WW Tribes

[Samantha78]

At a member's request, the table below sets out the tribes of the UK's previous winners - given a debate around which wall was the best choice

https://img.skitch.com/20120307-nagtir38dnug54adm8hy7tuyxx.jpg

So from first glance, it is very unusual for a roman holder to win a server - but some do brave it and succeed with a 5x strength artefact.

For 'slow' servers, Teutons definitely outperform Gauls - but is this because they are intrinsically better, or just because people think it is the safe option?

For speed servers, Teutons and Gauls are pretty much equal - may be the higher defences make Gaul's a stronger option?

Commentary from the legendary RinTinTin's guide (which I guess many may have followed) is:


# What race is the best to choose to defend a WW?

This is an excellent question, and there’s no “right” answer. I’ve seen Romans and Teutons win servers, and I’m sure there have been plenty of Gauls that have won too (just not on the servers I have played). However, here’s sort of an analysis:

From what I've seen on servers past, nobody takes rams seriously. I've seen very few hammers that have enough rams to make a significant ding in WW villages. What does this mean to the topic at hand? Well, Roman walls are notoriously wimpy against rams. If a player takes rams seriously, that Roman wall will be down with very little effort. However, past precedence says that people will continue to lack in the ram department, making Roman walls for WW defenses very doable.

If the opposing players are not going to take rams seriously this means that a Roman will more than likely be able to enjoy their 81 percent defense bonus that the wall gives them. When you're applying that to WW defense stats, that's some serious D. In a "perfect" situation where the players forget about the need for rams, the Roman WW village is by far the very best of the best. You can't beat the bonus, and the double build feature is cool (but not really helpful for a WW village at all).

The benefits of a Roman WW village are obvious. However, if a server decides to wise up and send some rams with their hammers (perhaps a restarting server that has numerous experienced people playing them), then the Roman wall becomes as ineffective as a Phalanx is at attacking. This leads to the question of which other of the two tribes should be used to defend that WW?

Personally my favorite by far is the Teuton WW village. The Teuton wall is about 5x stronger than the Roman wall and still receives a very respectable 49% defensive bonus. Were this to be relatively even between the tribes, the Teuton wall would get 1/5 of the 81% bonus that the Romans get, but they actually receive much more than that.

Keeping your wall intact is a huge time saver and benefit to WW villages that is practically priceless. While Romans are stuck rebuilding their walls after a successful hammer, a Teuton could keep plugging away at the WW race since their walls are much more likely to hold. The WW race is a marathon, but rebuilding wall levels can cost an alliance the WW race if they are forced to do it one too many times (servers have been lost by as little as 2 hours difference in when lvl 100 of the WW finished).

Now, there are some things to be said about the Gallic wall, but with the palisade you are still taking a risk against rams. Teutons give a person the most insurance in an attack. I won't say a lot about the Gauls except that they are the middle ground.

There is one counter argument that the bonus of the Roman wall should even out the difference between it and the Teuton's Earth Wall strength. Starting out with an 81% bonus versus a 49% bonus at the beginning of the attack may even the difference. Well, I would argue that the Roman wall will be taken down so quickly in an attack that the 81% bonus is diminished to a point that is even with (or lower than) the Teuton wall strength so early in the attack that it won't matter hardly at all. If the Roman wall is taken down that quickly in the attack like I think it probably would be, then the Roman bonus is mitigated and shows why a Teuton wall is so much more beneficial. A Roman wall could be lowered by a small amount of rams and the bonus lost very quickly whereas the Teuton wall is MUCH harder to lower at all.

Summary (personal opinion): Teuton walls FTW. Roman walls if you're feeling lucky. Gaul walls if you stand by the power of the bonus and want to play the middle road.

And for pure geeks, http://archive.forum.travian.com/showthread.php?132039-Combat-system-formulas&p=1537514&viewfull=1#post1537514 is kirilloid's guide to the calculations used when rams are involved [caution: there is a chart with parabolas ;)]

[With enough useful discussion, I'll update this first post with a better summary of wisdom]

[MLGJ]

Cheers Sam.

