Interview Scattered Empire

Travian’s birthday is just around the corner and as you might know already, there will be another birthday special. We already published the name, Travian: Scattered Empire. In an interview, Martin, our minister of information, has been able to ask our game designer Jake about a couple of details.

What exactly is Scattered Empire?

We introduced the Roman Empire with Ancient Europe last year and will continue now with Scattered Empire. The name “Scattered Empire” stems from the Roman Empire, which broke apart. The regions that were left over now have to be conquered by the players. There will be fierce battles over complete regions and within each region, villages can be built and battles can also be fought against others. This means that players have to focus on many villages this time.

There have been annual specials for some time now. Last year it was Ancient Europe. What makes this one different to last year’s special?

In Scattered Empire there are different regions in which players can form alliances. As soon as an alliance dominates a region, a countdown will start. Once that has finished, all players of that alliance can use the artifact powers. The alliance will always produce victory points when it holds a region. Of course they can also hold multiple regions at the same time, but the more regions an alliance has, the more difficult it will be to hold them. Indeed players will accumulate the most victory points if they hold multiple regions over a longer period of time or hold a region for the longest time, respectively. This increases the chances of winning the server.

Since you’re talking about victory points. The normal Travian: Legends endgame depends on the Wonder of the World. In birthday special versions it’s always slightly different. How does it work in Scattered Empire?

Usually we have the Wonder of the World in Travian: Legends, where all attention is on just a few villages. Large armies stand together and the numbers are ever increasing. When so many troops are all in one place, the crop counter quickly drops down very low and logistical problems arise. In Scattered Empire we want to add a slight change to that challenge. It’s no longer about having everything focused on one place, but we want to spread the whole thing out more. The goal is to have more smaller skirmishes. Each attack, even on smaller targets will count, so the overall sequence of events will change.

At the same time there is no dynamic end, but a pre-set duration of the server.

Exactly. We have a server runtime of 200 days, so there won’t be issues with planning more and more and then all of a sudden the server is over and someone else won it. There will also be an info box with a countdown, so players can prepare and plan for the end.

The birthday special is always something very extraordinary for all of us. Will there be special features as well?

Yes, we do want to try out two new features. One of them will be that players can group troops together, so for example if I train troops in two villages and then send them all to one village, I can then continue to send those troops on missions from that village. For this the troops literally “move barracks/stable”. This will cost the player some resources however.

The second feature will be that troops can be forwarded within an alliance. So if players are in the same alliance, they can forward their defensive troops directly without detour. Right now it’s very different. If us two would be in an alliance for example and I send you reinforcements, you would first need to send them back to my village, before I can send them elsewhere. Now you can forward them directly, despite them being my troops. So they no longer make detours.

What do you aim for with all these changes in Scattered Empire?

A new gaming experience. It’s a “let’s try this without touching the actual game”. This also allows us to find out which changes are popular with the players, so that they may be implemented in the normal game, too. If for example there’s a player saying “I’ve been playing Travian for five years now and no longer wanted to play, but this special sounds really interesting”, then something like the birthday special is a very good variation of the game.

To summarize it quickly: Why should we play Scattered Empire?

It will definitely be a completely different gaming experience. While at the core it is the same game, it will progress in various new ways. Instead of many large battles, there will be even more smaller battles, more hot spots and real campaigns, always with the goal: “This region is ours!”

Are you going to play as well?

Of course! I’m already playing on our internal test server and there has been a lot of positive feedback so far. Hence I will definitely also play on the public server.

Thanks for the interview, Jake.

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18 thoughts on “Interview Scattered Empire

  1. Please lower the production. With 4.4 theres an over kill in resources. Also the cranny tend to be way too strong. Simming is an utteryly boring yet dominant strategy right now. Bring T3.2 back (or older) with real raid bonusses.

    Ps: also give a real hero bonus to guals, let troops return xx% quicker.

  2. How much would it cost to transfer the troops to a different village? I ask because if it is more than two times the cost of the troop build cost, you would really never want to transfer troops — unless you’re forced into a bad situation.

    1. Hi,
      the merging of troops will cost two times the troop training. Good or Bad? In the end the players will decide.

      Cheers
      Tinker 🙂

      1. No change in production speed, so I think it’s relatively good. It won’t change the game hardly at all. If you want to see actual change, you’ll need to lower it below 2x.

  3. Hello Steverino.

    Thanks for the interview. It gave some interesting insights on the new server. If memory serves me well, it (finally) tries out some features that older gamers like myself were hoping to see implemented in the 3.6 version …
    Can’t wait to try it out. Plus, I just loved that Europe map (although a bit too big if I may).
    When will you inform us on the starting dates of the servers according their region?

    Cheers.

  4. In Travian Browsergame youtube channel’s video “Travian: Scattered Empire – New features part 3” I can see that troops can be merged with resources OR with 10 gold. It is very important that this merging with gold is removed. If it’s not removed, then it’s impossible to defend from attacks.
    Let’s say the offer builds an army in his capital, then sends his settlers 10 cells away from me, and after his new village is founded, he just sends his off as reinforcement to that 2pop village of his. His reinforcement arrives – he merges his offence to that small village – and attacks me. As a result I have no time to react and to defend myself.
    Offers will have several villages scattered all around, and will make attacks from these small villages. And you’ll never know where his reinforcements go to.
    So: let’s have a possibility to merge with resources only, NOT with gold. Otherwise such game makes no sense.

    1. Hm, good alternative: add a restriction that using gold only smaller army can be merged into larger army. Maximum amount of units in one merge – not greater than the current troop count in that new village. So if there are 10 troops in the destination village, it would take about 17 merges to merge 100 000 troops: first merge 9 additional troops, then 18 (less than 10+9), then 36 (less than 10+9+18), then 72, etc.
      17 merge operations to gold-merge one direction is quite big investment, one would not do that often..

  5. IF its true this game has become an even bogger joke since the ridiculus actions and advantures. What a bullshit is that.

  6. I see that in S 19 CN Alliance are being awarded 150 victory points per day but they only have one region with population above 10,000 Please explain why the victory points are being awarded.

  7. You actually make it appear so easy together with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something that I feel I’d never understand. It kind of feels too complex and extremely extensive for me. I’m taking a look ahead in your subsequent put up, I will attempt to get the dangle of it!|

  8. I have been browsing on-line greater than three hours as of late, yet I by no means discovered any interesting article like yours. It’s beautiful price sufficient for me. In my view, if all web owners and bloggers made good content material as you probably did, the web can be much more helpful than ever before.|

  9. how are victory points calculated?
    if players of leading ally of a region(>50%) holds more treasuries do they affect victory points? i mean, no.of treasuries shall affect the victory points?

  10. I agree with one of the comments above. It should not be possible to merge a greater quantity of troops into a new village than already exist in the new village.

    As we have seen, with the use of gold, players are transferring 70,000 troops around the map and destroying enemy villages, purely because they are happy to spend gold. If this is the objective of Travian, I can see a number of players leaving this version of the game.

    It should take longer for the enemy to build an army in a new village than is currently the case.

  11. In regard to the cauldron you get one free spin per day that’s far enough but I have a major problem with the pay gold for extra spins. The lottery, fruit machines and betting on random out comings like sports etc is betting and only allowed to certain age groups depending on the countries laws

    My question is how does travian get round this as gold is technically money/currency and a minor using gold given by his/hers parents can access this feature

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