In the following guide some thoughts about the playstyles and advantages of the three different Tribes in Travian: Kingdoms that can be choosen among. Everything written represents one opinion and other experienced players might have a different views on it (feel free to open a discusion about it on the forums of Travian: Kingdoms). 

 

Which Tribe should I choose?

Every single tribe in Travian: Kingdoms has its own strengths and a justified place in the game. The guide is split between a section for less active and a section for more active players to adress both groups and everybody inbetween.

 

Low / Medium active player

 

Gauls

Gauls are the most picked tribe for players with generally lower activity and that's for a good reason. In Travian: Kingdoms a hero item lets you dodge a small troop amount with your hero. Meaning, that  if you are less active your prime target is a good defense before you start with a strong offense. This is where the Gaul tribe shines. The double Cranny size makes you less interesting to opposing attackers and farmers and helps you to get enough resources to build Settlers. Not necessarily depending on being built or not, the fact that you could have a Trapper often scares enemy players enough to not attack you. Also traps prevent other players from attacking your village with their strong hero alone (as he will just get trapped). However, it has to be stated that the effectiveness of both Cranny and Trapper decreases with the progress of the game world. Still the Gaul is a very good class for a defensive or hybrid playstyle (even if you are very active).

 

Romans

One important reason for players to pick the Roman tribe is the possibility to extend a resource and an infrastructure building at the same time. Lesser active players might often face resource overflows. The ability to queue three instead of two buildings helps a lot to grow the account faster, to build a large Warehouse and to use the resources effectively. In addition, the high defense bonus of the Roman wall and the fact, that Roman heroes get a higher strength bonus (100 Str instead of 80 Str per spent point) makes them strong defenders in the early to mid-game.

 

Teutons:

It's not recommend for lesser active players to choose Teutons, as they don´t bring any defensive or economic advantages with them.

 

More active players

Consider yourself a more active player if you log into your account multiple times a day and/or have Duals or Sitters, which help you achieving this. In this section the focus isn't on activity but on the actual troop and tribe advantages of the different three tribes.

 

Defensive playstyle

For a defensive playstyle, Gauls are considered to be the best tribe among the three. Of course, also Roman and Teuton accounts can be played defensive with a good success. In the following both tribes are compared to the Gauls.

 

Gauls vs Romans

Romans are also an excellent choice as defensive tribe because of their good economic growth, however their biggest disadvantages are the slow unit building times and the lack of a defensive cavalry unit. The Praetorian takes 1,7 times longer to be built than the Gaulish Phalanx. That is a huge difference! Also the anti-cavalry unit of the Romans, the Legionnaire, has very average stats for a defensive unit and has to be produced in separate villages as it’s also an infantry unit.

 

Gauls vs Teutons

In the early, infantry dominated stages of the game the Teuton has very little defense to offer. The Spearfighter is a very fast built, crop efficient and resource efficient unit. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? The main problem with a Teuton defender comes with the defensive cavalry unit, the Paladin. Despite the facts that it can be a decent raiding unit, the Paladin is just a much weaker and much slower version of the Gaulish Druidrider. The Spearfighter is considered to be a weak anti-infantry defense unit, however if you want to build resource efficient anti-infantry defense it is still better to build Spearfighters instead of Paladins.

Resources spent per infantry defensive point:
 

Paladin = 7

Spearfighters: 6.85

 
This means resource wise Spearfighter offer cheaper infantry defense than Paladins, which shows how below average the Paladins defensive stats are. Overall, if you want to build defensive infantry and defensive cavalry units the Gaulish tribe offers a better mix. Still I want to encourage you to try the defensive Teuton, as it is a very unusual and exotic choice and cavalry defense get more important in the middle and late stages of the game.

 

Offensive playstyle

All three tribes are capable to support an offensive playstyle, however Teutons and Romans seems to have an edge over the Gaulish tribe. If you want to play Romans or Teutons your final choice highly depends on your playstyle and the goals you want to achieve.

 

Basic Infantry

Resources spent per offensive point (Brackets show the values with an active lvl 20 Brewery).
 

Clubswinger = 4.5 (3.75)

Axefighter = 4.58 (3.82)

Swordsman = 4.54

Imperian = 5

 
Base training time spent per offensive point.

Clubswinger = 18s (15s)

Axefighter = 20s (16.6s)

Swordsman = 22.15s

Imperian = 27.4s

 
As you can see here, the all mighty Clubswinger is not as oppressive in his resource efficiency as he used to be in the older Travian versions. All three tribes can produce infantry combat units at nearly the same efficiency! The Imperian might take a bit more time and cost more resources, however he is the most crop efficient unit in the end (and nearly matches the Clubswinger in farming). The Teutons achieve a serious infantry advantage after getting full access to their Brewery with a overall 20% bonus on attack stats.

 

Basic Cavalry

Resources spent per offensive point (Brackets for a level 20 Brewery / level 20 Horse Drinking Trough).

Teutonic Knight = 7.13 (5.94)

Theutates Thunder = 8.44

Equites Imperatoris = 6.6

Haeduan = 9.86

Equites Caesaris = 6.77

Base training time spent per offensive point.

 

Teutonic Knight = 19.73s (16.44s)

Theutates Thunder = 27.55s

Equites Imperatoris = 22s (17.6s)

Haeduan = 22.28s

Equites Caesaris = 19.55s (15.64s)

As one can see, the Teuton and Roman cavalry in general is much more resource efficient and faster produced than the Gaulish one. With the use of the Brewery (which brings some disadvantages with it) the Teutons are nearly able to compete with the quality and the production time of the Roman cavalry!

In the shown categories the Theutates Thunder and the Haeduan both get beaten by their Roman and Teuton counterparts. Of course, they have other additional qualitys to offer, however considering the offensive usage they are clearly disadvantaged.

