Scattered Empire – A new round‏

Scattered Empire was our birthday special last year. This year the special will begin a second round. Read all the information here.

We got a lot of positive feedback for our last birthday special Scattered Empire. It was also bigger than previous birthday specials. That is why we have decided to run a second round. Jake, the responsible game designer, answered a couple of questions in an interview.

Is the idea the same as for the original?

It’s the same servers as last year, so there’s no big news. It’s rather just a new round of Scattered Empire. However, we have included a couple of changes. Right now, players see the regions as a motivation to settle far away from the center. The big map provides lots of space. That allows players to settle in peace and have a quiet life, since distances are considerable and attacks difficult. So there is less conflict right now, less interaction and fewer battles. The change also means that players cannot just settle “anywhere” right away, but that certain regions need to be unlocked first. This will make for a more thrilling game, as there will be more action at the beginning. As soon as a population of 10,000 has been reached in the region by the five best alliances (of that region), bordering regions are unlocked. Settlements across the map will therefore spread more slowly. We hope that this will make for a more exciting game on smaller servers as well.

That means the situation right now is more like “let’s settle” without real conflicts and battles?

Yes, pretty much. At the beginning everyone tries to unlock all the regions to get as many victory points as possible. That’s because it’s easier to unlock a region by constructing buildings than to conquer it by fighting. At the start it’s all about settling and not about fighting at all. We do however want to intensify the game in its early phase, so that there is more interaction and diplomacy between players, and so that players also have more targets in their vicinity. If I settle in Ireland for example, I’m all alone and don’t have the option to farm anyone. I can settle up and push myself to unlock the region as quickly as possible, which is particularly easy with a good alliance, but it gets boring pretty quickly, as nothing else happens and nobody else is there. That’s the biggest change compared to the first round of Scattered Empire.

Why a new round and what’s the aim of it?

We received so much positive feedback about Scattered Empire. That’s why we’re starting a second round. Of course, besides the Travian: Legends Tournament, we also want to offer all other players a different variation of the “normal” game, to offer them something new. We have also improved the balancing of the alchemist’s cauldron. With this new round, we’d like to find out what the improved balancing looks like on a server from start to finish and without making any changes over the course of the game.

Will there be any new features?

Apart from settling, no. We have made some minor improvements here and there, such as to the description texts for the regional population. In the crop-finder you can also now see the region; this makes finding a good cropper easier. But these are only minor user interface changes. Right now we have intensified our work on the Travian: Legends features that may also have an effect on Scattered Empires as well, since this special version is related to Travian: Legends of course.

How does Scattered Empire work?

Just like the first round. People will sign up and begin to upgrade the starting regions in order to spread out farther. We hope that there will be more fights at the start. Then players have to conquer new regions in order to use their artifact powers. The regions will produce victory points and in the end there will be great battles again.

Thank you, Jake! We hope you will join the epic battle for ancient Europe and wish you lots of fun in the new round of „Scattered Empire“!

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94 thoughts on “Scattered Empire – A new round‏

    1. Heyho Brum,

      we have planned a lot for 2016. And with that we squeezed the second round of Scattered Empire in our plans to February. Also there are already many players dropped out of the first round – and we want to offer them a new server where they can start playing again. I know, playing two servers at once can be tough, still I know that Travian players are used to find the challenge!

      Another fact is that we received lots of messages from our players to start another round in december already. Waiting till all SE servers end, the start of a new round would have been around end of April, start of May. Given the fact that we plan to create a new scenario for our birthday early September, a new round starting in May would not get finished till then. That’s why we decided to do it now 🙂

      May this helps you 😉

      Greetings
      Anny

      1. Troop forwarding sucks! Part of the skill in the game is balancing res and troop building, you take a 15c as your cap and build around it to feed it, you have to build a barrack and a forge to level up your troops, both take time and res, now you just build a barracks in a villa, build a forge in your 15c and feed it troops from all over at the cost of either res or yep GOLD … You don’t even need to build troops in your cap just feed them and up the forge and your away
        Well done you’ve taken the skill level of the game down to new lows

  1. Important question for me and my alliance: will the tournament be scattered empire? We are finishing up on our current SE server, and we don’t want to miss the only one this year. But we also do not want to play a new server while we are in end game…

    Also, how does water work with unlocking regions? If Ravenna hits 10k population, then does every region touching water (that connects to Ravenna) unlock (Like Carthage or Caledonia).

    1. Same question, very important to get an answer since the UK server start is hours away and we need to pick a quad

    2. Heyho Richard,

      to your first question: I can say, that the tournament is not planned to be Scattered Empire. As usual our annual special is a very special experience, which gives unique challenges. For that the servers don’t start often. With the new region settling mechanic, you’ll find good 15c + 150 % even in mid game, as they can’t be settled from the very start if they are in a non-central region.

      To your second question: Yes, regions which are next to each other by sea, will unlock as well. In case of Ravenna, it will unlock:
      * Aquileia
      * Salona
      * Brundisium
      * and of course Pisae.

      May this help you 😉

      Greetings
      Anny

      1. OK. Bye bye Travian. You never knew you had a good thing until it was gone.

        The cauldron makes this game SUPPPPER slanted toward Americans and their $$$. I won’t waste my money.

