The Complete Guide to Endgame
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This is a complete and in-depth guide to the Endgame. Many questions get asked about Endgame. Some of those can be answered by the ‘Beginners Guide to the Endgame’ posted originally by Falling Wall here. However, this guide seeks to reiterate some of the points in that guide and delve much further into the endgame than anyone has ever gone before. It is extremely thorough and lengthy, so pour yourself a cup of coffee.
Table of Contents:
Section 1- Introduction to the Endgame
-Definition of Endgame
-General Natar Information
-General WW and TC Information
Section 2- General Endgame Specifics
-Meta Alliances
-Pushing Rules
Section 3- Actual Specifics
-WW Village Specifics (including troop counts)
-Natar Plan Village Specifics
Section 4- Additional Specifics
-WW and Plan Village Similarities and Differences
-Natar Attacks
-The Natar Capital
Section 5- Strategies
-How to Keep your Plans
-WW Village Tribe Choice Discussion
Section 6- Additional Strategy
-Piggybacking
-What Buildings to Target with a WW Hammer
Section 7- Even More Strategy
-Wonder Building Philosophies
Section 8- The Tribes
-Tribe Defensive Troop Discussion
-Tribe Offensive Troop Discussion
Section 1- Introduction to the Endgame
Endgame? Doesn’t that have something to do with chess?
What is the Endgame?
The Endgame is the word used to describe the period when a new race called the Natars appear in the game world. On non-speed servers, the Natars appear approximately 300 days after a server begins. On speed servers, they appear ~100 days after the server begins. (To find when your server started, click HERE)
Who are the Natars, and why are they spawning on my server?
The Natars are a computer-controlled tribe. They appear on servers because all servers must come to an end. By spawning on the server, alliances are able to capture Natar villages and build a World Wonder in those villages that were previously held by the Natar tribe. Once an alliance’s World Wonder reaches level 100, the game/server ends, the winning alliance (along with the #1 attacker, #1 defender, and top 3 players with the highest populations) is recognized on a screen that everyone sees when they log in.
How will I know the Natars have spawned?
You will receive an announcement when you log into your account letting you know that a new and powerful race has appeared.
What is a World Wonder?
The World Wonder (otherwise known as a Wonder of the World) is as wonderful as it sounds. This “building” is built in order to win the server. Each level of the World Wonder costs hundreds of thousands (even millions) of resources to build. For specifics on build times and costs look here. As you can see by the building costs, a single player could not build a World Wonder on his own. In addition, it is very unlikely that a single alliance would be able to complete a World Wonder. The reason for this is not only the amount of resources needed, but the number of troops needed to defend the village (more on that later).
What if no one is able to build a World Wonder to lvl 100 or they just don’t want to?
Our .US Admin (Taranis) can, and will, end a server if it goes on for too long a time. He can either abruptly end the server without a winner, or he can have the Natars begin to build their own World Wonder, which will complete itself in a specified time period.
I saw in the manual buildings called a Great Granary and Great Warehouse. Can I build those? What do they do?
Only a World Wonder village has the ability to build Great Granaries and Great Warehouses. They are needed because of the enormous costs of building the World Wonder, but they cannot be built in any other village.
I saw in the manual a building called the Treasure Chamber. Can I build this, and what does it do?
Once the Treasure Chambers appear in the manual, they are available to be built by anyone. They are not available to build during the early or mid-game, but become available to build a little bit before the Endgame begins. The prerequisites are a level 10 main building, and they cannot be built in a capital or WW village. A level 1 Treasure Chamber allows any player on the server to see where the Natar Building Plans are. A level 10 Treasure Chamber allows a player to capture a Natar World Wonder building plan if the proper steps are taken (see section 3).
Section 2- Generic Specifics—Alliances and Pushing
You said something about alliances teaming up to win? And what’s a “Meta” anyway?
During the Endgame, alliances from across the server team up in an effort to win the server. These alliances vary vastly in size, and location, but everyone in those alliances can help by sending both resources and defense troops to the World Wonder. In addition, once several alliances ally with several other alliances (ones with different identities than their own, so they are not “wings”) they are referred to as a “meta” alliance.
Typically, these “metas” choose some sort of acronym, or symbol that they add to their alliance tag to symbolize that they are all on the same side, and to avoid any confusion.
Who gets credit for the win?
Those who play the server know who is allied with whom, and so every alliance on the winning side gets some sort of credit by the players. However, on the “winners’ screen” that appears when a World Wonder has reached level 100, only one alliance can get credit. This is where that tag comes in. Usually, all the Wonder holders (those who possess a World Wonder village) in an alliance and sometimes players in the alliance who are holding World Wonder plans (we’ll talk about those later) form a single alliance with whatever tag their alliances have and that is the alliance that gets credit.
What purpose does a meta alliance serve?
There are 3 very good reasons why this is done:
1. Security. –If the enemy metas know how many and what kind of troops are in each WW village (this can be seen in the alliance ‘attacks’ page) then they would be better able to decide when to attack. If a WW village is weak, you certainly don’t want the enemy knowing about it.
