Travian

German developer Travian Games GmbH think they have just the strategy game for you. Travian is a free to play browser based game inspired by the award winning Settlers of Catan board game. Ultimately the goal in Travian is to construct and upgrade a Wonder of the World to level 100. The game revolving around building up your village, resource and alliance management.

You have a choice of three tribes each with a distinct advantage compared to the others. The Romans are good both offensively and defensively but have longer unit construction time, the Gauls are very good defensively with very quick horses and the Teutons are very strong offensively but much slower. However the tribes are so versatile you can really adapt them to your own play style.

Once you've selected your tribe and a starting position in the world you are given a starting village and taken through a tutorial. This does an average job at explaining how to navigate the menus and the general game mechanics, but may still leave you scratching your head in the main game. Menu design adds to this problem.

There are 4 types of resource used for literally everything from buildings to units, for example, you can build something called a cranny. This ensures that when you're attacked you don't lose quite so much of your precious resource when you're attacked as the person you previously annoyed comes calling for a raid on your village.

The online community is a vital part of play as it's really impossible for a single person to win alone. Working in an alliance allows resources to be traded and you can garrison villages with another player's troops. The main benefit of being in a large well established alliance is it gives you time to breathe, as people who try and go it alone generally get trodden on. Well maybe not always but there's definitely a certain amount of bullying which mars the experience for newcomers.

On the other hand the large community can add a social aspect to the game, where you can extend olive branches to stave off war on your territory or the next minute put on your best poker face and proceed to stab an ally in the back as you destroy his village.

A key part of gameplay is waiting; every action taking an allotted amount of time. For example upgrading your iron mine might take 30 minutes and within those 30 real time minutes you really won't be able to do much else. As it's a browser based game and animation free, it will pretty much run on anything, but without sound effects, music or any type of feedback from the game it feels devoid of life making it difficult to know if instructions have been actioned.

Whilst Travian is free to play, unless you stump up the cash for Travian Plus; giving you the benefits of construction queues, resource management tools or +25% production, you can find yourself at a distinct disadvantage to those who do pay. For example you can opt to pay for a feature which completes construction and research immediately.

Travian is a bit of an enigma, promoting itself as a game where you can just dip in and out in short spells, whenever you have a spare minute. However in reality the game requires quite serious time investment in order to micromanage your empire; as well as possible monetary investment in order to remain on a level pegging with your competitors. Whilst there are some interesting strategy elements behind the scenes only fans of the genre might want to brave this one.