        1. Yep any way the dev’s can get you to use gold is a winner in their eyes
          The numbers have dropped off on regular servers, so the income has dropped, on U.K. Svr 19 you can be in the top ten ally raiders with 0 points now! This was a good game that required skill, now all you need is access to a PayPal acc and your well away
          Bring back the classic servers

        2. Hey Richard

          The alliance that won the first Scattered Empire server was Eastern European, Bulgarian I believe, Bali-Go. So no it does not slant the game towards American deep pockets. Stop making excuse for poor play.

  2. Will these new servers have Cauldron.. aka… Golderon? Players should be aware that this new feature has absolutely destroyed Scattered Empires by requiring players to spend several thousand gold to simply be competitive. Purchasing troops. Purchasing resources. Purchasing instant troop training. Purchasing additional hero adventures. Almost all players from existing Scattered Empires could not recommend any more travian games that have this feature.

    1. Heyho FMD,

      yes, there will be the Cauldron. The Cauldron has a lot of good things, too. You have the chance to win some cool extra stuff and you don’t have to pay for it.

      I hope this will help you 🙂

      Greetings
      Anny

      1. You’re killing the last client base you have. It’s sad you’re just handing this game to ruch people.

        1. No Richard,

          The accounts that are spending the most and building the fastest are still dual accounts that have 3-6 people playing at the same time. If you want to have this advantage, all you need to do is sign onto a team instead of playing solo.

          As for the cauldron I think it was designed to level the playing field against those people for solo players but since dual accounts still have access to it, it has backfired tremendously, increasing the disparity between dual and solo accounts.

      2. Anny I do hope you are joking. As a player who played with no gold on ts19.com I can assure you there is no good thing in it for anyone except the richest people on the server. That one free spin you get a day is nothing compared to spins heavy gold users buy.
        There was a gap between gold users and non or small gold users before that feature, but giving the ability to purchase troops is just crosing the line here.

        For anyone considering on joining “golderon” server I strongly advise you not to, unless you can afford to put in 400€+ a month.

      3. Hi Anny,

        Thank you for the reply. Yes, you can ‘win cool extra stuff’ for free 1x per day and might just get 100 horses or infantry. However people have the ability to drop 100,200,300 gold PER DAY and guarantee to get 400 infantry, 300 horses, 40000 resources, 2000 insta-training troops + more every single day. No player can compete with heavy gold users. Players will have 2nd villages in 3 days, and 100k troop hammers by week 8. It makes your ‘1x cool free stuff spin per day’ pretty useless in comparison.

        Scattered Empires elite players will be determined in most part by $$, rather than skill/strategy. Its sad.

      4. I was so looking forward to another SE type server, but if there’s a cauldron, then I won’t be back.. Maybe you could limit the cauldron to the one time per day free usage, that would be fair for everyone..

  3. got to say… you make me laugh…. you anounce start on 29th… only put this post up on 31.. and the thing starts on 1st…. how are teams supose to prepair… also totally disrespecting… im a leader of current leading alliance on uk19… and although we would of loved to of entred this competion…(defend our posible win) we want to finish the servers we are on… and all your doing is making more players drop off uk 19… after our players have spent money on it… not impressed….

  4. “We have also improved the balancing of the alchemist’s cauldron.”

    There is no room for balancing. If you care at all about old travian crowd coming to play SE, goldron must go. Scattered Empire server is expensive even without it (artifacts activation, troops incorporation and more than usual instabuild).

    So yes, bye, bye travian. All good things come to the end.

  5. “The Cauldron has a lot of good things, too. You have the chance to win some cool extra stuff and you don’t have to pay for it.”

    There is nothing cool about goldron. We don’t want to buy troops or troops upgrade. Period. The re is 700 people registered on uk server at the moment. Do you need more evidence that WE DO NOT WANT IT.

  6. It is sad to see such a beautiful game being ruined. I think the Scattered Empire servers is a lot of fun, but with the cauldron being added to the game it has become all about who can buy the most gold, since you can literally buy yourself resources and troops. It is simply impossible to compete with that if you’re not buying gold..

    My travian time will probably end here..

  7. I think many of us that did ts19 would LOVE to see the results of the satisfaction survey.

    My thoughts on Cauldron again for this new round of Scattered Empire.
    Yuck. Double and Triple Yuck.
    Seriously not a selling feature at all to entice people who have experienced the cauldron. While I might lurk on a server with that feature, I doubt I would willingly sign up to play.

    From our own alliance skype chat and from what is posted on the forum NO ONE thought the cauldron was a good feature. The cauldron feature allowed some very serious gold users to produce an amazing amount of offense in a short period. It takes no skill to pull 1000’s of troops out of the cauldron.

    Troop forwarding was a mixed blessing. Feeding forwarded troops back to their home base after an attack had passed was hard but was useful.

    Troop merging option was a horrendously expensive use of Gold and beyond most users – again only those with gold to burn could do that.

    The idea of unlocking adjacent regions as population grows might encourage more intense playing in the early part of the game but could very well discourage the casual player – who only logs in a couple of times a day.

  8. See, they aren’t responding to these comments because they know we are right. They probably got terrible reviews of the cauldron in the survey; however, they also saw a jump in gold purchases. They don’t care about what we want.