2. Clarity. –Remember, only one alliance gets “official” credit for the win. Those who hold the World Wonders represent all the alliances that are backing those Wonders. When the winning screen appears, everyone will know who won.
3. World Wonder plans. Since I haven’t defined or talked about these yet, I will just say that a World Wonder village needs 2 sets of plans in order to complete the WW. One set has to be held by the WW village owner, and the other must be held some someone inside the alliance. If all the WW holders are in one alliance, they piggyback off one another’s plans (see section 3).
Are Cross-Quadrant metas O.K.?
Absolutely. The difference between normal confederacies and metas is that with a confederacy, an alliance must be able to help an alliance defend the other alliance’s villages from attack and assist in coordinated attacks against enemy alliances. With the World Wonder race, this is not necessary. All alliances must be willing/able to do is to send large amounts of troops to a World Wonder village for defense, and provide hammer armies to damage enemy Wonders. Because of large travel times (since 99% of hammers will have catapults and the distances between Wonders are great) cross-quadrant metas can even coordinate attacks on enemy World Wonders.
If you’re concerned about cross-quadrant metas not being able to provide enough resources, a good single quadrant can successfully feed several Wonders, and those other quadrants will have their own Wonders to worry about feeding.
What about pushing rules? Do they still apply for the Endgame?
The pushing rules are thrown out the window for any resource transfers to the World Wonder. That means you can send as many resources as you want to any World Wonder village and you will not be punished. If the pushing rules were followed during the endgame, the majority of the defending troops in World Wonder villages would starve to death.
Section 3- Actual Specifics—Wonder and Plan Village Info.
World Wonder Villages
There are 14 Natar villages that spawn at the very start of the endgame. Only 13 of these villages are considered “World Wonder Villages” because the 14th Natar village is the Natar Capital. These 13 WW villages spawn randomly all across the server (although quads are guaranteed a certain number of WW’s to be fair). Any one of these 13 WW villages can be conquered and used to build a World Wonder village. The 14th Natar village (the Natar capital) will always be located at (400400), unless someone put a village there, in which case it will spawn at the next nearest tile. (For more info. on the Natar capital, see section 4.)
Additional WW village information
None of the 13 Natar WW villages have walls or residences/palaces. This is extremely important to note if you plan on conquering a Natar village. Great time and resources can potentially be lost if catapults are sent to WW villages with the intention of destroying a residence/palace.
Gold cannot be used in this village for anything whatsoever. No NPC, and no insta-build. However, two WW levels can be queued at any given time. This is EXTREMELY important at the end of the game. If catapults are targeting GW’s when the WW has reached level 98, they won’t do any significant damage to the Wonder since levels 99 and 100 will already be queued (to see why people are attacking the GW’s, see section 6).
Troops consume half as much wheat as they normally would when reinforcing the WW. This is a plus for the WW holder, but a WW will still be significantly in the negatives throughout the WW race.
Also, the WW can be named when it reaches level 1. There have been some epic WW names and some really crappy ones, so choose wisely.
WW village troop counts
Each WW village has the exact same number of troops. Their troop numbers look like this:
Defense/attack values of Natar troops are completely UNKNOWN to everyone except the game developers. However, based on past experience, an army that consumes ~50k wheat (perhaps more depending on tribe) will be able to completely clear a Natar WW village. It never hurts to send a little more than that though. Inadequate clearing of a Natar village may lead to botched chiefing attempts and chaos, so plan accordingly.
Those people who win servers have a plan of who is taking what and when, even before the Natars spawn.
Natar Plan Villages (Natarian Oases)
Natar plan villages, also known as Natarian Oases, are the villages that house the World Wonder Building Plans. These villages (they are villages, not oases) spawn approximately 1-2 weeks after the World Wonder villages have spawned on the server. The plan villages spawn randomly, just like the WW villages, but each quad receives a certain minimum number of these villages for fairness. In addition, a Natar plan village has the exact same number of Natar troops defending as the Natar WW villages did.
An announcement will be made to the entire server upon login that the Natar plans have spawned on the server, just like when the Natar World Wonder villages spawn on the server.
Natar plan villages look like this:
Why WW building plans are IMPORTANT
WW plans are extremely important. In order to begin building a WW in a WW village, the player who owns the WW village must first have a WW building plan. A single building plan will allow the owner of a WW village to build the WW all the way from level 0 to level 50. However, in order for the player to build the WW past level 50 through level 100, another player inside the WW holder’s immediate alliance MUST own a second WW plan. This can be ANY other player inside the alliance.
Examples:
1. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds a WW village, but no building plan. Player A and Player B are in the same alliance. Player A can build his WW to level 50, but can go no farther. Player Bcannot build his WW at all.
2. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds his own WW village and his own building plan. Player A and Player B are in the same alliance. Both Player A and Player B can build their WW’s all the way to level 100.
3. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds a WW building plan, but not a WW village. Both Player A and Player B are in the same alliance. Player A can build his WW to level 100.
4. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds a WW building plan and is in an alliance that is allied with Player A’s alliance. Player A cannot build past level 50 unless Player B joins Player A’s alliance, or vice versa.
5. If you can’t see how it works by now, you need to take a logical analysis class.
How to obtain a WW plan from the Natars OR another player that already has them
In order to “steal” a WW plan from either a Natar building plan village, or another player a simple formula must be followed:
1. The player who is going to take the plans MUST have a level 10 Treasure Chamber in the village they are attacking out of.
2. The Treasure Chamber of the village the plans are being held in (either held by the Natars or another player) MUST be destroyed before the plans can be taken.
3. A hero sent from the village with the level 10 Treasure Chamber must survive the attack after the enemy TC is destroyed, because only a hero can carry a WW plan.
This can be done at anytime and in any logical order. One person could clear the enemy plan village, a second person could destroy the enemy TC, a third person could send a hero from a village with a level 10 TC and take the plans. Or, one person could do it all.
Section 4- Additional Specifics
Similarities between WW villages and Natar Plan villages
1. Both of these villages CAN be conquered.
2. They have equal numbers of defending Natar troops.
3. Neither type of village has a wall.
4. Neither type of village has a residence/palace.
5. Both play an integral part in the Endgame.
Differences between WW villages and Natar Plan villages
1. A WW village can house and build a WW, a plan village cannot.
2. A player cannot use gold for any reason in a WW village, if you happen to conquer a Natar plan village, you can use gold in that village.
3. While a WW village has a purpose and should be conquered, the Natar Plan village should not be conquered, because it is worthless. Natar plan villages look cool on the map, but their insides are full of crannies, and that’s about it:
4. Natar Attacks
Natars only attack out of their capital. They only attack WW villages. Contrary to popular belief, they do not scout everyone on the server, nor do they attack you if you attack them. The Natars will attack a World Wonder village once every 5 levels starting from level 5 and continuing to level 95. After a WW has reached level 95, it will be attacked at levels 96, 97, 98, and 99.
Natar attacks come in two waves. The first wave is a “clearing” wave that is intended to weaken the WW defensive forces. The second wave consists of siege that only targets the WW. The second wave is very easy to defend against and isn’t very large at all. However, if the wall is not protected during the clearing wave attack, this could create some potential problems for the WW village (and a potential opening for enemies). Although the Natars send a handful of rams with their clearing attack, their huge offensive numbers still make that small number of rams potentially damaging.
The Natar Capital
This is the Natar’s untouchable fortress of destruction. Do not plan on sending attacks at the village hoping to kill troops or destroy buildings. Why? The Natar capital has a seemingly unending supply of traps and anything sent to their capital will be captured immediately.
Attacking the capital has been attempted, but has never been successful. If by some miracle you were able to get past the traps (something tells me the developers have made this impossible anyway) you’d be faced with a Natar defense force that looks something like this:
Section 5- Strategies—Plans and Tribe Choice
How to avoid getting my plans stolen
Adequately defending plans is key to winning a server. Inadequate defense strategy leads to epic failure. If you’re thinking “I’ll just stack as many defenders as possible in a plan village in order to stave off attacks” you’ll be joining the loser’s circle shortly. The worst thing a plan holder can do is leave the plans in a single village for any extended period of time. In order to protect the plans with nearly 100% assurance, they need to be moved around. That means a player needs to have a sort of relay between villages, having lots of level 10 treasure chambers around, having a living hero, and using lots of gold (to tear down TC’s instead of sending catapults to destroy it, and also to insta build TC’s in other villages). If an attack shows up on a plan village, a plan holder simply has to move them to another village to prevent them from being taken. If they don’t move them, they risk losing them, and as was shown, if you don’t have plans, you can’t build a Wonder.
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 preference): 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.
Section 6- Strategy—“Piggybacking” and what to attack in a WW village with your hammer
Unfortunately, this is not something I have seen done very often at all on servers. If a hammer (or a group of hammers) were to piggyback off a Natar clearing wave (travel times are listed OR can be calculated) the effect of those attacking hammers would be magnified. A WW village is always going to be heavily defended (barring any stupidity or failure) and so every extra troop that can be killed is a bonus to the attacking force. Since a Natar attack will weaken the defending force “for free” an attacker should use this to their advantage to maximize damage to the WW.
I won’t go into the calculations or assumptions a person would have to make in order to land a successful “piggyback” but it’s something I would love to see done successfully.
What should a hammer be targeting when attacking a WW village?
The simple answer is: Target the Great Warehouses. Of course, the question is “why?” Well, in terms of build time, high levels of the GW take longer to build than levels of the WW. So, if you attack a GW and inflict damage, you will cost the WW holder more time than if you target the WW. The WW race is a marathon remember, and every increment of time lost can be costly in the end.
There is a second reason. We all know that higher-level buildings are harder to bring down and thus require more catapults. Well, when the WW is reaching levels like 40, 60, 80, etc. It is getting significantly harder to damage with each additional level. While a hammer targeting a GW (only level 20 max) could bring it down 3 levels, the same hammer targeting a level 50 WW would do nothing. In order to cost a player the most amount of build time, the GW’s must be targeted. However, for last-ditch efforts to stop a WW (when it reaches level 98 and beyond) you have to target the WW to do anything to stop it since 2 levels of the WW can be queued at once.