Proves two things really, firstly most people go for a Teuton to WW hold, either for the wall bonus or may the more experience players plump for Tuets?

Secondly as I said my memory is pants as I was holding a ww the S4 server when ceejay won as a gaul

[Samantha78]

Or the less experienced plump for Teutons just cos the majority do... or those with the biggest egos tend towards teuts *and* ww holding? ;)

The significant difference between normal and speed servers is really interesting, but I've not paid enough attention to speed servers to know why it might be.

I impressed myself that I refrained from teasing you about being beaten by a Gaul and not remembering :D

[NosajDraw]

So from first glance, it is very unusual for a roman holder to win a server - but some do brave it and succeed with a 5x strength artefact.Erm, according to your table, 50% of the Roman winners did it without the strength artefact.

I've also won a WW race as Roman, not a UK server, and we took the educated guess that the server was too small had too many noobs to do a traditional approach, so in the circumstance a wall of high defence value seemed a good choice, and it was, during the entire WW race the wall was only once was taken down by 1 level and by that time we had level 100 queued.

As for Gauls, again for me its the judgement of what's out there that can attack you versus what you have that can protect you. If the troop numbers are low and the number of rammers are low too then the natars are your worst problem, and Gaul palisades are good compromise.

Bear in mind if your Roman walls can save you on average 20,000 troops each time the natars attack versus what you would have lost with Teuton walls, then come level 90 that's 160,000 extra troops to with stand the WWK's. Now when the average defence at a WW is 4 million troops, then 160k isn't a big deal, but when like on UK1 now the average defence is 300,000 to 500,000 those extra 160,000 troops is pretty major.

Basically the smaller the server the more attractive Gaul and Roman walls look and now the days of 6,000 or more players reaching end game seems long past, and instead we must be thinking the ranges of 400 to 2,000 players then some of those certainties born in the old high pop era will need to be reassessed.

[wgn]

Hard to say yet if the new t4 will effect results

[MLGJ]

Gonna try and be a good boy and not spam up this thread as I find it quite interesting, so I'll firstly say that i'm still not sure if Tuets hold WWs because of the wall bonus or it's a case of most people historically think that a Teut should be WW holder without really understanding the benefits of each tribe and therefore more alliances choose to have a Teut holder and thus the chances of a Teut winning increases. I still think that the majority of experienced players choose Teut as their tribe and therefore it's inevitable that they hold the WW and the wall bonus isn't even a consideration. At the end of the day a decent sized rammer going in before a WWK is gonna take the wall down no matter what the tribe is.


or those with the biggest egos tend towards teuts *and* ww holding? ;)

I couldn't let that go though, without saying, when you're as good as me, you can afford a big ego :P


I impressed myself that I refrained from teasing you about being beaten by a Gaul and not remembering :D

I blocked it out, you would too if you'd spent 12 months working with Papa, on the plus side was #1 defender that server which proves I was as popular then as I am now.

[wgn]

Gonna try and be a good boy and not spam up this thread as I find it quite interesting, so I'll firstly say that i'm still not sure if Tuets hold WWs because of the wall bonus or it's a case of most people historically think that a Teut should be WW holder without really understanding the benefits of each tribe and therefore more alliances choose to have a Teut holder and thus the chances of a Teut winning increases. I still think that the majority of experienced players choose Teut as their tribe and therefore it's inevitable that they hold the WW and the wall bonus isn't even a consideration. At the end of the day a decent sized rammer going in before a WWK is gonna take the wall down no matter what the tribe is.



All of the WW teams that I have been a part of have had much pre-planning and the first part of that planning is a general discussion on what tribe holds the WW. Some holders may just be offensive players who have chosen the main offense tribe but I believe that more often than not WW TEAMS will plan what tribe holds the WW. As you say, if a decent sized rammer is going to hit then that wall is going to come down whatever but for anything less than 'decent' I'd much rather have a strong teuton wall than the weak roman or gual ones.