    I’m okay with paying money to play this game, but not okay with getting in a gold race with my opponent. There’s a BIG difference. Many of my friends live in countries where the standard of living is much lower than mine. They will never be able to keep up with my expendable income. This is just wrong.

    1. Hey Richard,

      we want to respond to your comments, and this takes some time. We want to answer as quick as possible, and also accurate and helpful. Sorry that this takes a bit – we hear you, and we take you seriously.

      Greetings
      Anny

    2. If spiked gold spending create a delusion in TG HQ here is reality: I’m one of the people who contributed to it and 1) I’m not doing it again. One time contribution. 2) My account has been deleted already. Our monthly spending was higher than usual but I think per server it’s about the same.

      If you somehow manage get 100s of people who will be willing double/triple/multiply their monthly spending they will demand totally different customer service. It’s one thing to accept buggy service if it costs $20 per month and totally different if many will get over $100 and some spend thousands.

      Yes, gold always gave an advantage, but it was like having a better bike in bike race. Even if I can I see no point entering bike race on a car and this is what happening.

  9. I will not play another server with the cauldron. Expensive and tedious. Doesn’t add anything to the game except a slot machine.

  10. I also will not play another server with the cauldron. It is a shame because SE was really quite fun otherwise. It seems like when Travian Games takes two steps forward with an awesome game design like SE, they take three steps back by adding such a “pay to win” feature like the cauldron.

  11. I don’t usually get caught up in these conversations but I felt it was necessary to echo the other sentiments that have been expressed. I have been playing travian since 2009 through the good and the bad but I have never seen anything as imbalanced as the cauldron. At the beginning of the SE server I am currently on I spent way more gold than I normally do and that’s directly related to the cauldron. It was new and I wanted to see its power first hand. I don’t think I built a single troop but was able to grab a couple top attacker/robber medals on the cauldron troops alone. It also means that with the way troops are counted in the cauldron, why would anyone be any tribe other than Roman? Roman troops are arguably the best in the game with regards to attack and defense capability so on one cauldron pull a teuton gets 10 maces and I can get 10 imps. That’s the definition of imbalance. Sorry about the wall of text, I just had to get that out there.

  12. WOW, I must ask thee what was going through your head when you added a feature such as goldron, it is safe to assume money was the only thing that was going through your head, not a care about the player base.

    as someone who have been playing this game for 9 long years paying my money to support you guys only to be slapped across the face with this sh*t, i am utterly dissapointed. looking across the servers and its dwindling numbers it is not a hidden matter that alot of the players have abandoned this game once they realize they were being ripped off, but it seems no lesson was learned and an attempt to further rip off the players who supported you is at hand here with this version of goldron. i hope and pray that you do not dream of entering the com servers with this pathetic version of travian.

    And if it does then goodbye from me, it has been a long and fun 9 years enjoying this game with my fellow team mates, but this is where we will part ways and kiss it goodbye.

  13. You can’t have cauldron and restricted settling. You just can’t. Those who can spend will get croppers and the rest will have no option but wait to be run over. No point in playing a server like that.

  14. I know that I will not play this revised of Scattered Empires if the cauldron is not deleted or is revised to one free pull per day’
    Way too much gold needed to compete with players that have the money to spend.

  15. No more cauldron servers for me either. It gives people with endless pockets an overwhelming advantage. You say that you’re always trying to improve the game to make it fair for all the newer players, so you can draw a larger fan base. But your fan base just keeps dropping, so you add things instead like the cauldron to try and make up the money you’re losing on players dropping the game…then you lose even more players. Eventually the endless pocket players are going to have no one left to play with. Your us servers are so empty it’s almost impossible to even play a full round anymore, and it’s only going to get worse. Instead of coming up with more ways to get money out of people, figure out how to keep players coming back…like giving them the version of games they want. The SE server was good except for the cauldron. One free spin a day would give incentive to everyone, instead of running off the people who can’t afford it. And changing the settle rules is not a good idea on a server that has so few players, unless you make the map smaller…or make the server last for a couple years!

  16. No more SE servers for me,just don’t like the regions concept.
    It kills gaming for the single player.
    A skilled player who has learnt how to play over many years is now reliant on other people to get any artefact.
    aEU was far better.

    Cauldron is a big fat NO unless restricted to 1 free spin per day but then what’s the point?

  17. Hi everyone,
    it’s Martin from the Travian Team. Thanks for all of your feedback! As Anny said, we take it very seriously and of course want to reply to you.

    Introducing something as the Cauldron is always a challenging decision for game design. Therefore we are constantly working on the functionality and balance of it. We got a lot of good and constructive feedback from the last SE round and took it into our work for the second round. Of course we will take your’s into consideration as well.

    To give you a better unterstanding of the cauldron concept, here is an explaination of the cauldron functionality and its limitations:

    First of all, yes, in Travian it is possible to buy advantages like farm lists and resource production boost for gold. The prizes of the alchemist cauldron are like this as well.

    From Game Design point of view it is very important that the amount of money spent does NOT scale one to one with the advantage a player gets for it. With that we’ve build quite a lot of limitations in.
    Resources can only be won depending on the amount of resources the player produces.
    Troops can only be won depending on the amount of adventures the player already has done.
    Adventures can only be won once a day.