Remember, catapults CAN and DO fire even if all the escorting troops die. The common belief is that the percentage of enemy troops that is killed is roughly equal to the percentage of catapults that fire. Combat simulations show that this isn’t quite true, however since the real formula is not known, this serves as a good rule of thumb.
Section 7- Strategy—Wonder Building Philosophies
When it all comes down to it, there are two main philosophies for building a Wonder. The first focuses on building almost solely the resource buildings ie granaries, warehouses, then GB’s, GW’s. Basically the philosophy is to get enough room for resources that the Wonder holder would be able to build the Wonder straight to 100 without stopping.
The second philosophy is for the WW holder to build the Wonder and the resource buildings as they go. With this build strategy, the WW holder will be upgrading the Wonder when they can and upgrading the resource buildings when they need to.
There are pros and cons to both.
PROS of the first: Once you get going you don’t have to stop and will have troops in the village to defend against Natar and Wonder attacks.
CONS of the first: The alliance/meta doesn’t see that their wonder is moving forward immediately and can hurt morale or support. Morale is priceless in the WW marathon!!
PROS of the second: People can see that the Wonder is moving forward. Of course, so can the other metas. This means that this Wonder would be more likely to be attacked… However, if an alliance has at least two WW’s, this means that the other Wonder is less likely to be attacked.
CONS of the second: The limited resource buildings do not allow for quite as many troops or as many resources that can be stored. Since it will probably be attacked more often, that could be an issue.
Conclusion: Both philosophies are necessary and will be seen on every server. A server has to have a front-runner, and a server will inevitably have a few Wonders that trail behind until the end. Both strategies have their merits and should be taken into account when formulating a build strategy for an alliance.
Section 8- The Roles of the 3 tribes during Endgame/What defenses do I put in a WW village?
Defense
Roman- The best Roman defensive unit that can be sent to the WW is the praetorian. The praetorian’s high infantry defense makes them the best infantry defender per crop used. Remember, WW’s need as much defense that consumes as little wheat as possible. Legionnaires should only be sent at a WW holder’s discretion since spearmen do a much better job defending against cavalry. DO NOT send any sort of Roman cavalry as defense! They are a waste of crop.
Gaul- Gauls should send both phalanx and druidriders to the WW. Phalanx are able to be produced extremely quickly and their good defense stats make them wonderful defenders per crop, while the druidriders make excellent infantry defenders to complement the praetorians. Haeduans should only be sent at the WW holder’s discretion because of potential wheat issues.
Teuton- Teutons should be sending spearmen, spearmen, spearmen. Also, Teutons should be the providers of scouts for the WW village because of their excellent wheat consumption versus the other scouts. Paladins should be sent only at the discretion of the WW holder, although they do help nicely against infantry, and a WW often sees several times more infantry than cavalry (remember, catapults and rams count as infantry too).
Hero- Your hero should be sent with your defenders to the WW village if your hero will not be part of a hammer attacking force. Any points you gain should be put into the defense bonus and then the defense stat of the hero if the bonus is maxed out. Remember though, your hero’s defense bonus only applies to YOUR troops. Also, don’t forget to turn on the +10% defense gold bonus. Every little bit counts in a World Wonder village.
Offense
Roman- Roman hammers should be composed of Imperians, E.C.’s, rams, and catapults. Roman troops are the best in the game, so a Roman should be able to provide a devastating hammer. Do not waste resources on E.I.’s unless there are extenuating circumstances.
Gaul- Gaul hammers should be composed of Swordsmen, Haeduans, rams, and catapults. TT’s generally won’t comprise a Gaul hammer, unless build time became an issue at some point.
Teuton- Teuton hammers are a little more interesting. They could be composed of Macemen, Axemen, T.K.s, rams and catapults, or just Axemen, T.K.s, rams and catapults. The reason for this is that Macemen can be built extremely quickly. In a lot of ways, the limiting factor on hammers is their build time and not their wheat consumption because of farming and the NPC merchant. If a Teuton were to build Macemen in a Great Barracks and Axemen in a regular barracks, they will be producing more attack per hour than if they just built Axemen. However, it does create a significantly larger wheat strain than a pure Axemen hammer would create, so choose your hammer composition wisely.
Hero- The hero should obviously have a maxed out offensive bonus. The raw attack power is a minimal boost to the overall strength of the hammer, but every little bit can help. Also, don’t forget to turn on your +10% gold bonus when attacking a Wonder. The +10% could be the difference between lowering something 3 levels versus 4 levels, which is potentially huge in a WW race.
I wish you the best of luck in your Endgame endeavors and hope that this guide was not only informative, but gave some insight into how the Endgame works. Although some people may say that I have given out too much information, my hope is that the .US server Endgames will become increasingly competitive and fun for everyone.