I also believe that a big part of the success of one tribe over the other comes down to luck and while some rounds have tended to overlook large rammers meaning the romans and guals have the upper-hand with their bigger defence bonuses, other rounds may have larger numbers of rammer builders meaning a teuton wall is going to stand much stronger. Especially with the low defence numbers and larger natar attacks being seen on T4 I think I would prefer a wall than no wall meaning I would more often than not sway towards teutons as the tribe that holds my WW.

[Jakeyyy]

This thread confuses me.

So do lava lamps.

Ever wondered how the lava flows up and down?

Mindblowing.

[Tinkerballa]

The "lava" is oil, which is heated by the lamp, as it gets hotter it rises in the classic "bubbles", and as it gets cooler the "bubbles" fall. You can make one yourself with a lamp, a wine bottle, some water and some oil.

[Jakeyyy]

The "lava" is oil, which is heated by the lamp, as it gets hotter it rises in the classic "bubbles", and as it gets cooler the "bubbles" fall. You can make one yourself with a lamp, a wine bottle, some water and some oil.

Really?! :o

You must teach me the ways of the wizard.

[Tinkerballa]

Orrrr you could actually pay attention in school :D

[Fabrestuta]

Any decent wonder killer will have a rammer that precedes it therefore, in my humble opinion, a Teuton wall is the only way to go for a WW. Very few WW killers will have enough siege to knock down the wall and take out the WW so no good hammer builder will try and do both.

[Tinkerballa]

Rammers aren't sexy though, it's all about the catas, which generally means rammers are quite rare on the ground. A gaul wall if you have a decent architects, well generally be an OK bet, and significantly cut down damage. Put it this way, unless the def levels become anything less than awful, a reasonable WWK is doing damage, with or w/o a rammer.

[Fabrestuta]

Rammers aren't sexy though, it's all about the catas, which generally means rammers are quite rare on the ground. A gaul wall if you have a decent architects, well generally be an OK bet, and significantly cut down damage. Put it this way, unless the def levels become anything less than awful, a reasonable WWK is doing damage, with or w/o a rammer.

Agreed rammers aren't sexy, but a good team will have a rammer hitting right before a wonder killer. Like anvils rammers don't get enough credit but are invaluable. Look at scyllas rammer for Assassins hammer last round, on its own it was a pretty big hammer, but it flattened the wall and so took out any doubt as to whether the WW would be zeroed.
Buddy on USX a few rounds ago was the same, flipping monster 650k club hammer but they had very few rams, they preferred to spend the time on cats. Its not about res etc its about the time you have, therefore people building wonder killers would likely use that time on cats rather than trying to make cats and rams. I am sure there are exceptions but most of the wonder killers I have seen have been preceded by a rammer.

[Master Blaster]

Last round I think having a Roman wall actually went in Corins favour. It was discussed before the WW was taken and Corin was of the opinion that the wall is going to come down anyway before any big hits so you may as well take the benefits of a roman wall for all the smaller hits and guys that hit on there own - and yes there are plenty that do (as well as that still double target). There seemed to be an abundance of enemy rammers hit his wall, a lot were in fact wasted so a tuet wall would have made no difference but there were numerous hits that were sent without a rammer so the extra wall bonus paid off handsomely.

[Fabrestuta]

Fair enough TS but it's much easier/faster to rebuild a few wall levels than it is to rebuild WW/GW/GG. As for double targetting, true dat. I think a lot of people assume that when they have double shot they need to set both slots to hit what they want, not realising it actually means they are splitting their cats even if targeting one building (I am going by what I saw in comx skype chat to come to that conclusion).

[wgn]

I know when I first started travian I didn't realise there was an option for hit nothing. Its not very clear when to choose nothing you must select nothing...

[Fabrestuta]

That probably should be made clearer for new players wgn, but if you have enough cats to even dent a WW you should know you don't need to set both slots to hit it when you are attacking.
As I said on comx a couple of people double targeted several times because they really thought that was what they had to do......and had nice troop counts and played quite a few servers!!!!!!!
Are you serious? you have obviously been playing for X amount of time and you don't understand how catting works with a level 20 RP? Sorry man, no excuse for that.

[Master Blaster]

Yes the thing is these guys with nice sized hammers should really have been carting and chiefing all round so should have it worked out by the time it comes to hitting a wonder ?