    Unlimited prizes are:
    Gold, both the 3 Gold or the 20 Gold prize. No limitation on this one.
    Resource production boosts – which are buyable already. Limitation wouldn’t make sense.
    Travian PLUS – which also is buyable. No limitation for the same reason.
    NPC Merchant Vouchers – both, 1x and 5x. It’s “just” a replacement for something players can buy. So no limitation.
    Hero’s Sprint – can only be used for adventures. So its usability is limited by the amount of adventures the player has.
    Smithy Blueprint – once all troops are upgraded these prizes don’t scale anymore. So there is a limit. It is very high, but there is.
    Call to Arms – Yes, it gives troops. These troops come without training time. Still – players needed to pay resources for it, so they are not “for free”.

    You see, the cauldron can give you advantages but it’s not possible to just go there and spend a ton of gold and be overpowered. Annual specials like Scattered Empire are also a good way of testing new features, which not all players will always like and support. We are always in discussion, how to proceed with new features and we are working hard, to give you a fresh experience with Travian.

    I hope, I could give you a little more insights of how we try to balance the cauldron and the gameplay of Travian: Scattered Empire.

    Best
    Martin

    1. Martin,
      We appreciate you reply. Just a little reminder – we played it, so we know what we are talking about. I don’t know a single player who does not think that goldron screwed the game.

      Using gold previously would give you maybe 25% advantage over a player with the same skills/dedication. Added feature give another 25% at least, maybe even more. I have no interest to play the game when it more than half depends on money.

    2. Hey Martin,

      First let me say that if I seem disrespectful, I want to apologize. Passion gives force to words, and reading text is not always the best way to portray tone. I send this message with the greatest respect for you developers and all the hard work you do.

      I’m part of the (currently) winning Scattered Empire team on the US server. Our opponents there whine that the cauldron is the only reason we have been able to defeat them so handily — we are considered extremely heavy gold spenders by our enemies.

      We have been talking about this blog post for a few days now, and out of the 60 people in the Skype room, EVERYONE has said they won’t play another cauldron server (and that they will only play Scattered Empire — no more WWs for them). Those are your heavy gold buying veterans in America.

      Demographically speaking, we’re some of the wealthiest players in Travian. If we’re not willing to do it, what about our dual friends in India, the UK, or the Middle East?

      Perhaps the most insulting part about all of this is that we are the ones playing 12 hours a day, meticulously adding farms to farm lists, using the cauldron to get the most advantage out of it that we can (so we know all the tricks). And then when we complain about the cauldron, your response is basically “Well, you’re too dumb to understand. You doesn’t understand the game as well as us developers.” Do you see how this looks? You say you care about the feedback, but actions speak louder than words, my friend. And all you’re doing right now is telling us we don’t know what is in our best interest — while both you and I know the players spend much more time on the game than the developers.

      This is the part where you walk down the hall and grab whoever is in charge of T4 — so he can read these comments. I think it’s safe to say this has gotten out of hand.

      1. hey perrin ,, travian wont listen ,,the will never admit they are wrong…..

        tchow travian,,,,

    3. “Call to Arms – Yes, it gives troops. These troops come without training time. Still – players needed to pay resources for it, so they are not “for free””

      I wonder why you are not willing to limit instant troops. Balance is such important point in a game. You limited several features over the years as it was badly necessary. Call to arms is normal resources cost plus free of time and village, can add gold as much as I like, resource is not that big matter.

      So why is
      – it limited to build only one single barracks/stable in a village? Still – troops are not for free, I have to pay resources.
      – GB/GS three times more costly? Have to pay a lot more to generate more troops in one village. No sense to use them on SE anyway. Use trainer and call to arms, don’t waste resources on it.
      Why that? Because time is a matter.

      Btw. why can’t I win culture points on cauldron?^^
      I don’t ask to remove alchemist’s toy completely, but to fix it.

      1. Hey Dual’s monkey,

        thanks for your feedback. I will forward it to the responsible game designer.

        Greetings
        Anny

        1. I am still waiting for your respond about unlimited instant troops.

          I am also wondering how you measure your customer’s satisfaction.
          Do you do it at all?

          Every deletion should be taken as customer complaint.
          Every mass deletion should cause to do an 8D report 😀
          User is not even asked why he is deleting.

          But well… I obvioulsy live in a completely different world than you.

          – Reading UK forums –
          You have to do another 8D report as there seems to be the next mass deletion on SE 2x server.

  18. Nothing wrong with gold, but cauldron is too much advantage. I won’t return. Not fair.

    There goes my favorite game of all time 🙁

  19. Don’t online casinos need a license to operate?
    Maybe we ought to tell the German Revenue Department now that Travian has become one … long live the Cauldron … sic.

  20. TG have become a joke even more of a joke, you allowed richer more privileged players to dominate with the introduction of auctions and silver and now you’re going to let players literally purchase the means necessary to give them a win via the cauldron? You do realise that the people posting here denouncing the cauldron are some of your most loyal and longest serving customers?

  21. As a heavy gold user i dont mind the cauldron, i see the problem with it however.
    Looking at the other uses for gold we have 25% rescource bonus, plus account and finishing buildings faster.
    Compared to a casual player its a boost but not something that puts you that far ahead. Now with the cauldron the heavy gold users can pull out infinite more rescourses, troops and other bonuses.