The End
source: Travian Forum
________________________________________
This is a complete and in-depth guide to the Endgame. Many questions get asked about Endgame. Some of those can be answered by the ‘Beginners Guide to the Endgame’ posted originally by Falling Wall here. However, this guide seeks to reiterate some of the points in that guide and delve much further into the endgame than anyone has ever gone before. It is extremely thorough and lengthy, so pour yourself a cup of coffee.
Table of Contents:
Section 1- Introduction to the Endgame
-Definition of Endgame
-General Natar Information
-General WW and TC Information
Section 2- General Endgame Specifics
-Meta Alliances
-Pushing Rules
Section 3- Actual Specifics
-WW Village Specifics (including troop counts)
-Natar Plan Village Specifics
Section 4- Additional Specifics
-WW and Plan Village Similarities and Differences
-Natar Attacks
-The Natar Capital
Section 5- Strategies
-How to Keep your Plans
-WW Village Tribe Choice Discussion
Section 6- Additional Strategy
-Piggybacking
-What Buildings to Target with a WW Hammer
Section 7- Even More Strategy
-Wonder Building Philosophies
Section 8- The Tribes
-Tribe Defensive Troop Discussion
-Tribe Offensive Troop Discussion
Section 1- Introduction to the Endgame
Endgame? Doesn’t that have something to do with chess?
What is the Endgame?
The Endgame is the word used to describe the period when a new race called the Natars appear in the game world. On non-speed servers, the Natars appear approximately 300 days after a server begins. On speed servers, they appear ~100 days after the server begins. (To find when your server started, click HERE)
Who are the Natars, and why are they spawning on my server?
The Natars are a computer-controlled tribe. They appear on servers because all servers must come to an end. By spawning on the server, alliances are able to capture Natar villages and build a World Wonder in those villages that were previously held by the Natar tribe. Once an alliance’s World Wonder reaches level 100, the game/server ends, the winning alliance (along with the #1 attacker, #1 defender, and top 3 players with the highest populations) is recognized on a screen that everyone sees when they log in.
How will I know the Natars have spawned?
You will receive an announcement when you log into your account letting you know that a new and powerful race has appeared.
What is a World Wonder?
The World Wonder (otherwise known as a Wonder of the World) is as wonderful as it sounds. This “building” is built in order to win the server. Each level of the World Wonder costs hundreds of thousands (even millions) of resources to build. For specifics on build times and costs look here. As you can see by the building costs, a single player could not build a World Wonder on his own. In addition, it is very unlikely that a single alliance would be able to complete a World Wonder. The reason for this is not only the amount of resources needed, but the number of troops needed to defend the village (more on that later).
What if no one is able to build a World Wonder to lvl 100 or they just don’t want to?
Our .US Admin (Taranis) can, and will, end a server if it goes on for too long a time. He can either abruptly end the server without a winner, or he can have the Natars begin to build their own World Wonder, which will complete itself in a specified time period.
I saw in the manual buildings called a Great Granary and Great Warehouse. Can I build those? What do they do?
Only a World Wonder village has the ability to build Great Granaries and Great Warehouses. They are needed because of the enormous costs of building the World Wonder, but they cannot be built in any other village.
I saw in the manual a building called the Treasure Chamber. Can I build this, and what does it do?
Once the Treasure Chambers appear in the manual, they are available to be built by anyone. They are not available to build during the early or mid-game, but become available to build a little bit before the Endgame begins. The prerequisites are a level 10 main building, and they cannot be built in a capital or WW village. A level 1 Treasure Chamber allows any player on the server to see where the Natar Building Plans are. A level 10 Treasure Chamber allows a player to capture a Natar World Wonder building plan if the proper steps are taken (see section 3).
Section 2- Generic Specifics—Alliances and Pushing
You said something about alliances teaming up to win? And what’s a “Meta” anyway?
During the Endgame, alliances from across the server team up in an effort to win the server. These alliances vary vastly in size, and location, but everyone in those alliances can help by sending both resources and defense troops to the World Wonder. In addition, once several alliances ally with several other alliances (ones with different identities than their own, so they are not “wings”) they are referred to as a “meta” alliance.
Typically, these “metas” choose some sort of acronym, or symbol that they add to their alliance tag to symbolize that they are all on the same side, and to avoid any confusion.
Who gets credit for the win?
Those who play the server know who is allied with whom, and so every alliance on the winning side gets some sort of credit by the players. However, on the “winners’ screen” that appears when a World Wonder has reached level 100, only one alliance can get credit. This is where that tag comes in. Usually, all the Wonder holders (those who possess a World Wonder village) in an alliance and sometimes players in the alliance who are holding World Wonder plans (we’ll talk about those later) form a single alliance with whatever tag their alliances have and that is the alliance that gets credit.
What purpose does a meta alliance serve?
There are 3 very good reasons why this is done:
1. Security. –If the enemy metas know how many and what kind of troops are in each WW village (this can be seen in the alliance ‘attacks’ page) then they would be better able to decide when to attack. If a WW village is weak, you certainly don’t want the enemy knowing about it.
