny bonus hurts (even if you are much more active, they can get the majority of the resources from shared farms if the crannies are big). Teutons often also have weak defenses, especially when they are relatively small ... they think they will not be attacked (and usually they aren't). If they are stupid enough to have no spears (or not enough), clubs are easily wiped out by even small forces of cavalry.

(If the competion comes from within the Clan than you must settle it. Get in touch with the one who's farming you same target and find an agreement. Many rules can apply here ...who farmed first, who's closer etc... but no matter what you decide to do, there is only one thing that matters: the Clan must be better off).



--> Keeping record

I have a target list on a sheet of paper. I update it every few days. It tells me the player, their location, their population, their estimated cranny size (based on scouting and bounties), their status (active, inactive, demi-active, etc.), and the last scouting report.

This is immensely valuable. If you work hard, you see patterns. You know what times are the best times to hit particular farms. You can guess the nationality (time zone) of players that might be also hitting the same farm (and you can look around and consider likely candidates to take out).

(Keeping records might come to hand in case of disputes. If for examples a player from a friendly ally claims a target as his farm, you could well present some evidence that you've been hitting there before and for longer).



--> Always build more military

This is the hardest part. You have to be very active to allow this, and you have to have lots of farming resources. In time though, you can get to the point where you are constantly building military, 24 hours a day. When the queue of troops gets long enough (maybe 15 hours), you upgrade the level of your stable/barracks and produce troops more quickly.

Travian is a race, a race to develop. Most people think it is a race to grow in population -- they are wrong, it is a military race. If your military grows much more quickly than your neighbors, it doesn't matter whether they have a higher population than you or not. In time, you will farm them too ... or at least destroy them to take out a potential threat and potential farming competition.

Most of you will not be able to do this, it is not easy, but with enough effort and the right choices, your military can grow very quickly, and you can find yourself dominating those around you.

(Author was a purely offensive player and a hell of a good one, that's why his guide follows such an agressive pattern. So please bear in mind what farming stands for: getting an income that makes you richer than your enemies. Once you're res-rich, it's up to you to invest what you have. And while training offense surely is a first choice, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the only one. An ever-growing off army is difficult to manage, to move, to keep alive. Go for it if you're up for the challenge but don't think you're not good if you chose a different path, like being a partially defensive player too, or a crop supplier.)

Although there are other important military issues (specialization of villages, weapons and armor improvements, organization of military, capacity to rebuild quickly), your military should generally show significant growth over time. (exponential)



--> Negative crop is your friend

Lumber: 400 per hour
Clay: 762 per hour
Iron: 99 per hour
Crop: -1474 per hour

That was author's resource production in his first village in first few days ... He was plus 500 in crops in the cropper, for a total of just under -1K per hour.

It gives you an idea of what kind of resources you can generate through really active farming. I do not have crop problems at all right now, though you probably should build some more crop field improvements again soon to keep up with the military increase.

Crop is cheap on the market though. If you ever wondered why, it's because military doesn't require much crop to build, and there are other raiders out there that are constantly building military. They end up with too much crop in the early game, although later, crops can be a big problem, which is why croppers are so important for these players in particular.