    My suggestion is to keep it in the game, but put a limit on it. Give everyone a free use very day but limit the times you can use gold on it to maybe 3 or 5. That way people that use gold can still get a bonus to get ahead of the people that dont.

    This way casual players can get the benefit of the cauldron and the gold users get their bonus, and travian games get our money from gold purchases. Its a win-win for everyone!

  22. Let me start by agreeing with everybody else here, that the cauldron is big mistake… also i’sent it odd that nobody, not a single soul actually likes it, other than de developers….?

    Perrin
    4. February 2016
    Yes I agree – did he just answer all our post with an explanation on the cauldron – like we did not know what it can and cannot do – geee – the answers could have been “shut up morons, we know better, you know nothing”

    Well now on to a real Scattered question – the new regions rules, do not sound very thought over, not for the small territories as I am from (Denmark) – even on a x2 server, it will take a long time to expand and actually use the map
    Also – as a side questions – why do the 3 different territory types takes the same populations to unlock – 10k – even if its an small, large or unique? – should’ent it be harder to unlock an unique?

    Best of luck to Travian – will be without me ;(
    Water – leader of ADULT – DK19 – SE version 1 – and yes we are winning!

  23. Greetings Lords and Ladies, I have recently played Travian Scattered Empire in ts19.com and it was a whole new experience and challenge than other game versions. I never bought a single gold for the cauldron but I still enjoyed the game. I was constantly attacked by a player who used the cauldron for his hammer. Yes, my villages took some damage but he was not able to destroy them. And I retaliated by massacring the catas / chiefs and their accompanying troops in the fourth attack wave onwards. I relished the thought that I flushed his hard-earned money down the drain. But he was not alone, these rich monkeys thought they could win the server with their money, Oh boy!, they were dead wrong. At first they preyed on the weak and bullied the underdog alliances. But the masses could not tolerate their tyranny any longer and rallied together to form a META that brought them to their knees. 60 rich monkeys and their 60 rich cronies versus 7 Major Alliances and hundreds of underdog alliances. The cauldron made them confident and it was also their downfall. The common disgust of the masses against the elite cauldron users is the most effective battle cry.

    To those who rely on their money and worship the cauldron to win the Travian SE server, I dare challenge you, bring it on!

    For the weak of heart, give them a Travian SE server without the cauldron. I am sure the developers can afford it already since their revenue have increased exponentially with the cauldron.

  24. It’s like you people have no idea what you’re doing. We want to play scattered empires again. But you don’t even have the sense to wait until the current server finishes. Do you actually think we’ll go back to WW servers after this? Not a chance. So now, when the first round of SE ends, we’ll all just stop playing the game until we see the next SE. That is, if we notice it when it happens. Most likely, we won’t and we’ll go play a reliable game like Call of Duty or Clash of Clans where you can expect good services when you pay a lot of money.

  25. Am I crazy in suggesting that TG simply limit the cauldron to 5-8 uses per day? Still brings them money yet doesn’t provide the gold whores with as much of a competitive edge over the non-cauldron abusers. I know most of us want to see the cauldron abolished.. but from a business stand point that’s simply not possible, the cauldron would have provided unprecedented revenue for TG games, however, if they want SE to take off which by the looks of things it’s certainly gaining popularity, the cauldron needs to be censored otherwise the gold whores will dominate and the non-cauldron abusers will simply look elsewhere as far as gaming goes..

    1. “I know most of us want to see the cauldron abolished.. but from a business stand point that’s simply not possible,”

      Why would you say so? I see no indication that goldron will bring significant revenue after the initial round where it was introduced without an announcement on the special server. People waited for empire server, planned a team for it and were forced to spend money on it to stay competitive or abandon all the work that was done in preparation for the server. What makes you think it will be done again?

      IMHO, introducing goldron was very bad financial decision. SE would be high spending server even without it. Many like the concept. I know people who would come out of retirement to play it. I personally would recruit for SE if not goldron. I doubt however that TG is capable of admitting wrong decision plus damage is done already.

      1. Your argument is based around the fact that people won’t play another round with the goldron, but you can’t claim that until you see the second round in which the goldron is implemented. And frankly if you think the goldron is a “Bad financial decision”. then you obviously haven’t dabbled in business/finances and certain invests of this type before, I could do some general statistics and math for you but all you need to do is look at the posts on this page, these first rounds of the goldron would have reeled in as much revenue for TG as two standard rounds, potentially more, and as the game slowly dies, that’s crucial for TG.

        1. My argument is based on the fact that have no intentions to put money into goldron server again and quite a few people I know have the same thoughts. Coincidentally, majority of these people do not want to play WW based servers or kingdom.

          Goldron is not the only reason for higher spending on SE servers. There are activation on artifacts, incorporation of troops and potentially higher rate of insta-build. I have no idea about proportion but attributing increase solely to goldron is not accurate.
          I don’t know about other servers but ts19.com was very competitive. It’s not a secret that people spend more on competitive servers. This is another portion of increase.