2. Clarity. –Remember, only one alliance gets “official” credit for the win. Those who hold the World Wonders represent all the alliances that are backing those Wonders. When the winning screen appears, everyone will know who won.
3. World Wonder plans. Since I haven’t defined or talked about these yet, I will just say that a World Wonder village needs 2 sets of plans in order to complete the WW. One set has to be held by the WW village owner, and the other must be held some someone inside the alliance. If all the WW holders are in one alliance, they piggyback off one another’s plans (see section 3).
Are Cross-Quadrant metas O.K.?
Absolutely. The difference between normal confederacies and metas is that with a confederacy, an alliance must be able to help an alliance defend the other alliance’s villages from attack and assist in coordinated attacks against enemy alliances. With the World Wonder race, this is not necessary. All alliances must be willing/able to do is to send large amounts of troops to a World Wonder village for defense, and provide hammer armies to damage enemy Wonders. Because of large travel times (since 99% of hammers will have catapults and the distances between Wonders are great) cross-quadrant metas can even coordinate attacks on enemy World Wonders.
If you’re concerned about cross-quadrant metas not being able to provide enough resources, a good single quadrant can successfully feed several Wonders, and those other quadrants will have their own Wonders to worry about feeding.
What about pushing rules? Do they still apply for the Endgame?
The pushing rules are thrown out the window for any resource transfers to the World Wonder. That means you can send as many resources as you want to any World Wonder village and you will not be punished. If the pushing rules were followed during the endgame, the majority of the defending troops in World Wonder villages would starve to death.
Section 3- Actual Specifics—Wonder and Plan Village Info.
World Wonder Villages
There are 14 Natar villages that spawn at the very start of the endgame. Only 13 of these villages are considered “World Wonder Villages” because the 14th Natar village is the Natar Capital. These 13 WW villages spawn randomly all across the server (although quads are guaranteed a certain number of WW’s to be fair). Any one of these 13 WW villages can be conquered and used to build a World Wonder village. The 14th Natar village (the Natar capital) will always be located at (400400), unless someone put a village there, in which case it will spawn at the next nearest tile. (For more info. on the Natar capital, see section 4.)
Additional WW village information
None of the 13 Natar WW villages have walls or residences/palaces. This is extremely important to note if you plan on conquering a Natar village. Great time and resources can potentially be lost if catapults are sent to WW villages with the intention of destroying a residence/palace.
Gold cannot be used in this village for anything whatsoever. No NPC, and no insta-build. However, two WW levels can be queued at any given time. This is EXTREMELY important at the end of the game. If catapults are targeting GW’s when the WW has reached level 98, they won’t do any significant damage to the Wonder since levels 99 and 100 will already be queued (to see why people are attacking the GW’s, see section 6).
Troops consume half as much wheat as they normally would when reinforcing the WW. This is a plus for the WW holder, but a WW will still be significantly in the negatives throughout the WW race.
Also, the WW can be named when it reaches level 1. There have been some epic WW names and some really crappy ones, so choose wisely.
WW village troop counts
Each WW village has the exact same number of troops. Their troop numbers look like this:
Defense/attack values of Natar troops are completely UNKNOWN to everyone except the game developers. However, based on past experience, an army that consumes ~50k wheat (perhaps more depending on tribe) will be able to completely clear a Natar WW village. It never hurts to send a little more than that though. Inadequate clearing of a Natar village may lead to botched chiefing attempts and chaos, so plan accordingly.
Those people who win servers have a plan of who is taking what and when, even before the Natars spawn.
Natar Plan Villages (Natarian Oases)
Natar plan villages, also known as Natarian Oases, are the villages that house the World Wonder Building Plans. These villages (they are villages, not oases) spawn approximately 1-2 weeks after the World Wonder villages have spawned on the server. The plan villages spawn randomly, just like the WW villages, but each quad receives a certain minimum number of these villages for fairness. In addition, a Natar plan village has the exact same number of Natar troops defending as the Natar WW villages did.
An announcement will be made to the entire server upon login that the Natar plans have spawned on the server, just like when the Natar World Wonder villages spawn on the server.
Natar plan villages look like this:
Why WW building plans are IMPORTANT
WW plans are extremely important. In order to begin building a WW in a WW village, the player who owns the WW village must first have a WW building plan. A single building plan will allow the owner of a WW village to build the WW all the way from level 0 to level 50. However, in order for the player to build the WW past level 50 through level 100, another player inside the WW holder’s immediate alliance MUST own a second WW plan. This can be ANY other player inside the alliance.
Examples:
1. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds a WW village, but no building plan. Player A and Player B are in the same alliance. Player A can build his WW to level 50, but can go no farther. Player Bcannot build his WW at all.
2. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds his own WW village and his own building plan. Player A and Player B are in the same alliance. Both Player A and Player B can build their WW’s all the way to level 100.
3. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds a WW building plan, but not a WW village. Both Player A and Player B are in the same alliance. Player A can build his WW to level 100.
