Roman era online multiplayer resource management
Travian is a free to play online multiplayer strategy game. The goal is to manage your resources well enough to expand your territory while fending off other attacking players.
Travian is not an action game, but a resource management game that requires a lot of waiting, and ideally is played for a while here and there during a day. You begin by choosing one of three classes of people. Gauls are best at defending and are faster, Teutons are better fighters and Romans are pretty well balanced.
During the first few hours of playing Travian all you will do is slowly increase your resources around your village. Every action has a time cost - so if you want to improve agricultural land, that will cost you 3 minutes, and so on. Once your resources have improved, you can use them to build buildings and expand the village, an eventually construct barracks and armies, so you can explore and fight other villages.
Travian is presented in non-animated, hand drawn style graphics. They are functional. The tutorial is useful for teaching you the ropes, as without it Travian makes little sense!
Like many online management games, Travian features a lot of waiting. However, if you want something you can play quickly in the background every so often, it can get addictive.
User reviews about Travian
by Anonymous
Unlevel playing field makes the game a disappointment.
The game is fun at first but it does become time consuming. There is also an option to spend real money on the game and I think those that flourish the most exercise this option. Someone like me who does not wish to spend both time and money on the game simply can't compete. I often found my villages pummeled by basement dwellers who spend all of their free time and a good sized portion of their unemployment checks on the game. As I mentioned before, it is impossible to compete unless doing both of these. In the end, one of these jerks will ruin the game for you by taking the fun out of it. I've spent countless hours building an empire only to have it ruined by people who were later caught cheating or just because they felt like ruining my game (this as an actual reason given to me one time). WIth a few administrative changes to make it more fair across the board I'd give this game very high ratings but as it is I must call the game a huge disappointment.
Pros:
Free to play (in theory), game action is fun
Cons:
The game is easily ruined by a brat with too much free time and nothing else to spend allowance on. More