          We currently have an account on uk server, with 0 gold spent on it and activity level way below than we find normal. The account is comfortably sitting in top 50 and I have a feeling that troops count, even though embarrassingly low, is well above median player. With this picture in mind I find hard to believe there is more than 200 people spending ANY money on the server and more than 50 spending significant amount.

          You are correct, I don’t have any experience in running such business, but I have a few pieces of knowledge beyond Business101 and some experience behind my belt. I can’t agree more with your other point – TG is dying. They are trying to milk every last drop from the cow before they shut down the shop. Then it’s all logical.

  26. Apparently the changes indicate that the real heroes are the credit cards, I’m an idiot to play Travian.

    With rules which encourage corruption and lack of ethics of the staff put in agony to CL servers where players are really cheated.

    Bad trading strategy that will only lead to legal claims add and subtract customers.

    I greet and I say goodbye, I started playing in 2007, I was leader of the alliance that won the 2 servers unique classic Latinos version 2.5 with over 40,000 players on each server, cost much but managed to which now

    http://ts6.travian.cl/

    Players registered: 691
    Active players: 577
    Players online: 39

  27. no more cauldron

    i use massive gold and with cauldron i spent 3 x more gold per month and would spend like 200 gold a day just with the cauldron

    it is addictive and travian well knows it

    we are the ones playing the game and we dont want cauldron……i deleted because i was going bankrupt

    travian as a way to dig into our pocket

  28. Oh shush, will you!

    Your artful, heartful special run
    Made me glow when I rised with the sun
    To join the server with kith and kin
    Because I thought: Go in and win!

    Your happy, peppy birthday rave
    Crashed my iron propensity to save
    All the money I put in my safe
    And made me goldron hitting slave!

    Such sneaky, peaky player’s end
    Finished my deepest love to defend
    All those years of entering the fray
    Not any more I’m here to stay!

    Such monkey, donkey member’s ship
    Went down much too fast, not sip by sip
    I wonder how and I wonder why
    Because my feelings ran so high!

    I thank you, Travian team, for generating Scattered Empires. It is a really good and welcome change to all the servers that end up in Wonders of the World. Please take seriously in consideration to restart a Scattered Empire server without unlimited cauldron prizes. Make us happy by playing it without need of claiming each other for hitting it hard. How about to give it just a try on a single server?

    I am looking happily forward to see such a server. I have no desire to start anywhere else anymore.

  29. Thank you to everyone who posted about this ‘Cauldron’ / Goldron – I never played this game but I was looking for a game to play that was not a pay to win. I was hoping that something that had been around since 2005 and was successful and had positive reviews from the past would be a great choice. But seeing that they have jumped on the pay to win platform and reading the way the developers do not care what the players concerns are I am glad I will never register or play this game.

    I hope that any person who has never tried the game and reads what I read makes the same decision.

    Once developers step on this path, they only start running down it.

  30. Anny, make sure senior staff has read these comments. You haven’t had this many comments on the blog since T5 was introduced (2 years ago).

    If that isn’t cause for concern on your part then I don’t know what would be.

  31. Wait, you didn’t even change the region artifact powers? This has to be the laziest thing I’ve ever seen.

  32. Please Remove Cauldron,
    Or at least limit its usage to 5 per day as max.. it is for real a big advantage for massive gold users, specially troop wise.. yes in normal servers also gold could give a slight advantage, but cauldron brings the the game to an imbalanced competition between heavy gold users and (average) gold users.
    Although Scattered empire principle is very nice and competitive in every stage of the game, and statistics might show that in the last com19 gold buying was higher than usual, yes i’m one of those who bought above my average in that server, but i hereby to say that i wont join another round unless cauldron gets highly Nerfed or removed.

    with all the love and respect to players/game developers/admins

    Z

  33. After reading all these comments, I have to ask the question — why is TG not responding? They aren’t even saying “Well, we need the cauldron. If we don’t have it, we can’t pay the bills.” That would at least start a conversation. I’m surprised Daniel or Brian isn’t responding to this stuff since Ancient Europe was their brainchild…

  34. Anny,

    Thank you for your fast response! I’m sorry if I seemed to doubt you!

    Martin may have dodged some questions though… He seemed to ignore the fact that some other players have raised the concern about troop building time. The call to arms in the stable and barracks, combined with unlimited spins on the cauldron, means that anyone can build a hammer instantly. So those people can hit their enemies over and over again as long as they have the resource production to do so (which everyone has that production later in the game, so when he says “but they still have to pay for the troops” that’s true, but it’s such a small price relative to build time). Meanwhile, people like me (single dad, no extra money besides gold for the plus account and resource bonuses) pretty much have to quit playing after our hammers splat on someone. I cannot rebuild my hammer; however, I have the resources to pay for it. But it will take a month. Meanwhile, Mr. Gold next door does it in 4 days.

    Does Travian Games consider that fair? I’m not being facetious, I really would just like to know their thoughts on that aspect of the cauldron. Because when you combine that with the ability to forward troops to a new village, anyone — anywhere — could be targeted by a massive army that was build yesterday right on your doorstep (settle a village adjacent to someone’s capitol and then merge in the hammer to destroy).