4. Player A holds a WW village and 1 WW building plan. Player B holds a WW building plan and is in an alliance that is allied with Player A’s alliance. Player A cannot build past level 50 unless Player B joins Player A’s alliance, or vice versa.
5. If you can’t see how it works by now, you need to take a logical analysis class.
How to obtain a WW plan from the Natars OR another player that already has them
In order to “steal” a WW plan from either a Natar building plan village, or another player a simple formula must be followed:
1. The player who is going to take the plans MUST have a level 10 Treasure Chamber in the village they are attacking out of.
2. The Treasure Chamber of the village the plans are being held in (either held by the Natars or another player) MUST be destroyed before the plans can be taken.
3. A hero sent from the village with the level 10 Treasure Chamber must survive the attack after the enemy TC is destroyed, because only a hero can carry a WW plan.
This can be done at anytime and in any logical order. One person could clear the enemy plan village, a second person could destroy the enemy TC, a third person could send a hero from a village with a level 10 TC and take the plans. Or, one person could do it all.
Section 4- Additional Specifics
Similarities between WW villages and Natar Plan villages
1. Both of these villages CAN be conquered.
2. They have equal numbers of defending Natar troops.
3. Neither type of village has a wall.
4. Neither type of village has a residence/palace.
5. Both play an integral part in the Endgame.
Differences between WW villages and Natar Plan villages
1. A WW village can house and build a WW, a plan village cannot.
2. A player cannot use gold for any reason in a WW village, if you happen to conquer a Natar plan village, you can use gold in that village.
3. While a WW village has a purpose and should be conquered, the Natar Plan village should not be conquered, because it is worthless. Natar plan villages look cool on the map, but their insides are full of crannies, and that’s about it:
4. Natar Attacks
Natars only attack out of their capital. They only attack WW villages. Contrary to popular belief, they do not scout everyone on the server, nor do they attack you if you attack them. The Natars will attack a World Wonder village once every 5 levels starting from level 5 and continuing to level 95. After a WW has reached level 95, it will be attacked at levels 96, 97, 98, and 99.
Natar attacks come in two waves. The first wave is a “clearing” wave that is intended to weaken the WW defensive forces. The second wave consists of siege that only targets the WW. The second wave is very easy to defend against and isn’t very large at all. However, if the wall is not protected during the clearing wave attack, this could create some potential problems for the WW village (and a potential opening for enemies). Although the Natars send a handful of rams with their clearing attack, their huge offensive numbers still make that small number of rams potentially damaging.
The Natar Capital
This is the Natar’s untouchable fortress of destruction. Do not plan on sending attacks at the village hoping to kill troops or destroy buildings. Why? The Natar capital has a seemingly unending supply of traps and anything sent to their capital will be captured immediately.
Attacking the capital has been attempted, but has never been successful. If by some miracle you were able to get past the traps (something tells me the developers have made this impossible anyway) you’d be faced with a Natar defense force that looks something like this:
Section 5- Strategies—Plans and Tribe Choice
How to avoid getting my plans stolen
Adequately defending plans is key to winning a server. Inadequate defense strategy leads to epic failure. If you’re thinking “I’ll just stack as many defenders as possible in a plan village in order to stave off attacks” you’ll be joining the loser’s circle shortly. The worst thing a plan holder can do is leave the plans in a single village for any extended period of time. In order to protect the plans with nearly 100% assurance, they need to be moved around. That means a player needs to have a sort of relay between villages, having lots of level 10 treasure chambers around, having a living hero, and using lots of gold (to tear down TC’s instead of sending catapults to destroy it, and also to insta build TC’s in other villages). If an attack shows up on a plan village, a plan holder simply has to move them to another village to prevent them from being taken. If they don’t move them, they risk losing them, and as was shown, if you don’t have plans, you can’t build a Wonder.
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 preference): 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.
Section 6- Strategy—“Piggybacking” and what to attack in a WW village with your hammer
Unfortunately, this is not something I have seen done very often at all on servers. If a hammer (or a group of hammers) were to piggyback off a Natar clearing wave (travel times are listed OR can be calculated) the effect of those attacking hammers would be magnified. A WW village is always going to be heavily defended (barring any stupidity or failure) and so every extra troop that can be killed is a bonus to the attacking force. Since a Natar attack will weaken the defending force “for free” an attacker should use this to their advantage to maximize damage to the WW.
I won’t go into the calculations or assumptions a person would have to make in order to land a successful “piggyback” but it’s something I would love to see done successfully.
What should a hammer be targeting when attacking a WW village?
The simple answer is: Target the Great Warehouses. Of course, the question is “why?” Well, in terms of build time, high levels of the GW take longer to build than levels of the WW. So, if you attack a GW and inflict damage, you will cost the WW holder more time than if you target the WW. The WW race is a marathon remember, and every increment of time lost can be costly in the end.
There is a second reason. We all know that higher-level buildings are harder to bring down and thus require more catapults. Well, when the WW is reaching levels like 40, 60, 80, etc. It is getting significantly harder to damage with each additional level. While a hammer targeting a GW (only level 20 max) could bring it down 3 levels, the same hammer targeting a level 50 WW would do nothing. In order to cost a player the most amount of build time, the GW’s must be targeted. However, for last-ditch efforts to stop a WW (when it reaches level 98 and beyond) you have to target the WW to do anything to stop it since 2 levels of the WW can be queued at once.