 

Summary (Teutons vs Romans)

If you want to be an offensive player, it is recommend to play as a Roman or as a Teuton. Both are capable of producing decent offensive armies. If you also want to be aggressive in the early, infantry dominated, stages of the game and want to have a lot of fighting action going on, the Teuton offers an advantage by having fast produced and cheap infantry. With the help of the Brewery Teutons also transition well into the late game. If you are okay with being more careful about your troop losses in the early and mid-stages of the game, the Roman is a very potent choice. In the later stages of the game the Roman tribe cancels out its slight infantry disadvantages by superior cavalry units with the help of the Horse Drinking Trough.

 

Special mention Gauls

Even though the Gaulish cavalry is not as offensive oriented, they have a very potent ambush unit in the Theutates Thunder. Since there is no default Troop evasion in Travian: Kingdoms and it's only required to land a successful attack with the hero to steal Treasures, the speed of the Gaulish cavalry can be a real threat to unguarded units or treasures. In less than 1,5 hours Theutates Thunders can reach any target that’s not further away than 28 fields. Combined with a prior scouting this can cause a lot of fear and damage in opposing players and alliances.

 

 

Account growth / Farming income

 

Account Growth

Especially in the early stages of the game but also later on, it is important to work on the resource and culture point production of your account. In Travian: Kingdoms, if you are an advanced farmer and have a solid resource production you often will have enough resources to upgrade multiple things (while probably also producing units). The limiting factor here is the building time. Especially in your main village it will take hours, days or even a week or two of building time to extend your Main Building, your Warehouse, your Granary and many other important buildings to their maximum level. Even though you rather would like to upgrade the Resource Fields instead, some of these  infrastructure-buildings are required to manage the account properly. Guess whose Capital is days and weeks ahead of you, because it can build two things at once? The Romans! The same goes with culture points. The Romans double building feature allows him to accumulate resources and culture points much faster than any other tribe! Are you farming 1.000.000 resources a week? That sounds very impressive and looks like you spent some effort to achieve it. If the Roman player next to you produces 6000 resources per hour more in his villages than you do, he is still ahead of you in total income, without moving a finger for it. If you speed build everything that takes too much time, you can ignore this advantage, however even if you only speed build very specific buildings the Roman rewards you, as you can instantly finish 3 buildings at once (instead of 2).

 

Farming

Right from the start the Teuton player can mass Clubswingers and accumulate an impressive raid income. If you are a good raider and know how to optimize account growth and the speed of settlement, this can lead to the most explosive starts a player can have in Travian: Kingdoms. Furthermore, it also should guarantee you good choices of 15 or 9 crop villages in case you want to settle one of these as your second village. You can beat the Robber Hideouts and Camps more efficiently than others, because you can raid them with you hero and a massive amount of Clubswingers. The additional Cranny-dip of the Teuton Hero offers, gives you a little edge in macro farming, however the usefullness of this bonus highly depends on your surroundings.

In Travian: Kingdoms the Romans Legionnaires got a great cost reduction and can also be used quite effectively to farm in the early game, however they get outclassed by a lot, as so as the Romans “real” farming unit is available to you.

For the Gauls and the Romans, the Equites Imperatoris and the Theutates Thunder are the units of choice to generate a good farming income. Both are very expensive compared to the Clubswinger and much more sensible to losses. Still their speed and their carrying capacity puts them far ahead of all the other units. Especially the Theutates Thunder is a real farming monster. Once you got your Theutates Thunder production going, these little horses can out-farm opposing Teuton players, even when these have  two or three times bigger army sizes.

When active farming Teutons reach  3000 – 5000  Clubswinger sized armys,  they will have to send their Clubs on 10 hour or longer lasting trips to gather resources. At this point the whole efficient farming turns into more of a self-sustainment farming where the Clubswingers often won’t return much more than the amount of wheat they ate during their journey. Theutates Thunders still will only need between 3-4 hours to do the job. Also if you use a Tournament Square to speed up your units the Theutates Thunder will be sped up in every additional minute, that exceeds 2 hours and 6 minutes travelling time. Compared to that, Clubswingers have to run 5 hours and 40 minutes, before the speed bonus kicks in !

At the end of the day, farming mostly will be a by-product of the offensive army you are creating and the unit type will mostly be chosen by its offensive efficiency and not by its raiding stats. Still preferences between farm efficiency, raiding efficency and building time have to be choosen. Prime examples for choices that have to be made are : Clubswinger vs Axefighter, Theutates ThundervsHaeduan and Equites ImperatorisvsEquites Caesaris.

 

Conclusion

As mentioned before, the Gauls are a great choice for new and experienced players as they have good defensive mechanisms and can be played successfully with less commitment than other tribes would require. (Especially Teutons need a higher activity!) Another interesting choice would be to play a defensive hybrid Gaul and with a lot of fun with your personal Theutates Thunder striking force while providing defense to other players with the rest of your troops.

Because of the fast account growth and the army strength, the Roman tribe is considered as the most potent by many active players. Romans generally do not suffer from the problem of having too expensive units (see the tables above). As the game progresses they provide the strongest, fast built and most efficient offensive force available.

Most players who chose Teutons as their tribe either wanted the explosive start and the aggressive early game or were not aware of the fact that the Clubswinger is not more resource efficient than the rest of the infantry anymore. Still the Teuton has its own special spot in the game. If you want to fight a lot and want to be able to recover losses fast (instead of saving your army for only few very few big attacks during the game) the Teuton offers very good offensive options for you. Also the high durability of the wall and the overall great defensive stats of the Spearfighter might pull you into the direction of the Teuton tribe!