    Some suggestions I’d like to provide: (and I would love feedback!) 🙂
    1. Make it so that catapults cannot be merged into new villages so that they are like Senators, Chiefs, and Chieftains or Settlers.
    2. Make it so that there are still unlimited amounts of spins on the cauldron, but each time costs 1 more gold than the last.
    3. Give everyone two free spins a day instead of one.

    1. Hey Veteran,

      thanks for your Feedback/questions and Ideas! I can understand you. It is challenging to keep up with Alchemist Cauldron users, but it is definitly possible.

      I will forward your ideas. And have a great day.

      Thanks and Greetings
      Anny

      1. Anny, please define “keep up”.
        For example (real example from TS19.com, you can find it on com forums). Week 7. Roman hammer splat. 5 days later the the player comes back with about 18K imps and 6K EC. The alliance did not have trainer yet. Here is math: it takes about 45 days to build such number of imps, with helmet. It is almost entire time since the server start of training in barracks l20 and longer then the hammer home village existed. It would take 9 village with l20 barracks to build such hammer in 5 days using incorporation feature, but biggest players had 7 villages at that point and the hammer owner had 6.

        Please explain how to “keep up” with such situation without massive amount of gold. Thanks in advance.

        1. I don’t believe they can. That is why they have gotten quiet on this blog except with a “no guys, it’ll be OK. We know better than you” every once in a while.

      2. “definitly possible”? Have you even played the game with these features? We, the people who are posting all these comments consist of your loyal and hardcore players who have already played the cauldron servers. And I can tell you, it is not possible.

        1. I can see Anny is approving these comments, but she is not responding. Either she is not allowed or is incapable of defending the position.

          Either way, not a good sign…

          1. Hello Veteran,

            actually I am responding to comments if you’d take a look below. I am allowed to and I am capable. The only reason why I’m not responding to each and every little comment, is that my job is a lot more than “just” responding. It’s an important part of my job, so don’t missunderstand it. I love the contact to the players. It’s important for me to see what you think about the things that we make. About new features or new game-rounds or whatever there is or will be. I forward every feedback-comment to the game-centers. And if I sometimes don’t know an answer for a question, I ask the responsible person. I’m online here in this blog EVERY DAY and every hour when I’m in the office. Sometimes even on the weekend, when I’m actually “not” working. I am on your side. I am your friend and your helper. The contact guy between two sides of a bridge. I am the chewing gum between a shoe and the street. You guys are important. Your opinion is important! So don’t think you’re not important for me! Don’t think I’m not responding or incapable! At least I’m just a human, as we all are just human!

            May this helps 🙂

            Greetings
            Anny

  35. No, it’s literally not possible. A cauldron user can instantly build thousands of troops. Without using the cauldron, I do not have that ability. If I raid and grow super fast, and my enemy does the same, the only thing holding us back is troop build time. By eliminating that obstacle for the gold user, you’re creating a massive disparity that is impossible to overcome without at least an marginal amount of gold spending yourself.

    The people speaking to you in these comments are not new players. They know how to play the game better than any of the developers. Most of them were top robbers before farm lists — when you’d have to make over 1000 clicks with your mouse per day to be a top robber. They have spent thousands and thousands of hours staring at this game and learning the intricacies. They intimately understand the game better than anyone else. And when they (unanimously) agree something is destroying the game balance, they know what they are talking about.

    Don’t take my word for it. Interview the #1 player of the com, US, and UK servers. Or try the #1 robber of those servers. They’ll all agree with me.

  36. I am also on the US19 SE server now. I can understand from a financial standpoint why the cauldron was added. Problem I see is who is going to pay for it in future servers if they all do not return? The casual player might hit it 1 or two extra times per day, compared to the 100’s of players that would be spending a lot of gold even without the cauldron, who are being chased away by it. And those 100’s of players would be over a third of what’s left on the US server.

  37. Anny, statements “I’m your friend, I help you” don’t do any good, sorry. Everyone can read comments and see that there is no meaningful answer from TG, leave alone action on TG side (which we understand needs time).

    Goldron aside, there is no complete information about the server anywhere. I just read on uk forum that 2x server will last 140 days. Was length of server announced anywhere? Definitely, not in this blog. By default I, and I’m sure everyone else assumed 100 days. Don’t you think it’s important piece of information? Note – there is no reason to forward this comment to developers. You should be able to answer it in heartbeat.

    P.S. I struggle to understand what good chewing gum does to either shoe or street.

    1. Probably a weird German idiom that doesn’t translate well.

      Still never answered the above, just talked about how she likes to answer. Whatever. I give up looking at this blog. I won’t get real answers. And they’ve never even said they’ll consider getting rid of the cauldron — so they’ll prob keep it.

  38. I have played Travian off and on for at least 8 years, and have always been a light-to-moderate gold user. The new victory conditions and region control system of Scattered Empires has been one of the most interesting and refreshing changes I’ve experienced in the game, as playing through the middle months of a WW server always got extremely tedious.

    By contrast, the cauldron and the ‘merge troops’ features are categorically the worst new features I’ve ever seen. Buy troops with gold, buy resources with gold, queue troops with the resources, buy call to arms with gold so you can have those troops instantly. Martin’s somewhat patronizing (probably unintentionally, but still so) explanation above of how the cauldron works doesn’t change the fact that it gives an enormous advantage to lavish gold users on a scale that the game has never previously had. The Travian staff seem to be stuck in their offices vehemently believing that how balanced it initially looked on paper is in fact how balanced it is in reality, when everyone here is almost unanimously telling them that that is not the case. It doesn’t matter what your design document says about it. You have to look at how it actually ends up working.

