TribalWars

There I was again. I found myself going thru my farm list. After choosing my village and finding my rally point the horrible waste of human life begins: copy & paste coordinates from notepad into the x&y-coordinate fields, then choose 44 or 55 light cavalry units (a tip: two same numbers are easier to type than two different ones), hit enter, then click on "attack". Wait for screen to reload. My farm list is currently about 50 villages long making it about 10-15 targets for each of my villages. I got four villages myself. Only. How is this going to be like when I have ten villages? Taking a quick look at the Rankings.. the current number one guy in our world (world 40), Societal, has 59 villages! If it takes 15 mins for me to go through my farm list (which I'm supposed to go through 3-4 times a day to get the most out of it), how long does it take for Societal? If he farms like me, is should take him about 12 times longer. So three hours per time, 3-4 times a day making it a shit lot of wasted time.

TribalWars is one of many medieval war games out there. It has about 300,000 players divided over 40+ worlds. These worlds are not exactly alike but have some small differences in how things work. Some worlds got churches, some worlds got smithies capable of pimping weapons (i.e. weapons got levels) etc.

So what is it that you can do in TribalWars? Well, you tend to your village and since your village is just amazingly mind-blowing, you continuously want more of those exactly the same kind of villages! Even the buildings are located in the exact locations in every village. Anyway, you mine resources and use them on building new buildings and upgrading existing buildings in your villages. Then you recruit troops by spending resources and time. You got spear fighters, swordsmen, axemen, archers, scouts, light and heavy cavalry, mounted archers and some of the heavy stuff: rams and catapults. A pretty usual and in my opinion, a firm, working set to play with! Each troop has one offensive and three defensive attributes. The defensive attributes are strengths against infantry, cavalry and archers. Upon a battle, these attributes are somehow all summed up and calculated and out of this the winner and troop losses are determined.

When you send some troops to war, you have the possibility to call of the attack within the first 10 minutes. Even when the attack is targeted at some village 20h away from you, there is no way for you to cancel the attack after the first 10 minutes. I assume in ten minutes the troops are still on "a calling distance" away: "Oi fellows, come back! Our liege orders you to come back oready!". Then there is this message, which I've wondered about a few times: "The attacking force has to consist of at least 69 villagers". It seems that the number of troops in your "attacking force" must be at least 1% of your village points. The village points tally is a made up system to rank villages and players against each other. I wonder about the difference: why I cannot send ONE guy to attack a human player, but then again, I can send ONE guy to attack a non-human player (i.e. barbarian or bonus village)? Why is this restriction correlated with the amount of points in the village? It will remain a mystery. Another thing that bothers me is the flashing swords, which lights up when an attack is launched towards any of my villages. What specifically bothers me is why do I see this immediately when this attack has been launched? As I wrote in my previous post, they did not have any means of real-time communications in those times.

One major huge part of TribalWars is expanding or growing. You do so by pimping up your existing villages and by conquering pre-existing villages. There is only so much you can upgrade in your first village that eventually you need to get another (and yet another) village. You cannot create new villages from scratch but you need to noble them. You can train these noblemen to attack villages. Each attack lowers the loyalty of the village and once the loyalty has fallen below zero, the village is yours. This one bugs be greatly. How can the loyalty of a village fall to below zero in a second or two? I assume a nobleman is someone with high prestige and is an absolute great speaker (master of propaganda) and is therefore able to convert local population. By sending a nobletrain, which is basically four attacks timed closely together, each containing a nobleman, you can drop the loyalty of a village as quickly as the attacks hit it. With good timing, this can happen withing a second, usually withing two or three seconds. Those noblemen must be absolutely amazing speakers and their bling-bling must be so shiiiiinnyyyyyyy for people to fall for it so quickly. In reality, this process would take days or weeks.

In TribalWars supporting your tribe members is very easy. You just sent troops to your tribe member's village and then forget the whole thing. Unlike Travian, you do not need to feed your troops OR should I say, they are fed by their home village's farm - automagically. I assume the logistics involved with large scale troop movements is done in the "background" or as in reality in the medieval times, troops outside their base relied mostly on foods provided by their current location. Food was not that often transported to them. However, having troops supporting other villages does not "free" any food at home.

TribalWars is definitely not a bad game and naturally I salute it's creators. It regularly provides things to do. Planning and executing attacks is kinda fun, timing them is a bitch but once successfully orchestrated and executed, the feeling is great. And the graphics are nicer than Travian's.

.. but the worst.. I think TribalWars has no ending. You have to play it until you get your family to scold you, your wife divorces you and your own mother and father disowns you. Once you have what you've worked so hard for, that is, one billion villages, there is simply no time for anything else in life. So. Think for yourself.

I would not like to disappoint my tribe members by quitting the game but I'm afraid that is what I have to do. Sooner or later. So maybe tomorrow. Or maybe the day after tomorrow. Or.. when someone attacks me (which will never happen?).. I don't know!

TribalWars can be found here: www.tribalwars.net

And finally, out of FIVE stars, I give TribalWars THREE!

Let the discussion continue in the forum!