BoardGameGeek and Travian - Show #3 - 07/11/2006

Review of Travian:
6 servers with different approaches
3 races to play
Romans (all around, cavalry-heavy) Can raise or extend a building and resource field simultaneously, High Defense-bonus by wall, Merchants can carry 500 units of resources (speed: 16 fields/hour), Very powerful infantry, average cavalry, development is expensive and takes a long time.
Teutons (attackers, aggressive) Plunder bonus: the cranny of enemies only hides 2/3 of its content, The earthwall is almost indestructable, but only gives a minimal defense bonus, Merchants can carry 1000 units of resources (speed: 12 fields/hour), Very cheap and fast trained troops which are excellent plunderers, Weak defense
Gauls (defensive, passive, but can be powerful) Speed bonus: Fastest troops in the game, average defense-bonus because of palisade, Merchants can carry 750 units of resources (speed: 24 fields/hour), Cranny is twice as big, Expensive siegeweapons, Cheap settlers
Main screens
Village Overview (this is where you raise resources)
Village Center (this is where the buildings are built)
Surrounding Map (who your neighbors are)
Messages (alliance, others)
Statistics
Reports (who attacks you)
Resources: Lumber, Clay, Iron, Crop
Crop is a persistent need, each building and unit requires a constant supply of crop
Buildings
Main building to decrease building time
Barracks for troops, Marketplace for trading, Embassy for alliances
Cranny is important, it protects resources from attack
Warehouse for storing resources, Granary for storing crop
Academy for better units, Blacksmith for better units, Stables for cavalry
Rally point for attacking, Armory for increasing the defense of your units
Residence for settling new areas (make new cities)
City Walls, Resource enhancing buildings, and more
Alliances
Forums are good and let you know what you are doing wrong and are good for alliances.
Plus gives some nice extra options such as queuing, resource look forward (when the resources will be available), better statistics, longer map view, better combat simulator, notebook, sorting function on marketplace.
$2.99/month; $6.99/3 months; $19.99/10 months; $19.99/1 year

Online experience with Travian:
Initially, I thought this game was a slow boring game, but as I played it and got into an alliance, I found it to be more engaging.
I definitely plan on playing more often and will report back in a few months
Alliances are key
Cranny is very important
Different races play differently
Play often even for a few minutes here and there

Review of BoardGameGeek:
Three games
Roads and Boats
Kingdoms (Auf Heller und Pfennig)
Tigris and Euphrates
PHP / mySQL based
Turn-based, non-interactive

Online experience with BoardGameGeek:
Could use an email reminder feature and a slightly better interface
The rules are pretty nice
Non-interactive (can be days between rounds)

Next week:
Boardgame site: Atari Play: http://games.atari.com/playgames/home.jsp
MOBBG: Imperia Online