    Likewise, the merge troops feature is ridiculously overpowered for uninhibited gold users. Just recently on UK20 a top alliance organized a cluster of new villages in a certain region. In the space of about 12 hours, the top player on the server (in a rival alliance) settled a village in the middle of them, “golded” it up to around 400 population, merged in a 100k army including catapults, and proceeded to completely raze five of the villages in the cluster. Through the history of this game, the counterbalance to the power of catapults has always been that they are slow, and that you can therefore plan ahead, call for defenders, send counterattacks while the cats return home, settle far away from threatening players, and so on. Merge troops completely negates that balance. I’m really baffled that the Travian developers didn’t anticipate this behavior.

    Right now I am probably going to delete once my gold runs out (a week or two more). I’d love to play on a SE server again, but I won’t do it if these features remain in place.

  39. Hey everyone,
    I want to jump in for a second. Thanks for all your comments about the second round of Scattered Empire so far. I can see that it’s mostly about the cauldron feature, which is good because it is a challenging one, for us and obviously for some of our players. Feedback is great and will always be heard here at Travian. Even if we cannot reply to all of your comments directly, we take every comment into or accounting.

    Some points, regarding the cauldron: We are constantly working and designing it, to improve it for a better balance. There is no normal server, beside birthday special server with the cauldron until now. This is for a reason, because we want new features to be tested first, even on a bigger stage as the birthday special. Each new feature has to pass the testing, before we decide to continue with it or remove it. This also counts for the Cauldron. So please keep up with constructive feedback.

    Regarding the lack of general server information on this blog: The blog is here to give you little more detailled insights of Travian and the company aroung the game. To be fully updated with the relevant server information, there is also the chance to subscribe to our email newsletter, to visit the offical forum, the Travian Answers homepage or our official startpage. So you see, there is a place for each information 🙂

    I hope this can help some of you. We are always happy to receive your feedback.

    Cheers
    Martin

    1. Some additional feedback on the cauldron to consider:

      For lavish gold spenders, it amounts to buying free wheat, free warehouse space, and instantaneous troop travel. Stock up on won resources and drop them instantly into a new village, without having had to use warehouse space for them anywhere else. This is particularly salient in SE where the map is designed to encourage players to settle far away; low-budget players still have their growth limited by merchant travel times, while big spenders do not. Get around being croplocked the same way, by holding on to wheat won in the cauldron.

      Store hundreds or possibly thousands of troops in the “won prizes” area, wheat-free, and then instantaneously drop them into any village (or queue and complete instantly with call to arms) moments before an attack hits. Scouting reports against your village before an attack become irrelevant. Likewise drop an attack force into a small village no one was expecting to be a threat. The free storage aspect of the cauldron is almost as much of an issue as the ability to purchase so much with it.

      I’m not saying players will be able to do these things ad infinitum, against all possible opponents and forces, but it’s enough to make the capabilities of the abusing players (who by consequence will also be the biggest threats around) completely unpredictable, and what I’ve always loved about this game is how it rewards strategy and number-crunching. It used to be that you could get a great amount of useful information about what your opponents could do, and how soon, if you were willing to do the math, and you could still factor in gold features like PLUS. With these new features the most important numbers become the 16 digits on the other guy’s credit card.

  40. Martin, please kindly point out the place to find length of the 2x SE server. It was very simple question.

    Saying that people have to do a research to have basic info is outrageous. There is very little information on forums, I was unable to find an answer in FAQ and none of e-mails I received has it.

    It’s not a question if you responding to all our comments, you are not responding to ANY. There will be no constrictive feedback around goldron, there is no room for balance. It must go or be limited to low single digit use a day. It’s not “challenging” feature, it’s no-go feature and not for “some” but for most of your current customers. I suggest you take your own advice and read forums yourself.

    1. Hi Ele,
      Thanks for your comment. Scattered Empire speed server will have a duration of 140 days.

      Best
      Martin

  41. Oh I get it now! They are ruining T4 so that we have to play T5… Makes total sense now.

  42. Hi! I hope your day is going well.

    Can i settle from Hyperborea to Petra? 🙂 I mean… are this regions neighbors from the “other side” 🙂 (400/400)

    Kind regards:
    Arara

    1. Hi Arara,

      it is possible to unlock regions over the “worlds end” 🙂

      I hope this will help you.

      Greetings
      Anny

Comments are closed.

Scattered Empire – Новый раунд‏

Сервер Scattered Empire был запущен в качестве особого сервера ко дню рождения Travian в прошлом году. В этом году мы запускаем новый раунд в той же версии. Здесь вы найдете всю информацию о ней. (more…)

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2 thoughts on “Scattered Empire – Новый раунд‏

    1. Heyho Алексей,

      I’ll reply in english: The battle will be a battle over all of the regions. The alliances which hold more than 50 % of the regional population will eventually gain victory points. The alliance which has the most victory points at the end of the server wins.

      I hope this will help you 😉

      Greetings
      Anny

Comments are closed.