Remember, catapults CAN and DO fire even if all the escorting troops die. The common belief is that the percentage of enemy troops that is killed is roughly equal to the percentage of catapults that fire. Combat simulations show that this isn’t quite true, however since the real formula is not known, this serves as a good rule of thumb.
Section 7- Strategy—Wonder Building Philosophies
When it all comes down to it, there are two main philosophies for building a Wonder. The first focuses on building almost solely the resource buildings ie granaries, warehouses, then GB’s, GW’s. Basically the philosophy is to get enough room for resources that the Wonder holder would be able to build the Wonder straight to 100 without stopping.
The second philosophy is for the WW holder to build the Wonder and the resource buildings as they go. With this build strategy, the WW holder will be upgrading the Wonder when they can and upgrading the resource buildings when they need to.
There are pros and cons to both.
PROS of the first: Once you get going you don’t have to stop and will have troops in the village to defend against Natar and Wonder attacks.
CONS of the first: The alliance/meta doesn’t see that their wonder is moving forward immediately and can hurt morale or support. Morale is priceless in the WW marathon!!
PROS of the second: People can see that the Wonder is moving forward. Of course, so can the other metas. This means that this Wonder would be more likely to be attacked… However, if an alliance has at least two WW’s, this means that the other Wonder is less likely to be attacked.
CONS of the second: The limited resource buildings do not allow for quite as many troops or as many resources that can be stored. Since it will probably be attacked more often, that could be an issue.
Conclusion: Both philosophies are necessary and will be seen on every server. A server has to have a front-runner, and a server will inevitably have a few Wonders that trail behind until the end. Both strategies have their merits and should be taken into account when formulating a build strategy for an alliance.
Section 8- The Roles of the 3 tribes during Endgame/What defenses do I put in a WW village?
Defense
Roman- The best Roman defensive unit that can be sent to the WW is the praetorian. The praetorian’s high infantry defense makes them the best infantry defender per crop used. Remember, WW’s need as much defense that consumes as little wheat as possible. Legionnaires should only be sent at a WW holder’s discretion since spearmen do a much better job defending against cavalry. DO NOT send any sort of Roman cavalry as defense! They are a waste of crop.
Gaul- Gauls should send both phalanx and druidriders to the WW. Phalanx are able to be produced extremely quickly and their good defense stats make them wonderful defenders per crop, while the druidriders make excellent infantry defenders to complement the praetorians. Haeduans should only be sent at the WW holder’s discretion because of potential wheat issues.
Teuton- Teutons should be sending spearmen, spearmen, spearmen. Also, Teutons should be the providers of scouts for the WW village because of their excellent wheat consumption versus the other scouts. Paladins should be sent only at the discretion of the WW holder, although they do help nicely against infantry, and a WW often sees several times more infantry than cavalry (remember, catapults and rams count as infantry too).
Hero- Your hero should be sent with your defenders to the WW village if your hero will not be part of a hammer attacking force. Any points you gain should be put into the defense bonus and then the defense stat of the hero if the bonus is maxed out. Remember though, your hero’s defense bonus only applies to YOUR troops. Also, don’t forget to turn on the +10% defense gold bonus. Every little bit counts in a World Wonder village.
Offense
Roman- Roman hammers should be composed of Imperians, E.C.’s, rams, and catapults. Roman troops are the best in the game, so a Roman should be able to provide a devastating hammer. Do not waste resources on E.I.’s unless there are extenuating circumstances.
Gaul- Gaul hammers should be composed of Swordsmen, Haeduans, rams, and catapults. TT’s generally won’t comprise a Gaul hammer, unless build time became an issue at some point.
Teuton- Teuton hammers are a little more interesting. They could be composed of Macemen, Axemen, T.K.s, rams and catapults, or just Axemen, T.K.s, rams and catapults. The reason for this is that Macemen can be built extremely quickly. In a lot of ways, the limiting factor on hammers is their build time and not their wheat consumption because of farming and the NPC merchant. If a Teuton were to build Macemen in a Great Barracks and Axemen in a regular barracks, they will be producing more attack per hour than if they just built Axemen. However, it does create a significantly larger wheat strain than a pure Axemen hammer would create, so choose your hammer composition wisely.
Hero- The hero should obviously have a maxed out offensive bonus. The raw attack power is a minimal boost to the overall strength of the hammer, but every little bit can help. Also, don’t forget to turn on your +10% gold bonus when attacking a Wonder. The +10% could be the difference between lowering something 3 levels versus 4 levels, which is potentially huge in a WW race.
I wish you the best of luck in your Endgame endeavors and hope that this guide was not only informative, but gave some insight into how the Endgame works. Although some people may say that I have given out too much information, my hope is that the .US server Endgames will become increasingly competitive and fun for everyone.
The End
source: Travian Forum
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